You Have Lived Through All This

An Anatomy of the Age

Preface

Many excellent books have instructed a large public about events in Europe and the Far East. I cannot, however, find a great deal that instructs me about events in my own country, where I live and in these inhospitable days must continue to live, even if I wished to change. And, now that we seem to be re-entering a former cycle, with the Near East, India, Ireland returning to troubles of twenty years ago, it seemed worth while to study the seedtime, when the harvest we are reaping now was sown. For my own instruction, I went through the years immediately after the Armistice; and was surprised to find how much I had forgotten, and also how the shape of things to come was cast upon those careless years.

We remember the immediate past, the last few years or so; we forget anything beyond them. And the generation which is taking over from the hands of my own generation such influence and power as we possessed (which I think was never much) were too young to notice the years that followed the War’s conclusion. To anyone under forty, this book has a chance of bringing facts that they do not know, which might affect their thinking.

I present therefore a mass of detail, covering half a dozen significant years, that glided away as little watched as any in our history. In an Epilogue I add selected “high spots” since, with some reflections and conclusions.

Geoffrey Garratt and Guy Chapman have seen the first part of this book, and Margaret Storm Jameson also has helped me with advice.

Part I

This Was When and How It Began — A Cross-Section of Your Life, January, 1919 to May, 1926

Chapter I

Glad Confident Morning

1

If you could put yourself back into the first days of 1919, what manner of person and outlook would you find?

Confusion in both, of course: within and without. Yet a feeling as if a weight had been lifted off the spirit, that had seemed as if it must lie there always, and as if the landscape had been washed with silver. Queerly enough, among the convictions that had sunk deep was one that was wrapped up with the thought of “England”, a place of green woodland rides and primroses and windflowers and may and wild roses. It has vanished since, yet men believed in it then, and expected to find it on return:

“... green banks of daffodil,
Slim poplars in the breeze,
Great tan-brown hares in gusty March
A-courting on the leas;
And meadows with their glittering streams, and silver scurrying dace,
Home—what a perfect place!”¹

A grimmer note was to be struck presently (the Poems of Wilfred Owen were issued in 1921), and had been in some measure struck already. Yet at the background lay always this quiet lovely existence (whether fact or imagination, it is not our business to enquire now). Sorley thought of it, his mind dwelling on the barrows and ancient camps of the Marlborough Downs, and on his own fleet body racing through the showers:

“We swing ungirded hips,
And lightened are our eyes,
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
We know not whom we trust
Nor whitherward we fare,
But we run because we must
Through the great wide air.”

It is in Edward Thomas, who, like Owen and Sorley, was killed: men who would have striven with some effectiveness to keep the England that has since been shattered died in the War to preserve it.

“They passed,
The robin till next day, the man for good,
Together in the twilight of the wood.”

It is in Sassoon, in his dreams of autumnal down and forest, and the contrast made with those other darker dreams that will haunt our generation till all dreams die out of our brains. There had been something for which men had been dying, not without deliberate choice of destiny; and it surely awaited them, now that all dying was over!

“In the grey summer morning I shall find you
With day-break and the morning hills behind you.
There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings;
And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings.”

It is perhaps summed up most directly in Hugh Lyon’s poem, “Now to be still and rest”.

It seemed all that was left to do, thank God! To let the soul expand again and lay itself open to pleasure, of not ignoble kinds—to be still and rest and let the loveliness of the world do its work within the tired brain and body—as is anticipated in this poem which J. C. Squire rightly called the fit and proper conclusion of every selection of War poems.

All this of course was “sentimental”, was “woolly-minded” and nit-witted. But that is beside the point, which is that this was what men and women felt—a sense of release and of winds blowing gently and the sun shining peacefully—a sense they had never thought to experience again and were soon to lose once more.

The first job was to be human adjustment. How badly we have done it, and with how complete a break with our civilisation, we all know. How did we go wrong? It is my task to try to find out for myself, and to put before you the materials for judging and for making your own conclusions.

2

Among the men who had been at the Front there was an almost complete absence of bitterness. There had been reason enough for bitterness (in a very few years it became the vogue to deny this, and to assume that fault had been equal on both sides, and that anyway, such matters as the execution of Captain Fryatt were nothing to brood over. Such always happened, and no doubt had happened on our side just as much; the “atrocities” of the Belgian occupation had been sheerly bogus, so much wartime “propaganda”—that word which explained away everything). Yet the general feeling of the fighting man towards Germany was expressed in classic words by one of the noblest of our generation, Charles Sorley:

“You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we the tapering paths of our own mind. . . .

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new-won eyes each other’s truer form
And wonder.”

To sum up, the British, who had somehow managed through all the years of the War to preserve their isolation and island self-sufficingness, thought they were going back to this fastness of theirs, to be untroubled by any other nation. They had finished the War, and the Government would see that everything was properly tidied up.

That was the trouble. We had been disfranchised in practice, and our politicians had had things to themselves. They had just managed a “coupon election”, by methods satisfactory to those who jockeyed the affair, and had won the majority they wanted; and we were to pass into that negation of self-government which is all we enjoy to-day. It was our own fault. We had got out of the habit of noticing, and of taking an interest. We had lost the British political-mindedness.

