If you didn't live in a country that was bombed or invaded during the World Wars, it will be hard to understand how grateful one can be for a little house, and your country to be normal again.
That's true: it's hard to understand the horrors and deprivation that wartime brought on unless you were there yourself. Reading about them in the 21st Century does help, but it's not the same thing as being there and having to undergo them yourself.
Despite this, it's hard not to be impressed with the fact that food rationing lasted
fourteen years. That is, it didn't end with the end of WWII but continued for nearly a decade afterward (with meat rationing finally ending in 1954). Paul Fussell's book
Wartime focuses mostly on the American civilian experience of WWII, but it does spend some time talking about what the British went through as far as shortages and rationing (e.g. a man in the UK could only hope to purchase a new suit once every
two years, while he was eligible to purchase a new shirt every 20 months.
With the relative plenty of the 21st Century (even in these times) it all sounds a little incredible.
This was not a false side of Noel Coward. He was a true Englishman who loved his country, and could cry for it.
I'm grateful for all the responses as they have helped me to realize that being cynical and worldly-wise doesn't necessarily preclude one from feeling strongly about his fellow man and feeling a sense of solidarity with them.
I hope to have a chance to see this on the Silver Screen again.
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