A New Era
Three points stand out to-day in the war position. Ohe is Pre sident Roosevelt's "lease or lend" bill. Another Ik the Beginning of a British and Allied air of fensive in Europe by daylight, Thờ third is the declaration By Gel- eral Smuts, Prime Minister of the South African Union, that the en- emy must be cleared out of Africa and that South Africa has dedicat- ed herself to this task.
President Roosevelt's bill strikes British observers as epoch-mal - ing in the true sense of the term. It may prove to have inaugurated a new era in the political, eco- nomite and, above all, financial re- lations between freedom-loving democratie proples. It zeems to foreshadow cooperation and inter- dependence anong nations which cheri;h similar political ideals, and a pooling of their resources The Nazi for a cotation purpere
By Wickham Steed
f
and Fazeist systems have aimed at economic and financial self- sufficiency, or "autarky," for the purpose
waging avgressive predatory War. The "leave or iend" principle accepts cooperation. among demoeratie Countries for resistance to aggression in the first instance and, perhaps, for the work of constructive peace in the second. This is what gives it an epech-inaking character.
enemy
been had
To its night-bombing operations the Royal Air Force has now add- ed heavy daylight raids
upon and other aerodromes military targets. These daylight raids are a new feature in the war position. They amount to a determined offensive against the enemy. Since Hitler's mighty air effensives against England were smashed last summer and autumn and Splt- by British Hurricanes
no large restaurants for the raids of that memorable first res. there
Ministry offered | week-end of September. Every operations by daylight in Western it smashes individualist traditions workers. The
Mr. Winston Churchill than ever the Italian peo- and compels men to realise that the necessary equipment free, and window was shattered and when Europe.
months ago that Miss Anderson, the A some of it has been manufactured
manager of predicted some ple are thrust back upon they form
community. 11
the whole enterprise, a woman in 1941 we should gain mastery most promising development has by mass production to its orders. the gratitude of
Many people now ask Hitler.
who evidently knows how to or- in the air. communal These meals are open to all, been the growth of
"What," the reader may ask,ganise and also how to win the whether these daylight raids in- And how much that grati- meals.
The Ministry of Food is not, "does private enterprise say, when devotion of all who serve under dicate that the Commanders of the tude is worth they can hampered by a venerable past: a a municipality offers at 6d. a bet- her, visited it at 6 a.m., it had British and Allied Air Force' feel neither gas, water nor electricity. they have already begun to attain learn from the fate of jungle of red-tape requires several ter meal than it would sell at is.
The engineers wrought miracles mastery in the air. decades to reach maturity. Under 3d, or is, 6d.?" So far the answer Fritz Thyssen and scores
under the stimulus of her deter- Lord Woolton, with only a hand-
mination and by noon the first of others without whom ful of civil servants on the staff.
cooked dinners were ready Hitler's rise would not it has shown both enterprise and'
usual.
have been possible.
fresh thinking.
The gigantic task of controlling distri- the import, storage and
whole for the meantime,bution of food
population might well have oc-
By H. N. Brailsford
have as yet been opened only in districts so poor that they would not tempt a profiteering concern. "But," said I to one of the men who inspired this scheme; "when people throughout the city realise what you are doing, will they not flock to your communal meals?" "I hope so," said he. "And won't you have to expand?" Again he hoped so.
in
air
fighting
Whether or not this conclusion is warranted, I think the daylight soffensive means that our numeri- cal strength in aircraft and pilots A long line of men and women, is now great enough to allow us with the men predominating, were to run to risks that are more scri- by buying their tickets as I entered. ous Mussolini,
than they are by It was a cold raw day and many day
the past we have proceeds towards a fate cupled all its energies. But since
looked tired and a few were dirty, night. In Where in this devastation can held our own against a numeri- marked out for him by a the aerial Biltzkrieg grew serious, it has had to concern itself with
they wash? Most of them sleep in cally stronger enemy by the sup- study of great historical the provision of communal cook-is easy. These public restaurants shelters, some of them on the erior quality of our machines and figures of the past obsess-[ed meals.
bunks which Mr. Morrison has the superlar skill of their crews. Mr. Bevin saw the need for
provided, but some still on the Mr. Churchill's phrase: "Never in ed by similar ambitions. maintaining the health and cheer-
ground. I could sense in my own the history of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so How hard it is for a man fulness of the munition workers.
body their feeling of ease and re- to escape from his past! It tolling in perll and under exces
lief as they entered the warm and few" will stand as a merited tri- sive strain, The children and
friendly room and surveyed what bute to our comparatively small Duce illustrates again the mothers evacuated to the country
they might choose for 6d. You can Air Force last year. But because from dangerous areas had to be
buy for this sum one of three our first-line machines and high- difficulty of acting upon cared for.
dishes of meat and vegetables and skilled pilots were then compara- the Greek maxim
"AC-
In Coventry and other stricken
one of three sweets. The quantity tively few, the strain upon them It would have been was generous; the quality all one was severe. quire a competence and towns where the housewife was for a time without water, electri-
could ask, and once more the wrong to risk them in daylight "And must not a system So then practise virtue." city or gas, even when her house
they were still become permanent?" kitchen was a model of cleanli-offensives while was undamaged,
ness and order. Best of all there comparatively few. The fact that Mussolini had acquired a
neighbouring beneficent cities and the Army rushed to the Once more he had hopes.
