CAVE DWELLERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 2, 3 January 1941, Page 9

CAVE DWELLERS.

ENGLISH SHELTERERS. DIM LIGHTING AT NIGHT. This modern world has often enough been likened to barbarism, but surely there is no more terrible example than LJat of a modern race of cave-dwellers. The spectacle of people sheltering underground from the enemy, like animals run to earth, is tragic enough, but when a thousand English people spend their nights in caves, dimly lit, it is as though the whole world has been wrenched back with one twist of the hand of war. , A writer in the London "Daily Telegraph" describes these caves, in a small town in the south of England, where people have found shelter at almost no cost at all. They run deep into an adjacent hill, and here come not only the local inhabitants, but people in cars from places many miles away, and even a number of homelese refugees from the East End of London. By night these modern cave-dwellers, numbering about 1000, present an astonishing spectacle. The caves, where mushrooms grew till recently, have been lighted dimly by electricity. In the semi-darkness hundreds of candles and hurricane lamps stuck in the walls gleam, flickering on a scene which for eeriness might challenge one of Gustave Dore"s illustrations of Dante's Inferno. Across some of thp natural recesses in the walls carpet* have been hung, converting them into something very like the cave-woman's first bedchamber. Here whole families rest with a certain measure of privacy. Others, etill more ambitious, hav,e brought stretchers and even iron bedsteads. The shelterers are of all ages, from frail old people cheerfully enduring discomfort and cold to infants waking from deep sleep to cry fitfully while mothers try patiently to hush them. They are, too, of all classes.

Canteen Kept Busy. The supervision is admirable. A Home Guard watches the entrance. Inside, a canteen, with a bowl of flowers on the table, is run by three devoted young women. Between 8.30 p.m. and 11 p.m they serve 500 cups of tea, and after 6 a.m., when the exodus begins, another 300 or 400. People bring their own eups and jugs, usually presented by a child on behalf of a family. A boiler to provide constant hat water is being installed. fe The place is damp and unhealthy, but everything possible is done to mitigate discomforts and dangers. A Red Cross nurse, lietening to the wondrous chorus of coughs and snores, is as alert as any roof spotter for signs of whoopin<r cough, and she makes a regular tour with cough medicine for which those dieposed pay Id. A sanitary equad provide what conveniences are practicable at short notice, and where sleep in some London shelters is made difficult by chatterers, here the supervisor calls for silence at 11 p.m. If the shelter is to be used through the winter, eome form of heatin* and more elaborate sanitation will be essential. The organisation established in a week, however, shows what can be achieved by energy and public spirit.