COUNTRY LIFE
Rural Bombs
The bombs, explosive, igneous and oily, that have been sprinkled with careless generosity over meadow, tilth, stubble, spinney and churchyard have made apparent a cardinal difference between rural and urban psychology. Rural folk have been sustained by a lively curiosity. They all know the exact locality of every shell within a wide area. They know the size of the crater, the nature of the bomb, the effect on particular windows and how many rabbits have been and how badly killed.
All the village boys know our various aeroplanes by name and sight. Interest has driven out fear. At the same time they regard the distributors of the bombs, especially if the church is threatened, as a sort of mad dog that must at all costs be destroyed, come what come may. It never so much as occurs to them that a homicidal lunatic should not be beaten. They know he will. Their belief is something more than faith. It is a certainty. In one country place the hole in the ground that kept curiosity alive the longest and caused a ploughman to divert his furrow was at last shown to be the effect of a shell from a German bomber whose plane soon afterwards crashed into an elm. Queen Elizabeth's Oak is not more famous than that elm.
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