MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
AROUND me as I write are grouped the flowers of spring. In a bowl from Mekinez, packed tight with fibre, the stiff flowers of the netted iris glimmer among the green spikes which form its leaves. In a pot from Aubagne the perianth of the Algerian iris,
frail as tissue paper, .puzzles the mind with its evas:ve colour. Is it blue? Is it purple?. Is it pink? And to my right a small glass vase from Woolworth holds a bunch of primroses, of yellow crocus, and of snowdrops. How tightly do the bells of the latter hide the small green and white petticoats which lurk within! "Monocotyledonous" is, I am assured, the botanical name for this demure habit. And outside, under the thorn hedge where the robin hops and picks, is a whole regiment of other snowdrops—so small, so courageous and so neat. Slowly, in this manner, we are creeping out of the fifth winter of the war, the winter which so many people, most imprudently, imagine will be the last. I wonder whether the citizens of this country are aware of how slowly peace will come to us this time ; of the anxieties, the turmoils, and the horrors which the liberation of Europe is bound to bring. Last time we passed, as it were, from war to peace in a single uproarious night.. I can still recall the bonfire flames flickering upon the packed crowds in Piccadilly Circus. and hear the deep-sea roar of their delight. This time when the armistice corines there will be equal jubilation, and the smoke of burning black-out curtains will rise from many a backyard. But we shall wake in the morning conscious that all is by no means over, that we still have a formidable enemy, and that peace upon the continent can come gradually only, and in instalments.
Our grandchildren.in after years will gaze at us with a certain wonder, and will beg us to tell again the stories of how the bombs fell around us in the night. We shall tell these stories with relish. We shall tell them how, standing in the orchard, we had seen twenty searchlights converge upon a tiny bomber, shining white up there like a gnat in the light of a lamp. How suddenly the great beams of the searchlights were sucked into themselves to leave a well of darkness streaked with a feather of red flames. How we could hear men cheering across the woods. We shall tell them of London, when the pavements shook and billowed as in an earthquake, and when the great fires threw flickering shadows of street-lamps across the roads. We shall tell them how we lay in bed listening to the drone of aeroplanes, as insistent as a dentist's drill, and heard the whistle of descending bombs, and felt the bed jump beneath us to the shock that followed. We shall tell them of the London tube stations, of the steel bunks which lined, the platforms, of the pathetic pieces of cardboard or dim shawls devised to keep away the draught ; of how the curtains of these sad cubicles would still be swaying as we entered the trains to the shrill cry of "Mind the doors." We shall tell them how in the early mornings after the blitz the streets would be blocked by dripping hoses ; how one would note the exhaustion on the faces of the firemen, and gaze with apprehension at the drab faces of the women who crept out from shelters' into the dawn. And we shall tell them how the whole of London would on such mornings smell of ashes, of how burnt paper would twirl in the air and fall among the puddles, of how the brick dust from blasted buildings would cover the privet hedges with .a film of powdered chocolate. We shall tell them these stories, and we shall feel heroic. But we shall forget to tell them that after all it was not the great ordeals that we minded most. We shall not tell them that the central strain came from the accumulation of smaller inconveniences.
To most of us it will not be the presence of danger, nor yet the constant anxiety regarding those at the front, which will remain in our memories as the more persistent .tribulations of five years of war ; they will recede into the after-glow of heroism and love. Nor shall we recall in later years the denial for so long a period of the accustomed pleasures of life. I am quite unable, for instance, to remember_ whether in the last war the ordinary enjoyments of our
days and nights were either more or less restricted than today. But the inconveniences which are imposed will remain with us for ever, and it will be difficult to convey to those who never experienced them how serious was the stra:n upon our temper of these constant, these unceasing, these accumulated tribulations. How, for instance, could one convey to others the effect of the black-out ; surely the greatest and most inclement of all civilian ills? To them darkness will mean "the country," and they will th'nk of it in terms of a warm hurricane lantern among the byres. They will not understand that the black-out in a town meant fear. Fear of tumbling down area steps, fear of being run over, fear of losing one's way. They will not realise the deep perplexity which assailed us when our torches had been forgotten, or dimmed suddenly to a mere glow-worm light. and when every street seemed to run beside the edge of a great park, houses upon one side, and upon the other nothing but gigantic trtv.s. They will not know how, upon nights of streaming rain, the headlights, the traffic lights, and the torch-lights become confused with their own reflections and blurred into a coruscation of different points of light, some static, some moving slowly, and some moving with most dangerous speed. It will be comic for them to imagine their grandparents crashing their teeth against a Belisha beacon, or walking round the Victoria Memorial as dazed as any lost wanderer in the Brazilian jungle. Nor will they understand the warm glow of achievement and security which comes upon us when the dark doors open and we find light ins:de.
When I ask my constituents what they really mind most about the war it is always the black-out which comes first in their list of evils. The second tribulation, especially for women, is shopping. For me this ordeal is intermittent rather than constant. It is inconvenient, of course, to run out of soap, carbon paper, razor blades, and clothes. It is sad that my washing should be collected and delivered so irregularly, and that my underclothes, when they eventually return, have ceased to be my underclothes, but have shrunk to the shape of Little Black Sambo's pants. I quite see that were I a housekeeper (which I thank Heaven that I am not) these difficulties would assume enormous proportions, and that I should almost envy in my black despair the irresponsibility of those who labour at Anz'o or in the Garigliano river-bed. But for those who have constantly to move from one place to another, and according to a rigid frnetable, the second of war ills is certainly transport. It is all very well for those who can appear early at a station, and who on arrival can, in the eighteenth century manner, go to bed ; but for those who have to dash for a train, make a speech on arrival, and then return in the evening, the conditions of modern transport arc an ordeal which frays the nerves and debilitates the frame. St. Pancras station on a wet midnight, and after three hours in a packed corridor, makes one realise that this is, in fact, a total war.
In this great darkness there is a shining light, namely, the amazing good-temper of the British people. After a night journey recently the dawn broke cold and grim upon a packed corridor. People had taken it in turns to sit upon their luggage, but when morn:ng broke other people emerged from the compartments and picked their difficult way towards the end of the car. Those who had to rise at their passing did so with a wan smile of forgivingness upon their sleepless, haggard faces. "You observe," I remarked to a Polish officer who was standing next to me, "how good-tempered are the citizens of this country?" He had stood the strain of the journey less well than my compatriots. He ground his teeth with rage. "They arc I ke shecps," he said furiously. " Oh, no," I said, "it isn't that at all." He grunted unconvinced. My admiration for these patient; patriotic, courteous people knows no bounds. I pray with all my soul that they are right in thinking that we are now passing out of the last winter of the Getman War.
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