Conclusion - "All over England the same thing was happening. Nine of the main roads out of London were turned into one-way evacuation arteries. A continuous stream of buses, trucks and automobiles crammed with singing children reached as far as one could see. So precise were the plans of the railroads that the incoming army of London commuters was not delayed more than half an hour. What the arriving commuters saw, they will never forget. Not that the children were particularly tearful - for most of them it was something like the promise of an extended picnic. But implicit in that first tense day was the all-encompassing tragedy about to be played upon the European stage. An unseen force was already disrupting homes and families, suddenly propelling multitudes into strange places, among strange people. A burly bobby, eyeing the long lines of children trooping to their trains, hand in hand, observed: 'One of them kids is mine. God knows when I'll see him again. It may be years.! And some of 'em, he added, 'are going to have a bad time of it.' Some of them have had a bad time of it, although competent inspectors tried to send children to homes that would make them most comfortable - the poorer children to the simpler homes, those acustomedo to luxury to the more pretentious. When lack of room made compulsory billeting necessary, they tried to choose the families who would resent it least. The vicar of the village near Reading took two of 1017's tough little cockneys. Tommy's mother keeps a pub in London's East End; Jimmy's father is a dock worker. Adjustment has not been easy. To the vicar's mystification, the boys scrupulously avoided walking on the grass and insisted on playing in the road. Jimmy was appalled at the thought of a bath and Tommy refused to use his handkerchief. Both complained at having rooms to themselves, saying: 'We gets frightened, we do.' They were disturbed at the idea of climbing into a bed with sheets .... One chi! ld, seeing a tree laden with plums, exclaimed: 'Blimey, I thought the y came in boxes!' ... Children used to margarine complained of country butter. To some of England it had been a revelation - one which may have long-range repercussions for the better. It was a shock to find that for some slum-dwellers lice are an accepted condition of life .... In one ultrafashionable district, when a contingent arrived from the toughest part of Birmingham, neither the aristocratic ladies nor the butlers could control the children who quickly formed gangs, scoured the countryside, beat up the village boys, closed railroad-crossing gates, threw stones at policemen, pillaged orchards and chased cows... Most difficult to handle have been the mothers. In the village where the 1017's were quartered there arrived a family from London's East End - Granny SMITHERS, huge and raucous, and three daughters with three children apiece. They were timidly polite at first ... but when they discovered that there was no pub in the village, they brooded disconsolately. 'If I cawn't 'ave me drop of port, I wants to go back to London,' Granny announc! ed. 'To 'ell with the bombs! I cawn't stand this plice,' a daughter chimed in. The vicar did his best, but finally the SMITHERS family returned to London, loudly vowing that they never come again into such a holy wilderness. Local welfare organizations and schools, trying desperately to overcome these difficulties, are doing a titanic job. New quarters are being found for classes. Sports and excursions are being organized to keep the children busy. Communal kitchens where the mothers can work will relieve the burden on householders - because two women at the same stove do not make for peace. The owners of large houses have responded nobly with facilities for maternity wards to relieve the overcrowded hospitals; country squires with big estates have turned parts of their houses into schools. The poorer families are only too willing to take evacuee's because they can make a small profit off the weekly government allowance. It is too early to tell yet how the Government Evacuation Scheme will turn out. In any case, underprivileged hundreds of thousands will have good food and clean beds for one, two, three years, perhaps more. They will then, just as suddenly as they left, be expected to re! turn. The second adjustment will be harder than the first, and it may have to be made with metropolitan England in the throes of postwar depression and unemployment. As the bobby said, 'Some of them are going to have a bad time of it.'" -- Frederic SONDERN, JR., "Reader's Digest" Dec. 1939, condensed from "Life" magazine, Oct. 16, 1939