GREAT BRITAIN: War Comfort

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All that was needed to make War II the legitimate heir to War I was a knitting bee, and busily clacking their needles this week were more than 5,000,000 British women, more than one-ninth of the whole population of the Kingdom. Yet with the demand for yarn ten times greater than in peacetime, the price last week was successfully held to eightpence (14¢) per ounce, up just a penny from the pre-war level.

For once it was not emphasized that many prominent British males, including most of the King's brothers, are expert fancy knitters, samples of whose work are exhibited in Britain occasionally in peacetime. The London Daily Telegraph & Morning Post, close to Downing Street, emphasized rather the feminine side:

"Now, after little more than six weeks, the knitter is conspicuous everywhere. Philosophers, mostly men, agree that for large projects and noble ideals man is supreme. Nothing could prove more strikingly than knitting woman's devotion to the small things. . . . To see a knitter adding a few stitches between stops in a train or omnibus, purling two or casting off between glimpses of Mr. Cooper and Miss Colbert on the screen—this is an object lesson in concentration and in kindly devotion."

Knitting became the acceptable conversational topic at Mayfair dinner tables, even male ARPers knitting to pass the time. Female knitters are called Sister Susies after the popular World War I song: Sister Susie's sewing shirts for soldiers, Such skill at sewing shirts our shy young sister Susie shows, Some soldiers send epistles, Say they'd sooner sleep in thistles, Than the saucy soft short shirts for soldiers sister Susie sews.

Singled out as "The Commander in Chief of Knitting" was retired Vice Admiral Hubert Seeds ("The Dear") Monroe, 62, newly appointed chairman of the Royal Navy War Comforts Committee. For the wartime saucy soft short shirts of British sailors, posited the Admiralty in a broadside to knitters last week, it is necessary to employ two-ply and even three-ply yarn.