WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. —Thursday morning's multiple bomb attacks on buses and subways in London shall challenge the British people once more to draw upon those famous reserves of stubborn endurance that are often admired and sometimes even caricatured as "British phlegm."
These days, of course, the word more often refers to a bodily secretion, but the Greek physician Galen identified it as one of the "four humors" of the human body — black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm, which controlled people's moods and bodily shapes. To be phlegmatic was to be sluggish and pale-skinned, even cowardly. Originally it was an insult.
But over the past two centuries, and especially during the London Blitz, which lasted from Sept. 7, 1940, until May 10, 1941, the doggedness of Britons under fire was verified and signed with blood. On one night alone, the last of the Blitz, 3,000 Londoners died. In all the death toll topped 30,000.
In London's Imperial War Museum today, there is a remarkable recreative display, a kind of interactive Blitz-experience that is quite frightening. Visitors go into a tunnel, lined with bricks, and sit on crude benches in dim light. Voices whisper and speak around them, voices of ghostly revenants from the past, saying things people might have said as they waited underground, in the very subway tunnels which were bombed Thursday morning.
At the climax the whole tunnel shakes dreadfully, the lights go out, then come back on again. There is the sound of a huge explosion overhead.
Then a block-warden's voice calls the "All Clear!" and another voice says cheerfully: "Well, let's go back up and see what Jerry's left us!"
British phlegm! Even in peacetime it provided a rich source of humor. French author Jules Verne in his "Around the World in 80 Days," has Phileas Fogg bid, "with more than British phlegm," 2,000 pounds for an Indian elephant he needs for his trip. It is an outrageous price, but the phlegmatic Fogg wants the elephant.
Author P.G. Wodehouse presents the character Bertie Wooster as a flibbertigibbet and a nincompoop. But Wooster's butler, Jeeves, is imperturbable. We read phrases like "Jeeves shimmered into the room, the pure light of reason shining from his forehead." When Wooster is in trouble, or "neck-deep in the mulligatawny," the most Jeeves will say is: "Most disturbing, sir."
During the London Blitz, the plump, unwarlike editor Cyril Connolly was dragooned into service as part of the Home Guard. He was supposed to patrol blocks. He got lost. He was supposed to order people to put out lights and go indoors. He couldn't. He was supposed to help extinguish fires. He was unequal to the task.
So, after the war, the wickedly sarcastic Evelyn Waugh sent a copy of one of his books to Connolly, with the inscription: "To Cyril. Who Kept The Home Fires Burning."
This same grinning sangfroid animated the 8th East Surreys regiment on July 1, 1916, the first day of the ghastly battle of the Somme in World War I. Capt. W.P. Nevill bought four soccer balls and handed them out, offering a prize to the company that could kick one right up to the German battle line. Nevill was killed instantly and the Surreys were mowed down by machine guns, but one of the soccer balls is in the Imperial War Museum today. An anonymous poem appeared shortly afterward:
On through the heat of slaughter
Where gallant comrades fall
Where blood is poured like water
They drive the trickling ball
The fear of death before them
Is but an empty name
True to the land that bore them
The Surreys play the game.
The pattern and paradigm of courage under pressure will always be Winston Churchill, whose speeches during the darkest days of World War II remain the touchstone of stoicism. Everyone knows his "Blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech. But on June 4, 1940, he delivered another speech, inciting his countrymen to stubborn courage.
Churchill praised London as, "this strong city of refuge." He made it seem a labyrinthine fortress, a redoubt proof against all Hitler's malice. It is known today as his "War of The Unknown Warriors" speech.
"We await undismayed the impending assault. Perhaps it will come tonight. Perhaps it will come next week. Perhaps it will never come," Churchill said. "We must show ourselves equally capable of meeting a sudden, violent shock, or what is perhaps a harder task, a prolonged vigil. But be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley. We may show mercy. We shall ask none.
"Should the invader come to Britain, there will be no placid lying-down of the people in submission before him, as we have seen alas, in other countries. We shall defend every village, every town, and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army. And we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes, than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved."
On Thursday, Prime Minister Tony Blair, shaken but composed, released a statement:
"The terrorists will not succeed. Today's bombings will not weaken in any way our resolve to uphold the most deeply held principles of our societies and to defeat those who would impose their fanaticism and extremism on all of us."