On Wednesday Sir Samuel Hoare delivered the most thorough and
meticulous survey that Parliament has yet heard on the subject of Air Raid Precautions. The emphasis which he laid upon the policy of dispersal was bound to raise acute controversy. But it is only fair to say that he gave the House the impression that far more rapid progress was being made in the provision of equipment and the training of volunteers than hitherto. Mr. Noel Baker, who led for the official Opposition, has made himself an authority on these matters, and exhibited much valuable knowledge on the results of aerial bombardment in Spain. He argued forcibly that the Government was making a mistake in treating all parts of the country alike instead of concentrating on the great cities and most vulnerable centres of population. The House then listened with appreciation to one of the most acceptable maiden speeches delivered in recent years. A reputation established outside is not always an advantage to a newcomer, but Sir John Anderson entirely came up to the expectations of his audience. Miss Megan Lloyd George, who followed, had some pointed criticisms to make of Sir Samuel Hoare's view that the safest place in an air raid is an ordinary house. How could this be true, she asked, in the overcrowded and structurally unsound buildings of the East End ? The reception accorded to this speech showed that Members are profoundly uneasy regarding the reluctance of the Government to construct bomb-proof shelters.
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