20 SEPTEMBER 1940, Page 5

The action of Lieutenant Davies and his staff in unearthing,

removing and destroying the vast time-bomb that threatened St. Paul's Cathedral has rightly been seized on by the public imagination as the most spectacular example of cool and deliberate courage that the war has revealed. That judgement may do an injustice to some of the other numberless heroes of the Battle of London, but none of them is likely to challenge it. It is, I suppose, a nice point whether Lieutenant Davies is eligible for the Victoria Cross, which is awarded for a con- spicuous act of bravery in the presence of the enemy. There will be deep and universal disappointment if he is not.