For the first time in seven years, the "vacation factories" are back on the British beaches.

Staying in London during August is, for an Englishman, as hard to bear as the absence of bacon at breakfast or the suppression of bookmakers at the Newmarket races. Along with the blitzkrieg and Doenitz's submarines, the lack of vacations will remain one of the worst memories of the war. Perhaps this best explains the waves of assaults that battalions of Londoners have been unleashing over the past few days on Victoria Station, the hub of departures to the fat meadows of Surrey and the chalky cliffs of the North Sea.

Not for seven years have the stations in the British capital been so crowded. Tens of thousands of Smiths and Sullivans spent nights under the stars just to get a rail ticket. For this first summer of peace, the railways put two thousand four hundred special trains into service for the most popular seaside resorts: Blackpool, Southend, Brigthon and Margate (...)

Brighton remains England's most popular beach. Before the war, it was estimated that two million people came to spend an average of ten days each during the season. But this year, the record will be broken: the beach was reopened on June 1. Since May 1940, it had been considered a military zone, and special reasons and a pass issued by the War Office were required to visit it. (...)

Brighton would look like any other beach in the world if it didn't have a pier. For the English, Brighton's pier is almost as famous as the column in Trafalguar Square or the Tower of London. And they'd be happy to call it one of the Eight Wonders of the World if it weren't already carefully catalogued. Brighton Pier is part fair, part dance hall. There are open-air concerts, merry-go-rounds, lotteries, a cinema and, of course, the inevitable amusement arcade. You have to pay three pence for the right to enter the pier, and every day five thousand people pay this fee without batting an eyelid to be able to smell the famous air that a famous English humorist once defined as "the only one worth sniffing". Bank employees who come to Brighton to spend their annual family vacation thus give themselves, for a few francs, the illusion of a sea voyage, without the risk of nausea and without straying too far from their boarding house.

The pier is 570 metres long. During an air attack, an enemy bomb blew a 40-meter hole in its floor. It has now been partially repaired, with 500 plumbers, carpenters and painters working to restore it to its pre-war appearance. Every day, a diver descends to the bottom of the sea to check the 400 pilings and 5,000 crossbeams that support it. As the continuous vibration caused by the footsteps of walkers can cause damage over time, he is Brighton's busiest man.

This year, the city's hotels are overwhelmed and understaffed. In one hour, five hundred chambermaids could easily find a good place. Summer guests are reduced to making their own beds, doing their own laundry, and fetching their own breakfast from the kitchen. (...)

This craze for the first peaceful vacations has left the streets of London deserted. It is estimated that almost two million city dwellers headed for the beaches along the coast. While only 30,000 foreigners and provincials came to spend their vacations in the English capital, where hotels lowered their rates.