THE AIR RAIDS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 63, Issue 4490, 15 October 1941, Page 3

THE AIR RAIDS

POWER OF IMPROVISATION. “The air raids on Britain have done more than anything else to reveal how adept we British are both as individuals and as a nation at improvisation. They have revealed, too, our common dislike of planning, of anything that savours of regimentation. Not until the last moment, when the enemy is upon us do we rush to make guns, to erect temporary shelters, to call for volunteers to provide emergency hospitals and rest centres, to evacuate refugees and commandeer billets. We have an inherent dislike and distrust of the warning voice, whether it be that of a statesman or of our neighbour. Never mind planning or preparing for an emergency. We can always improvise that tardy, illegitimate offspring of procrastination. In spite of bombing, of death and destruction we rely, it seems, above all else on a philosophy which is typified in the remark of an elderly East End woman: Tn the evening I goes to bed "opeful, and in the morning wakes up thankful.’ ” The “News-Letter.”