If Hitler Comes (5 page)

His motives in founding and organizing the League of Britons are equally obscure. Those who regarded Rosse as endowed with a Satanic hatred of England and an equally Satanic ingenuity in accomplishing her ruin believe that the League of Britons was founded with the deliberate intention of building a bridge to the German domination of England, and that it was an I.R.A. conception no less murderous and devastating than a bomb. The complexities of the Celtic mind have always been beyond me, and it is, I suppose, not
impossible
that a man might give himself up heart and soul to the ruination of a foreign country, if he thought that he could thus free his own. But I find it difficult to believe that anyone with so Machiavellian a turn of mind could inspire his public utterances with the atmosphere of passionate and abandoned sincerity that surrounded the speeches of Patrick Rosse. There is unfortunately no doubt that the League received subsidies from Germany, under the transparent cloak of “gifts from German ex-Service men”, and that Rosse was
fully aware of this. But I personally do not believe that Rosse fully realized the purpose behind the “gifts”. I think he was a man naturally “agin the Government” who became
intoxicated
with his own popularity and success, and who in his fervour and fury would seize any weapon to attack his adversary.

That is my personal opinion. But I met Rosse and I heard him speak, and I am prepared to admit that anyone who ever fell under the spell of that flaming personality is not a reliable witness. He was the most potent orator I ever heard. It was only a few weeks after the Treaty of St. James's that I went north to attend a big Yorkshire rally of the League of Britons, held in Leeds Town Hall. Unemployment had of course hit the industrial areas hardest, and it was here that the League found its staunchest and most stubborn adherents. Delegations from all over Yorkshire and Lancashire marched into the great hall, each headed with a home-made banner bearing the name of the local branch, and took their places in the rows of red-plush seats under the huge and intolerably bright electric chandeliers. There was nothing theatrical about the gathering—no brass bands and no music from the vast and ornate organ that rose behind the platform and had
accompanied
so many lusty performances of the
Messiah
. The hall was insufficiently warmed, and I shivered in the Press seats, which were caught by a draught from one of the side-doors. The men about me talked in low tones. There was no smoking: tobacco for this class had become a luxury that was enjoyed only in moments of leisure, and this was not one. Here and there in the crowded hall I could see a woman when I stood up, but it was primarily a male gathering—row on row of serious-faced men, with shabby jackets or overcoats over the inevitable grey shirt.

Then the committee filed on to the platform, and there was a brief stir and a perfunctory clapping from the audience. Still there was nothing to recall earlier outbreaks of Fascism—no roll of drums, no floodlights, and no saluting. Patrick Rosse was easily distinguished from the small group on the platform by his bright red hair and tall stooping figure. He wore a dark suit on which I could see the ribbons of the Military Medal and the Nuremberg decoration. Both he and his companions seemed to the eye of a journalist to be unusually slim and young to be occupying the platform of a public meeting. One was so used to the elderly and well-fleshed committee man.

Lawson, a local journalist, named some of them for me in a whisper. “The scruffy little fellow on the right, who looks
like an atheist cobbler, is Morley, the secretary. The chap next to him is a German delegate—think his name's Meyer—he's over on some sort of goodwill mission.” (We could not know then that the pale face of Meyer with its fixed smile and staring blue eyes was later to preside over the horrors of the Godalming concentration camp.) “Fellow in the middle is the local chairman—Lewthwaite's his name—and then there's Rosse. Don't know any of the others.”

After a few laborious words by the chairman, which
included
an introduction of “our good friend and late foeman, Herr Meyer” and an acknowledgement of the “handsome donation from our brothers in arms in Germany” which he had brought with him, Rosse rose to speak. I took no notes: I was not there to give a
verbatim
report, only my
impressions
, and when I later came to write them up I found them incoherent. It was difficult to realize—much less to describe—the way in which that sober, rather stolid meeting was roused to a ferocious and hoarse-voiced mob which went out and did its best to sack the Jewish quarter of Leeds.

