"Speaking of Bombs . . . ."

A talented private secretary who, at 37, after her employer's wife died, finally married her 70-year-old boss not long before his death is the Dowager Marchioness of Reading. Last week this indomitable peeress, who heads today the British Women's Voluntary Services for Civil Defense, announced at Preston in Lancashire an idea as practical as the dictaphone.

The Dowager Marchioness revealed that she has organized squads of women to listen attentively, sympathetically and endlessly to the verbal outpourings of those war-shocked Britons who enjoy telling about how they were bombed. To most Britons, "Speaking of bombs . . ." has become as dull a phrase as "Speaking of operations ..." and the press has made fun of "bomb bores."

But Lady Reading declared: "We must realize that people who have come from a bombed area are in a highly nervous state and that one of the things that helps them is to be allowed to talk about it. It is essential that a listener should give the whole of her attention to the person who is relating his or her experience. There must be no turning away for a second, no indication that one is not interested."

Meanwhile in Birmingham bomb bores formed a mutual-aid society, "The Birmingham District Bombees Association," to listen to one another's bomb stories.

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