August 18, 1942
This morning I put on new plasters. I have been able to do with out these for nearly a year, but my legs are now so bad again I have to put these plasters on. I am most terribly tired, too many visitors, of course. I cannot take care of people anymore.
August 21, 1942
Artie left soon after eight this morning. He is going straight to Glasgow, to visit with Hilda’s people, until his leave expires on Sunday. It has been very nice having him at home, and nice having Joan here, but now I am dead beat. I can jog along taking care of Ted and myself all right, but extra people seem to be too much for me now a day. This must be age!
Anyhow
I seem to be smothered with visitors these last two months. I was particularly
pleased to have cousin Will Searle and Nellie one day, but most local people
who call in distract me and fatigue me unduly. I don’t want to talk to the
neighbors. I want to be quiet, to think of my own concerns. Joan I found
particularly exhausting, she was here a fortnight and never stopped talking. Of
course I talked too, but I got tired and I got bored. I guess I am a natural
solitary.
August 26, 1942
There is news today of the death of the Duke of Kent, in a Sunderland Flying Boat which crashed last night in the far north of Scotland. It was en route for Iceland. Sixteen men in the plane were all killed. This is a tragedy for the Royal family, but although most people are sorry, I think the general feeling is: Good! Let those people also feel the war! Why should they be immune? I must also note that on Monday Churchill arrived back in London from a visit he has been paying to Stalin in Moscow.
The
war situation gets worse and worse, you don’t think it can and then it does.
Germany still wins everything everywhere. Brazil has this week declared war
against the Axis, but what difference will that make, except the Brazilians
will now die before their time? Our raid on Dieppe last week was probably a
fiasco; the war office has been too long cooking its report for it to be a good
job. “Gaining valuable experience,” says the war office, but they do not tell
us their losses. We claimed to have killed ten thousand Germans, but if so, how
many of our men did the Germans kill? We are not told. The more I listen to the
B.B.C. reports, the more I distrust all news. I think our propagandists are as
big liars as the Germans. All we really know is that everyday and every night
our men are dying. For what? The talk about democracy makes me sick. I will not
write about the war.
August 27, 1942
The latest “target” at which we are bidden to aim is what the Minister of Fuel calls the fuel target. This, to all intents and purpose, means coal. We are to cut down our consumption of coal drastically or undergo a still more drastic system of rationing. Should we complain, our rulers have arguments ready to prove that our complaints are groundless. They tell us first of all that the coal we should in the ordinary way be consuming is urgently required for war purposes, and that the winning of the war is more important than our immediate personal comfort, and they add that coal is only one more item on the list of those things of which the war has reduced our consumption and that anyhow the less we spend on personal requirements the more there will be available for war purposes, and the less chance of ruinous inflation. Indeed, every argument (save one) is used that has already been used to defend the rationing of food, building, and clothes. The omission is important. Hitherto, in every category of abstinence, it has been impressed upon us that by abstaining, whether voluntary or under compulsion, we are all saving vital shipping space for imports that are necessary for us as a nation. That argument clearly cannot be used about coal, for coal is one of the few raw materials that we have consistently exported in peacetime after satisfying our own needs.
Coal
thus stands in a category by itself. Like food, shelter, and covering for the
body, it is a primary economic need. It is necessary to keep warm and to cook.
Unlike the other primaries, coal has always been abundant in England, and
probably more planning and legislation has been devoted to coal mining in the
pre-war years than to the production of any other natural commodity. We thus
started the war with an inexhaustible supply and a fully matured organization
for tapping and distributing it. Furthermore, there has not been really any
substantial additional demand for it owing to the war. We have not used it to
any considerable extent for the extravagant production of oil, synthetic
rubber, etc. and there has of course been a saving to the country as the result
of diminished exports. To this it may be replied that the big increase of
factories for war materials has greatly increased consumption. This is true,
although it must be remembered that a large number of the present war-factories
existed in full production of other commodities before the war. Again, there is
the inflation argument, but, with coal at four pounds per ton, the government
need hardly fear that most of us will buy more than we need.
I
suppose this winter we shall have to resign ourselves to cold hearths, burst
water pipes, and probably an increase of illness, or, at any rate, a diminution
of our powers of resistance, but why? The Minister of Fuel is not convincing
us. Is it that big business has once again failed where small units with
individual ownership or control have succeeded? Or are there perhaps deeper and
even less savory influences at work? Is the town mind, with its obsession that
profit is the sole object of existence finding it impossible to adjust itself
to the wholehearted patriotism that is imperative if we are to win this war? I
say damn Major Gwilym Lloyd George and the rest of his fool government. Our boys die and we at home may starve and
freeze whilst the fool politicians debate! Rationing, saving, war-work.
Meanwhile the Germans go steadily in winning the war, Lord, how I hate men,
particularly Englishmen!
August 30, 1942
I was dreaming I was having an illicit love affair with a white haired priest, who turned out to be the Pope! Nothing serious beyond kissing, but we were contriving to meet in rooms on staircases in quiet streets, simply to kiss, and thrill with a kiss. A preposterous dream, but it shows very clearly my disregard of priests and popes. It also shows my physical hunger, which seeks to satisfy itself in dreams. Ted off to church as usual this evening. Church! What does a man find in church?
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