In 1906, I could have told you not merely the names of every member of our Cabinet, and a great deal about their records and reputation, I could have told you the names of nearly every minor member of the Government. To-day, in 1939, I could not even get through the Cabinet, I should be several names short, unless I got hold of a book of reference. What is more, in my inmost mind I cannot bring myself to believe that it very much matters about all the members of the Cabinet, I believe that only a few of them are really anything like the best we could find in Parliament (to say nothing of the British world outside), I think that they are poor sticks in comparison with the leaders of either Party in the days when I was young.

And now Mr. Chamberlain has reduced the Cabinet at times of Crisis to an “Inner Cabinet” of Four. The rest are ciphers; and content to be ciphers.

When the War ended, we left everything to our rulers. They could hold interminable conferences in any European capital they chose, just as later they could skip to Locarno and Geneva and other jolly places, or Sir John Simon and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald went off to “have talks” and “make important contacts” with this or that head of this or that semi-fabulous state that was not on the pre-War maps. They could let Ireland run through years of butchery and counter-butchery, they could take years to come to a peace with Turkey, they could waste public money year after year. We merely grunted when we had to, as a dog shakes his ears when the fleas get beyond a joke.

We felt we were due for some enjoyment, and we wanted it, and our whole make-up was towards it. Women had become athletic, they wore short skirts, bobbed hair was the fashion (until some found it was not “their line of country”), they had learnt to ride while serving in military camps and towns, and to ride astride, for the pre-War manner was out of fashion. Men were sick of a monastic life, and of the routine and meaningless uniformity of existence in khaki and under orders. Besides, many were worried about their jobs, and were soon finding how hard to get jobs were going to be. So let the politicians see to the fixing of national and international affairs, since that was the kind of thing they liked!

“Let Austin have his swink to him reserved.”

America? It had not begun to affect us. We knew singularly little of it and its ways. Our favourite films were the Lucky Cat ones, where Felix went on walking, a precursor of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Films, anyway, were still rather low-class; the intelligentsia did not discover them for several years yet. When The Times, for example, began to look into this new matter, it noticed (June 22, 1919) that a queer incomprehensible language was invading us. “‘Nix, nix, Buddy, this guy’s a friend of mine!’ Surely this kind of thing is a needless infliction!” It was “hard to guess” its meaning (if it had any meaning!).

Nevertheless, the conquest of Britain and of British speech and thought by Hollywood was on the tables which the gods had written.

The War was finished by a “Business Government”, who celebrated their achievement with an impressive programme of “planning”. Men in “key industries”, such as mining, were to be demobilised first, to start the wheels of industry running down normal grooves.

What about reconstruction in the international field?

This, too, had been provided for. There was to be a League of Nations. Thinkers pointed out how useful this was going to prove. It would be always a very present help against the very thought of possible trouble—to envisage actual trouble in being was beyond the dreams of that post-War dawning. Mr. Balfour, for example, “did not conceive of a League of Nations spending an idle, dignified existence between widely separated European crises”²—which was the only way people imagined crises could come—if they came at all!

Yet about the League there seemed a measure of disagreement among the Allied Powers. Not frank and overt as yet, but there. President Wilson, journeying from one ovation to another, amid the abounding joy and trust of the peoples of the great European capitals, paid small attention to what his colleagues said, and heard nothing of the undertones. M. Gustave Hervé, in the Chamber of Deputies, reported (December 31, 1918) that M. Clemenceau “did not say no to the noble President of the United States” and was “very careful not to reject a priori the brilliant formulas of the Society of Nations”, but was nevertheless “resolved (he did not say all that was in his mind on this subject) at least to neutralise the left bank of the Rhine” and to keep for England, “who is close by”, the mastery of the seas. The Tiger himself observed what no one need have doubted. “I remain faithful to the old system of countries organising their defence, having well-defended frontiers and armaments.” France took up the stand from which she has never since hesitated, until her slump into sheer fright and passive defensiveness this last autumn.

There was an occasion when President Wilson (“voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone”) realised suddenly that the British Dominions had not the slightest intention of handing back German contiguous territories which they had conquered. Australia and New Zealand, for example, stood firm. Was he to understand (he asked Mr. Hughes) that his country—a new country, and thinly populated, and among the Great Powers negligible—was prepared to defy the opinion of the rest of the world? Mr. Hughes, a little deaf, asked for the question to be repeated. It was. He understood; and made himself understood in return. “That’s right, Mr. President.” Clemenceau, a delighted third party, asked Mr. Lloyd George afterwards to “bring your savages with you” next time also. And to Mr. Hughes he observed, “Mr. ’Ughes, I ’ave ’eard that in your young days you were a cannibal?” “Much exaggerated,” said the gratified Mr. Hughes.

This same Mr. Hughes on January 9 addressed the Australian and New Zealand Luncheon Club at the Holborn Restaurant. He reminded the absent President that Australia had lost as many men in the War as the United States had. “I have nothing but contempt for the Germany of to-day. It alternately grovels, fawns, blusters, and weeps hypocritically, in its efforts to deceive the Allied peoples” (“Hear, hear”). “Germany, the same Germany that is posturing hysterically in the face of Europe, calling herself Socialist, has deluged the earth in blood. . . . Does anyone doubt that she would have humiliated us, torn this Empire asunder, and only stopped short of destroying us utterly, if she had been victorious?”

