THE UNEVACUATED CHILD
By PATRICIA GILBERT-LODGE
THE scene might be any shelter in London within the last few months. "Have you ever thought of sending them to the country?" I asked, patting the head of Mrs. A's youngest-of-five- under-eight. " Lor', yes, Miss, I sent 'em all to Cornwall, but two of 'em was killed by a bomb, so I brought the rest back. They're safer with me." "I 'ad six, now I've only got four," announced Mrs. B, from the edge of her bunk. "I am sorry," I mumbled inadequately. "Oh, so far's I know they ain't dead, but the Government took 'em and the Government can keep 'em." "Well," said Mrs. C indignantly, "I sent two of mine away and they were so damned 'appy they 'ad no time to think of me. So I brought 'ern back again. I sweated for my kids for sixteen years and I ain't going to lose 'em now. They can stay with me and be 'appy." "I ain't been evacuated at all, Miss," piped Mary aged seven. "My ma says orphans is treated terrible, and she ain't going to have me and Doris left if she and pa gets killed. So we all stay together."
The place was pervaded by that queer unwholesome smell which clings to ttle cleanest shelter. I saw a baby twitching in its sleep_ with what is known colloquially as "shelter-sickness "—a nervous disease. I saw toddlers listening open-mouthed to the eternal bomb-story. I passed the older children swinging on the sacking in front of the lavatory-doors or slinking down the bays seeking mischief. It was nearly midnight, but many of the children were not in bed. These children are the Forgotten Legion. Officially—though this attitude is now being modified— they do not exist ; they are all in the country, so little has been done for them. Actually children have been coming back from reception-areas in twice the number they are leaving London. There are now i42,000 schoolchildren in the L.C.C. area, and 87,00o under five years old in the London region. Many idle and sleep in the unwholesome atmosphere of a shelter every night ; in three shelters, all within a few hundred yards of each other, there were 209, 114 and 90 children respectively on the same night last month. Nothing was being done to amuse them.
The Save the Children Fund felt that these conditions could not be ignored, and they are now organising children's centres in shelters where there are more than twelve children. In spite of the difficulties of obtaining boil.i equipment and voluntary helpers
to run the centres both have been found. Financed largely by American generosity, sixty-five centres are already running, with two or three new ones opening each week.
These centres are attempting to provide the children with an opportunity, which they crave, of expressing themselves in con- structive activities, painting, drawing, modelling in plasticine, carpentry, boxing, needlework, writing and acting their own plays, making and using puppets, constructing model towns, from which they learn some civics, and now they are planning to write their own "shelter magazines" and illustrate them with lino-cuts. The centres are one stable event in a life of uncertainty and upheaval ; and they may even augment the much-interrupted "education.
Many London schools have been bombed or partially taken over by Civil Defence units ; many are closed because the staff is with other children in the country ; the schools that are functioning are overcrowded and must sometimes turn children away—tem- porarily. But even a temporary break in an education which is cut short at fourteen years old can do untold damage. Children forget very easily. At one of the children's centres there is a family of eight boys and girls who have not been to school for two years, and even the eldest, aged ten, cannot read now, Another child has been trying for eight months to find a school which has room for her. Stepney schools have a waiting list of 200. Many school attendance-officers have been called up ; the new ones are often inexperienced in dealing with difficult situations.
Apart from the disorganisation of their school life the children are facing the break-up of their home-lives. Their fathers and often their mothers are at work. Their homes arc battered or vanished ; the familiar streets of yesterday are the rubble of today. They play in those streets by day and sleep in the shelters by night. Everything with which they come into contact induces a feeling of fear and insecurity, which is one of the worst things children can know. Bombs are far less dangerous to them than this lack of security, which is naturally having a bad effect on their characters ; they are forming themselves into gangs, partly with a desire to lean on a leader, no matter what his morals may be, and partly to achieve a feeling of security from obeying orders —any orders. Child-delinquency is increasing. The ground is pre- pared for the seeds of a philosophy like Nazism ; a philosophy for fearful, neglected and therefore aggressive people ; there is a frightening analogy between the young Germans of 1923 and the London children of 1941.
One or two hours each night in the children's centre in their shelters may seem a small remedy for a great evil. Nevertheless it is better than neglect. The regularity and discipline of the centre is something on which the children may rely in a world where everything else is liable to collapse. The chance for self-expres- sion directs their interests away from the war or turns personal horrors into impersonal pictures, thereby releasing the strain on the child's nervous system, as in the case of the small boy of five who cheerfully drew a picture entitled "Bits of Daddy." Useful hobbies are learnt and the war becomes less dominating.
There can be no doubt that, given reasonable conditions, the children would lead more normal and less insecure lives in the country. But one can never forget the difference between the country and the London child. They are almost foreigners to each other, and the city child cannot be blamed for his hatred of evacuation. Is the fact that he has returned to London a good enough reason in itself for neglecting him and his education, both mental and moral?
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