By Margaret Lowenfeld
Part of her post-war writings

Any action which arises as a total response to a pressing emergency must produce problems. When the action is new in kind, a reaction to a form of emergency hitherto unknown, those problems are apt to kitten like guinea pigs. Something of the sort confronts us in the problem of ‘Evacuation’ today.

As a nation we dislike planning and distrust thinking in the abstract, we prefer to act ‘ad hoc’, to see a problem concretely before we take action and then tackle it piecemeal. When the chaos arises that in modern conditions inevitable follows this approach to practical problems, we tend to feel overwhelmed and to call helplessly for pre-emptory Government action.

We have seen enough in other countries of two forms of powerful centralised government, Fascism and Communism, and have, for the most part, shrunk from both. I believe it lies in the genius of this people to evolve a third way, which will be a contribution to the corporate happiness of the world, as our steadfastness under strain has been and is being to its security. The problems brought by the evacuation of masses of people from one part of the country to another offers as good a ground as any other for the hard spade work and keen thought that is necessary.