Facing Unpleasant Facts (14 page)

30.6.40:
This afternoon a parade in Regent's Park of the L.D.V. of the whole "zone," i.e. 12 platoons of theoretically about 60 men each (actually a little under strength at present). Predominantly old soldiers and, allowing for the dreadful appearance that men drilling in mufti always present, not a bad lot. Perhaps 25 per cent are working class. If that percentage exists in the Regent's Park area, it must be much higher in some others. What I do not yet know is whether there has been any tendency to avoid raising L.D.V. contingents in very poor districts where the whole direction would have to be in working-class hands. At present the whole organisation is in an anomalous and confused state which has many different possibilities. Already people are spontaneously forming
local defence squads and handgrenades are probably being manufactured by amateurs. The higher-ups are no doubt thoroughly frightened by these tendencies.... The general inspecting the parade was the usual senile imbecile, actually decrepit, and made one of the most uninspiring speeches I ever heard. The men, however, very ready to be inspired. Loud cheering at the news that rifles have arrived at last.

Yesterday the news of Balbo's
⁵²
death was on the posters as C.
⁵³
and the M.'s
⁵⁴
and I walked down the street. C. and I thoroughly pleased, C. relating how Balbo and his friends had taken the chief of the Senussi up in an aeroplane and thrown him out, and even the M.'s (all but pure pacifists) were not ill-pleased, I think. E. also delighted. Later in the evening (I spent the night at Crooms Hill
⁵⁵
) we found a mouse which had slipped down into the sink and could not get up the sides. We went to great pains to make a sort of staircase of boxes of soap flakes, etc., by which it could climb out, but by this time it was so terrified that it fled under the lead strip at the edge of the sink and would not move, even when we left it alone for half an hour or so. In the end E. gently took it out with her fingers and let it go. This sort of thing does not matter.....but when I remember how the Thetis
⁵⁶
disaster upset me, actually to the point of interfering with my appetite, I do think it a dreadful effect of war that one is actually pleased to hear of an enemy submarine going to the bottom.

1.7.40:
Newspapers now reduced to 6 pages, i.e., 3 sheets. Print reduced in size. Rough analysis of today's
News-Chronicle:
6 pages = 48 columns. Of these (excluding small adverts. besides headlines on front page) 15 columns or nearly one third are adverts. About 1½ columns of this are taken up in notices of situations vacant, etc., but the greater part of the ad.s are for more or less useless consumption goods. The financial columns also overlap with the
advertisements, some of the reports of directors' meetings, etc., probably being paid for by the companies themselves.

To-day's
Express
consists of 6 pages = 42 columns, of which 12 are taken up in advertisements.

Rumours in all to-day's papers that Balbo was actually bumped off by his own side, as in the case of General von Fritsch.
⁵⁷
Nowadays when any eminent person is killed in battle this suggestion inevitably arises. Cases in the Spanish war were Durutti and General Mola.
⁵⁸
The rumour about Balbo is based on a statement by the R.A.F. that they know nothing about the air-fight in which Balbo is alleged to have been killed. If this is a lie, as it well may be, it is one of the first really good strokes the British propaganda has brought off.

3.7.40:
Everywhere a feeling of something near despair among thinking people because of the failure of the government to act and the continuance of dead minds and pro-Fascists in positions of command. Growing recognition that the only thing that would certainly right the situation is an unsuccessful invasion; and coupled with this a growing fear that Hitler won't after all attempt the invasion but will go for Africa and the Near East.

5.7.40:
The almost complete lack of British casualties in the action against the French warships at Oran
⁵⁹
makes it pretty clear that the French seamen must have refused to serve the guns, or at any rate did so without much enthusiasm.... In spite of the to-do in the papers about "French fleet out of action," etc., etc., it appears from the list of ships actually given that about half the French navy is not accounted for, and no doubt more than half the submarines. But how many have actually fallen into German or Italian hands, and how many are still on the oceans, there is nothing in the papers to show......The frightful outburst of fury by the German
radio (if rightly reported, actually calling on the English people to hang Churchill in Trafalgar Square) shows how right it was to make this move.

