Lights of the New World

New York newsmen held a mass interview last week with refugees of the war. Aboard the S.S. Samaria when she steamed into New York Harbor were 138 British children, tagged, labeled, carrying knapsacks, duffle bags, copies of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, gas-mask containers crammed with tuppenny treasures, dolls, souvenirs. Reporters and officials who boarded the Samaria at Quarantine found the refugees assembled on the tourist-class afterdeck. While they gazed at the skyline of Manhattan, they were singing There'll Always Be an England.

Fifteen-year-old John Anderton of Nottingham, remembering a German bombers' raid on Liverpool the night before the Samaria sailed, told reporters how it felt to come within sight of the skylit glare of New York City. Said he: "Our first thought was to shout, 'Turn out them lights.' "

Under John's wing was his five-year-old sister Julie. "I had to smack her--not hard, mind you--two or three times," he confided. "She was forever losing her life belts after drill. A bit of a mess she is--and bossy."

Said bossy Julie to Marshall Field III, president of the U. S. Committee for the Care of European Children, who sponsored the evacuees: "Mister, kneel kindly. I've a kiss for you and the fancy lights of the New World."

Audrey Hamilton, 10, answered for her younger brother, David, when he was asked what he thought of coming to the U. S. "He is very glad to come," said Audrey precisely, "but of course he misses his mother a great deal."

The children, who had virtually overwhelmed the rest of the Samaria's 687 passengers during an anxious eleven-day trip, were the vanguard of 32,000 British children whom Mr. Field's committee hopes eventually to place in U. S. homes. Best hope of getting the others out still lay in the British merchant marine. Though the Hennings Bill (passed last week but not yet countersigned by Hitler) has granted permission to U. S. ships to go into combat zones to evacuate children, it carries the proviso that a grant of safe conduct must first be obtained from the belligerents. Germany last week practically nullified the measure when the official Nazi news agency declared that no guarantees could be given ships passing through mine-infested waters* no exception could be made to the announced total blockade of England. It was impossible, the agency stated, to regard the proposal as a workable proposition in international practice.

*Safely through the mine-infested area, it was announced in Washington, was the Army transport American Legion, which sailed from Petsamo, Finland with U. S. citizens aboard and in spite of ominous warnings from Germany.

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