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Show ' j i ji in j 1 ... -.. 3 ji Londoner in New York: This is the voice of a friendly alien. I've been reporting this United Nations' war since September, Septem-ber, 1939. But first thing I had to do when I sought permission to visit U. S. A. was fill out form for aliens. This peacetime form is all rules and B yard wide, full of highly personal, cryptic questions. It floored me. Only two questions I'm certain I answered correctly were could I read and was I masculine. They asked me also it I'd ever been insane. in-sane. Even in the evil Nazi prewar days when I went often to Germany the formalities were never so tough, and I'd never been called an alien. It seemed a symbol of our Hie and times that you and we, so (as I believe) be-lieve) fundamentally alike in thought and aspiration, should build and maintain barriers to association and understanding. Symbol of our times, too, I never saw Liberty as we steamed upriver. Liberty passed by as I was answering answer-ing an FBI quiz. Very charming, very courteous those FBI men, but the going-over they gave me wasn't less thorough for being so friendly. Is it too much to hope that after the war the American and British peoples peo-ples may share common citizenship in each other's countries? That would be a war aim. It might even prevent World War 3. I was entirely unprepared for New York. Years spent in the jungles of Burma and on the vasty deserts of Egypt, Libya and Tripolitania were poor training grounds for this exhilarating ex-hilarating contact. A strange city but the natives are friendly. Everything Every-thing has been said of New York, but I was surprised at its smooth, velvety functioning, the politeness of the inhabitants; not surprised at its fascinating window displays, its high ' prices, its "nothing for nothing, and damn little for a dollar" attitude. London has nothing of New York's spirit or character. Paris had, a little; the same tempo, same fruity smell of gasoline, same gusts of warm air uprushing from the subways, sub-ways, chestnut trees. Nostalgia broke over me like a wave at sight of those chestnuts, recalling Paris Maytime in 1940. Sydney has something of New York, in its waterfront, its irregular skyline, its hamburger heavens and gay, gaudy and swift taxicabs. New York's women and Sydney's have certain kinship, too. The skillful makeup, lithe figures, slim ankles and well-shod feet. (I am not disloyal dis-loyal to you, you gallant British women wom-en who fill our factories, clean our streets and man our guns.) On Fifth Avenue maidens in uniform are rarer rar-er than on London's Piccadilly. But those I saw rated a backward glance. Unlike British women's service uniforms, seemingly designed de-signed by repressed spinsters as revenge re-venge on their sex, US women's uniforms uni-forms are chic, feminine, frequently fantastique. Perhaps' occasionally un peu trop fantastique, devised more for front-row chorines than for frontline front-line corps. There's something to be said for ugly uniforms: those who volunteer to wear them must be pure patriots. A New York girl asked me: "I suppose you must resent our remoteness remote-ness from actual war, and seeing buildings unscarred, coming as you do from Britain and the African front-line?" But of course not! Because Be-cause my home is shattered and my people killed should I wish the same fate for others? No Britisher does. As they stroll on Fifth Avenue I guess they feel like me, that it's good to be able still to find unscarfed loveliness and beauty in peacetime proportions. Unaided I spotted Jack Benny, Una Merkel, Billy Rose, and some lesser aristocrats. Walter Winchell was there, too, doing his homework. I was quite prepared to dislike Winchell. (It's the human thing to resent success in others.) I did not expect to meet a starry-eyed youth, but Winchell was much less sophisticate sophis-ticate than I'd imagined. Maybe it's true what they say that every New York columnist yearns to be a farmer's farm-er's boy. Lunch-talking the other day I Pleaded for postwar common citizenship citi-zenship for British and US peoples. Sompnno 1. "iVi-kohl The British want America back." But what with the jungly heat, the miners' min-ers' strike, the Roosevelt versus Congress issue, the food wrangle and the race riots, America was no gift iust then. And in Britain right now We've troubles enough of our own. Talking to an intelligent New Yorker about the United Nations' air "ssault on Germany these days I referred to the air Battle of Britain. He had never heard of it. I told him it was the Battle of America under another name . . . Except 'hat chops and steaks are elusive, New York doesn't show signs of war privations. But war isn't merely do-inS do-inS without things, war is heart-breok, heart-breok, personal loneliness, for those eft behind. For frontline soldiers il is short periods of intense fear, 'eng periods of intense boredom. |