Indeed, most people found the attitude of Germany unsatisfactory in the extreme. Her Government, such as it was, disliked the Armistice terms and was doing all it could to evade fulfilment. “The leopard may camouflage his spots,” The Times pointed out, rewriting Scripture to bring it up to date, “but it is not so easy for him to change them.” This was à propos of seeming docility in Alsace-Lorraine. “Forgetfulness of one’s sins is not the same thing as repentance, and without sincere repentance there can be no real change of heart.” Propaganda, The Times was inclined to think, four days earlier (January 2), might assist to this end. “A bundle of literature of the right kind is capable of doing far more mischief than a bomb.”

This enlightened outlook was by no means shared by all; there were still a minority who held by sound old doctrine that “Stone dead hath no fellow”. “Germany”, urged a peer of the realm (January 6), “should have been crushingly crippled in the field before we began on peace considerations at all. Is it too late even now to face these facts and in our negotiations make sure of the crippling two years of crushing war would have supplied? There is time still.”

That was how they talked then—these people who now keep on assuring us that poor Germany is not to be blamed but pitied! It was all the fault of that iniquitous Treaty of Versailles, that goaded her to her excesses of recent years! So they say now!

The Allies settled down to research into War guilt, and the running up of a list of criminals to be tried.

3

On January 9, General Smuts published his celebrated pamphlet on a League of Nations. “The tents have been struck, and the great caravan of humanity is once more on the march.”

The march was a ragged and tempestuous one. The story of the next twelve months is one of a wave of unprecedented ill temper passing round the whole world. In India, the massacre of Amritsar, and the murders and arson and retributive shootings of Ahmadabad and many other places: in Great Britain, strikes of an ugliness of mood unknown for many years: in the United States, double the lynchings of 1917, and many of them of an atrocious character. In the United States also a wave of repression of “Red” activities which it is pleasant to remember that our own country escaped (and there are very few things which it is pleasant to remember from this period). On January 9, a jury in the Federal Court of Chicago convicted the national leader of the Socialist Party and four of his lieutenants of sedition and disloyalty. America had set out on the march that was to lead to the electric chairs where Sacco and Vanzetti died. In the wave of hysterical anger many whose views by our reckoning were mild enough were swept up for prosecution or deportation. “Reds!” as a popular preacher had cried out, of the beginnings of this wrath. “Why, some of them weren’t even pink!” Presently, Arthur Henderson and Asquith were to be regarded across the Atlantic as dangerous revolutionaries. And under this surge of misjudgment worked a real volcano. The genuine “Reds” during these months of 1919 exploded bombs and blew out the sides of large buildings in great cities, and killed many passers-by.

But the tumult in America and Great Britain was nothing in comparison with the agonies of Europe. An English paper might think these merely amusing: “There is something very comic in the spectacle of the rival mobs of bawlers, packed so tight that they could neither raise nor lower their hands.” To us to-day it is a mystery how we ever supposed that Germany would keep one single item of the Treaty after long wrangling imposed upon her. Demobilisation dragged, until even the British soldier was in mutiny, and meanwhile the preliminaries of the Peace settlement dragged and dragged also. “Poy” in the Evening News invented the figures of “Dilly and Dally”. And all the time, with every sinew of her nation, Germany fought against the Treaty that was coming. She fought through her journalists; she fought through her successive Governments; her agents intrigued (with success) in French Morocco. The iron of her conviction that she had not been beaten in the field, but tricked and then bullied into surrender and Treaty, entered into all her thinking, and God knows how much in further blood and misery the world is going to pay for this.

Everywhere in Europe, and in numerous lands outside it, was a spectacle of warring armies or worse, warring mobs. In January, the Bolshevists took Riga, and in Poland the Ministry was kidnapped. In February, Warsaw seemed certain to fall. To and fro surged the fighting of Red and White armies and their auxiliaries. There were risings in Portugal and Mexico, food riots and martial law in Madrid, rebellions in French and Spanish Morocco (where Abdul Krim, who was to bring down the remnants of Spain’s strength, into an extremity of distress, made his appearance). In Waziristan, on the Indian North-West Frontier, was the severest and most protracted campaign since 1897, which engaged 400,000 troops (1919-1920). Even Korea had a shot to recover freedom (but Japan soon settled that idea). The Amir of Kabul was assassinated, in February, 1919. The fate of the Tsar and his family began to leak out in its details.

Berlin was ravaged by civil war. Its inhabitants passed under a terror which drove them to live in cellars. Bavaria was having a worse time yet, and its sufferings were protracted and appalling. It is customary to say that France created Hitler in the Ruhr. He was created much earlier, in the savagery which desolated Munich. For a while, Communism (his official bogy) was stalking through his beloved Bavaria; and if the last half-dozen years have taught the world anything, they have taught it the peril when an idea gets into Hitler’s head.

Spartacists and Communists and Governments of sorts shot each other up in the streets. On January 15, 1919 Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were killed by the mob. Kurt Eisner, the Bavarian Premier, was murdered, February 21, and a Soviet Republic established at the end of March. The phrase “class war” passed into common use.

On March 11, the British Government (while still keeping a blockade on Germany) decided to send to Prague immediately 200 tons of condensed milk. This was a good deed and a wise one. But it needed a stiffer broom to push back the tide of anarchy and wretchedness. Germany and all Central Europe were in famine, and in Hungary Bela Kun established his own Soviet régime, and in April issued his messianic word of promise to mankind:

“As regards illegitimate children we have given them the air, the light, and the cleanliness which were formerly the privilege only of the children of the bourgeoisie.