was an atmosphere of kindliness they are now being risked in day- competence and he seem- spot with their mobile kitchens I chose the shattered riverside and respect. Free citizens were light offensives seems to suggest
Finally, all over
of East London for helping one another to live while that they are no longer few but ed to be in an
excellent and canteens.
the country, certain categories of visit of exploration. Many all, men and women together. are becoming many. position for
The main faced the common danger. practising wage-carners together with the streets, oddly enough the
It must be remembered that the virtue. He had achieved old-age pensioners presented the thoroughfares, are nearly normal usual cheap restaurant run for Royal Air Force
most difficult problem of ail. and thronged with traffic. Behind profit is incomparably less plea is not only British. In It Polish, while the cost of living has risen them may lie a stretch of several sant and less efficient, and its staff Czechoslovak, Free French, Dutch, steeply, their incomes have stood acres where nothing remains but is sweated to the bone.
Belgian and Norwegian airmen still.
Around such areas tangled ruins.
The economies of this new play their part besides Cana- The Ministry has followed the stretch mean little streets of two-
New Zealanders, Aus- whose walls municipal venture belong to the dians,
The tralians and
volunteer airmen usuni English technique. It has not storeyed buildings,
a centralised look intact, but on a closer view improvisations of wartime.
United States. It is charge of 6d; covers the cost of the from food bought in bulk. The widely looked upon as the nucleus Borough gives free the building, of the international air force of the electric current and the ser- the future that will help to keep vices of the staff, but even if a the peace when Nazi and Fascist charge were made hereafter for aggression has been crushed. Like these overheads, a fantastically President Roosevelt's "lease or cheap meal could still be provided lend" bill it is truly epoch-mak-
some
authorities to act.
mum
area
·6
Amid this devastation
at 8d.
ing.
the
though British
the future of
a great success; his rule was established; if he had gradually relaxed his grip and continued a policy of material development he attempted to create
machine, but it required and the windows gape open and some might have gone down in stimulated and helped the local of the woodwork is charred.
I first history, in spite of his
Every factory with a staff of visited an elementary school--the crimes against liberty, as 200 employees is now required to laboratory of the whole rapidly a man with
con- provide a canteen for its workers. expanding system. The kitchen Some supply hot meals at a low was spacious und spotlessly clean
the women in it structive ideas to his cre-charge (10d, or 1s.) in cheerful and
worked dit. But the instincts that surroundings: others do the mini- quietly and with method. A happy.
Many of the social gains of the Epoch-making, too, is General and sell only sandwiches buzz of talk came from the class- had guided him in his un- and cakes with tea or hot soup. rooms where the children were at last war, the admirable controls Smuts' vision of
fail, dinner. They drank from plea of foods and raw materials for Africa. This African continent scrupulous career
they notoriously
santly coloured mugs which, like example, were lost when the pro- of ours, he said, must be render- too strong: the flattery in the local authority steps in.
Happily the local authority the gaily coloured table-cloths fiteers assailed them, because they ed safe for the young democratic worked invisibly and the communities of the future which which he basked was too usually had a nucleus which it had been specially designed and had
could expand. Thanks to the pro- manufactured for these schools, average man never knew what he are setting up house within it. ¦ disturbing to his balance; vision of cheap meals to children The food was wholesome and gained. But his senses tell him all South Africans are helping to ́about, socialised restore the Emperor Haile Selas- not content with his in elementary schools, a staff of well cooked and an ample meal he need know
As I journeyed home [sié to his native land. Australians capable and enthusiastic teachers cost the incredible sur of 3d, meals. triumph, he dreamt of re- domestic economy was available Any child could ask for a second through a city still, after months broke through the Itallan defences No British Gov- than half of of buttering, mainly intact, I won-in Cyrenaica, sounding glory as a con- to direct the many willing volun- portion and more
teers, and behind them was anthern-did so.
dered will any poet ever ade- lernment could have commanded queror. In consequence, adequate, experience of buying In another school over two quately sing the devotion of its them or the Canadians or the New whereas at one time he food in bulk. To extend this sy hundred adults dined daily and in common people the boys who de-Zealanders to fight in our cause. held the balance in stem to children in secondary a third over five hundred. The fend its liberty in the air, the wo-They care of their own free will. schools and to the evacuees, was usual. landscape: with its many men who know what community They will expect, and will have, Europe, he has no hope of mirly easy. The really exciting varieties of devastation, some means, and the stoical endurance a voice in the making of a de survival to day except as adventure began only a few weeks brutal and some fantastic lay of these dockers who work all day mocratic peace from which the ngo, with the opening all over the around them. Ofte of these schools in peril and sleep in squalor un- very possibility of aggressive war
will be rënïoved” Hitler's puppet::
'country in the pobrer districts of had been struck in the terrific der arches?
were
Where