ON SLEEPING IN BED
Sta,—Every day one hears of fresh amenities to brighten public shelters (tube and other)—canteens, hot drinks, buns, bunks, concerts, libraries, &c. Before long they will be equipped with all the pleasures of a fun-hall. No wonder that railway officials complain to protesting bona-fide travellers that the tubes grow fuller each night. No wonder that parents refuse to send their children out of London because they are "too useful in booking shelter-places and helping to shift bedding." There seems no doubt that we are settling down under- ground, to be a race of troglodytes. It is said that the first question asked by evacuees to country villages is "Where are the shelters?" When told there are none, because there are no bombs, they reply that, bombs or not, shelters there must be ; shelters have taken the place of the cinema as an essential part of the good life. So the evacuees fire the natives with their troglodyte enthusiasm, and to- gether they go round collecting materials for the erection of these charming dwellings, which, since there are no bombs, need not be strong, so are easily put up. The fact is that we are natural trog- lodytes by inheritance; as children we all wanted to make houses in caves, and now we have our chance. It is an amiable propensity, but has its dangerous side. Doctors and nurses tell us that this winter promises to be a grim season of diseases caught by infection and from foul air in communal shelters, or from cold, discomfort, sleeplessness and damp in Andersons and other private ones. Especi- ally the elderly, delicate, and children will suffer—those children who cannot be spared because they are so useful in keeping places and shifting bedding. Already the tide of illness runs high: what will it be in a month or two? Is it too late to try to stem it? To start a propaganda campaign for sleeping in bed? One does not want to be a kill-joy, but are all 'these incitements to the shelter life an intelligent idea? Mr. Morrison lately spared a kind word for "those calm people who sleep in their beds "; more such words might be timely. It is not that we who sleep in our beds are braver, but we prefer to face a different danger. Personally, though I value my life and limbs quite a lot, I am natur- ally philoclinic, and I find that it takes far less nerve to sleep in my flat on the third floor of a small and old-fashioned block of flats in a frequently bombed district than to adventure nightly into the foetid atmosphere of a comfortless unhygienic shelter crammed with people of whom many may have infectious illnesses, and many may not be particularly clean. It is a choice of risks; but obviously the chance of one's house stopping a bomb and oneself being killed, badly damaged, or buried longer than is healthy (I always hope I shall have the luck to be dug out in time) is .a slighter chance than that of discomfort and illness from a shelter. Can we not concentrate there- fore on urging parents to send their children out of London (accom- panying them if they prefer to and easily can and persuading the adult population to stay' commodiously in their beds and take a chance?
By all means make shelters as little unwholesome as possible; but even at the best such closely and miscellaneously crammed dormitories cannot be health resorts, and not all the bunks and buns in the world will make them so. To keep children in London in order to help their parents to sleep there seems criminal.—Yours, &c.,
ROSE MACAULAY.
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