We have made the theatre and cinematograph free and perfectly accessible for the children of the poor, whereas in the past they existed solely for the amusement of the rich. . . .

The Soviet Government of Hungary has decided to use the services of journalists and writers for its propaganda, and to raise considerably the salaries paid to them. Journalists, like politicians, are to be given first-class treatment, that is to say, like heavy manual labourers, they are to be provided with all articles of necessity, houses, and so forth, by the State free of charge.”

“That’s a big bid,” as Candida remarked to her poet. One wonders why “the threadbare goldless genealogie”³ of authors, all the world over, did not flock to dedicate their pens and typewriters to so noble and great-hearted a leader. But of course, they are of all classes the one most hopelessly bourgeois.

Things were beginning to look up for the arts, however. In mid-January, Paderewski had become Premier of Poland, and in March he was engaging in the pleasing pastime of “endorsement”, and the advertisement columns announced that he could not “conceive of any reason why the ‘Pianola’ should not be in every home”. There were, however, reasons—no doubt, temporary ones—why the Pianola should not be in some of the homes of Central Europe.

4

Let this be our cue; and, “so to interpose a little ease”, look away from street battles and shooting files, and see what the really civilised nations were doing.

America, despite a vigorous “No Beer No Work” movement which started in the States of New York and New Jersey and was expected to get “a national impetus”, put through Prohibition. Optimistic headlines by mid-January announced her as “Bone Dry” and announced, under such captions as “Success of Prohibition”, “the drink trade is now doomed to extinction”.

England, less ambitious, was paying a deal of attention to a “new field of work” (so far as she was concerned), the film industry. Nelson was put on the pictures. It began to be a sign of intelligence to see a future for the cinema, even a future containing artistic possibilities. “The next five years, without a doubt”, said The Times, March 7, 1919, prophesying with more than average success, “will see an enormous development of the cinematograph industry. . . . The old idea that the picture theatre was the resort only of children and people with an hour to spare before catching a train has gone for ever.” It “has to be recognised that the picture theatre is not a passing craze”. The crowds at some of the West End houses had proved “that if the programme is sufficiently attractive the same audience will go . . . week in and week out”. Standards, however, must be kept very very high to ensure this. “The cinema is essentially a family institution, and the programme must be above suspicion.”

To draw the same patrons steadily, America was using serial films. The show you saw one week ended with the heroine lying limp across the bandit’s saddle, while the hero was a whole river behind them, with crocodiles barring his passage; or the prairie was on fire, and the girl and her pursuers were riding madly before the flames. You simply had to come next week, and come early, to see what happened to one so beauteous and so grimly misused.

There was a growing suspicion (even in those days!) that perhaps British films—admitted (with a unanimity that would not depress if anything had since changed) to be abominably poor in every quality—were about to have a bad time from those of Hollywood. To combat so unjust a thought, the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry of America, representing 95 per cent of the producers and distributors, sent an envoy to the British producers, to reassure them. He admitted that during the War America had gained a five years’ start. But “any idea that had gained circulation in this country that the United States is trying to corner the market and shut British films out was not based on fact. They were only too willing to encourage the making of first-class films in Great Britain, France, and Italy, and they guaranteed to provide them with an open and liberal market” (May 12). America, he pointed out, was turning away from her former toughness, and yearning to film the Waverley novels and all the lovely romantic and classical world of English imaginative writers. This she would have to do on British soil and in British surroundings, for she had not the scenery for Ivanhoe or the works of Dickens and Thackeray, and her people attached great importance to accuracy in every detail.

And on July 20, the British industry, having been long in labour, produced a grand new picture. “A Little Child Shall Lead Them.”

What about the legitimate theatre in those days? To be frank, it was excessively poor and thin. Cyrano de Bergerac went on tour in February. In London you could see The Bing Boys on Broadway, or if you were a fan of our earlier literature and the spacious days when it came into being, you could see Mr. Cochran’s As You Were. In this, the Court of Queen Elizabeth took the place of the Court of the Hunzollern (the Wartime amenities, you see, were beginning to be liquidated), in early March of 1919. There was a jazz band, which “now seems to be recognised as a necessary feature of every up-to-date revue” (so early did the monster swoop upon us!). Jazz, of course, had been introduced by Sir Walter Ralegh, who for some reason is always the comic villain of every Elizabethan frolic—poor Ralegh having managed to pass on to posterity the hatred with which his own contemporaries regarded him. Under his instruction, Queen Elizabeth (Mlle. Delysia) danced “a cross between a squirm and a wriggle” and announced of her own times:

“Then Shakespeare’s plays, unless I’m much mistaken,
Were rationed as a substitute for Bacon.”

