24 JUNE 1938, Page 6

The Government is often criticised, no doubt justly, for its

failure to make adequate preparations against what we seem to have agreed to refer to euphemistically as " a state of emergency," but in some fields at any rate a good deal more has been going on than the general public suspects. On one field the chairman of the governors of Queen's College, Taunton, threw interesting light at the school speech day last Saturday, when he mentioned that arrangements had been made for all the boys from a school in Canterbury to be moved to, and housed in, Queen's College, " in case of emergency." As a matter of fact there are very few schools in the eastern counties of England (and for this purpose east goes a considerable way west) which have not been urged to make, and have not made, similar arrangements. How one school can make its dormitories and class-rooms sufficiently elastic to accommodate two is a question to which the answer no doubt is that improvisations are always possible in emer- gencies. Moreover, boys in " air-raid zone " schools who happen to live in safe areas will probably go home. * * * *