If Hitler Comes (9 page)

Much of this seemed to us pretentious nonsense, like Hitler’s or Rosenberg’s; but it is impossible to fight a war without some suspension of disbelief in fallacies about race. Mallory’s best claim on our credulity was that none but he made any attempt to rally us in the defence of the things which in past times we had held dear. At the least, it was surely better to fight for a lost cause than to own no cause at all.

Mallory, then, set himself to fan back into a flame the damped-down embers of British patriotism; and he would have hit more than the headlines had his little bellows
produced
anything but the tiniest flicker. But, alas, he failed, or seemed in his lifetime to have failed; and the world, which he wished to save, has still largely not heard of him. He was not a conspirator, but a prophet; and as a prophet he was first unheard, and then, almost casually, silenced. But he never himself abandoned hope, or recoiled for long before his successive disappointments. He died believing that he had started a movement that would sweep on to victory. In the
realm of political thought, and in the long run, perhaps he had.

The former War Coalition had by this time become sadly disorganized. Mallory went to see all the old leaders, whose voices, not long since, had been heard on the wireless
exhorting
the nation to fight on to the end. They received him, I believe, without enthusiasm, and when he had gone forgot about him, unless they wondered whether he was an
agent provocateur
. Most of them had already retired from political life. They were lost without their Parliamentary
sounding-board
, their privileges and their nice rules of procedure; they could hardly be expected, at their age, to take leading parts in the Continental melodrama that now dominated English politics, with its private armies, and strange disappearances, and multitude of spies. “We have lived too long,” was the burden of their complaint, and, as they had played out the game honourably according to the rules, they were entitled to excuse themselves thus. From many a remote country house, its gardens falling somewhat into neglect, Mallory drove despondently back to the village station—not always unnoticed by a man in a high peaked cap lounging near the lodge gates.

But these lost leaders had sons: were they not picking up the dropped torch? Alas, in their bewilderment, their
judgment
seemed to desert them. Some of them were frankly with Rosse, irrelevantly hunting the Jews; others responded to Mallory’s approaches with futile plans for minor
coups d’état
. A small proportion, who might have passed as honourable men in simpler circumstances, were already making their contacts with the German party bosses—giving mixed house parties at home or lending aristocratic tone to the orgies in the Karinhalle. The great majority were helpless and
dismayed
, waiting to see what would happen next—ready, perhaps, to strike a simple blow for freedom as part of a disciplined revolt, but unable to plan or lead it.

One of Mallory’s group was a young and not unsuccessful stockbroker. This Mr. C. (his name is better not given, as the Nazis may still have failed to track him down) used to tell some incredible stories about conditions in the City. “We are business men, not politicians,” was the common slogan among those who in other circumstances might have found it useful to become Conservative M.P.s, and this asseveration covered a multitude of strange dealings which trailed the Red Ensign in the dust. The financial outlook was, of course, as black and uncertain as it could well be, and the whole of British foreign trade was in the balance. There was a big
field for speculation, and some cause for panic. One fact alone was certain, and that was that the political power in the shade of which financial power must wax or wane lay on the other side of the North Sea. The central finances of the British Empire were already at the disposal of German development in south-east Europe. Dr. Schacht was made an honorary member of the Court of the Bank of England, and it was astonishing how many heel-clicking Nazis were
entertained
in the battle-scarred halls of the Liveries. C. was decided on this point—it was quite impossible to finance a national revolution in the City of London.