If you had severer tastes, you could run out to Hammersmith, and see Abraham Lincoln, whose long run began in February. It is interesting to pause over its tremendous success, and to find reasons for it. Not many plays have been less dramatic; it was deadly to see and hear the President not merely read excessively dull passages from Artemas Ward in Cabinet meetings (which he did in life but ought not to have been allowed to do on the stage), but break into orations which brought in every outstanding passage he ever spoke, including even the Gettysburg Address. Yet this probably helped and did not hinder. The one full-bodied art which the Pilgrim Fathers took over was oratory, and especially moral oratory, the art of the preacher. That art still flourishes there in greater esteem than here. We have not, and have not had for twenty years, any counterpart to Senator Borah, who (so far as those in this hemisphere can judge) orates, and orates only, yet apparently is a man abounding (not merely in interestingness, but) in influence. And London was full of Americans when Lincoln was performed.

There are other and deeper reasons for the play’s success. It guyed a bloodthirsty and comfortable woman who tried to hound the President on to vengeance, and multitudes of British soldiers had a fierce memory of creatures who went about distributing white feathers. Our nation was better, and very much better, than the men who were its rulers, and the playwright voiced their scorn for the people who sat pretty but cried on havock. Also, the play was at least about a most moving and noble life and death, and the stronger part of the nation was utterly weary of “prancing ranks of harlots . . . drunk with din”.⁴

Abraham Lincoln did not have the War interest to itself, however. The Female Hun took some of it. Presently Mr. Lowell Thomas appeared, apologetically offering us (in his own words) “through an American nose” “America’s Tribute to British Valour”— With Allenby in Palestine. This did well, and in the summer was going strong alongside of Drinkwater’s play, the perennial Chu Chin Chow, Uncle Sam, Buzz Buzz, The Rotters, Caesar’s Wife, and other masterpieces.

Literature is the first casualty when war breaks out and is the last of the arts to recover. For a great while the books that appeared were War books, of the stately sober discursive kind—nothing jazzy or lively and economic and political studies more or less germane (this is almost—but accidentally—a pun!) to war.

Edmund Candler’s The Long Road to Baghdad (how he used to curse the Censor who held up publication while the running would have been so good!) appeared at the end of January, 1919; Conan Doyle’s History of the War in February. Presently, of the War leaders Jellicoe got off first, with The Grand Fleet, 1914-1916, and after him Lord French. The latter began the controversial War book, of which we were to have so much (and so much) in succeeding years, admiral tearing admiral and general debunking general, and both orders abusing “the frocks” and being abused in turn, until to-day there is perhaps no leader (unless it is Allenby, who was lucky in escaping from France to Palestine) who has any serious reputation left. Asquith mildly defended himself against General French’s strictures, and The Times, which greatly disapproved of him, was on to him like a knife and very plainly told him (never mind these mixed metaphors—they are getting my meaning across) where he got off, or would have got off if he had had any sense. “Had he been wise he would have maintained silence. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose from an examination of his share in the conduct of the War. Thrice has the verdict gone against him” (June 4, 1919). Poor fellow! he was in for another castigation, a fortnight later, having incautiously said something about Tariffs. His “economic catchwords” had “little attraction” for people who had “to live through the war for which the Free Trade policy of this country was certainly not wholly without responsibility”. The Times in August began serial publication of Ludendorff’s Memoirs.

The year 1918, the last year of the War, saw a decrease of 415 book publications on the list of 1917. There were 523 fewer novels, and 153 fewer books for juveniles. But 98 more books of verse, 112 of sociology, 110 of technology, 80 of medicine. Among the novels (they were still nominally 6s.) of the first nine months of peace was John Buchan’s Mr. Standfast; among the books of verse, Sir Robert Vansittart’s The Singing Caravan and Mr. Yeats’s The Wild Swans at Coole. Mr. Asquith in May, praising the work of Sir Henry Wotton, deplored these wild modern poets. “To an old-fashioned ear there seemed to be . . . often an almost arrogant disorder in the outpourings of the contemporary muse. . . . It might not be amiss to go back now and again to the great masters of poetic style.”

Who were these arrogant disordered poets? Well, it was the Age of the Georgian Poets; year after year came out the Books of Georgian Poetry. In 1919, Francis Brett Young published Poems, 1916-1918. This contained pieces included in his prose Marching on Tanga, published the previous year (too much of the plaintive cry of the hornbill in that book—it seems to have haunted the troops—as they sank to their well-earned rest—as they rose each morning—as they went forward). Wilfrid Gibson published Whin, John Freeman Memories of Childhood, J. C. Squire The Birds, Siegfried Sassoon War Poems. Edward Shanks was the first Hawthornden Prizewinner, with The Queen of China. But perhaps Mr. Asquith had a low standard of arrogance and disorder (as, it was once surmised, Wordsworth had of intoxication). We have gone beyond it since.

On October 30, 1919, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, the most popular poet of her day, the predecessor of Fay Inchfawn (and then Wilhelmina Stitch) with the same public, died. She claimed descent from Pocahontas, and collected dolls and necklaces. At the age of seven she was one of America’s acknowledged poets, drawing a steady income from good magazines, and the gift that won recognition for her in infancy did not materially alter in after life. Mrs. Florence Barclay, the “white ladies” novelist, died March 10, 1921—but this takes us beyond this chapter’s limits.

