DEFENCE MUDDLE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 47, 24 January 1939, Page 7

DEFENCE MUDDLE.

ANXIETY IN BRITAIN

AIR RAID PRECAUTIONS

LONDON, Jan. 12.

Although three months have passed since the Czechoslovakian crisis, there is still a serious muddle in connection with Britain’s anti-air raid precautions.

The Government is attempting to quieten anxiety by its decision to spend £20,000.000 on splinter-proof shelters in cellars and basements, by its house-to-house survey throughout tho country, and steps to evacuate children. It is spending also £30.000,000 to safeguard electricity supplies.

Meanwhile, other anti-raid activities aro still in a dreadful muddle. Evacuation of hospitals has not yet been decided. TRENCHES COLLAPSING.

Trenches evidently dug in parks and cities during the crisis are collapsing and becoming bogged. .Some even bear the notice: “Keep away from trenches. They are dangerous.” It was officially announced years ago when Sir John Simon was at the Home Office, that there was no immediate danger and that the Government “ha.d the matter well in hand.”

The muddle was supposed to have been ended hv Sir Samuel Hoare when lie was Home Secretary, but tho September crisis showed that nothing whatever had been done. There is not even now a single bomb-proof shelter in London.

The new Privy Seal, Sir John Anderson. who is now in charge of civilian defences, has done more in a month than Sir John Simon and Sir Samuel Hoare did in three years. WORSE THAN USELESS.

English engineers and others who went to Barcelona during the air raids affirm that the £20,000,000 scheme will be disastrous because the Spanish found such attempts a waste of money.

Tinkering with cellars and basements, they say, cause much greater loss of life and give a sense of false security. People rush to them and few emerge alive. Modern bombs penetrate the structures and oven the concussion causes entire buildings to collapse. The muddle becomes more serious in tho light of flic general admission that the foremost problem Britain will have to contend with is an enemy aiming a knockout blow against the public’s morale.