SELECTIVE EVACUATION
Sta,—Mrs. Williams-Ellis's plea in The Spectator of December 13th for " selective evacuation " deserves every encouragement. Her view that some of the machinery of evacuation should be available in the larger night-shelters is obviously a piece of inspired common sense ; likewise her suggestion that social workers should operate as liaison officials between the evacuation and the reception areas. I am afraid she is over-optimistic in thinking that one worker could combine the tasks of selection and distribution. Experience gathered in organising convalescent centres for nervous mothers and children has convinced me that two or more workers are necessary for the smooth running of even a comparatively small evacuation unit. The real troubles of evacution are threefold ; first, that the social aspects of the problem are almost totally neglected. The various Ministries and authorities responsible seem to imagine that evacuation can be handled as one would deal with the distribution and storage of bags of flour. Secondly, official evacuation has to compete with the more efficient and more humane self-evacuation of the well-to-do. No middle-class family would dream of evacuating a perambulator without much more reflection and preparation than the authorities give to the evacuation of the average town-dweller. And, thirdly, there is still a deplorable amount of overlapping between the innumerable organisations con- cerned. Mrs. Williams-Ellis's scheme would go far to eliminate the
first two of these difficulties. But it would appear that only a miraculous change of spirit in our Civil Services would remedy the
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