The midland journal., 1917-02-16
SENSE Being LOST
LoNDoNERs UNABLE TO cRoPE
THEIR WAY IN DARKNESS.
Philosophical Review of Warfare's
Needs, and Of Past Days, Has Not
Brought Citizens to a Proper
Realization Of Conditions.

A few months ago CHANGED to be in
what official language would describe
as "a certain northern town" at the
time when lighting restrictions were
being newly enforced as precautien'
against air attacks. Loud was the
outcry Of persons who had bumped in
to the lamppost and tripped over the
curb upon their homeward way, and
who had even found themselves un-
able to identify their own homes with
out the aid of an electric torch.
And yet the curious thing was that
even such restricted street lighting as
remained would have been considered
a really handsome illumination by our
forefathers and would indeed be con-
sidered so today by dwellers in rural
districts where the street lamp is un-
known, G. Fox-Smith writes in the
London Chronicle.
What is happening to us-or, rather,
what was happening to us in the days
when the daylight, in towns, was de-
posed before its death by the glare Of
gas and electric light? We're we not
rapidly losing the very last remnant
of that faculty of seeing in what we
call "the dark which is really quite
natural part of our equipment, being
a sort of combination of the senses Of
sight, smell, touch and hearing? !
AS a matter of fact speaking broad
ly, what most people call "the dark
is not darkness at all. How often, for
example, do you hear person who
has just emerged from or who lifts a
blind to look through the window of a.
lighted room exclaim: "What pitch
dark nightT ~
But once leave the bewildering
lights behind and it will be seen that
the apparent darkness was really more
than half caused by the light itself.
Pitch darkness seldom exists except
comparatively, never without some ex-
traordinary condition, such as fog or
very dense clouds. One does, OF
course, remember one or two such Oc-
casions of a blackness impenetrable
as wall and almost as tangible to all,
seeming. But they are rare enough to
as if they were somehow abnormal.
which would not be so If pitch dark
ness were common.
1t is rather strange to reflect that,
until the coming of the lighting re-
strictions, most Of the present genera
ton had never really seen the town at
dusk.
And yet what peculiar charm there
is now about the coming on of dark in
city. There is, let us frankly admit
it, touch of the sinister about the,
dark mouths of narrow streets which
by daylight are but the most common
place and sordid of routes to the backs
Of shops and warehouses.
But they are for the time romantic,
as well as sinister; there is SOME
thing Stevensonian about them, StevN
enson of doctor Jekyll" and 'The
New Arabian Nights"
Darkness is the fairy godmother OF
commonplace buildings. It brings
them gifts of breadth, of massiveness.,
of dignity. This pinchbeck incrusta-
ton, that shoddy bit of construction,
it transfigures with wave Of its
wand. Seen simply as broad effect
of light and shade, or rather of shad-l
dow and deeper shadow, the newest
building is at one with the old, the
tawdriest with the most austere.
1t was just at the corner of Yelling
ton street the other night that / sur,
prised one of those wonderful mo-
ments on the edge Of darkness. In
the light of it's few and shrouded
lamps Kingsway cleaned family, like
a frozen river under stars. Vehicles
loomed up for minute and We're
gone, motorbuses, laden lorries strain
ing toward Waterloo, a motor ambu-
lance with its Red Cross cleaning al
most luminous on a white ground like
the device on a knights shield in a
dark forest The faces of passers-by
were seen in a moment in the light of
a street lamp, then swallowed up in
the darkness. And above it all the
stars-the same stars that looked up
on the shell-racked glory of Verdun,
the remnants that were Ypres and
Reims; upon the trenches, the hospi-
tails, the silent dead; and the ships at
their stately vigil in the northern seas.
The Higher Duties.