Happy New Year

Few Britons ventured on "Happy New Year" greetings last week. Their New Year mood, conditioned by Rundstedt's drive and the prolongation of the five-year-old war, was caught by the relentless national jester Nat Gubbins (London Sunday Express): "By looking through the bottom of an upturned glass in a dimout [one can foresee that] the war, of course, will continue almost indefinitely, and as the people get more & more fed up with it the Government will lose its temper and impose stricter measures for keeping noses to the grindstone.

". . . Helped by German propaganda, the military experts will tell you that the German Army is composed almost entirely of ten-year-old boys, men over 70, invalids and cripples. . . . Spring will arrive at the usual time, March 21st, but you won't notice it unless you watch the calendar carefully. There will be no change in the weather except for the worse. . . .

"Easter will come & go without Easter eggs, and people will spend most of the summer dealing with new V-weapons and not going on holidays.

"About August the same fools who said it last August will be saying that the war will be over by Christmas. But they will be wrong as usual. The German Army, now composed entirely of eight-year-old boys, men over 80 and old women in Bath chairs, will break through at the place they always use for breaking through. This will cause wide-eyed astonishment at Allied headquarters . . . while that old Swedish haberdasher who is always flying between Berlin and Stockholm will be telling correspondents that the German civil population has almost reached the breaking point."

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