Playing at Black-outs
It was a little odd last Tuesday evening to hear the B.B.C. announcer, in relation to the coming black-out, humbly en- treating householders to curtain their windows and conceal their lights. According to him, it was of immense importance that they should ; one or two unguarded lights might be sufficient to destroy the value of the exercise for a whole district.. It must surely have occurred to many (perhaps most) listeners that, if exceptions to the rule were as harmful as all that, they ought to be penalised. The only effect of supplicating instead of commanding is to give the public the impression that little real importance need be attached to A.R.P., or the Government would take it more seriously. Is it surprising in such circumstances to read that Man- chester, for example, has recruited only just over half the male volunteers that it requires for auxiliary firemen, less than half for first-aid parties, and not much over I third for rescue parties? Compulsion in matters of national safety should begin now. Surely, too, black-outs should be prac- tised not only after midnight, but (as in Germany) in the busy early evening Nothing appears to stand in the way but a subservience to money-making interests, which shows the working of democracy at its worst. A midnight black- out may serve the limited purpose of enabling airmen over- head to discover whether London and other cities have been effectively darkened ; but to find them dark at a time when, so far as private houses are concerned, they would be dark in any case does not carry us far.
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