What is the explanation of this lack of solicitude, this
withdrawal of even average human benevolence? Is it that the whole organisation is incompetent? That is a defect which we are not accustomed to associate with the R.A.F. Is it that the possession of a monopoly, and one in regard to which the demand so overwhelmingly exceeds the supply, induces a mood of indifference to human suffering and renders each individual passenger as impersonal as a mail bag? Is it that the highly specialised gifts of the R.A.F. inspire them with arrogant contempt, not only for all civilians, but even for those members of the other Services who are entrusted to their care? Hour after hour I pondered on these alternative explanations, and concluded that no oneof them could account for the unnecessary strain to which we were exposed. Was there, I considered, some ethical purpose behind this cat-and-mouse procedure and did there exist in the background some calvinistic air-commodore who believed in purification through suffering? Or was the cruelty to which we were exposed to be explained by the fact that somewhere remote from us, pacing the glass-enclosed control tower, was a sadist gazing down upon us with exquisite delight? This suspicion occurred to me on one of the many mornings which I spent upon the Naples aerodrome. There were some twenty of us walking up and down in front of the internment shed ; we were a small and patient fraternity, not pitiable enough to stimulate a jaded sadism, not numerous enough to suggest mass torture. Further victims were therefore summoned from the base internment camp ; they poured from their tumbrils in a motley horde ; a few tired colonels, ten members of a Greek Labour Delega- tion, a mother superior, two aged psychiatrists. As dawn broke over Pomig,liano the spectacle of these unhappy victims would have gladdened any sadist's heart.
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