It was, to begin with, the strong confident voice, reaching the ears without strain or violence, which disarmed the critical faculties. There was none of the practised lilt of the politician in it; it was not over-educated, and yet the latent brogue was too restrained to become “picturesque” or comic. It was in fact a pleasure just to listen. Then I found myself noticing, with keen appreciation, the extraordinary richness of the man's vocabulary and vivid phrasing. But before long, in spite of all my training, I found myself gripped by his matter. He made the injustices done to ex-Servicemen sound like some huge and legendary crime which must make the world weep. He created bloated giants of oppression, which the feeblest Jack of all longed to rise up and slay. He surrounded us with a labyrinthine web of corruption and inefficiency, and then led us sword in hand to slash our way out. Above all, he depicted the Jew—not the oriental, child-murdering bogy of Nazi doctrine, but the well-to-do smiling alien in our midst—with such venom that even my sanity was clouded with resentment, while half the audience was on its feet baying with fury. Throughout the whole speech he played subtly on the sense of shame which secretly beset so many consciences—a war unwon, a job half-finished, a nation disgraced in the eyes of the world, betrayed by its own half-heartedness and the leaders it had produced. I still remember his peroration, delivered with the voice of a trumpet:

“On your feet. March through the town. Show the Jews and show the world that there is still blood in Britain.”

His hearers had leapt up like one man, and, as he ended, streamed shouting and cheering into the city streets.

I sat where I was until my dizzied wits had come to earth. Then I remembered that there was to be an interview with the Press in one of the committee rooms. At this Rosse showed that he was not merely a demagogue. Most of the journalists who were there to question him felt, as I felt, indignant at having been swept off their feet by an oration. They were out to justify themselves as hardened newspaper men, to trip him up and reveal him as a callow politician. They did not succeed. He met their questions with wit and ability, and occasionally abashed them with a quiet sincerity which blunted their would-be cynicism. When he learnt that I was from one of the Dominions his face lit up and he drew me aside to beg that I would convey his message to my own countrymen. Would I ask them, he said, to have patience with the Old Country—to remember that the voice of politicians was not the voice of England? I was to tell them that he and his like were there to restore the lost tradition of Britain, to renew the pride in their heritage which Britons all over the world had once shared between them. The men who had returned sulkily or defiantly to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand would once again be glad that they had sprung to arms. In spite of myself I was moved, not only by his discernment of the feelings which were troubling the hearts of my countrymen, but by the warm, personal friendliness of his manner, and the spontaneity of his words.

Yet even while I talked with him, pandemonium was
spreading
through the streets as darkness fell over the city. The authorities had been deceived by the quiet and orderly way in which the meeting had begun, and had relaxed their
precautions
. But what had begun on the Town Hall steps as a tumultuous procession developed within twenty minutes into a riot. It was a Saturday, and the large Jewish population of the city was out enjoying the Sabbath holiday. The sight of the crowded pavements and brightly lit shop windows seemed to enfuriate the Leaguers. One of them levelled his banner-pole like a lance, and with a shout of “Come on, boys, we'll show 'em” dashed it through a window. With the crash of the broken glass rose the ugly, long-drawn sound of women's screaming, and with a roar the fight began. It became the worst kind of street battle. The local citizens fought furiously against the invaders. The Jews among them were not the timid refugees of recent years, but a hardy race born and bred in the industrial slums, and they fought back
with the jagged armouries of the race-gangs and the back streets.

The inadequate police forces struggled desperately to regain control, but they were swept aside or trampled underfoot as the battle raged up and down the main shopping
thoroughfares.
At first the Leaguers, united in a blind enthusiasm, had the upper hand, and drove the crowd before them. Then, as local resentment boiled up and as reinforcements poured out of the public houses and side streets, they in their turn were hurled back. Gradually the main battle broke up into a number of vicious and hard-breathing struggles between small bodies of men, and it was then that the worst casualties occurred. Fortunately by this time the police had collected enough reinforcements to clear the streets, and this they did with repeated truncheon charges and a good deal of very necessary hard-hitting.