A few miscellaneous items. Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day was published October, 1919. On Hardy’s eightieth birthday (June 2, 1920), 43 poets gave him tributes in verse from each of them, the MSS. bound up into a book. The National Review offered a prize of 100 guineas for the best essay on the “Disadvantages and Dangers of the League of Nations to the Empire”. This was for adults; for boys in public schools was a prize of 50 guineas, and for girls one of 20. In November, 1919, came Mr. Wells’ Outline of History. In January, 1920, The Economic Consequences of the Peace: “Mr. Keynes has written an extremely ‘clever’ book . . . he has rendered the Allies a disservice for which their enemies will, doubtless, be grateful” (The Times, January 5). By the following April, sales were in the twentieth thousand. Dean Inge published Outspoken Essays, 1920, and a second series, 1922. They were not really very outspoken, though they said some true things. “The worst enemies of Christianity are Christians.”

Grey squirrels were becoming common in London parks, and were beginning to spread. This was considered a good thing; they were very charming, and much tamer than the red. A year later, doubts began.

In April, 1920, “the most beautiful Red Cross Nurse in the World” was married in America. In May, at the Royal Academy you could see Mr. Frank Salisbury’s “The National Peace Thanksgiving Service on the Steps of St. Paul’s”. There were other remarkable pictures: “Admiral Beatty Reading the Terms of the Armistice to the German Delegates”; and a number of more or less hardy annuals. “The Wise and Foolish Virgins”, “Jairus’ Daughter”, “Adoration of the Magi”, “The Childhood of Bacchus”. Something for every taste, and for no taste at all. A very good world, fast returning to “normalcy”.

In May, 1920, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales took his first toss in a race, and Joan of Arc was canonised (May 15). In July, the British Institute of International Affairs was founded. In August, Mr. Gandhi began his hartals. In 1921, The Times learnt to spell his name correctly, and left the numerous ranks of the papers whose publicists thought it should be “Ghandi” (on the general fines that there is an h in every Indian name, and the sooner you get it out the better). It still could let “Summerville College” (at Oxford) pass, however.

Do these names call up any memories? The Rev. Vale Owen? His “spirit messages” were appearing in the Weekly Despatch, and had an enraptured following. The Skin Game? The Ruined Lady?

In December, Sir William Osler died. Also Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood died. “If any one interest competed for his affection with the British ‘Tommy’, it was hunting.”

And that again gives us a cue. SPORT! (as the B.B.C. announcers observe, on a note of brightness rising away from the summary of dreary politics and trivial news).

Far and away the most important was what was happening in the air. In May, 1919, Hawker tried to fly from Newfoundland to Europe, and came down in the sea, 40 miles west of the Shannon estuary. The American airship NC 4 flew to the Azores on May 27, completing thereby the first flight over a really vast expanse of ocean. The NC 4 went on to Europe. In June, Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop Atlantic crossing, from Newfoundland to Ireland. From now on, gigantic flights became more and more part of the normal news.

In July, Herbert Sutcliffe made his first century in first-class cricket.

“Glamour girl” was a term that arose nearly twenty years later, but the glamour girl ballyhoo was in the beginnings of what is now full spate. Women were marching into the news, and their alleged “interests” dictated the choice of what was printed. Feminine prowess won increasing attention, starting with a note to be constantly struck in later years, and now struck regularly in the better-class journals—the patriotic manner in which ladies had kept the hunts going while the able-bodied males were otherwise occupied. They had shown what they could do in a time of national emergency, and now (the better-class journals surmised) they would sink back to a less strenuous gracefulness. “No mention has been made of tennis or rackets as a game played by ladies” (The Times, February 15). “In their present forms they are too fast, and they are games for which the physique of women is not too well adapted.” Still, there had once been a notable lady performer at “palm ball”, the precursor of tennis—Mlle. Margot in 1424. She had been able to beat all men at the pastime.

The age, however, was marching, and women with it. Only a fortnight had passed when The Times modified its judgment, and admitted: “Lawn tennis was the first game of real action in which ladies took part, and may be taken as one of those landmarks of which [sic] they are so pleased to style their emancipation. It certainly altered their style of dress. . . . It is an exercise which calls for the judicious use not only of all the limbs, but also of the head.”

Perhaps under the head of women in sport should come “the peach perch” controversy, just beginning. The motor-cycle was flaring up into abundant use; the car was not yet cheap enough to oust it. Women also bicycled. But “bicycling has ceased to be a sport”.

And—do such trifles as the following interest you? During the War birds of prey (and not only of the human species) had increased. This matter now had to be seen to. Fortunately, science could help, and the lower creation was soon suppressed. Sportsmen temporarily resident in Mesopotamia rejoiced over the advantages of a car, to run down bustard and gazelle on the hard desert levels. One writer “was lucky enough to have a 40 h.p. Lancia tender, in which he used to chase gazelle; often it has taken 20 minutes going out all the time, to bring down a single buck”. This new and excellent sport (which has now long been ordinary throughout the East) had great possibilities. Presently, the first party to motor from Jerusalem to Baghdad published an account of how they pursued a small group of ostriches in Transjordan and left one of them lying dead on the desert.

In 1919, the last of the race of Shetland white-tailed sea eagles died, a female who after her mate’s slaughter haunted their nest, outliving him for eight years. She had grown white with age. In 1919 also, ravens after a lapse of twelve years nested inland in Somerset.

On June 17, Beckett knocked out Goddard.

5

A few miscellaneous matters may be noted at random. Pelmanism, “a new idea”, was being much advertised. A gentleman suggested (January 13), that the new Lord Chancellor should be asked “(as tactfully as possible)” to give the 600 livings in his patronage to chaplains, in the order of the service they had seen, their wounds, decorations, etc. “As the new Lord Chancellor will, I hope, be a sportsman, a gentleman, and an Englishman, the result will be obvious.”

