"Downhill in the Dark"

In wartime, under the whip of demands for sacrifice, the British spirit stiffened again & again. Last week, when the British Government asked for more austerity to meet a further crisis, the British spirit simply relaxed dispiritedly. Said a London stenographer: "Surely, this is not all we have to do to put things right."

Bleak House. "This" was both too little and too much. It was not enough to give Britons a dramatic sense of back-to-the-wall fighting. Yet the new restrictions, coming on top of all the others, deepened the gloom that hung over the island. John Strachey's Food Ministry slashed several rations. It was worse than the bleak wartime year of 1941. Then a Briton was allowed a shilling and a half's worth of meat a week; now, a shilling's worth. Then he got twelve ounces of sugar; now, eight. Then, eight ounces of fat; now, seven. Then, four ounces of bacon; now, two.

The basic gasoline ration was canceled last week bringing nearly a million pleasure cars to a quick stop. Britons were forbidden to travel abroad for pleasure and 30,000 vacation trips to Switzerland were promptly cancelled. At Buckingham Palace, all plans for an overseas honeymoon for Princess Elizabeth were hastily dropped.-

All these restrictions were intended to reduce the drain on Britain's dwindling dollar supply; 'but they would close only a third of the gap between what Britain sold abroad and what she bought abroad. The other side of the scale was British production. A higher production rate was supposed to close the other two-thirds of the import-export gap. If every coal miner worked five minutes more a day, for instance, he would produce as much in exports as the British Government hopes to save by the new gasoline restrictions. What were the chances that British production would rise?

In Yorkshire last week the chances did not look bright. There some 16,000 coal miners went out on an unauthorized strike over the Government's request that they work harder in return for a five-day week. In vain burly Will Lawther, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, pleaded with them. "This is sheer anarchy," he cried, "more than criminal at a time like this." A miner in Armthorpe summed up the long-smoldering disappointment of his fellows: "Nationalization don't make no difference. There's still the bloody boss."

Great Expectations. Rife with old suspicions and enmities, tired, discouraged and uncertain of their leaders, the miners were in a sense symbolic of all Britons. "Never," said the Times of London in its grimmest attack on the Government to date, "has a ministry fallen so far short of pent-up expectations as Mr. Attlee's Government." The people of Britain, added the News Chronicle, "are tired of walking downhill in the dark."

-Moreover, fire broke out for the second time in five years in the south wing of the royal couple's stately Georgian bridal home, Sunninghill Park. Ten fire companies battled the blaze from midnight until dawn, while flames shot 50 :feet into the air. By morning, when the fire was at last put out, most of the roof was burnt off, and only one wing had escaped damage.

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