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it's equal to a fine liqueur"
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EAT AT
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INEXPENSIVE SATISFYING
THE CHINA MAIL, NOVEM
Huge A. R. P. Home Office Holds
Up Vital.com
Safety Measures
When the full story of A.R.P. comes to be told,
will be found that there has been wide-spread blundering and inefficiency in official circles, particularly in the Home Office.
Gas-mask distribution has been delayed in places. Often there has been no fitting of the respira- tors, a vital point if they are to be effective; and where fitting has been done, it has often been inefficient.
The masks were to have been ¡tection of London's people and pro- supplied to the public with contain-perty."
ers for safe storage and protection, Among the hardest worked, men but few people have them as yet. in London and the big cities were Some mothers even looked on the Registrars of marriages and these vital protectors as an easy their staffs. Hundreds of young way of amusing the children. In couples advanced the dates of their Notting Hill, children played with weddings. them in the streets, and were seen trying them on the dog.
In the vital days it was.only the sterling work of volunteers, who were on duty day and night, that brought ordér out of chaos.
་་
Special notices were given, and In a few instances cancelled. In many cases the Registrars' were just standing idly by, waiting for the couples who did not turn up. Among the couples who hurriedly Willesden Council was forced advanced their wedding dates, and to act contrary to Government in are now sticking to the later ones structions in order to provide any are Michal Hambourg, the pianist real measure of Air Haid Precap-daughter of Mark Hambourg, and tions for the inhabitants of the the Baron de Lancey. borough.
ORDER FOR 6ewt. OF BISCUITS
In July, a scheme was submitted | to the Home Office by the Council Grayer side of activities was the providing for the erection of four wholesale purchase of stocks of | buildings in open spaces which food by moneyed people... would provide bomb-proof shelters, Huge supplies of tea, sugar, coal training, first aid, decontamination and canned foods were bought for and organisational headquarters for the four sections of the borough,
1
at a cost of about £24,000.
The Home Office turned down the scheme, and instead suggested that a school, built largely of glass, should be used!
LAST-MINUTE APPROVAL Eventually, shortly before the crisis, approval was given for the erection of one building, but the approval of an A.R.P. scheme was not forthcoming. Plans must be ap- proved by the Home Office before the local authority can move in the matter.
But with sanction still with- held, the Council took matters into its own hands three weeks
before the crisis.
"Had we not done this and pre- pared an emergency scheme, In ad- dition to our main scheme, we should have been in a
a terrible plight" Mr. F. G. Exton, Chairman of the Willesden Council A.RR. Committee, said.
hoarding.
Reports, tell of van loads of food being ordered from London for small families who have moved to the country.
Another order was for £200 worth of groceries and one for six hundredweight of biscuits for pet dogs,
There was little additional run on food in the poorer quarters, ex- cent for a rise in the demand for a few commodities such as milk and sugar, much of which was account- ed for by necessary provision to be made for children being sent into the country.
"On the whole there has been no ing among working-class people, signs of panic, no signa of board-
but these are the people whom you can usually depend upon to keep London Co-operative Society Food their heads," said an official of the
Department.
proof rooms is the invention of two An apparatus for ventilating gas-
"I have never known such a state Cole and Mr. H. Storey, of Brixton. London motor engineers, Mr. H. G. of affairs existing in the Home Of- fice an all my life.
It comprises a large gas filter and ey were telling people over t
pair of bellows, and, in use, is the wireless that every thing was all, leht, when, in polût projecting through. Thê à
screwed to the door with a pipe air drawn
{cracks,"
BANKS REFUSED OVERDRAFTS
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That any efficiency came in the of the outside atmosphere, and so cent. less than end out of the Home Office was prevente gas seeping through after the sign largely due to the efforts of Mr. Herbert Morrison, Leader of the Loddon County Councilun vas one
NIET VANST
Another inte He has been working day and
~ the great exod To add to the difficulties of the gp in the p night since the beginning of the criais. Probably no one in the coum manufacturers, the banks were re- argan. try has worked harder."",
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