By nine that night the battle was over. The pavements were covered with broken glass and wreckage, but the streets were empty except for the police patrols and a few ambulances cruising about to pick up casualties. Leeds Infirmary was full of the wounded, sobbing or shuddering with the sickness that follows mob violence and being tended with grim
efficiency
by the overworked staff. In the mortuary lay seven broken bodies, two of them in police uniforms, as witnesses that there was “still blood in Britain”.

T
HE
riot in Leeds marked the beginning of the nightmare period of English history which is not yet ended. Until then the slope into Avernus had been gradual, and the many people who hated the turn events had taken still felt that it was possible to arrest their course and scramble up the insidious incline on to some firm and level ground. But now the abyss opened suddenly at their feet and tune to turn back was not given. Englishmen were plunged into a chaos in which all the things that “don't happen” were dreadfully fulfilled. The friendly half-tones and compromises of ordinary
existence seemed suddenly to be resolved into the menacing blacks and blinding whites of improbable drama. Even now, at a distance of both time and space, it is difficult for me to visualize the main actors in that drama as real human beings, and not as portents of perfidy and heroism, oppression and martyrdom.

It is easy, for example, to label Sir John Naker a villain and a traitor; he has been called these names and worse often enough, and yet he was a man who under other circumstances might have lived out an obscure life as a prosperous if none too scrupulous business man. Those of us who met him before he trafficked in his country's liberty thought of him as a not very pleasant character—he was too plausible and genial to carry any honest conviction—but there were other politicians whom we disliked as much, and there were
financial
magnates whom we suspected of equal dishonesty. We were prepared to believe the gossip-writers when they told us that he was an affectionate parent to his young family, and his expansive after-dinner speeches bore witness that he was an enthusiast for the
genre
novel, with a happy knack of quoting Dickens. But chance, or his own ambition, or the credulity of us, his countrymen, who had grown too prone to substitute mere ability for integrity, placed him in a
position
in which his ordinary and shabby failings were magnified into an extraordinary betrayal, and Naker the inadequate man was lost for ever in the Naker the arch-traitor.
L'on fait plus souvent des trahisons par faiblesse que par un dessein formé de trahir.

Two days after I had returned from Leeds I was able to read the German version of the affair, as recounted in the
Völkischer Beobachter
. The British Press, at the urgent request of the authorities, had reduced the incident to a local street affray which had no national significance. There was no attempt to conceal the serious nature of the fighting or the death-roll, which had been swollen when two or three of the casualties succumbed to their injuries, but, deplorable as the disorder had been, it was felt to be too dangerous to lay much emphasis on it. Events were to show how mistaken was this policy. It was no longer the time to hush things up; nerves were too much on edge, and, since the days of the war, official reticence had been regarded as a veil drawn over catastrophe. Now came the German report, compiled by those practised in describing the enormities committed in the
unenlightened
areas outside the Reich. It appeared that the British police force had been utterly corrupted by Jewish influence and Jewish funds. Together with organized bands of hooligans
from “the dance-hall and the gambler's den”, this
unscrupulous
body had made an organized and bloodthirsty assault on a harmless gathering of patriots. There had been unparalleled scenes of cruelty and massacre. There was a heart-rending description of a band of heroes, armed only with “flagsticks”, falling in heaps before the “well-aimed volleys” fired by the police. Worst of all, a German had been involved. The war-hero, Meyer, whom the Führer himself had decorated with the Iron Cross, had barely escaped from this holocaust with his life. This was worse than an outrage: it was an insolent defiance of the honour of the Reich. It must be avenged in blood. Meyer, fresh back from England, contributed his “eye-witness account” of these horrors. “
German
swine” had said one of these English policemen, reeking of slaughter. “Back to your own
verfluchte
country.” It is, I believe, a fact that Meyer, suffering from a black eye, had been given a strong police escort as far as Harwich, where he was put on a boat for Germany.

