[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—May I reply, on
behalf of the Cambridge Scientists' Anti- War Group, to the questions of your Contributor " Janus " in The Spectator of last week ?
In the first place, our own statements on the Air Raid Pre- cautions Schemes of the Government are based on scientific evidence, much of which has been done elsewhere and is already published. We claim to speak as scientists, and not as" extreme left-wing pacifists."
Secondly, as to our motives. We are not among those who deny that no protection against air attack is possible in any circumstances. We believe that the people of this country have the right to demand adequate protection from air-raids, and to know, moreover, the exact degree of protection which the present schemes will afford.
Frequently statements are made such as that of the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, who said : "The vast majority of the houses in London and in the other great cities were in fact easily made gas-proof by very simple devices." (House of Lords, 3.12.'36.) Your special correspondent on "Air War and the Civilian" says very much the same thing Such statements we believe to be untrue, and the evidence for this view is to be found in our recent book, The Protection of the Public against Aerial Attack.
We are fully aware of the gravity of these charges, and we ask that they should be investigated by an independent and authoritative committee of scientists to be set up for this Purpose.
As to the scientific basis of the Government proposals, when questioned at a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine, Major Blackmore, of the Air Raid Precautions Department, stated that "the experiments conducted had been performed on discarded telephone kiosks." If such experiments represent all the official research that has been done, this is not sufficient as a basis for nation-wide precautions on which the safety of millions of our fellow citizens may some day depend.—Yours, on behalf of the Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group, A. F. HUGHES.
Strangeways Road, Queen Ediths Way, Cambridge.
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