Up to London. Snow still lying. First type of balloon barrage–silvery looking “blimps” a few thousand feet up. Not in rows, but singly or in small groups.

So to the Dorchester, where, on the 1st floor, I have the suite which was occupied by Wendell Willkie ¹. As the building is modern and there are seven floors above me, it is considered as good as an air raid shelter. Curtains are closely drawn at sunset: the windows are coated with some anti-shatter mixture. Day raids have for the time been practically discontinued, and the street traffic on the way to the Dept of Information (London University) and Australia House seemed almost normal.

So far I have seen only a few bombed places, including the house in Piccadilly where the Duke of York lived. Sandbags everywhere; barbed wire; the front (to the Mall) of Carlton House Terrace rather battered; King Charles at Charing Cross in a corrugated iron container; police in tin hats; not many people carrying their gas masks; AIR RAID SHELTER, or AIR RAID TRENCHES signs everywhere; windows bricked or boarded up. At Information Dept I have a guard of Honour of the Home Guard (who work in offices and do their stuff as guards so many nights a week!) and some Australians still left here

At Australia House, meet the whole staff and thank them for prompt and devoted work. This timely and much appreciated.

One hour to spare, so walkabout for fresh air. Holborn Gray’s Inn Road, Theobolds Road, Red Lion Square, Lincoln’s Inn Fields–looking lovely in a cold blue grey mist with just a touch of sunlight. Every here and there a few houses destroyed; a shop blown up. We talk of spirit–(each of everybody else’s spirit!), but what tragedies of lost or ruined lives must be behind these scattered bricks.

It is a bedlamite world, and the hardest thing in it is to discuss and decide (as we do in War Cabinet) policies which, even if successful, must bring the angel of death into many homes. In public affairs at this time the successful leader is he who ignores the individual and thinks and acts in broad terms.

...here and there a few houses destroyed; a shop blown up. We talk of spirit...but what tragedies of lost or ruined lives must be behind these scattered bricks.

…through Bristol (with its main shopping streets blitzed—no possible military objective) and by Bridgewater, Taunton, Exeter to Plymouth, which had a doing last night. Many ruins still smoking. Meet Lady Astor at her house on the Hoe. Windows broken, and therefore sent to Admiral’s Residence, after visiting a shelter for homeless & speaking there.

At dinner we are warned that Hun arrives two nights running. Sure enough, just as the port arrives we are hurried into the cellars, into a corridor whose floor is some feet below ground level but whose walls are pierced by window sandbagged outside. A frightful bombing breaks out. Twice the window swings right in with the force of the blast. Twice I don my tin helmet and creep out to see the sky red with fire, to hear the sound of the planes overhead, to hear the ping of falling shrapnel, to see fires all along the city, and nearby houses and a church spire standing out as clearly as in an aquatint of moonlight.

Nancy Astor ² and I keep the company entertained below, but the business is not really funny. The windows in the front of the house are broken. After midnight, all clear sounds...A frightful scene. Street after street afire; furniture litters the footpaths; poor old people shocked & dazed are led along to shelter. Buildings blaze and throw out sparks like a bush fire. There are few fire appliances and firemen. Picture Melbourne blazing from Flinders to Lonsdale, from Swanston or Russell to Elizabeth Streets; with hundreds of back street houses burning as well.

Every now & then a delayed action bomb explodes (two were so close as to make me duck) or a building collapses. Millions of pounds go west in an hour. I am in a grim sense glad to have seen it. I am all for peace when it comes, but it will be a tragedy for humanity if it comes before these beasts have had their own cities ravaged. The Hun must be made to learn through his hide; for sheer brutality this kind of thing is beyond the imagining of those who have not actually witnessed it. I thought it horrible, but Billy Rootes ³ said “Nothing to Coventry!!”.

The windows in the front of the house are broken...A frightful scene. Street after street afire; furniture litters the footpaths; poor old people shocked & dazed are led along to shelter. Buildings blaze and throw out sparks like a bush fire.

Tonight the enemy is passing overhead. You can hear him. The search lights are operating–and the crack of the guns in the park opposite is deafening. To look out of window you switch out the lights and peep through the curtain. An eerie experience, the sky occasionally flashing like lightning with the explosion of the A.A. shells. London is so vast that the German bombers pass over it on their way to any of the Midland or Northern cities. But how many A.A. shells are fired per hit God only knows. While the uproar goes on the buses and taxis still rumble along Park Lane!

I was wrong. They were not passing. 460 of them were attacking London, and a dozen large bombs fell within 100 yards of the Dorchester. It was a terrible experience.

Later. I was wrong. They were not passing. 460 of them were attacking London, and a dozen large bombs fell within 100 yards of the Dorchester. It was a terrible experience. Invited up to the second floor for a drink with two elderly ladies (one of them John Lowther’s mother), we had scarcely sat down when a great explosion and blast shattered the windows of the room, blew the curtains in, split the door, and filled the room with acrid fumes. Twice the whole building seemed to bounce with the force of the concussion. Twice I visited the ground floor, and found it full of white-faced people. Tritton went out to escort a guest home, got into the blitz, had his taxi driver wounded and the wind-screen broken, and took the wheel himself!

The sky beyond the Palace was red with fire and smoke, the sky was flashing like lightning. It is a horrible sound to hear the whistle of a descending stick of bombs, any one of them capable of destroying a couple of five-storey houses, and to wonder for a split second if it is going to land on your windows!

Just before dawn, at about 5 a.m., Tritton, Landau and I went for a walk to see the damage. There were buildings down and great craters within 100 yards of the hotel on the side away from the park. In Brook Street buildings were blazing. A great plume of red smoke rose from Selfridge’s. Gas mains blazed in Piccadilly. The houses fronting the Green Park were red and roaring. There were craters and fallen masonry in the streets, and the fear of an unexploded bomb lurking around every corner. Wherever we walked, we crunched over acres of broken glass. This is the “new order”. How can it go on for years?

Wherever we walked, we crunched over acres of broken glass. This is the “new order”. How can it go on for years?