Why No Shelters?
As our Parliamentary Correspondent shows in an adjacent column, Sir Samuel Hoare's speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday indicated that more progress than was generally realised has been made in the matter of Air Raid Precautions. But in one field, the construction of shelters, there is a clear difference of opinion between the Home Office and the general public. The public demands that form of protection and it is hard to see why what is right for Paris and Berlin—and much-bombed Barcelona—should be wrong for London. Paris is reported to have 27,50o shelters capable of accom- modating 1,72op0o people and another 7,000 in the suburbs ; and the efficiency of shelters even when built under difficult conditions may be illustrated by the shelter in Barce- lona which, in the murderous air raid this week, resisted two hits, one direct and one indirect, from 220 lb. bombs.
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