Unevacuated Children
Attention has been drawn, none too soon, to the very sub- stantial number of city children who remain in the cities, not because their parents refuse to let them go, but because there is no category that they could go under. It will be remem- bered that under the original evacuation scheme children under five could only go if the mother or guardian could go with them. For the moment, and on emergency grounds, the rule was perhaps inevitable. But it never worked well ; " mothers with children," were, for intelligible reasons, the most unpopular class of evacuees ; and ayery large proportion of them soon went back. As far as the mothers themselves were concerned, the return was, most often, inevitable ; they had homes to mind and working menfolk to care for, and they could not afford to stay away from either for more than a few weeks. What the Ministry of Health ought at once to have pressed on with was the preparation of homes and hostels for young children in the reception areas. Labour and materials 'would have been available then, which now are no longer. Even so, much could be done by wax of adapting existing buildings and organising services. It is said that in the L.C.C. area alone there are some 42,000 children under five living on ; and all observers of the London shelters report a great many such children in them. Most of them should be evacuable, and special local provision ought to be made for those who are not.
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