But it was not so much money that was wanted as influence. What then of the various organs of publicity that a short while ago had been loudly urging on the war effort? The Ministry of Information itself was of course part of the Government machine, which meant that it was entirely at the disposal of the Nazis. They had increased its technical efficiency, and imported into British public life all those devices of propaganda which, crude as they seem to those outside its range, are effective enough on the mark. The
wartime
heads had long ago resigned, with the better part of their staff, but the vacant places were soon filled with “advisers” from Germany, who knew what they were about. During the war German propaganda had set out to disturb and depress us. It had succeeded, and now a new technique was required. We were to be calmed, reassured, mildly convinced. How skilfully it was done! Every Briton has by this time a deep track in his subconscious mind scored by those endless posters showing the combined might of the British and German empires, busts of Shakespeare and Goethe entwined with laurel leaves, showing, above all, a British and a German workman generously shaking hands and saying, “
Nicht wieder
—never again.” There is something hypnotic about pictures of workers shaking hands.

The Alliance propaganda was not confined to posters,. It penetrated every activity of life, and rapidly built up that clever picture, too soon shown to be a dissolving view, of a sort of Viennese honeymoon for Nazidom and its British bride. A painfully forced smile as of that lost easy-going Austria came over the countenances of our cultural invaders; for a brief moment it was Lilac Time. We waltzed, drank
duty-free
hock, and bought splendid books with baroque
title-pages
. Strength-through-Joy offered the British worker such tours of the Black Forest as the Polytechnic could never accomplish. The rubber truncheon was for the moment hidden away.

On the crest of such a wave even Lord Haw-Haw could rise with all his old sublimity. He was now installed in
Broadcasting
House, whence he lulled the listening public into a belief in a serene and happy future that was being prepared for them behind the scene. At first people were inclined to laugh at him, and the Mallory group rejoiced that the Nazis had made such a psychological blunder as to send him over. But he began to say so many of the nice things which people wanted to believe that it was not long before one ventured to remark, in suburban sitting-rooms, that perhaps he was not such a bad fellow after all. Nevertheless, he went
everywhere
with an armed escort; and, somewhat later than the time of which I am writing, as he was hurrying across to a taxi in Portland Place, a young Guards officer was thought to have aimed a revolver at him. The officer was shot dead by the Nazi escort; it was the first and almost the only “unpleasantness” of the kind, and it was hushed up.

Here, then, was a formidable barrier to Mallory’s
propaganda
campaign. It was difficult to see any way through or round it. The Press was still nominally free, except that it was forbidden to criticize German institutions, but it had abdicated from the leadership of public opinion. Reuter was nationalized. The most influential newspapers had gone; one does not spend twopence a day to read of prophecies belied or fulfilled. The big provincial dailies gave up national politics, and turned to local and sectional interests. The popular dailies, deserted by nervous advertisers, were swamped by Dr.
Goebbels’s
People’s Observer
, which, though supposed to be a kind of London edition of the
Völkischer Beobachter
, provided the unthinking Briton with such an attractive substitute for
Picture Post
, the
Mirror
, and the
Express
as no Berliner had ever seen. Some of my Fleet Street acquaintances took jobs on this monstrosity, explaining, of course, that “they were interested in it only from a technical point of view”, in its pictures, or racing news, or dramatic criticism. They were careful to steer clear of Mallory.

At one time I suspected Mallory of plotting a desperate revolt with his friends on the British General Staff, with whom he had some very secret contacts, or even of trying to shame the leaders of the Greyshirts into biting the vile hand that fed them. But he stuck to his view that the first preparations for such a move were moral and psychological, and for this he pinned his remaining hopes on the world of labour. He persuaded himself that if the solid basis of British society was firm it mattered not that the superstructure was breaking. He
paid a visit to Transport House. When he returned he was very nearly in despair.

“My God, Fenton,” he said, “the British trade-union
movement
has crumpled at the mere raised fist of Dr. Ley. D. told me there had been some changes in the Executive, but there is a completely new crowd there now. That’s the devil about this controlled Press. A man like Citrine can have the whole of his life’s work bullied or bribed out of existence, and then not know how to get the facts before the workers or the public.

