The Wimsey Papers Read Free Page A

in emergencies of this sort.) I said they might hold their demonstration here, on the strict understanding that little Paul should take no personal part in the proceedings and that the pouring of water inside the house should be a purely symbolic act. We arranged a very fine performance - an incendiary bomb was to be deemed to have come through your bedroom ceiling, with accompaniment of high explosive in the scullery, the maids playing parts as casualties, and the children and I as victims of the fire. We thought it better not to sound the local siren and whistles for fear of misunderstanding, but Mr Goodacre kindly gave the signal for the attack by having the church bells rung. Everything went off beautifully. Miss Twitterton was with us, having come over from Pagford for choi-practice (even in war-time, Wednesday is always choir-practice), and rendered first-aid superbly. I lent her your old tin-hat ("for protection from shrapnel and falling brick-work"), and her pleasure was indescribable.

We evacuated Polly and Bredon from the bedroom window and the other two from the attic in a sheet, and had just got to the pièce de rèsistance - my own rescue from the roof with a dummy baby under one arm and the family plate under the other - when Mr. Goodacre's kitchen-maid arrived panting to say that the Vicarage chimney was afire and would Mr. Puffett please come quick. Our gallant fire-captain immediately snatched away the ladder, leaving me marooned on the roof, and pleted up the lane, still in his gas-mask, and followed by the A.R.P Warden crying that it would be black-out time in half an hour, and if Hitler was to catch sight of that there chimney ablaze there wouldn't half be trouble with the police. So I retired gracefully through the skylight, and we transferred the venue to the Vicarage, getting the fire extinguished in nineteen and a half minutes by the warden's watch - after which, the fire-fighters adjourned to the 'Crown' for beer, and I had the Goodacres to dinner, their floor being - like Holland - not actually flooded, but pretty well awash. ...

4. Extract from a sermon preached on November 12th, 1939 (Armistice Sunday), by the Rev. Theodore Venables, Rector of Fenchurch St. Paul, Lincs, and printed in that week's issue of "The Fenland Weekly Comet."

... It is well, I think, that we should have chosen to commemorate this day, rather than that on which the Peace Treaty was signed; for the Armistice was at least was it claimed to be, but the Peace turned out to be no true peace. Indeed, several writers yesterday pointed out, very truly, that the whole interval between this war and the last had been indeed a period of armistice - not peace at all, but only an armed truce with evil.

We are, perhaps, too much inclined to imagine that peace is a thing that can be made once for all, and then left to look after itself. Something occurs to disturb us, and we make great efforts to be rid of it, and suppose that we have done with it for ever. This is true, whether the thing that disturbs us is good or bad. You know very well - there is no need for me to tell people like you who work on the land - that if you clear the weeds from a patch of ground you have not finished. The seeds are still there, and will spring up again, unless you are very vigilant to keep on rooting them up, and careful to plant good crops in their place. Just so, it is not enough to overthrow a wicked tyranny; we have to see to it that the seeds of strife and injustice are prevented from sprouting anew in the world, and that in their place we industriously sow the good seed that brings forth the fruits of the spirit. But it is comforting to remember that good things also cannot be wholly destroyed by a single act of violence. When King Herod slaughtered the Innocents, he did it in the name of peace and quietness - an evil peace and a false quietness - to put an end to the Jewish hope of a deliverer. And once again, when Pilate had Christ executed as a