The chief suit in the law courts was one of libel, by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the Indian Nationalist, against Mr. Valentine Chirol, over statements in the latter’s book, Indian Unrest. (Mr. Chirol won). Sir Edward Carson, defending, lost his temper with Sir John Simon, prosecuting. Sir John Simon objected to the warmth shown by his opponent and to his remark that Sir John, when jumping up to put in a protest, reminded him of a Punch and Judy show. The Judge, after hearing both parties, suggested that the point be left unsettled, and the case proceed.

Mr. Balfour said that as far back as January, 1906, Dr. Chaim Weizmann had convinced him that the Jewish National Home could not be anywhere else but Palestine. “Doubtless there are difficulties, doubtless there are objections—great difficulties, very great objections.” He was sure they could be overcome.

On February 11, 1919, the Food Controller fixed the price of beer at sixpence a pint. The beer-wise public, however, was still dissatisfied, mainly because it considered that beer was not what it had been in its younger days.

On May 7, Lord Fisher drew attention to the cause of the Allied victory. “The reason why we win in spite of incredible blunders is that we are the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. . . . Think of Heligoland, Corfu, Tangier, Minorca, Curaçoa, Java, Sumatra, won by the sword, given up by the pen! And was not the armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month a pure miracle? I know it! Our best general agreed with me.”

Admittedly, those three 11ths are impressive. But the strangely coincident by our own less reverent age is not so readily taken to be divinely arranged. For example, two brothers have risen to equal and parallel greatness; one Scot is Head of the Church of England, and the other of the Church of Scotland. What novelist would ever dare to invent such a ‘coincidence? Yet it happened. We have two Wyndham Lewises, and two Winston Churchills.

Long after the Armistice, the grim list of war casualties continued. And the pre-War generation of non-combatants began to leave the scene. Theodore Roosevelt died, January 6: Sir Wilfrid Laurier, February 17: Nat Gould, July 25: H. L. Doherty, the tennis champion, August 22.

Oxford was fighting to keep compulsory Greek.

There were said to be too many cuckoos in Devonshire. They woke people up too early. One gentleman, roused at unearthly hours, saw four of these birds chasing each other round and round his garden.

On February 27, 1919, Princess Patricia of Connaught was married. On June 21, Lady Diana Manners. In the late summer, the Prince of Wales went to Canada, and became “England’s Orator Prince”. On June 7, at Cambridge some young officers scrapped about the usual trouble, and a young naval lieutenant (who agreed “to take it quietly”) was stripped, tarred and feathered, and tied to a tree. This made a big sensation.

Chapter II

The Beginnings of Sorrows

1

At the end of the last battle of the English Civil War, at Stow-on-the-Wold (March 21, 1646),⁵the defeated King’s commander, white-haired Sir Jacob Astley, seated on a drum with his captors round him, told them, “You have now done your work and may go play, unless you fall out amongst yourselves”.

The Allies in the Great War fell out quickly enough, and America and Britain quickest of all. Yet for a while kind exchanges were the order of the day. An American admiral saluted Great Britain (May, 1919) as “a Fine Old Hen that Hatched the American Eagle”. This was gratifying, as was President Wilson’s confidence that all was going well. “There has already been created”, he said, February 13, “a force which is a very formidable force, which can be rapidly mobilised, and which will be very effective when mobilised—namely, the moral force of the world.” He presented to British journalists, to be auctioned for their less fortunate members, a copy of his Fourteen Points, specially signed by himself.

By February, however, the British were noticing American business and its offensive in South American countries. The Hearst press was charging this country with commercial aggression, aggravated by ingratitude. Britain was “resorting to methods not easily understood from a country which America helped to win the war”. British vessels, it was alleged, left New York with half cargoes of ballast, rather than carry American goods for which European neutrals were clamouring. Telegrams to Scandinavian countries were said to suffer an average delay of ten days, and the American censor said there was no delay at his end. England was accused of vicious propaganda against American merchant and passenger lines.

France was arguing as to whether Germany’s colonies should be taken under mandate or in full ownership. South Africa was emphatic that German South-West Africa should be the latter; in France all agreed on one point, that the same principle should operate in every case. “Pertinax” was angry when a Commission was sent to Syria to consult the inhabitants. His own mind was clear. “French Islam ought to reign at Damascus, just as British Islam will reign at Cairo, Mecca, and Baghdad”.

In April, the Hungarians were reported to be scornful of the Paris Conference, dragging its weary length. They may have been.

Looking back on the period, two things strike the reader who has lived through the period since: the casual indifference of the people of Great Britain to the Continent in dissolution at their doors, and the utter feebleness and vacillation of their Government, possessed of so overwhelming a majority.

The Colonel Blimps had won an even exceptional representation, and kept sending the Premier resolutions chiding him for his culpable kindness to Germany.

