Barely Time to Duck

A lot of anxious and perplexed U.S. citizens trooped to Washington last week. They were civilian defense directors of many states, mayors representing some 60 million Americans, leaders of women's groups. They had been summoned to the capital to discuss plans for civilian defense if their communities should be hit by atom bombs. They were met by NSRB Chairman W. Stuart Symington and his brother-in-law, James J. Wadsworth, who is acting federal director of civilian defense.

Symington confronted them with a long, worried face. He had experienced part of the London blitz, he said, but he had never lost confidence even then that the Allies would eventually win. Now he felt no such confidence. The U.S., he told his visitors, "is in far greater danger than at any time in its history." Russia could deliver the atom bomb "anywhere in this country," and the U.S. might lose a World War III.

Said Symington: "Whether we could get up and fight back depends on whether we have civilian defense."

His visitors did not need to be told that. They wanted Symington and Wadsworth to tell them what the Federal Government was going to do about it.

The cities did not know where to start, said San Francisco's Mayor Elmer Robinson. Robinson said that the local officials first had to know how much money Washington was going to put up for medical supplies, fire-fighting equipment, bomb shelters, etc. Certainly the Federal Government was obligated to share in the protection of industrial centers that are supplying the U.S. with its armaments. What did NSRB mean, Robinson wanted to know, when it said the Government would supply "some equipment"? That was up to Congress to decide in January, Symington replied unhappily.

All in all, the mayors and civilian defense leaders went back home knowing little more than before. They carried away one facetious suggestion from Toledo's Mayor Michael DiSalle on how to protect some, but not all, cities from attack. Places like Toledo, he gagged, might erect large neon signs on its buildings pointing the way to Cleveland and Detroit.

The Air Force last week gave some answers of its own to questions of civilian defense:

P: Blackouts will not be used so extensively as in World War II because radar can spot a target in the darkness.

P: The Air Force had decided to drop the preliminary "blue" air raid warning signal, use only the "red" signal (which means duck, the attack is imminent). Reason: the speed of modern bombers. Once bombers were sighted there would be no time for preliminaries, barely time to duck.

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