A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK I T is unfortunate that the Ministry of
Health should appear to have taken action in the matter of requisitioning of empty houses as a direct result of the campaign of the Vigilantes, and still more unfortunate that the facts should so obviously be what they seem to be. But now that the Ministry has moved, there is obviously no justification for any further activity by the Vigilantes at all, and firm steps should be taken, if necessary, to check them. There is talk, I see, of their diverting their attention from empty houses to shopping queues, in connection with which some clergy- man's wife has been achieving a little notoriety. Unless either the lady or the Vigilantes are prepared to relieve the pressure by serving behind the counter (under proper discipline), it is hard to imagine how they can affect queues, the causes of which are deep-seated and well understood. But what is quite clear is that any body of chance associates which decides to take the law into its own hands, and do what it plainly has no authority to do, is acting in a dangerously subversive way, however admirable its motives. The Law Officers are said to have,been, very properly, looking into this. Could pro- ceedings not be taken, if need be, under the head of " public mischief "? Meanwhile the County Court Judge at Epsom has made some justifiably forcible remarks on " the law of the jungle " and
the impossibility of tolerating it.
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