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[Page] 94
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greatest traffic chaos known in living memory
So as not to furnish the enemy with any meteoro:
:logical data no information of the weather is
permitted in the press. So although we are told
of people spending the night in snow drifts,
in buses, or in station waiting rooms, and
being refreshed after hours of starvation with
only bread and tea, snow is never mentioned
nor frost until long after they have been of interest
One train that left London (Euston) at
9.15 p.m. on Sunday only reached Glasgow
this (Tuesday) morning In one case at least
passengers were shivering in coaches in which
both lighting and heating had failed! The
roads here are very bad with the trodden snow
occasionally thawed slightly in the sun
and thereafter frozen anew.
Here nothing sensational happens.
We do not even hear the guns on the sea
Nor have we the plane. constantly circling
above us as we once had. Every one goes
about his or her business as if war conditions
were quite normal, and determined to see
this job through once for all. The tales of
murder by airmen and nazies generally;
the machine gunning of defenceless fishermen

and lightship-keepers, and the deliberate attempt
to depopulate Poland by every foul means,
makes ones blood boil. Forty years ago one
would never have believed that the civilized
world of the Victorian Age could degenerate
to such bestiality.

21st. Feb 1940
After almost continuous frost since the end of
Dec. today the last of the snow has disappeared
and there came a feeling of spring into the air.
The birds are twittering and singing; a few winter
aconites were opening their little golden cups, and
the first snowdrops were freeing themselves from
their sheaves of leaves. Oh! how weary we have all been
of this winter. It has been the most severe we have
had since 1895, and yet here we did not suffer so
much as many places. The thermometer never
recorded more than 21° of frost and that only on
two nights, but the frost was almost continuous,
and for weeks the snow lay white over the lawn
and flower borders. On the continent it has
been such a winter as they have not known
for many a long year, and in England,
as so often happens, it has been worse than
here in Edinburgh!

20th July 1940
We have had a wonderful summer. The weather
in June established a record in Edinburgh.
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