Abstract

London Notes

Before the author left New York, some of his English friends had written to him that he would find his native country in a very sad state. Austerity, they said, was making life nearly intolerable: people were undernourished, low-spirited, nervous, and irritable. His first impressions do not confirm these gloomy reports: on the contrary, Londoners seem to the author in some ways to be rather more relaxed and cheerful than New Yorkers. Outside the worst hit areas the city is beginning to take on a fairly normal appearance. There is peace, albeit a disturbed and precarious one, and that affords some relief to people who for so long were in the front line. With memories of the blitz still so vivid, it is hardly surprising that nobody here discusses the next war the way every one in New York does.