THE GREAT EVACUATION SIR, —Grateful thanks to The Spectator for R.

C. K. Ensor's truths on the evacuation outrage. Yours is the only paper, to date, which has broken the careful conspiracy of lies, organised on the Nazi model, to blanket the hardships inflicted on the victims in the " safe " areas.

Apart from the disgraceful insistence of the billeting peopi in thrusting filthy women and children into the homes of decent, cleanly people, there is an economic hardship not yet mentioned.

Many of the evacuated children arrived with no chalk of various undergarments. This means that the strugglinz. country worker's wife must buy new socks and vests for the slum children or allow them to become even more malodorous than they are already.

Then there is the case of the working wife who goes out • daily service to help with the rent money. She is now Ironted with keeping two evacuees on 17s. a week, spend- : all her time on their cleaning, washing and cooking subject to local busybodies' " inspection") and so losing her own job and wages.

Again—aged people.- I know of two retired folk : the husband 70, the wife 68. Both simple, childless, quiet people with no hobbies but their little spotless home and garden.

Into this the billeting officer threatened to thrust three urchins. The couple, in dread of the prospect, said they would shut their cottage and go away. The official retort was that the cottage would be commandeered as soon as it ;as unoccupied.

These cases can be multiplied endlessly.

Is the Englishman's home no longer his castle? If the Government, on Labout's initiative, have decided in the negative we might invite Hitler to come and show our A.R.P.

officials how to be humane and reasonable. A Victim.

SIR,—Mr. Ensor's article on evacuation and reception in your issue of 8th inst. is remarkable for the extreme moderation of its language, because it is obvious to all who have had any experience of reception that there has been a lamentable breakdown of the system in many directions, with lasting and unfortunate results for the evacuees and their hosts. The evacuation scheme, like many Ministerial schemes, perfect on paper, took little or no account of the human element. It assumed, having directed the evacuation of so many thousand persons, and having directed their reception by so many thousand householders, that round and square pegs would automatically fall into round and square holes. It did not and could not work that way. I live in a reception area far removed from London. The evacuating area was a large northern city. The reception area is a small industrial town, suffering, like all its neighbours, from many years' continued and ever-growing unemployment, but nevertheless with a clean and thrifty population. There arrived at the station large numbers of evacuated children, not merely unwashed, but actually filthy and verminous. The evacuating authority spends many thousands of pounds per annum on its school clinics, health visitors, school doctors and nurses, baths, &c., and yet can turn out its school-children in this condition. It really makes one wonder what real good these services are and what supervision over their use is exercised either by the local authority or by the Ministry of Health. The dismay and anger of the recipient authority and of the hundreds of volunteers assembled to deal with these children was intense.

Time was of importance. Another batch was due in a few hours' time, and the routine of collecting, docketing and billet- ing each child was a lengthy and tedious process. Meanwhile, the condition of the dirty and verminous children became obviously public property and spread consternation among the prospective hosts. Naturally, also, it reacted detrimentally to the clean, nice, healthy children who constituted by far the larger proportion, as these were subjected to a close scrutiny by each host before acceptance. By nine o'clock in the even- ing the billeting was complete. At nine the following morn- ing, when another batch was expected, trouble began again. Householders complained, apparently with good reason, of the habits and condition of their evacuees, and evacuees com- plained of the discipline of their hosts. A complicated system of exchange, for all sorts of reasons, had to be arranged on top of the reception and billeting of the next batch, which turned out to be mothers and children, which, as Mr. Ensor points out, are the most difficult type of all to deal with. But all our difficulties would have been enormously lessened if only the evacuating authority had supervised the condition of the scholars they sent out and had used their cleansing and medical services upon their children before evacuation. When I read the Ministry's unctuous and self-satisfied congratula- :tons on the success of the scheme, I can only wish some )fficial of that Ministry had been present here on the Friday

• ,nd Saturday of our reception. The volunteer workers were lriven distracted. Their sense of humanity was great. These children, verminous and dirty though they were, had to be dealt with, and dealt with kindly. Their condition was not

their fault, and I cannot speak too highly of the tact, sym- pathy and hard work put into this task by this particular band of volunteers. We pride ourselves on our voluntary system, but it should not be strained to deal with difficulties which could have been avoided if the supervision which, goodness knows, costs enough, had been efficient. I may say that the experience of the neighbouring recipient authorities was similar to ours.

What has been done cannot now be undone, but grave difficulties still lie ahead of the reception authorities. They are faced with children who are homesick, refractory and rebel- lious, without any parental control, and with householders who are suffering from a grievance and who feel they have not had a square deal and are now called upon to subsidise the Government out of their own pocket. Certainly the financial aspects of the scheme demand immediate attention, because parents of evacuated children, both grammar school and elementary and senior scholars, are ridding themselves of . their financial and moral responsibilities to a large extent, and throwing these on to the unfortunate hosts. To deal with this in detail would take too much space, but I can assert with confidence that this difficulty is a real one.

War from the air has not as yet touched this country ; when it has done there may be other evacuations not so orderly as the last. The Ministry should take time by the forelock, make strict and early investigation in all evacuation and reception areas, and, above all, insist on evacuating areas doing their duty by the children they send out. If the Ministry hides its head in the sand and ignores the difficulties and dangers of the scheme as it at present exists and is administered, if it complacently continues to state that everything in the evacua- tion garden is lovely, there will be a rude awakening, and the consequences to the morale of the country will be serious and far-reaching.

Apologising for the length of this letter, I enclose my card. My address would disclose information which it is perhaps prudent to keep secret. But you have my permission to give both my name and address to anyone in authority who may