Continental Holiday, Easter, 1947

It seemed to be quite in the order of things to see a St. Peter's cap boarding the Paris train on the docks at Calais: for one reason, of course, we had been cheerily hailed by the wearer of it not half an hour before: and in any case we stood too near in time to the term just ended, and brown caps and crossed keys were still part of the warp and texture of our existence. For had we not a bare hour after final assembly stolen quietly out of York, guiltily conscious that we were leaving a doomed city (floods!) in a doomed country (economics!) ?

These latter considerations were soon to be, if not entirely dissipated, at least set in perspective by a closer acquaintance with France. The devastation round the docks at Calais was of an order such as we had never seen anywhere in England. Within a radius. of more than half a mile from the port, scarcely one stone stood upon another: the authorities were housed in wooden hutments: the roads were but rough tracks through the rubble worn by other vehicles: the railway lines had, of course, obviously been repaired, but for ought else, only the gaunt walls of a burnt-out church towered above the pulverised waste like Roman ruins in the sands of North Africa: here, indeed, was the wilderness: we were little disposed to call it peace also.

This scene of destruction was repeated in nearly every town of note on the outward journey—Abbeville, Rouen, Evreux, Vendome, Poitiers, and Tours: whereas in England the damage is widespread, in France it is much more concentrated, and large sections of the towns appear to be unaffected. I made enquiries in several places as to what stage of the war had brought the havoc, and in most cases the answer was 1940: Tours had had a second patch of devastation made in 1944.

In contrast, the many miles of countryside we passed through seemed not to have changed at all: there were no signs of mechanisation on the land: teams of three horses—one was always white—were the order of the day for ploughing: and Spring was late in coming to Northern France too: for the roadsides were as dead as they had been in England: as we approached Bordeaux, cereals gave place to vines, and leaves were appearing on the trees. South of Bordeaux we met the fine weather and drove through the hundred miles of pine woods of the Landes under a cloudless sky that was to be our lot for the next ten days. Late that afternoon—Easter Saturday— we crossed into Spain. We had been received everywhere in France with a friendliness that clearly transcended the formal courtesies of hotel-keepers. By Spaniards, also, we were received with friendliness and with great interest: for Spain, too, is anxious to foster the tourist trade and has set up publicity and information centres in all the main towns. The end of the journey came on Easter Monday evening

when we arrived in Madrid, where we stayed for the next thirteen days. In Madrid—surely with its bright lights the gayest capital in Europe to-day—we found all the outward scars of the civil war healed: considerable development is actually taking place here, as in many other urban areas of Spain: main streets are being extended and factories are being built: for instance, Spain is now making her own cloth and even exporting it: but on the barren, sunbaked plateaux of Castile and Aragon little new is to be seen, except improvements to the main roads: oxen, mules, and even donkeys are used for ploughing, and many of the ploughs are wooden ones made to the pattern that Virgil described two thousand years ago. Politically, there is not a deal of useful comment to make: everyone seemed normally content, the police were not unduly in evidence, and compared with fifteen years ago there seemed less abject poverty: certainly there were fewer beggars, and the urchins who turned their monotonous whine upon us outside a cafe in Avila were quite well dressed: we saw plenty of pro-Franco slogans on the walls, and on our last night in Madrid a slogan to the effect that the United Nations will swallow i'ranco. Troops were garrisoned in every town we visited—San Sebastian, Burgos, Toledo, Avila, Segovia, Saragossa, and Barcelona—but there was nothing in the nature of a Fascist salute and no arrogance in their bearing. Undoubtedly civil liberties as we know them in England do not exist in Spain in entirety: on the other hand competent observers on the spot declare that the alternative to the firm hand is anarchy.

Of conditions in general on the continent as they affected us, I would say the following: accommodation is easy to obtain in both France and Spain and is not dear: meals a la carte can be very expensive, and it is always advisable to ask for the "table d'hote," which even so works out at more than the regulation 5/- meal in England: wines were plentiful in both countries, rather expensive in France, much cheaper in Spain: coffee, real coffee was inexplicably scare in France, and consequently very expensive. Ration cards for food are given to visitors in both countries, but we were only twice asked to surrender any—for bread in France. The main roads in France—particularly south of Paris—were very good indeed: the main roads in Spain were beautifully engineered, but on the whole the surfaces were poor: of petrol, adequate supplies were available in France on coupons, and cost about 3/41 per gallon: in Spain, petrol is unrationed and cost 3/- per gallon.

We returned home with a deeper sense of confidence in the goodwill and common sense of the ordinary citizen both here and abroad. He may be poor, but he was at least honest: contrary to the alarming warnings we received, no one attempted to take a rise out of us and no one stole anything. The pity of it is that his commonsense is not translated into international economics and his goodwill