A Traveller in War-Time | Page 8

shooting at?" I asked.
"Listen," said one of the officers. There came a lull in the firing and
then a faint, droning noise like the humming of insects on a still
summer day. "It's all they have to shoot at, that noise."
"But their own planes?" I objected.
"The Gotha has two engines, it has a slightly different noise, when you
get used to it. You'd better step out of that window. It's against the law
to show light, and if a bomb falls in the street you'd be filled with
glass." I overcame my fascination and obeyed. "It isn't only the
bombs," my friend went on, "it's the falling shrapnel, too."
The noise made by those bombs is unmistakable, unforgetable, and
quite distinct from the chorus of the guns and shrapnel--a crashing note,
reverberating, sustained, like the E minor of some giant calliope.
In face of the raids, which coincide with the coming of the moon,
London is calm, but naturally indignant over such methods of warfare.

The damage done is ridiculously small; the percentage of deaths and
injuries insignificant. There exists, in every large city, a riffraff to get
panicky: these are mostly foreigners; they seek the Tubes, and some the
crypt of St. Paul's, for it is wise to get under shelter during the brief
period of the raids, and most citizens obey the warnings of the police. It
is odd, indeed, that more people are not hurt by shrapnel. The Friday
following the raid I have described I went out of town for a week-end,
and returned on Tuesday to be informed that a shell had gone through
the roof outside of the room I had vacated, and the ceiling and floor of
the bedroom of one of the officers who lived below. He was covered
with dust and debris, his lights went out, but he calmly stepped through
the window. "You'd best have your dinner early, sir," I was told by the
waiter on my return. "Last night a lady had her soup up-stairs, her
chicken in the office, and her coffee in the cellar." It is worth while
noting that she had all three. Another evening, when I was dining with
Sir James Barrie, he showed me a handful of shrapnel fragments. "I
gathered them off the roof," he informed me. And a lady next to whom
I sat at luncheon told me in a matter-of-fact tone that a bomb had fallen
the night before in the garden of her town house. "It was quite
disagreeable," she said, "and broke all our windows on that side."
During the last raids before the moon disappeared, by a new and
ingenious system of barrage fire the Germans were driven off. The
question of the ethics of reprisals is agitating London.
One "raid," which occurred at midday, is worth recording. I was on my
way to our Embassy when, in the residential quarter through which I
passed, I found all the housemaids in the areas gazing up at the sky, and
I was told by a man in a grocer's cart that the Huns had come again. But
the invader on this occasion turned out to be a British aviator from one
of the camps who was bringing a message to London. The warmth of
his reception was all that could be desired, and he alighted hastily in the
first open space that presented itself.
Looking back to the time when I left America, I can recall the
expectation of finding a Britain beginning to show signs of distress. I
was prepared to live on a small ration. And the impression of the
scarcity of food was seemingly confirmed when the table was being set
for the first meal at my hotel; when the waiter, who chanced to be an
old friend, pointed to a little bowl half-full of sugar and exclaimed: "I

ought to warn you, sir, it's all you're to have for a week, and I'm sorry
to say you're only allowed a bit of bread, too." It is human perversity to
want a great deal of bread when bread becomes scarce; even war bread,
which, by the way, is better than white. But the rest of the luncheon,
when it came, proved that John Bull was under no necessity of stinting
himself. Save for wheat and sugar; he is not in want. Everywhere in
London you are confronted by signs of an incomprehensible prosperity;
everywhere, indeed, in Great Britain. There can be no doubt about that
of the wage-earners--nothing like it has ever been seen before. One sure
sign of this is the phenomenal sale of pianos to households whose
occupants had never dreamed of such luxuries. And not once, but many
times, have I read in the newspapers of workingmen's families of four
or five