The political repercussions were prompt. On the same day that the account appeared in the German newspapers, the German Ambassador presented himself at No. Ten Downing Street. He was accompanied by a brown-shirted escort similar to that which had attended him in the House of Commons, but this time It was armed with revolvers—“rendered
necessary
by the civil disorders”. He demanded a full-length apology from the British Government for this insult to a German citizen, and substantial compensation for the injuries “he had received at the hands of the police”.
Furthermore
, the German Government insisted that stem reprisals should be taken against the officials involved.

This was the first time that Dr. Evans had come into
personal
contact with the more downright methods of Nazi diplomacy, and he was worsted badly in the encounter. No details of that interview, which took place at ten o'clock in the morning, are available, but as soon as the German
Ambassador
had taken his leave the Home Secretary was sent for and requested by the Prime Minister to take exemplary measures of discipline against the constabulary involved in the suppression of the Leeds riot.

Mr. Bernard Goldsmith, the Home Secretary, had been regarded as rather a joke, at least by Fleet Street, up to that time. He was not considered to be particularly competent, and his fussy manner in the House of Commons, together with his sheep-like profile and gold pince-nez, had been favourite material for the cartoonists. His alleged Jewish ancestry had made him the target for the abuse of the Leaguers
and their organ the
Free Briton
, which began to appear about this time, but the average man did not take these attacks very seriously. There was nothing of the “sinister Semite” about Mr. Goldsmith—only a catholic enthusiasm for all forms of welfare work and a tendency to take precipitate and rather indiscreet decisions. His reaction to Dr. Evans's
suggestion
was instant and indignant. He had perfect confidence in the police: their conduct in this unfortunate affair had been admirable. If disciplinary action was to be taken it should be against the disorderly political organization which had provoked the riot. He would listen to no lectures from Dr. Evans on the subject of international tact. Rather than cast any slur on the well-known reputation of the British police force he would tender his resignation. The Prime Minister did his best to soothe him, and the conversation ended without any decision having been made.

Dr. Evans was in a quandary. “People were being very difficult,” as he observed pettishly to one of his secretaries, and the situation demanded that worldly wisdom, which, as he had been fond of remarking with mock deprecation from the platform, was abhorrent to his idealistic temperament. Consequently he turned to a source of that commodity which had become habitual to him, and the third visitor to Downing Street that day was Sir John Naker. The result of his advice was startling. The following morning Members of Parliament and the general public read with equal astonishment in their newspapers an open letter from the Prime Minister to Mr. Bernard Goldsmith accepting his resignation, “as tendered orally to me to-day”. The letter began in the approved manner, “My dear Bernard”; it paid a cordial tribute to the services which he had performed as Home Secretary, regretted deeply that he had not seen eye to eye with the Government on a matter of policy, and concluded by “Looking forward to the time when we may once more work in harness
together
”. The signature was the signature of Matthew Evans, but there were many who felt that the pen had been the pen of Sir John Naker.

The letter was not accompanied by any explanation or
statement
from Mr. Goldsmith. That gentleman had of course been rung up by the Press as soon as the letter was circulated, but, although he professed the utmost astonishment at its contents, he refused to comment, reserving the matter, as he said, for the House of Commons.

The House that afternoon threw off for once the dread apathy which had invested it ever since the ratification of the Treaty of London. Every bench was crowded when Mr.
Goldsmith made the statement to which he was entitled. In a voice which trembled with indignation and self-pity he described the conversation in which he had taken part at Downing Street. It was true, he said, that he had conditionally offered his resignation, but had he dreamt that the Prime Minister was contemplating such immediate and underhand action he would have demanded a meeting of the Cabinet. What had he done, he asked, wiping his pince-nez with a shaking hand, to forfeit the confidence of his colleagues? and what had the police of this country done that the word of a single and suspicious alien should be accepted against their official and careful report?

