* * * What is the reason for this lessening
of suspicion? Is it in truth (as I should like to believe) that the advance in education during the last twenty years has produced a public which is less impulsive and more capable of weighing evidence? Is it, as some suggest, that spies have since 1919 occupied so large a place in fiction that the public have come to regard them as essentially fictional? Is it, in other words, that Mr. Bernard Newman, by writing so many excellent stories about spies in the last war, has led his many admirers to doubt their reality? Or is it that the people as a whole have such confidence in our unanimity that they do not fear the seepage of some small trickle of treachery into so vast a reservoir
of patriotism and resolution? I do not doubt that their op is justified ; I have little fear of the existence in this country of organised or effective fifth column. If weakness ever comes us it will come, not through those who say that Hitler is right, through those who suggest that Churchill is wrong. But, all same, I am consoled by the thought that Mr. Herbert Mar is both vigilant and determined, and I deprecate the pr tendency to attack the " dictatorial " methods of one who, after is the guardian of our public safety. The guardianship is better rigorous than too lax.
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