10.7.40:
They have disabled the French battleship Richelieu, which was in Dakar harbour.
⁶⁰
But no move to seize any of the French West African ports, which no doubt are not strongly held..... According to Vernon Bartlett,
⁶¹
the Germans are going to make a peace offer along the lines I foresaw earlier, i.e. England to keep out of Europe but retain the Empire, and the Churchill government to go out and be replaced by one acceptable to Hitler. The presumption is that a faction anxious to agree to this exists in England, and no doubt a shadow cabinet has been formed. It seems almost incredible that anyone should imagine that the mass of the people would tolerate such an arrangement, unless they had been fought to a standstill first.....The Duke of Windsor
⁶²
has been shipped off as Governor of the Bahamas, virtually a sentence of exile......The book Gollancz has brought out,
Guilty Men,
the usual "indictment" of the Munich crowd, is selling like hot cakes. According to
Time,
the American Communists are working hand in glove with the local Nazis to prevent American arms getting to England. One can't be sure how much local freedom of action the various Communists have. Till very recently it appeared that they had none. Of late however they have sometimes pursued contradictory policies in different countries. It is possible that they are allowed to abandon the "line" when strict clinging to it would mean extinction.

16.7.40:
No real news for some days, except the British government's semi-surrender to Japan, i.e. the agreement to stop sending war supplies along the Burma road for a stated period. This however is not so definite that it could not be revoked by a subsequent
government. F.
⁶³
thinks it is the British government's last effort (i.e. the last effort of those with investments in Hong Kong, etc.) to appease Japan, after which they will be driven into definitely supporting China. It may be so. But what a way to do things—never to perform a decent action until you are kicked into it and the rest of the world has ceased to believe that your motives can possibly be honest.

W.
⁶⁴
says that the London "left" intelligentsia are now completely defeatist, look on the situation as hopeless and all but wish for surrender. How easy it ought to have been to foresee, under their Popular Front bawlings, that they would collapse when the real show began.

22.7.40:
No real news for days past. The principal event of the moment is the pan-American conference, now just beginning, and the Russian absorption of the Baltic states, which must be directed against Germany. Cripps's wife and daughters are going to Moscow, so evidently he expects a long stay there. Spain is said to be importing oil in large quantities, obviously for German use, and we are not stopping it. Much hooey in the
News-Chronicle
this morning about Franco desiring to keep out of war, trying to counter German influence, etc., etc......It will be just as I said. Franco will play up his pretence of being pro-British, this will be used as a reason for handling Spain gently and allowing imports in any quantity, and ultimately Franco will come in on the German side.

25.7.40:
No news, really......Various people who have sent their children to Canada are already regretting it.
⁶⁵
.....Casualties, i.e. fatal ones, from air-raids for last month were given out as about 340. If true, this is substantially less than the number of road deaths in the same period.... The L.D.V, now said to be 1,300,000 strong, is stopping recruiting and is to be renamed the Home
Guard. There are rumours also that those acting as N.C.O's are to be replaced by men from the regular army. This seems to indicate either that the authorities are beginning to take the L.D.V. seriously as a fighting force, or that they are afraid of it.

There are now rumours that Lloyd George
⁶⁶
is the potential Pétain of England......The Italian press makes the same claim and says that L.G's silence proves it true. It is of course fairly easy to imagine L.G. playing this part out of sheer spite and jealousy because he has not been given a job, but much less easy to imagine him collaborating with the Tory clique who would in fact be in favour of such a course.

