he wasn't criminalised. he was a criminal for gawdsake! trying to get people to fight on the other side and bringing in guns to shoot at the home side's soldiers in time of war, is a crime. sort of Benedict Arnold crime - wouldn't you think?

anyway. they never told Bernard what he'd done. only that he was saintly poet, and that it was wicked cruel thing to do, which of course it was.

i know cos Bernard told me. Bernard and I shared a bed when we went to visit him. He was 7 and I was 6. It was a story he told me before we went off to sleep. Not being in possession of the facts, I couldn't give him much of an argument. Just as well, we'd probably have started fighting.

Which was presumably the aim of telling a small child that story. to get people fighting.