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62
ENGLAND AFTER WAR

in houses, clothes or diet; vacuum cleaners, the rubber shoes, the American stove; "meatless dinner, and a hay box;" "we never go to the cinema or theatre;" these run like a thread through these queer confessions: the good gifts which God has given to save a perishing race. Husband, professional man: "Wife and one child; taught the child myself until seven and a half, then sent her to the Council Schools. Do without any help. Do all washing. Never go to any place of amusement unless a village entertainment 'in aid of——' Shall manage to keep smiling. We are growing older; times seem getting harder. Still,"—the suburban ideal unconquerable—"have the satisfaction of not being regarded as poor people by our many acquaintances."

"The chief factor in the management of my household," bluntly begins one, "is that my wife works one hundred and twelve hours a week." No nonsense here about the eight-hour day of the Washington Labour Conference!

This is the headmaster of a County Secondary School (it may be noticed that it is from the clergymen, the Elementary and Secondary School teachers, the scientists and lecturers, and all those whose work is essential to the preaching of an ideal or the giving of wisdom to a new generation, that most of these confessions come): when the rising tide of forces threatened to engulf him: "I resigned from the clubs and societies to which I was attached, shut off every luxury except my pipe, and went on short commons." He cultivated his garden, got an allotment, used up old clothes instead of buying new ones; there is no maid, the washing is done at home; children's boots are passed down from one to another when they become inconveniently tight. "I mend my own boots and some of the children's, buying second-hand army boots." In the intervals of such occupation and the cultivation of an allotment, this citizen inspires the growing youth of England with intellectual interest, patriotism, reverence for the cultivation of mind and spirit. And so is such service rewarded.