It always embarassed [him] when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was ‘policeman’. If it came to that, he hated to think of them as ‘civilians’. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the word these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit. Once policemen stopped being civilians, the only other thing they could be was soldiers.
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