Back to London

Last week the London press still printed cheery little notes from city children evacuated to the countryside. A small boy wrote: "Dear Mum and Dad, please send Colin and me some more trousers. We have been blackberrying. I have scores of mosketoe bites. P.S.--Please send some more muney. I have 4d. and Colin only has 2d." A small girl: "The lady's little girl is three weeks older than me, but I'm bigger. ... She says I talk funny. I told her I'm a Cockerney. Her uncle is a sailor too. Tell Dad to look for him. His name is Mr. Jones."

But after eight weeks, Britain was beginning to have trouble making the evacuation stay put. Country schools were so crowded that many children got only an hour or two of schooling a day. Overcrowded also were the houses in which they were billeted. Householders were horrified to find that their visitors had to be deloused, put up a struggle against taking a bath, often displayed questionable manners.

Britain's teachers tried desperate devices to keep the evacues out of mischief. They staged boxing and wrestling matches, started all sorts of games. Nevertheless, bored, homesick city toughies formed gangs, roved the countryside, beat up village children, threw stones at policemen, let pigs out of their pens, chased cows, skirmished with enraged farmers.

Result: By last week some 200,000 of the 1,220,000 evacues had gone back to their city homes. There, with all schools closed, they ran wild in the streets. The Catholic Herald estimated there were 100,000 at large in London. While the press regarded the situation with "dismay," the Government stood adamant against opening schools in the danger areas, lest it encourage a wholesale return. It did, however, recall 200 teachers to London, sent them out to round up youngsters in the streets and hold impromptu classes on sandbags, in church crypts, in basements.

To the Government's worry over the breakdown of its educational system was added another worry--evacuation's cost. The Government pays ten shillings, sixpence a week for each child's keep. Last week, evacuation's bill having risen already to well over $500,000,000, the Ministry of Health was considering imposing a means test, making families that could afford it pay for their children's country board.

Meanwhile London's universities were in even sadder case. The Government ordered the unwilling University of London out of town, dispersed its various colleges and departments to about a dozen places. One university professor refused to be driven. To his workshop, the Galton laboratory, established by famed Geneticist Sir Francis Galton, marched bearded, burly Professor Ronald Aylmer Fisher with two women assistants. When guards stopped the assistants, Professor Fisher used his fists, succeeded in storming his own laboratory. There he patched up his party's wounds, went grimly to work.

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