• ORGANISATION OR CHAOS
Sett,—Is it too much to hope that the new National Fire Service will lead to a rajaid development of local government on regional lines? Half our administration-difficulties ,wpul4. fade- away if the Govern- ment would instruct and assist the great industrial municipalities to prepare schemes of co-operation and joint action with the local authorities in the adjoining counties. For instance, if this had been done in regard to school-evacuation, an orderly experiment in educa- tional co-operation between town and countryside could have been carried out Most of the children evacuated from the towns could have been accommodated in their appropriate school-units, within 3o or 4o miles of their homes, and supervision of their educational and physical needs would have been possible.
As things are, the first two bodies of Bristol evacuees were " con- signed " by the -Ministry of Health to Devon and Cornwall, school units being repeatedly broken up, often into groups of two or three children. By a strange turn of the wheel, the " blitzing " and subsequent evacuation of Plymouth has resulted in Bristol's third "consignment " of evacuees being directed into the adjoining county of Somerset, an area which, we were previously given to understand, was full to the point of saturation.
These antics of Government departments are bringing democracy into contempt with ordinary people. The worst types of local and national officials are rivalling one another in ingenuity at evading responsibility and explaining that the blame for-each successive failure lies with the other set of officials. If this sort of thing is allowed to go on, efficiency and confidence will both be undermined. Sooner or later we shall have to choose between a centralised dictatorship and regional units of democratic government, in which power and responsibility are vested in representatives of the central government and the local authorities sitting together and facing, instead of evading, the many problems which confront us.
The sooner we face this question of regional responsibility and regional administration the better. The alternative is chaos, crisis— and the dictatorship. R. Sr. JOHN READE. 4 Goldbury Avenue, Bristol, 8.
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