"I Like Pink"

It was the children's finest hour. All over London small boys in grey flannel shorts and school caps could be seen walking solemnly about, cheeks bulging, a look of supreme contentment on their faces. All over Britain, pink faces were blissfully smeared and little fingers were wonderfully sticky. After seven lean years for British moppets, candy rationing ended last week.

The children stared at the piles of lollipops, taffy, gumdrops, and other treasures in shop windows, many of them for the first time in their lives feeling the sweet pangs of choice. In London's Hyde Park, a queue moved forward through the brilliant sunshine as a little slate-roofed kiosk opened for business. One boy unfolded the mystery of Life Savers for his brothers: "There's nothing in them but they're awfully good. You eat them one at a time." A little girl clutched a large Cellophane-wrapped goody as if it were a doll. Explained her father: "She's never seen so much in her life." In dark, narrow alleys off Regent Street, boys played a game of marbles with rock candy balls, and the winners had a feast.

The small fry, accustomed to an austere four ounces of sweets a week, began to speak expertly of such popular British candies as "hundreds & thousands," "bull's-eyes," "gobstoppers," "English humbugs." Six-year-old Jane Merrill gave some definitions: "'Gobstoppers' are soft and big and when there's one in your mouth it's so full you don't do anything but sputter. 'Hundreds & thousands' are called that because there are so many of them and they are measured out in a cup. They come in colors and I like pink."

Adults themselves joined the feast. Women with Pekingese and men in Homburgs unabashedly lined up to get some chocolates. At one stall, a mustachioed army major ordered four Mars bars, gravely tucked them into a folded Sunday Times and marched away. One Londoner stormed: "It's good to have something off the ration, but I'm sure a lot of people would rather have a pound of butter." But on the great day few of Britain's kids would have agreed with him.

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