Two peoples separated by a common language. And some other stuff.

I ran across this review of the 1943 Ministry of Information film Welcome to Britain, a guide to American troops on how to make a good impression with the local population (or at least how to avoid making a really bad one).

The New Statesman and Nation had some very good things to say about it:

“The other film on my list, though it can’t yet be seen, is shown to every American soldier landing in England and has the official blessing of the M.O.I. Tells, in a very lively and endearing manner, the best way for Americans to take the English. Pub etiquette, the rations problem, scars of the Blitz, English grouchiness and hopes for future; a brilliant little elucidation of character, with Burgess Meredith interpreting the good and the bad American, and Bob Hope and Beatrice Lillie at their dazzling best. There aren’t so many friendly and helpful films about that we can afford to have this one buried in the files of the American War Office.”*

Not least since my father would have been one of those who were compelled to watch it, I find it an interesting little film, since I try to imagine what he would have made of it.

Corny and stilted at times, it remains pretty watchable. (From about 25:00 there is, for example, an extended section on race relations -- something I noted here recently -- which I hadn't expected.)

Actually, the Britain it depicts is probably as foreign for today's Britons as it ever was for the Yanks of the mid-1940s. Even those from New York City. 

But judge for yourselves.

*New Statesman and Nation, 15 January 1944, 39.

Meet you at the Big Ben Cloverleaf Interchange

A lucky escape there, London, I'd say.

 The News Chronicle, 17 February 1941, 4

Special relationships, I: Swinging a line and sweet FA

Spotted in the New Statesman and Nation from many, many summers ago:

"The arrival of Americans makes us feel that something is really happening. I believe that for the most part the two armies are settling down well together, but inevitably there will be some friction. Old soldiers, who recall how the Americans came over last time, fresh when we had had three years of fighting and said they had won the war—they are just the men who are putting things right between the British and American troops. Both British and American have had wise advice given to them to prevent friction.

Difficulties are bound to arise because the Americans have far more money than the British, who are more sore about the allowances given to their wives than about anything else anyway. Also they are warned that Americans are apt to ‘swing a line’ while the British always understate.

An American recruit, naively pleased with his equipment, starts boosting his gas-mask. The English, smiling to themselves, egg him on a bit. The remark they would naturally make about their own mask is quite insincere, but traditional. They would curse the authorities for making them carry the thing at all, and add that anyway it would probably stop sweet Fanny Adams if came to the test."

"A Country Diary", The New Statesman and Nation, 25 July 1942, 58.

"I referred last week to the problem of Anglo-American relations in the village pub. My own observations this week have been that things are settling down very well, though the American habit of expecting whisky, which is not to be found because it has almost all been sent to America, has occasioned some ironic comment. It is just as well, in my view, that the whisky is not there, for the last two generations of Americans tend to treat alcohol too little as a social amenity and too much as an occupation."

"A London Diary", The New Statesman and Nation, 1 August, 1942, 72. 

Now: To the extent that Britons were ever more restrained than Americans when it comes to either self-regard or alcohol -- which may well have once been the case -- this seems like a long lost marker of cultural difference.

Stirring metaphors, lightly shaken

From the dark days of June 1940, a rather surprising -- and as far as I know, unique -- use of imagery:

The entire task of upholding civilisation and the justice based on Christian faith has now fallen on the British Commonwealth of Nations, with such aid as may be extended by the friendly offices of the United States.

God has bestowed on the inhabitants of this Island certain advantages which make their position radically different from that of the Continental nations who have succumbed before the inhuman tide of brute force.

Those advantages devoted and consecrated to the Author and Giver Who has conferred them, are fully adequate to save Britain from the horn of the Nazi unicorn, and thereby to save European civilisation from being irremediably submerged.

The Church Times (21.6.1940), quoted in the Ministry of Information's weekly bulletin The Spiritual Issues of the War, no. 34, 22 June 1940, 2. (Emphasis and line breaks added.)