The Prime Minister proceeded to surround the affair with a smoke-cloud of involved eloquence—a screen which concealed the bomb which he exploded with his concluding words. He was pained, he said, by the misplaced emotion which had been engendered by this affair. Mr. Goldsmith's indignation, which had led him to refer in ill-chosen and insulting words to a war veteran of our great ally, had also clouded the conversation at Downing Street, and it was perhaps due to this fact that Mr. Goldsmith had not then made his meaning as clear as it should have been. He (the Prime Minister) had then been fully convinced that the Home Secretary's offer of resignation had been unconditional and to take immediate effect. Under the circumstances, whether they were due to a misunderstanding or not, the public interest had compelled him to take at once a step of which he felt sure that his colleagues in the Government would approve. While no-one deplored more than he did the loss of so distinguished and able a colleague as Mr. Goldsmith, he felt that the present situation, involving not only the maintenance of order at home but our relations with a great and friendly Power, called for extraordinary action. He had accordingly put Sir John Naker, the Foreign Secretary, in temporary charge of the Home Office. It was, he knew,
unusual
for one Minister to hold both posts concurrently, but he felt that the circumstances justified this appointment.

There was a moment of stunned silence when Dr. Evans sat down, and then pandemonium broke out. The issue was twofold. There was first the insinuation against the police, which was generally felt to be unwarranted, and then there was the extraordinary initiative taken by the Prime Minister without full consultation with his colleagues. Member after member of the Opposition rose and attacked the Government on one or other of these points, and there were signs of mutiny among the Government supporters. Sir John Naker,
in an ill-judged attempt to calm the tumult, announced that he had instituted an official inquiry into the affair at Leeds, and that, while the report received by the German Government had, he thought, been somewhat exaggerated,
preliminary
evidence tended to show that the police had exceeded their authority in dealing with the rioters.

This temporizing only served to exasperate the House still further, and provoked a split in the ranks of the Cabinet itself. Sir Willoughby Parker, K.C., then Minister for
Agriculture
, and an old enemy of Sir John Naker, flouted all precedent by asking his own Prime Minister whether he
considered
that the Foreign Secretary was a fit and proper person to conduct such an inquiry, and whether the matter was not one for a full debate. Dr. Evans was about to reply when he received a note passed to him from Sir John Naker. The House watched him in dead silence as he read it. Then the Prime Minister rose, and in a shaking voice pronounced the final death sentence on free parliamentary debate in the British Isles.

“I have just received information”, he said, “that serious civil disturbances have again broken out in the North of England. In view of this fact and the unfinished character of the inquiry into the actions of the Leeds and West Riding police I do not think it expedient that this discussion should continue further at this time. Therefore, I propose immediately to advise the Council of Regency that this session of
Parliament
be suspended until further notice.”

I shall not describe the scenes that ensued. The demise of the British Parliament was without order or dignity. The Council of Regency had, as I have already said, been hastily constituted as a shamefaced and temporary stopgap to fill the absence of the Crown. Its powers, although a legal
commission
was attempting to determine them, were still
undefined
. Their very vagueness made them the more formidable and the less easy to challenge. No-one knew whether the Prime Minister possessed the authority he claimed, but the Speaker, after a vain attempt to quell the uproar and even violence which arose, declared the sitting adjourned and left the House. Members gradually realized the futility of their indignation, and angrily dispersed. There was no Oath of the Tennis Court.

Attempts were made afterwards to prove that the Tyneside disturbances had actually begun at the time of the Prime Minister's announcement. But a few stormy meetings of the unemployed are all that can be adduced in support of this theory, and there is little doubt that the disorders to which
he referred were fathered by the inventive brain of Sir John Naker, always ready to discover a quick exit from an
embarrassing
situation. Nevertheless, if these disorders were imaginary, they antedated the real thing by only a few hours. As the news of the Prime Minister's action was spread by Press and wireless all the latent anxiety and unrest came to a head, and the confusion in which Parliament had broken up Was the prelude to something little short of anarchy throughout the land.