Rustling Hedgerows

To 34 months of war the British people have forfeited most of their customary freedoms--of habeas corpus, of information, of occupation, of buying, of travel. Last week the War Office took wry notice of one freedom which, as everybody else knew all along, has grown as lustily as a cucumber vine. This is the freedom of companionship.

On behalf of the British army's estimated 2,000,000 men away from home, the War Office's welfare bureau urged wives and sweethearts to behave themselves. It asked Britain's 1,700,000 women factory workers not to write: "We dance with the men in our rest hour," suggested instead: "I should have enjoyed it so much more with you." It appealed to mothers and mothers-in-law not to gossip, decrying the excuse, "I think you ought to know. . . ." It bluntly explained: "We are not going to get men to fight with 100% heart if they feel their wives are unfaithful to them."

The War Office's appeal might change the chirographic phrases of the 17,000,000 women (aged 14 to 65) whose homes and habits have been upturned by total war. But nobody in Britain expected it to curb the nation's wartime habits.

Pre-war folk phrase of suburb and village was: "We keep ourselves to ourselves," and there were few who violated it by smiling at strangers. In the turmoil of common danger and common deprivation, that folkway died. A pick-up date is now almost respectable.

The daughters of worthy families hover in village doorways after tea, to chat with passing soldiers, free from camp for the evening. Country hedgerows echo in the dusk with laughter and new rustlings. In factory canteens, men and women in mutually greasy trousers lunch together by accident, arrange without benefit of formal introductions to dine more quietly elsewhere. At the "flicks" (movies), neighbors who have never seen each other hold hands. Adjoining seats in busses, trams and trains are excuse enough for a conversation which may lead to a quick drink, or maybe two.

Now in the warm weather parks are better hunting grounds than pubs. With the increase of U.S. troops in London, no girl need stroll alone. More aggressive than Tommies, or even the fast-working Canadians, a U.S. soldier does not hesitate to leap off a Hyde Park bench and catch a passing pretty around the waist. Average forgiveness time, they report, is three minutes for civilians, somewhat longer for girls in uniform. For daylight dates, soldiers like the prestige of uniforms. But they tend to choose unmilitary women for the evening: service girls must report back to barracks by 11 o'clock.

The London press has long inveighed against this new freedom, quoting vicars in denunciation of pubs which allow women to buy drinks, hinting at the iniquities of dormitories for the women's military services, prophesying the dangers awaiting wives who are separated for the first time from their husbands. Said the Daily Mail: "It will surprise many people to learn that this country has the worst record for bigamy of any European nation." The Daily Herald reported it was not drunkenness, but love, which caused men to talk and write of impending military operations; the Herald prayed for an artist who would draw "Cupid with a grinning skull and Venus in black mourning."

Working and playing harder than ever before, few Britons heeded these niceties. Meanwhile the known cases of syphilis had increased since the war by 34%.

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