New-York tribune., 1919-02-10

so much khaki in one big city. Not in the
days of war, by good deal.
The main streets contain streams of
khaki And there are all shades. There
are few Americans now-just here and
there one, mostly officers. But English
Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders
are here a-plenty.
At almost any tame of day the Strand will
present human spectacle of which 80 per
cent is in khaki
Piccadilly and Oxford Street are only 8
bit less brown.
But with all of this army in its midst
London looks not the least bit warlike.
Somehow these soldiers don't look if
fighting was part Of their lives or ever had
been, except for now and then the wounded
man, or the man just back from France, all
loaded with his pack and gun and tin hat.
The fact is, though maybe it isn't just
proper to say, that if London skies were a
little brighter and there was less oozy
mud on the pavements London would look
like a great military carnival town. There
is good bit of the carnival spirit abroad,
among the soldiers and among those whose
hearts beat high to have them back on
British soil
This peculiar spirit of London doesn't
show up any clearer anywhere than at the
theatres. Go to any theatre, good, bad or
Indifferent, at any performance, and there
you will a queue-a regular fun-hunt-
ing queue, line waiting to laugh.
Sometimes on the faces in these lines
you will see a great solemnity-a deep
grief And this is tragic contradiction
a soul that is sad and heart that Graves
a laugh
And that is why this London atmosphere
is so hard to understand or to picture It
isn't all of any one thing. 1t is the worlds
greatest mixture of conflicting emotions
But because nature restores and heals and
rejuvenates and responds most quickly to
that which brings happiness, happiness is
spreading its CHEEKY covering over the
wounds that lie deeper underneath.
So there are lines, three and four per-
sons wide and sometimes block long, wait
ing to get into the balconies and galleries
of the theatres. And lines winding through
the stores where bright things are and on
the streets all the time. If it rains UNI
brellas and parasols may go up, but the
lines go Unhappy in a great relief, in a
marvellous exultation-un any spectacle
America will ever know.
England is bearing great hurt with the
spirit of great nation!
SO London is a wonderful place to-day
1t is a place where the old and the new
mix. Tall, 1.-the Australians, sons mayhap of
exiles come to roam through London Tower
and gaze on the ancient headsman's axe
Sweethearts long separated, with future all
uncertainty, walk arm in arm in a great
content. Fathers and mothers and sisters
happy with their own or trying to be
happy for another's. 1t is the great homing
time-deep desires and instincts of the
race are being satisfied in homing time
along the Thames. There is never ANYTHING
just like coming home and all in London
are either coming home, or are Frightening
up the home for those who do come. For
many, so many, the affection lavished at
homing. time must be vicarious in this
day, but affection there must be-afrection
and JOY, for all the pangs of pain under
meath. Some great painter and some great
master of description and some great
singer who knows the songs of the heart
of the race ought together to save fop to-
morrow this wonderful, complex. but al
most primitive London of to-day