England Through- Soviet Spectacles
[We publish below some extracts from a document which we have recently had the good fortune to acquire, written by an emissary of the Soviet sent over to England to describe the country in a manner suitable for Soviet digestion. 25,000 copies of the book from which it is an extract have been circulated to members of the Communist party in Russia.] ON a June evening, Piccadilly Circus does not look like a city square, but rather like the sermon of a new Savanarola, or, if you prefer it, like a stage set by a Soviet stage-manager ; ladies in long evening dresses, with naked, thickly powdered backs, who pour out from theatres, cinemas, restaurants and clubs ; gentlemen wearing swallow-tailed coats and top- hats. They have not been to a ball, not even to a " first-night." This is one of their ordinary evenings. The gentlemen count their capital in pounds sterling, like everything that is virile and heroic, such as naphtha and rubber ; but the ladies value their dresses in guineas, as they do everything superior, or (should I say? ) sublime; like pearls, paintings, Dunhill's pipes and thoroughbred dogs. Among the ladies and gentlemen, rogues in tatters scurry afoot, blow toy trumpets, open the motor-car doors, offer to sell matches, swarm like night midges that swoop down and round the light of Piccadilly. And then ? Then the gentlemen wend their way to their West-end quarters, where they change from swallow-tails into dressing gowns, and decorously take tea. As to the beggars ? The beggars trudge to Trafalgar Square ; to arches, or to the shelter of bridges over the Thames, for they have neither a dressing gown nor yet a common roof over their heads.
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