Constantly, as I walk down the street, I find myself looking up at the windows to see which of them would make good machine-gun nests. D.
⁶⁷
says it is the same with him.
⁶⁸

28.7.40:
This evening I saw a heron flying over Baker Street. But this is not so improbable as the thing I saw a week or two ago, i.e., a kestrel killing a sparrow in the middle of Lord's cricket ground. I suppose it is possible that the war, i.e. the diminution of traffic, tends to increase bird life in inner London.

The little man whose name I always forget used to know Joyce,
⁶⁹
of the split-off Fascist party, commonly credited with being Lord Haw-Haw. He says that Joyce hated Mosley
⁷⁰
passionately and talked about him in the most unprintable language. Mosley being Hitler's chief supporter in England, it is interesting that he should employ Joyce and not one of Mosley's men. This bears out what Borkenau said, that Hitler does not want a too-strong Fascist party to exist in England. Evidently the motive is always to split, and even to split the splitters. The German press is attacking the Pétain government, with what motive is not absolutely certain, and so also are elements of the French press under German control. Doriot
⁷¹
is of course to the fore here. It was a
shock to me when the
Sunday Times
also stated that the Germans in Paris are making use of Bergery.
⁷²
But I accept this with caution, knowing how these small dissident Left parties are habitually lied about by the Right and the official Left alike.

8.8.40:
The Italian attack on Egypt, or rather on British Somaliland, has begun. No real news yet, but the papers hint that Somaliland can't be held with the troops we have there. The important point is Perim, loss of which would practically close the Red Sea.

H. G. Wells knows Churchill well and says that he is a good man, not mercenary and not even a careerist. He has always lived "like a Russian commissar," "requisitions" his motor cars, etc., but cares nothing about money. But [H. G. Wells] says Churchill has a certain power of shutting his eyes to facts and has the weakness of never wanting to let down a personal friend, which accounts for the non-sacking of various people. [Wells] has already made a considerable row about the persecution of refugees. He considers that the centre of all the sabotage is the War Office. He believes that the jailing of anti-Fascist refugees is a perfectly conscious piece of sabotage based on the knowledge that some of these people are in touch with underground movements in Europe and might at some moment be able to bring about a "Bolshevik" revolution, which from the point of view of the governing class is much worse than defeat. He says that Lord Swinton
⁷³
is the man most to blame. I asked him did he think it was a conscious action on Lord [Swinton]'s part, this being always the hardest thing to decide. He said he believed Lord [Swinton] knows perfectly well what he is doing.

To-night to a lecture with lantern slides by an officer who had been in the Dunkirk campaign. Very bad lecture. He said the Belgians fought well and it was not true that they surrendered without warning (actually they gave three days' warning), but spoke badly of the French. He had one photograph of a regiment of Zouaves in full flight after looting houses, one man being dead drunk on the pavement.

9.8.40:
The money situation is becoming completely unbearable.......Wrote a long letter to the Income Tax people pointing out that the war had practically put an end to my livelihood while at the same time the government refused to give me any kind of job. The fact which is really relevant to a writer's position, the impossibility of writing books with this nightmare going on, would have no weight officially.... Towards the government I feel no scruples and would dodge paying the tax if I could. Yet I would give my life for England readily enough, if I thought it necessary. No one is patriotic about taxes.

No real news for days past. Only air battles, in which, if the reports are true, the British always score heavily. I wish I could talk to some R.A.F. officer and get some kind of idea whether these reports are truthful.
⁷⁴

16.8.40:
Things are evidently going badly in Somaliland, which is the flanking operation in the attack on Egypt. Enormous air battles over the Channel, with, if the reports are anywhere near the truth, stupendous German losses. E.g. about 145 were reported shot down yesterday......The people in Inner London could do with one real raid to teach them how to behave. At present everyone's behaviour is foolish in the extreme, everything except transport being held up but no precautions taken. For the first 15 seconds there is great alarm, blowing of whistles and shouts to children to go indoors, then people begin to congregate on the streets and
gaze expectantly at the sky. In the daytime people are apparently ashamed to go into the shelters till they hear the bombs.