“Well, let’s ’ope you won’t, miss.  These times make you feel for others, an’ that’s something.  I’ve noticed a great change in folks you’d never think would feel for anyone.  And yet I’ve seen some wicked things too; we do, in the police.  Some of these English wives of aliens, and ‘armless little German bakers, an’ Austrians, and what-not:  they get a crool time.  It’s their misfortune, not their fault, that’s what I think; and the way they get served—­well, it makes you ashamed o’ bein’ English sometimes—­it does straight:  And the women are the worst.  I said to my wife only last night, I said:  ‘They call themselves Christians,’ I said, ’but for all the charity that’s in ’em they might as well be Huns.’  She couldn’t see it-not she!’ Well, why do they drop bombs?’ she says.  ‘What!’ I said, ’those English wives and bakers drop bombs?  Don’t be silly,’ I said.  ‘They’re as innocent as we.’  It’s the innocent that gets punished for the guilty.  ‘But they’re all spies,’ she says.  ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘old lady!  Now really!  At your time of life!’ But there it is; you can’t get a woman to see reason.  It’s readin’ the papers.  I often think they must be written by women—­beggin’ your pardon, miss—­but reely, the ’ysterics and the ’atred—­they’re a fair knockout.  D’you find much hatred in your household, miss?”

Noel shook her head.  “No; my father’s a clergyman, you see.”

“Ah!” said the policeman.  And in the glance he bestowed on her could be seen an added respect.

“Of course,” he went on, “you’re bound to have a sense of justice against these Huns; some of their ways of goin’ on have been above the limit.  But what I always think is—­of course I don’t say these things—­no use to make yourself unpopular—­but to meself I often think:  Take ’em man for man, and you’d find ’em much the same as we are, I daresay.  It’s the vicious way they’re brought up, of actin’ in the mass, that’s made ’em such a crool lot.  I see a good bit of crowds in my profession, and I’ve a very low opinion of them.  Crowds are the most blunderin’ blighted things that ever was.  They’re like an angry woman with a bandage over her eyes, an’ you can’t have anything more dangerous than that.  These Germans, it seems, are always in a crowd.  They get a state o’ mind read out to them by Bill Kaser and all that bloody-minded lot, an’ they never stop to think for themselves.”

“I suppose they’d be shot if they did,” said Noel.

“Well, there is that,” said the policeman reflectively.  “They’ve brought discipline to an ‘igh pitch, no doubt.  An’ if you ask me,”—­he lowered his voice till it was almost lost in his chin-strap, “we’ll be runnin’ ’em a good second ’ere, before long.  The things we ’ave to protect now are gettin’ beyond a joke.  There’s the City against lights, there’s the streets against darkness, there’s the aliens, there’s the aliens’ shops, there’s the Belgians, there’s the British wives, there’s the