PEOPLE AND THINGS
By HAROLD NICOLgON
SEE that I have fallen into disgrace with Mr. Tom I Harrisson and his fellow experimenters in Mass Observa- tion for having stated recently (on insufficient evidence) that they had been obliged to suspend their activities owing to the war. Mr. Harrisson has now sent me, as evidence of his vitality and forgivingness, some notes on the war-time observations which he and his fellow operators are making. Valuable lessons are to be derived from these researches. It would seem, for instance, that the working classes do not enjoy reading the Public Information Leaflets with which they are so lavishly supplied by a maternal and disquieted Government. Even when they do read them, they find it hard to understand the official language in which these leaflets are composed. Few of those hundreds who were questioned had any knowledge, in spite of repeated instruc- tions, how to deal with an incendiary bomb. A large majority confessed that they had no idea how to distinguish between an incendiary bomb, at first sight, and other types of bombs such as high-explosive, gas-producing, liquid- oxygen, atomic, or even Hitler's secret weapon. I confess that, although possessed of a high civic sense, I share that ignorance. The idea is, I suppose, that the bomb would declare its own true nature without any undue delay. And it might well be that one's own future observations would be much curtailed.
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