The Sixth Column
A two-hour night-patrol with a Lee-Metford, guarding a small automatic country telephone exchange, aroused a few disturbing reflections. Between the hours of eleven and one the night was intensely silent, the small country lane completely deserted except for the shadow of a prowling cat. As we watched the few distant searchlights swing among the stars in a sky that was never quite dark, it occurred to me that a month ago the sabotage of that small telephone exchange by a rubber-slippered Fifth-columnist would have been child's play. In a world of village constables armed only with bicycles, the cutting of telephone wires, the wrecking of wayside transformers, even the burning of crops, would have been a similarly easy matter. These dangers, though lessened, are still there. The L.D.V. forces are settling down to their assigned duties well. but in many country districts their numbers are, it seems to me, still too small. Harvest and hay-time will be hard on a farmer or farm labourer 'who loses one night's sleep in four. Apathy is still the danger : the apathy of the type of mind who still believes that because the countryside is quiet and remote it is also safe, a kind of Sixth Column admirably per- sonified by the ladies who, urgently requested to receive evacuated children, declared " We have quite enough to do with the parrot and ourselves."
Previous page
