Bomb Shelters Away

Early this month, Millard F. Caldwell, the U.S. civil-defense boss, went grimly to Congress with a request for $535 million. Cities .and states were clamoring for civil-defense funds and guidance, he said, and he voiced a warning: "In our present state of unawareness and unpreparedness, a half-dozen bombs on as many cities, with a consequent million casualties, would so shock and benumb the American public that the very will to fight and win could be lost."

Missouri's Clarence Cannon, House appropriations czar, greeted the request with a hoot. "Any preparation we make for fire-fighting and for hospitalization is a drop in the bucket," he said. "Our only hope ... is to altogether avoid war. The greatest asset in civil defense is that the nation be so strong from a military point of view that no nation dare attack us."

Following that lead, the House Appropriations Committee crushed the $535 million request to $65 million, a cut of 88%. It wiped out the request for $250 million to provide bomb shelters, calling for more study to determine what can be done to make shelters of existing buildings.

Mississippi Democrat Jamie L. Whitten, subcommittee chairman, summed up: "We are not trying to neglect civil defense ... If it were humanly possible and within financial reach to give complete protection from the atomic bomb . . . that would be the desire of all of us. But . . . you cannot build enough holes in the ground with all the money in the federal

Treasury, including the federal debt, to be perfectly safe from the atomic bomb."

Last week the House, with growing concern about growing expenditures, stamped its approval on the committee's slash.

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