A war is won on a nation's stomach

Adverts from the Ministry of Food, 1942.

Spotted in the British Weekly,  14 May 1942, p.79:

...and 12 November 1942, p. 83:

(Another installment in the -- now rather intermittent -- "historical bycatch" series.)

Doing her bit

Inspired by my last post -- as the image is used as the cover of the book I quoted -- I thought I would post this British Second World War poster.

I have always loved it since I first saw it.

This is not least, I suppose, since my mother actually did, during the war, work in an aircraft factory (one that, if I recall correctly, built and repaired Bristol Beaufighters.)

But it's also just beautifully designed.

If I remember her words accurately, my mother didn't take up that job because she was inspired by such a poster or out of some surfeit of patriotic fervour but rather because the labour exchange suggested it to her, after her father forbade her from taking up the other recommended employment: bus conductress.

He was himself a bus conductor, you see, and was concerned, as she put it, about the (im)moral influences to which she might be subjected in such a job.

Though, from her other reminiscences, I didn't have the impression that the factory was actually that much better. 

On putting houses in order

I noticed the trailer for Ken Loach's new film The Spirit of '45 the other day, which I'm looking forward to seeing.

I had to think of it just now when, while doing some research for my new project, I ran across an editorial from The Times titled 'The New Europe' that seems to fit well with it and that has not, I think, lost any of its power.

Agreeing with Churchill's comment that Britain's only war aim was 'victory', The Times argued that it was necessary that 'victory for our arms will point the way to a new social and international order in Europe'.

It was important that the values defining that order not be defined 'in purely nineteenth-century terms':

If we speak of democracy, we do not mean a democracy which maintains the right to vote but forgets the right to work and the right to live. If we speak of freedom, we do not mean a rugged individualism which excludes social organisation and economic planning. If we speak of equality, we do not mean a political equality nullified by social and economic privilege. If we speak of economic reconstruction, we think less of maximum production (though this too will be required) than of equitable distribution. … The European house cannot be put in order unless we put our own house in order first. The new order cannot be based on the preservation of privilege, whether the privilege be that of a country, of a class, or of an individual. (The Times, 1 July 1940, 5)

Well said.

First we take Clarence Bridge, then it's on to Whitehall

George Orwell, commenting on the generally frustrating organisation of things during wartime, with specific reference to the Home Guard, 21 June 1942: 

Details of organisation, battle positions etc. have been changed so frequently that hardly anyone knows at any given moment what the current arrangements are supposed to be. To give just one example, for well over a year our company has been trying to dig a system of trenches in Regents Park, in case airborne troops land there. Though dug over and over again these trenches have never once been in a completed state, because when they are half done there is always a change of plan and fresh orders. Ditto with everything. Whatever one undertakes, one starts with the knowledge that presently there will come a sudden change of orders, and then another change, and so on indefinitely. Nothing ever happens except continuous dithering, resulting in progressive disillusionment all round. The best one can hope is that it is much the same on the other side.

That reference to Regent's Park caught my eye. When we stay in London, we tend to go jogging there regularly.

I'll not be able to run through the place any more without wondering where it was that Orwell and his Dad's Army chums were digging their 'system of trenches'.

Which got me wondering: if you were going to launch an airborne attack on London, surely St. James's or Hyde Park would be better tactical options? I mean, if your aim was to take out the government?

Not encouraging this, mind, just idly speculating.

While we're at it: anyone know whether there were any genuine Nazi plans to air drop troops into London's parks?

On being selective

George Orwell, about 70 years ago, describing the actions of himself and his wife after their building was (in the end only slightly)damaged by a bomb:

We slipped on some clothes, grabbed up a few things and went out, at this time imagining that the house might be seriously on fire and it might be impossible to get back. At such times one takes what one feels to be important, and I noticed afterwards that what I had taken was not my typewriter or any documents but my firearms and a haversack containing food, etc., which was always kept ready.

Priorities, priorities....