WOMEN'S PART IN A.R.P.

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 74, 24 September 1938, Page 23

WOMEN'S PART IN A.R.P.

"PRICE OF EQUAL CITIZENSHIP"

,Women who attended the meeting which the Dowager Lady Heading and Lady Maureen Stanley addressed in Manchester recently on women's voluntary services for A.R.P. (air raid precautions) were handed a list of 38 kinds of work for which they could enrol, states the "Manchester Guardian." j Lady Reading emphasised that the idea I that women could only be air-raid wardens or casualty officers is mistaken. ■ Volunteers were wanted for some kinds iof work that seem to have no connecJtxon with air raids. In possible emergencies women with special training would be called away from their normal work and other women would be needed to relieve them. j Lady Maureen Stanley said it seemed extraordinary that while they were going about their 'business and pleasure they should be thinking., of war again. They did not need her to tell them that however futile, and rldicu-, lous it was it was not so far away, and the efforts of everybody were needed to keep it away. The more other countries realised that England was not only able but also willing to undertake its responsibilities the less chance of war there would be. | CANNOT BUY PEACE WITH A I , SHILLING. 1 "You cannot buy peace by paying a shilling a year to the League of Nations Union," she said. It was more than probable that if war came again the first thing we should know about it would be a raid of enemy planes. They had all got to know exactly what was expected of each of them, and in that way they would avert panic. A great deal of what women would learn in training for possible air raids—such as first aid—would be of use in everyday life. Lady Reading said that the people in England were in a peculiarly advantageous position in planning air-raid precautions because of our network of national women's voluntary movements. "I am riot a feminist," she continued. "I do not think one needs to be. We knsw we rule the men anyhow, so why* worry about it?" and then she suggested that women's response to such a call as that of A.R.P. was part of the price of equal citizenship. They advocated that training of some kind should be taken by everybody and that people should make themselves as conversant with all sides of the work as they could be. Those who joined women's voluntary services would not be prevented from saying anything they wished, or criticising A.R.P. in any way. RESULT OF PANIC. "Do you know,", she appealed, supplementing what Lady Maureen Stanley had said about panic, "that in the last war nineteen people were killed in trying to get into one shelter, and the aeroplanes for which the maroons had sounded did not drop a bomb? ' That is^the kind of thing we can avert." The movement was divided into regional branches, and there would be women organisers'in the same places as the Home Office organisers. The women organisers would work for the opening of a centre in each large city, and ultimately, they hoped, in every borough. She hoped the centre in Manchester would be besieged. Mrs. Graham Bryce had been appointed to take charge. " One of the first questions from the audience was whether it was possible to get first-aid lectures apart from the local authorities' schemes. Lady Reading said: the:, advantage ■of ;, training under the local 'authority'was feat itwas free, and the authority could get reimbursed by the Home Office. But the Red Cross and St. John Ambulance Association provided lectures for those who wished to pay fees. Miss Hilda Buckmaster said she was ■sure an impression which might be j made by a remark by Lady Maureen ! Stanley was unintentional. She did not mean that they should slacken their efforts for the League of Nations Union. Lady Reading replied, with Lady Maureen's assent, that Lady Maureen only meant that a shilling to the League of Nations Union was not enough in itself. "NOTHING FRIGHTENING." In reply to a question about the possibility, of women: with childrei* being called away from their homes during

a raid, Lady Reading said that in Denmark it was proposed that women with children should stay at home during a raid, but that some might be called for other duty afterwards, leaving their children in the care of neighbours, and some such plan would no doubt be made here. She told another questioner that works schemes had the first claim on women employees, but in some districts they were finding where the. women lived and persuading them to enrol in separate schemes for day and night duty. The Lord Mayor (Sir William Kay) presided, and Miss Molly Grime, the Lady Mayoress, said in a vote of thanks speech: "I am an air warden, and, believe me, there is nothing frightening about the training. Indeed, there is a great deal of comfort and safety in going into a gas-filled • room, and realising ', the safety the' gas-mask gives you."