When she has had a good week she sometimes takes her mother and brother for kvass to one of the many Russian restaurants in Osborn Street and Little Montagu Street.
Sometimes you see Sonia Karavitch at a table, sipping her tea, and listening to the talk, and you may wonder why that sad, far-away look in her eyes. She is not in Stepney. Her soul has flown to her native land—to the steppes, to the cold airs of Russia, whither a certain Russian lad, who used to work by her side in the cigarette factory in Osborn Street, was dispatched by a repatriation order.
But then she remembers mother and little brother, and stops her dreamings, and hurries on to work.
Many wild folk have sat in these cafés and discoursed on the injustices of civilization; and at one time private presses in the neighbourhood gave forth inflammatory sheets bearing messages from international warriors in the cause of freedom.
If ever you are tired of the solemn round of existence, don't take a holiday at the seaside, don't go to the war. Edit an anarchist news-sheet, and your life will be full of quick perils and alarms.
Another of my Stepney friends is Jane, the flower-girl, who tramps every day from Stepney to Covent Garden, and sells her stock from a pitch near Leicester Square. Here's another ardent war-worker.
Some worthy people may not think that the selling of violets comes properly under the fine exclusive label of War Work; but these are the neurotics whose only idea of doing their bit is that of twisting their soiling fingers about anything that carries a message of grace; who fume at a young man because he isn't in khaki, and, when he is in uniform, kill him with a look because he isn't in hospital blue, and, when he is in hospital, regard him askance because he isn't eager to go back.
"Flowers!" they snort or wheeze. "Fiddling with flowers in war-time! It ought to be stopped. Look at the waste of labour. Look at the press on transport. Will the people never realize," etc.
Yet, good troglodytes, because the world is at war, shall we then wipe from the earth everything that links us, however lightly, to God—and save Germany the trouble? Must everything be lead and steel? Old Man—dost thou think, because thou art old, that glory and loveliness have passed away with the corroding of thy bones? Nay, youth shall still take or make its pleasure; fair girls shall still adorn their limbs with silks, and flowers shall still be sweet to the nose.
Old Man—on many occasions when I could get no food—not even war-bread—the sight and smell of bunches of violets have furnished sustenance for mind and body. So fill thy belly, if thou wilt, with the waxy potato; put the Army cheese where the soldier puts the pudding; shovel into thy mouth the frozen beef and offal that may renew thy energies for further war-work; but, if there be any grace of God still left in thee, if there be any virtue, any charity—leave, for those who are shielding thy senescent body, the flower-girls about Piccadilly Circus on a May morning.