“Well, they are a strange, hunted lot at Transport House now. A rather pansy young man who had obviously never done a day’s manual work in his life seemed to regard me as an envoy of doomed Jewish capitalism.’ The British worker is done with fighting your battles,’ he said. I asked him if he was old enough to remember what had happened to the trade unions in Germany. He said that when capitalism was
destroyed
in Germany the trade unions turned to fulfil a more constructive function, and that we must be ready for the same glorious revolution over here—not without the
co-operation
of the Communists. Isn’t it extraordinary how, with big guns and determination, Hitler has been able to turn all the old political theories upside down?”

Next day Mallory went back to his old constituency in Lancashire. I saw him off at Euston, feeling acutely that his failure was due in the long run to the cowardly inactivity of such as I. I muttered over again my feeble self-justifications; and when the whistle blew I felt like jumping into the
compartment
with him, without quite knowing why. He pushed me back on to the platform with a melancholy smile.

Three weeks later I heard from him, at the “Old Red Lion”, Oldham. “How glad I am I have come back here,” he wrote. “This is where our resistance begins. You could sweep the whole decadent world of London away to-morrow, and these people would throw up a new set of politicians and financiers and professors without any fuss at all. I have been addressing some meetings of the local Cotton Spinners’ Association, and, if the men here are typical of the rank and file of the trade-union movement up and down the country, I can assure you that next September’s meeting of the T.U.C. will change the whole situation. The Greyshirts are strong here too, but I prefer the quiet strength of the loyal Labour men. No Hitler could begin to undermine their confidence and determination, or could resist them when the time comes to act.”

I had two or three letters from Mallory after that. He spoke
of meetings and processions, and admitted to some
unprofitable
street encounters with the Greyshirts. There was
something
of the demagogue about him after all; he must have thumped the tub good and hard. Some of his friends shared with him a tour of all the industrial regions; nowhere was their belief shaken in the nationalist fervour of the British working man or in the crucial importance of the next Trades Union Congress.

He was, on a short view, deceived. History records that this Congress never met. It records very little (as yet) about Mallory and his movement. In the remaining London papers there was only this, an agency message published on Monday, 23rd June:

“In a slight street disturbance in Oldham market-place on Saturday evening an unfortunate accident caused the death of Mr. Stephen Mallory, of Crown Court, Temple, E.C., a former National Labour M.P. for the borough. Mr. Mallory was wounded in the head by a revolver bullet which is thought to have been fired inadvertently by one of the Socialist demonstrators.

“Mr. Mallory, who was thirty-eight and unmarried, had been staying at Oldham for some time. He served in the Ministry of Supply during the last war, but for some time had retired from political life.

“The street disturbance was of a minor character, and Major Robinson, the newly-appointed Chief Constable of Oldham, states that order has now been permanently restored. ‘We have had some trouble lately with Socialist agitators,’ he told a Press Association representative yesterday, ‘but we are taking firm steps to preserve law and order. A detachment of Greyshirts rendered yeoman service in giving immediate assistance to the police, and I cannot be sufficiently grateful for the help given by those members of the German police who are here under the exchange system, commanded by the gallant Captain Trauber.’”

Many people read this item of news and blenched, or hung their heads with shame, but there were few comments on it. At the inquest they brought in a verdict of accidental death; but from evidence as reported in the
Oldham Chronicle
it would not have taken Lord Peter Wimsey to deduce that of all the unhappy people huddled together in the market-place that Saturday evening the only man likely to be armed with a revolver was the gallant Captain Trauber himself. He soon became Major Trauber, and got himself appointed to a coveted post (for such as he) in Whitechapel.

After that, one heard no more of the Patriots—if, indeed,
one had heard of them before. A bullet from a minor Nazi gangster brought that whole grandiose movement to an end. One or two younger men, hitherto known to have been
somewhat
active on the fringe of public life, disappeared,
apparently
to the complete mystification of the police. One day, when it is quite certain that they are either dead or safe from Nazi clutches, I will write what I know about them. Meanwhile, I must confess that I had certain fears for my own safety, though Heaven knows I am no hero, and had done nothing to deserve the crown of martyrdom.