"Blown to Bits''

For months and years the normal arriving Briton has voiced surprise at the queries of U. S. shipnewsmen about danger of war in Europe and whether Britain was in fear of attack. "You Americans are the ones who worry about war in Europe," has been the usual British remark. "In England we think more about the results of our cricket test matches."

By last week the attitude of the arriving Briton was more like that of rich and alert Lady Rhondda who, arriving on the Aquitania, said: "The threat of war is so near and so constant and so inescapable that all England feels it. It is not something remote, as war in Europe must seem to you over here. It is right in her homes. I haven't got my gas mask yet--I'm not sure that I wouldn't rather be gassed right off and have it over with. But you cannot feel comfortable when you know that your capital city might be blown to bits any hour of the day or night and everyone in it gassed."

With the Viscountess was the general manager of her weekly magazine Time & Tide (no kin), Miss D. S. Stanhope. Its staff is 100% female, its regular contributors about equally divided as to sex, Bernard Shaw and the "Provincial Lady," Miss E. M. Delafield, sharing honors with Economist Sir Norman Angell and Novelist Rebecca West, Dramatist Sean O'Casey. "In England people have stopped reading Punch in favor of the New Yorker," said the publisher Viscountess, "and most intelligent English people read TIME every week, even though during recent months large sections have often been clipped out."

During the abdication crisis of Edward VIII, Lady Rhondda said in a radio broad cast: "If he [the King] marries her [Mrs. Simpson] he will offend against the standards of the old morality. On the other hand, it seems to me that the new morality which says he should marry the woman he is in love with is a cleaner, a more honest and a better morality than the old. I myself should be for it."

Last week Lady Rhondda went on: "In England we have stopped completely talking about the abdication of King Edward. After all it affected only one Englishman directly. That is why England took the abdication right in stride and passed over to the more important thing--the threat against the lives of every one of us over there. . . .

"I think President Roosevelt is a very great man. . . . The main purpose of my visit to America is to promote my magazine. ... I am frankly envious of the popularity in the British Isles of several American weeklies."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.