The Southland Times MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 1941. Local Emergency Schemes

Southland Times, Issue 24338, 20 January 1941, Page 4

The Southland Times MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 1941. Local Emergency Schemes

THE conference of representatives of Emergency Precautions organizations, which was held in Wellington last week, should result in a general overhaul of local schemes and a clarification of their relationship with the Home Guard. According to a statement issued after the conference by the Associate Minister of National Service (the Hon. D. Wilson) the requirements of the schemes were fully discussed and information was exchanged on more advanced measures such as the provision of air-raid shelters, anti-gas and decontamination squads, and auxiliary fire brigades. The Minister expressed his confidence that everything possible was being done to make the emergency organizations efficient. It must have been apparent to him, however, that there are very marked variations in the degree of preparedness which has been achieved in different centres. Some cities have fairly complete and workable schemes, others have not yet moved beyond the preliminary stages. The news that rehearsals are to be held and all schemes put on more or less a war footing is therefore to be welcomed. Up till now the development of the Emergency Precautions organizations has been retarded by three factors —lack of money, lack of equipment, and the failure of the community to recognize the need for local security measures. In general, the efforts of local committees have been received apathetically, as if the dangers against which they were preparing were very unreal and remote. That may have seemed true in peace time, though no one who remembers the chaotic conditions which existed in Napier and Hastings at the time of the 1931 earthquake can have doubted the value of local preparations against similar disasters. But there is no excuse for apathy towards eleI mentary measures of security in war time. Mr Wilson in his statement remarked that the Government had felt some concern about the progress of the emergency organizations “in view of developments in the war situation, particularly the presence of enemy raiders in the Pacific.” The shelling of coastal cities and ports is not beyond the bounds of possibility today. If the war is extended to the Pacific it must be counted as something more than a possibility. An attempt to destroy port equipment and prevent the transport of food, materials and men to Britain is certainly more likely than an attempt at invasion. It follows that the development of local emergency schemes is at least as important, and as deserving of public support, as the organization of a numerically strong and efficient Home Guard. Finding the Money

On the other questions—the provision of money and the availability of equipment—the Minister’s statement gave no information. The Government has placed on local authorities the responsibility for establishing and operating the emergencj' schemes, and presumably this means that the authorities are expected to provide the very considerable equipment that is required, as well as to pay running expenses. Most local authorities have been reluctant to spend money on the schemes. In Invercargill, for instance, it has been left to charity to provide elementary first-aid equipment. Whether local authorities can reasonably be required to raise by rates the many thousands of pounds that would be needed to complete the schemes down to air-raid shelters and auxiliary fire services, is a very debatable question indeed. The people are already paying heavy taxation for defence, and heavier taxation still to support a civil expenditure that was extravagant even by peace-time standards. They are entitled to expect the Government to provide for defence needs as far as possible out of existing taxation, without recourse to special rate levies by local authorities. Moreover, desirable as it may be to leave the organization of local security measures in the hands of local authorities, some degree of Government supervision is obviously called for. The needs of different localities vary according to their importance and exposure to enemy attack. Some co-ordination of local schemes will be required to ensure that each is adequate to meet likely contingencies, and to make the most effective use of the available equipment. Presumably the conference dealt with the question of equipment and ascertained from the Minister what steps are being taken to provide it. So far municipalities have been unable to obtain much of the equipment they want, even where funds have been available; and if the schemes are to be placed on a war footing their difficulties will be increased. Any equipment that can be made in New Zealand should be made at once: the Government cannot expect local authorities to develop their schemes with a sense of urgency unless it displays something of the same sense in stimulating the Dominion’s industrial effort. The Home Guard

Mr Wilson’s statement on the relationship between the Emergency Precautions Scheme and the Home Guard is clear enough to remove all misconceptions. The two bodies “are required to be developed as separate entities,” and the Emergency Precautions organizations have been instructed to “ensure that their own personnel is sufficient to enable them to carry out efficiently the duties imposed upon them.” What needs to be recognized is that each body has a valuable part to play in the organization of national defence, and that a volunteer may be as usefully employed in an Emergency Precautions Scheme as in the Home Guard. Remarks such as the one which has been attributed to the New Zealand commander of the Home Guard, that no man should “shirk his duty by hiding behind the Emergency Precautions Scheme,” are to be deprecated. Many members of the emergency organizations have given valu-

able service over a long period before the Home Guard was even thought of, and they deserve the fullest public and-official support in the completion of their work today. Some E.P.S. workers have joined the Hor. Guard as well. Up to the present they have been included in the ordinary units of the Guard, although in an emergency the local precautions organization would presumably have first call on their services. It would be in the interests of both bodies to have these workers trained as a separate unit which can, if necessary, be withdrawn without upsetting the organization of the Home Guard. The Associate Minister of National Service appears to have favoured this idea, although to judge by his statement he visualizes a Home Guard unit within the Emergency Precautions Scheme rather than an E.P.S. unit within the Home Guard. In practice it may be found that the latter arrangement is the better one. What matters most is that there should be no confusion or overlapping if both organizations are brought into operation simultaneously.