An Example
The village in which these notes are being written has a population of 230 adults and children ; it is really three ham- lets in one. It has a church, one pub. and one shop, a big house which stands empty, a school which stands empty, no doctor, no retired Major or Colonel, an average proportion of independent and working-classes. It is twenty miles from the coast, almost twenty from the nearest air-port, five from the nearest railway junction. Unimportant and right off the supposed lines of air attack, it could reasonably declare that A.R.P. hardly concerned it. Yet these are its figures : out of a population of 230 it has over fifty air-raid wardens (London needs something like a million and a half to be equally well served) ; these wardens have been, or are being, trained in first-aid and the use of anti-gas precautions ; it has a fire- brigade, complete with full equipment, a utility squad (also complete with full equipment and lorry), and finally a mobile ambulance which is in reality a converted horse-box. All wardens and eauipment have been well tested in two black- outs, both with realistic effects and casualties, both revealing extremely smooth and common-sense organisation. I cannot deny that a large part of the whole affair has been due to a generous and fortunate piece of private enterprise, but an equal part of its success is due to an easy and vigorous co- operation between farm-labourers and retired ladies, quarry- workers and bailiffs, innkeeper and landowner, gardener and stockbroker, regardless of class. It strikes me as more than interesting that such a village, typical of so many where class-prejudice is still a powerful undercurrent, should have made such an uncommonly zealous effort to provide itself with defences it may never need.
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