Are refugees welcome to plant bombs on our trains?

It’s all a long time ago now isn’t it?  All of three days since someone put a bomb on a London Underground train and then stepped out of the carriage.  Thankfully the detonator went off without managing to trigger the main bomb, which isn’t a mistake we can hope for every time.  30 people were injured on the District Line on Friday morning.  But if the bomb had done what it was meant to do then those 30 people wouldn’t have been treated for relatively light injuries.  Instead, bits of their remains would have been gathered together in some order and put into the dozens of body bags ordered for them and others at Parsons Green station.

It remains strange how fast we pass over all of this.  Of course other stories come along.  Some – such as the inevitable swift diversion story (this time provided by a Tweet from President Trump) – are connected.  Others – such as Conservative leadership gossip would have come along anyway.  But it’s strange nonetheless.  A society that wasn’t entirely fatalistic about what it was going through, or not so wholly lacking in answers, would have some response to this.  Ours just notes it, and moves on with a touch of ostentatious, feel-good, tea-drinking coverage and tired Blitz-chat as an attachment.

What we fail to recall is that while ‘Keep calm and carry on’ was fine advice for the citizenry of London during the nightly destruction of the Blitz, Britain didn’t win World War II simply by the daily expression of taciturn stoicism.  While the citizenry of London were being exhorted to remain calm and unbothered, their service men were in the skies flattening whole German cities.

But in this conflict, and with a far less severe but still relentless form of terror, we don’t know where the German cities might be this time or what we should do if we found them.  What