The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-12-06

down red and smokey on tn table = the timetable of tn London'S life for 12 to A hot when the sun has moved sou
 In London these nights there's nc lamp-lighting time. The dusk gath CTS deeper and deeper in the streets until finally they are black with gloom and night is complete. Peo- pie hurry faster as the light be- gins to fade. They are hurrying to hole up for the night. Once dark has fallen it is both dangerous and difficult to be abroad on the streets of London.
 Unless you are a policeman, an air raid warden, a fire fighter, a newspaperman or some one else with business that keeps you out, you get to your home or your shelter by nightfall.
 How They Spend Nights
 What happens then? How do people spend these long night hours
 First we visit an East End shell ter:
 This great, cavernous building used to be a freight depot. Now its a shelter where as many as 5000 persons spend the night on a cobblestone floor. It's safe enough for there are several stout floors above, but right there its recom- mendations cease. Not many east enders had much even before the war. Now they have less and this shelter and others like it are the only homes they have left. In the bays where freight from distant Africa and India used to be stored are now row after row of there tiered hunks enough to accom- modate about 2,00O persons. The rest spread their bedraggled bedding on the dusty floor. Some wedge down between huge rolls of news print not yet removed. The air is heavy and close, laden with body odors and the smell of fumigating chemicals and chemicals from the hastily-installed latrines. Stray dogs and cats wander about. In one cor ner Salvation Army Canteen sells tea and soup for penny cup, Jely rolls for a penny, sausage rolls and apple turnover for tuppence and cold meat pies for three pence.
 The people have been thronging in since o'clock. At daylight they must leave so the place can be cleaned up for the next night. If you listen you hear the noise of the shelter-c cough, cough, cough = the noise that worries physicians 50 much when they think of the dan ger of disease and epidemic in the months ahead. No one shelter is typical.
 Some are better than this one; a few are worse. Thousands upon thousands of Londoners spend 12 or more hours a night in these pulp lie shelters.
 In Private Home
 Next we call at private home:
 This Is an average middle-claSS home. At the start, during some of the worst raids on London, these people went to a public shelter. Lately, they've been sleeping at home on the ground floor or in the Anderson shelter in the backyard. Behind their blacked-out windows life is not too different from the days before the blitzkrieg. But evenings are spent at home and if company is invited to dinner the guests get an overnight invitation. You don't go out to dinner, either, unless there's promise of bed as well as a meal. There are no evenings at the movies.
 The folks in this house play lot of checkers, cribbage and lotto now. That's true at the shelters, too. Never any trouble finding a fourth for bridge. Book sales are holding up well, too. Nothing like good book to make the long nights indoors pass more quickly or to keep your mind of the German planes buzzing overhead and the crash of that anti aircraft battery in the park three blocks down the street. One of the current best-sellers is Noel Monks @Squadrons Up"-a story of the RATS fight in Flanders. Another is Andre MauroiS' Battle of France" But mystery stories top the list. Some Londoners now rate a good mystery as the next best thing to an "all clear" night.
 Night in a Hotel
 But, you can still have night out in London, perhaps at a Mayfair hotel:
 In the basement of this hotel there there is ballroom. The room is crowded with smartly- dressed peo- ple-jnust the sort who've always filled Mayfair hotel bathrooms. The ballroom used to be an underground storage room. Now you can dine there on lobster thermidor, drink champagne and dance until 1 a. m.
 You won't hear the noise of bombs falling or A-A guns bombing. And for an extra $125 on the cover charge you get a camp cot and can stay the night. The wine cellar is well stocked and only now are a few of the rarer years and vintages beginning to disappear from the lists. But there are only few of these hotel bathrooms and the famous London bottle clubs" where mem bers short-circuited the closing laws for serving drinks-have been wiped out.
 One more glimpse to round out the picture-a glimpse at a woman and her five children, all of them under 1z. The woman and her brood are euending the night-as she has eDent many nights since September in the six-foot-square space of toilet in an abandoned subway sta- 1lon. Why aren't she and her family evacuated to a safe spot in the coun- 2<vs That's what the House of Com mons wanted to know. Her plight was so unusual that Parliament de- aE.AA A.. 4, saAI. ffar aasNtn &r.