Rockets in South Uist

South Uist is an island, twenty miles long, but narrow and much cut about by the sea, in the remotest corner of Scottish West. About half of it consists of barren hills. A fair proportion of the rest is sandy beach, too far from the cities to attract holiday bathers. West of the sands the ocean stretches unbroken to Canada. There is one good harbor for smallish ships, an airfield nearby, and a population of less than 5,000. When the British government decided to set up a range there for testing military rockets, its planners must have thought that the project was both simple and sensible. Great Britain is a crowded island, except in the extreme North, and most of the seas around it are full of shipping. Rockets fired from the mainland might too easily hit something if they went a little astray, and there would be loud protests if a range interfered either with industries or with summer crowds by the coast. But ships are seldom seen west of Uist. The people there are peasants making a very simple living out of sheep, a few cattle, small-scale tillage, the gathering and processing of seaweed, and hand weaving. Military experiments there could do no economic damage worth considering. To South Uist itself they would bring new roads, new harbor works, far higher than anything the island had seen, thousands of newcomers to buy the local produce and put new life into the local dances—in fact, a real entry into the twentieth-century world.

Perhaps the authorities in London were not altogether surprised when there were some criticisms of their plans. In Britain there are always critics of the Defense Departments. Rockets are still mysterious; people are apt to connect them with unknown atomic horrors. The Scots, in particular, are full of complaints nowadays, and the Highlanders are suspicious of all novelties. But perhaps the officials concerned have scarcely understood, even yet, why their choice of South Uist should have saddened the hearts of so many intelligent Scots.

JR

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J. M. Reed

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South Uist is an island, twenty miles long, but narrow and much cut about by the sea, in the remotest corner of Scottish West. About half of it consists of barren hills. A fair proportion of the rest is sandy beach, too far from the cities to attract holiday bathers. West of the sands the ocean stretches unbroken to Canada. There is one good harbor for smallish ships, an airfield nearby, and a population of less than 5,000. When the British government decided to set up a range there for testing military rockets, its planners must have thought that the project was both simple and sensible. Great Britain is a crowded island, except in the extreme North, and most of the seas around it are full of shipping. Rockets fired from the mainland might too easily hit something if they went a little astray, and there would be loud protests if a range interfered either with industries or with summer crowds by the coast. But ships are seldom seen west of Uist. The people there are peasants making a very simple living out of sheep, a few cattle, small-scale tillage, the gathering and processing of seaweed, and hand weaving. Military experiments there could do no economic damage worth considering. To South Uist itself they would bring new roads, new harbor works, far higher than anything the island had seen, thousands of newcomers to buy the local produce and put new life into the local dances—in fact, a real entry into the twentieth-century world.

Perhaps the authorities in London were not altogether surprised when there were some criticisms of their plans. In Britain there are always critics of the Defense Departments. Rockets are still mysterious; people are apt to connect them with unknown atomic horrors. The Scots, in particular, are full of complaints nowadays, and the Highlanders are suspicious of all novelties. But perhaps the officials concerned have scarcely understood, even yet, why their choice of South Uist should have saddened the hearts of so many intelligent Scots.