"
"But it is too dreadful to think of all you poor souls have gone
through," said an aunt soulfully. "How little we in Australia know of
what war means!"
"But if it comes to that, how little we knew!" Norah exclaimed, "Why,
there we were, only a few miles from the fighting--you could hear the
guns on a still day, when a big action was going on; and except for the
people who came directly in the way of air raids, England knew little or
nothing of war: I mean, war as the people of Belgium and Northern France
knew it. The worst we had to admit was that we didn't get everything we
liked to eat, and that was a joke compared to what we might have had.
Hardly anyone in England went cold or hungry through the war, and so
I don't think we knew much about it either." She broke off blushing
furiously, to find every one listening to her. "I didn't mean to make a
speech."
"It's quite true, though," said her father, "even if you did make a
speech about it. There were privations in some cases, no doubt--invalids
sometimes suffered, or men used to a heavy meat diet, whose wives had
not knowledge--or fuel--enough to cook substitutes properly. On the
other hand, there was no unemployment, and the poor were better fed than
they had ever been, since every one could make good wages at munitions.
The death rate among civilians was very much lower than usual. People
learned to eat less, and not to waste--and the pre-war waste in England
was terrific.
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