"The End Is Not Yet!"

In pioneer days, Spokane, to entice new settlers, sent around handbills bragging about its development and proclaiming, "The End Is Not Yet!" That's the way Spokane feels still, come H-bomb or high water. This week the city went ahead with Operation Walkout--the nation's first test evacuation.

Until last fall, Spokane's official air-raid siren was a 10-c- plastic gadget hanging on a hook in the police radio room. The idea was to broadcast its thin wail to the squad cars, which in turn would sound their sirens. Since then, Spokane has acquired three new Chrysler airhorns.

At 9:35, on a chill grey Monday morning, the big siren sounded atop the Old National Bank building. Spokane (pop. 176,000) was ready. The National Guard was out, and ack-ack crews atop Newberry's five & ten fired blanks into the sky. Taxis rushed 400 nurses to 40 aid stations.

Within seconds, some 18,000 downtowners--salesclerks and their customers, office girls and the boss himself--were filing downstairs and striding out for safety (exception: despite some grumbling, prisoners in the city jail stayed in the lockup). Jet fighters roared over the city, and a B-29 dropped bomb-shaped leaflets inscribed: "This Could Be an Atom Bomb!"

In just eight minutes, all 18,000 reached assembly points, along main arteries, theoretically to be picked up by vehicles and raced out of town. Actually, they stood around, staring down the empty streets and glancing with a shiver at the grey sky, until the all-clear sounded. Then they trudged back to the day's routine. If nothing else, the test proved that civil defense--even in the nuclear age--is no more obsolete than the instinct of self-preservation.

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