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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 0053.PDF
JANUARY IO, 1918. A GOOD citizen, it becomes me to conform with the rules. Indeed, it would appear futile to object and to struggle against conformity. To rules and regula- tions I am becoming apathetic ; we are all becoming apathetic. Before the war there were rules : I con- formed with them. The outstretched arms of the liftman was sufficient to shunt me into the next lift, even though the first was but half full and he had passed my friend. I always passed right across please, noticed that no smoking was allowed, was beware of pickpockets—male and female—allowed passengers off first. Such things were of the Tube, following on the days when one paid tw opence, dropped the ticket into a bin, and went anywhere. And if I liked it not there were the 'buses. They would stop for me did I but point at the driver with my umbrella. Possibly it is now against the rules for a 'bus to stop to pick up passengers. Anyway I am become apathetic ; I put on my pipe and walk. There is no rule against smoking in the street—yet. My lunch in the City to-day was vegetarian, my dinner this evening was jointless. They have just sent a cup of something hot through to my writing room. It looks like tea, smells like coffee, might be anything and brewed from anything. It has a flavour all its own, and may be an infusion of the ashes from a burned out boot factory. Yet I should not wonder did it cost many good shillings the pound. And because I am become apathetic I do not grumble. I know that there are those in high places who are looking after my welfare, who are doing their best to do for me. The last business of the food is the business of the Food Controller, who just now is so very busy making rules and speeches that he has little time to control. Little doubt in my mind but that the Central Food Control Office, wherever it may be, is a grand building, with lifts to hoist the many staff to the many corridors. That there is much coming and going from room to room. That those whose duty it is to awaken the corridorial echoes by their incessant foot- fall are doing that duty faithfully. That there are sufficient young ladies (doing it for patriotic pocket- money) to make tea for all. I know not where this central office may be. I am become apathetic and cannot keep up with all the latest commandeering of public buildings for Government offices. I do know, however, that local Food Control offices have sprung up in all districts. I saw one on Saturday afternoon last when ah* the butchers were closed owing to food control. This control office was closed also, it being Saturday afternoon when wars do not matter, and a man had pitched his stall in close proximity and was selling rabbits to poor people at 5s. each because the butchers had no meat and people, even poor ones, must live. English wild rabbits, bred and born in this country, provisions that do not have to be carried overseas, rabbits that used to be retailed at ^ Possibly if this were whispered to the great and pompous they would be apathetic as I am. No doubt about it, we are under the spell of official- dom, whose business it is to make rules and regula- tions, whose outward and visible sign of existence is the opening of new offices, the roping into the net of public buildings. Wherefore the British Museum has fallen from its high estate as the home of many of the most wonderful and precious things in the whole world, and it is some- thing only a little less than certain that it is to become a new home for the Air Board. I cannot grant to the Hun much in the matter of sympathetic feeling for anything that he has not a direct interest in, but it is possible, just barely possible, that even he may have some little regard for the past history of the world he is so desperately anxious to govern, and that it is possible, just barely possible, that he would not deliberately order his aeroplanes to drop their eggs on a world's treasure house, to deliberately destroy records of history passed these many thousands of years. I know little of history, and less of the constituent parts of a Hun, mental, moral, or spiritual, but perhaps even he has some little respect for past history. Possibly a nomadic race have no relics of the past. A warlike race with no fixed place of abode, a wander- ing people driving their own cattle and as many of other people's as they could rake in on the journey, from place to place to feed and thrive on other people's pastures, can have had little but their cattle-staves and their weapons. Yet could the shield or weapon of Attila, the first Hun to lead his people from Northern Asia in the fifth century, so making it possible for William to happen, be found, I venture that even the modern Hun with all his frightfulness would have some respect for those relics and their housing. But not so with enlightened England. The British Museum has caught the eye of the Government house agent. Perhaps wandering that way after lunch he stumbled upon it. Here was a big building appa- rently shut up and doing nothing. A walk round the side streets with a view to guessing its interior roomi- ness (I cannot suppose he had ever been inside), a guess at the number of people it would take to fill it, a conviction that he was capable of the job of finding them, and the British Museum becomes a Govern- ment office. But I am become apathetic. There is a picture of Mr. Lloyd George formed in the figurement of my bedroom curtains that I view every morning from my bed, but it does not worry me ; I may just as well start the day under Government supervision and try to remember its rules. Besides, in my curtain picture the Prime Minister is smiling ; so we must also keep smiling and hope for the best. 49
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