Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/44

26 "Where is the police station?"

"Heaven knows. By daylight it ought to be a couple of blocks to the left, if you run into the church first."

“How will we know the church?

It is very large, and solid," a wag answered. "You'll recognise it if it stops you."

A constable, met in this obscure and abrupt fashion, kindly took us in tow. With whispered sympathy he stamped our books.

"Now," he asked, “do you think you can find your way back. It' a long time, you know, before daybreak."

He gave us minute directions. We followed them almost wholly by the sense of touch.

It was difficult to go to sleep that night. Until very late I listened to the perpetual shuffling of feet along the sidewalks—the tentative feet of countless young men, condemned to war, groping a course through a complete and inimical darkness.

After that London was no longer black. As we drove in, its few hooded lamps seemed brazenly inviting disaster. We brought back to it one conviction. Rural England is not apathetic. All Britain is heart and soul in the war. Even then it was hard to accept as real the brilliant, careless complacency of our own country. That became a memory from the remote past.