A wartime compromise
From Mr Francis Rentoul Sir: Nicholas Farrell ('Why I like the Italian police', 4 August) writes, 'Whereas the British bobby plays it rigidly by the book, his Italian counterpart often turns out to be your flexible friend.' After 1941, when Hungary became a belligerent on the side of Germany after Hitler invaded Russia, I officially became an 'enemy alien'. The British authorities became worried that spies with some technical knowledge could
convert an ordinary receiving radio into a short-range transmitter, and so an order was passed under which enemy aliens had to surrender their radios. A policeman came to ask me if I had one. I had a small Philips set given to us a few months earlier as a wedding present. Well, he said, it had to be surrendered into the custody of a natural-born British subject. I said my wife was a natural-born British subject — would that do? The bobby was deep in thought for a moment or two and then said, 'All right, but only she must switch it on or off.'
Francis Rentoul
Guildford, Surrey
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