Mr. Bonar Law did once or twice turn angrily at bay, and ask how on earth more than Germany possessed was going to be wrung out of her. Here and there an economist raised a timid caveat. Mr. Faithfull Begg thought £6,560,000,000 might fairly be demanded for distribution among the Allied Powers, to be raised from Germany alone, from her “exceedingly valuable natural resources” (January 14, 1919). But he warned the public that it was pitching its expectations too high. “We could not get an A1 indemnity out of C3 resources.” Germany could not pay if she were ruined, and she must be allowed access to raw materials and transport, or “an economic plague spot would be created in Europe, with incalculable results”. Mr. Lloyd George kept on assuring doubters that Germany would pay to the full.

In England, the Triple Alliance of miners, railwaymen and transport workers had now forged ahead of the rest of organised labour. That the great strikes were for so long kept within measure was largely due to Mr. J. H. Thomas, who held back the railwaymen, more moderate than the miners. If they found the House of Commons unsatisfactory, he told them (February 9), “it is only a reflex of your intelligence”. The people had voted these beauties into high places, and they should not do by industrial action what should be done at the ballot box.

There was none of our present-day nonsense about it being “disloyal” to criticise the Government. When Sir S. P. Sinha, the first Indian to serve in a British Government and to enter the House of Lords, was made Under Secretary for India, in January, The Times approved it as “a rare stroke of imagination”, but added, lest the Government be exalted beyond measure, “We wish there were more of them for what is utterly depressing about the new Government is that so many tired men continue to tread their weary round of office, and sometimes even embark on fresh adventures”. It dubbed them a Government and Parliament of caretakers, waiting until real men arrived. Their handling of Ireland was marked by “evasion and nihilism in high places”, and revealed “both the careless irresponsibility with which Mr. Lloyd George handles the gravest problems and the lack of cohesion which marks his Government”. They were about to “file their petition in political bankruptcy”.

Ireland, indeed, was an ever-blackening cloud. At some time between 4.30 and 9 in the evening of February 4, “Eamon De Valera, aged 35, a professor, standing 6 feet 3 inches, and dressed in civilian clothes”—Sinn Fein M.P. for East Clare—escaped with two others from Lincoln Gaol. Two Irish girls of unusual beauty were of great help in charming and outwitting his keepers. Two days later, he was reported to have been seen at Bantry, in a lodging house where he played the piano with such skill that he attracted attention. It was noticed that he did not wear a coat under his greatcoat, and when questioned by Sergeant O’Sullivan he gave the name of Bernard McCarthy. On February 24, an American journalist was taken in a closed car—in a series of closed cars, in fact—with his hat pulled down over his eyes, to interview De Valera, who was flitting nightly from one retreat to another. De Valera told him that violence was inevitable if the Paris Conference “did not take steps to extend self-determination to Ireland”, and that he had his Government organised and ready to take over immediately.

American actions over Ireland incensed British opinion, and were going to incense it much more. A “Commission of Irish Independence” came to Dublin from the United States. A resolution to recognise the Irish Republic was introduced into the Senate, with a very good chance of passing. Sir Edward Carson accused the Senate of effrontery and abetting murder and arson; British journals asked what Americans would say if this country enquired into the Monroe Doctrine’s morality or the political rights exercised by negroes in the Southern States.

President Wilson in Paris refused to see the Commission, and when De Valera was reported to be seeking passage to America the Washington Immigration authorities gave assurances that unless he had proper passports he would be deported back. These passports the British Government was determined not to grant. Nevertheless, De Valera reached America, remained there, and received tremendous welcomes, and raised a large Irish Republican loan. In theatres, the artistes sang, to popular applause:

“When Ireland is free,
The whole world will have a jubilee.”

Nor was Ireland the only disquieting region of the Empire. Egyptian Nationalists were in rebellion. Their desire for self-government was considered natural and up to a point praiseworthy. But Britain had to protect “the voiceless masses”; The Times reminded the dissidents that they should “not forget that in the history of all nations” that had attained it, self-government “has been a long, gradual and at times painful process, which has only been the result of development of the moral and intellectual character of the nation as a whole” (February 14). The Nationalists replied by terrible assassinations of British officers, caught helpless in the train when returning from a holiday visit to Upper Egypt.

Until 1937, the Indian National Congress used to hold its annual meetings round about Christmas. As 1918 entered its final week, it met at Delhi, good-naturedly, and for the last time passed resolutions of loyalty to the Throne, and of appreciation of the valour of the Allied forces. It asked for a declaration of rights (a demand to which in those days, for some reason—possibly study of British history in the schools—the Congress attached much importance), self-government, and commissions in the Indian Army. There was a suggestion to hold the next Congress in London. These proceedings aroused indignation in Britain, and “a distinguished veteran politician” who preferred to remain unknown exclaimed, “God save India from the new Kaisers of the hour!” The Times Correspondent at Delhi thought (January 1, 1919) that it was “impossible to regard the proceedings . . . seriously. . . . It is felt that the Congress has served a useful purpose in showing the Extremists in their true light”. “Only that and nothing more”, as Poe observed.

But in April came news of terrible rioting in city after city, of Europeans caught and murdered, of banks gutted in Amritsar. Afghanistan had declared war and was about to invade the Punjab. Presently there had been some shooting at Amritsar—about two hundred casualties. “Mr. M. K. Gandhi, who again figures conspicuously in the reports, is a misguided and excitable person, who is used by others as a stalking-horse.” He was not “in any real sense dangerous”.

It would be impossible to find in any English journal any hint that something had happened which for all time was to mark a period in British-Indian relations—so that, just as British memories reckon from the Black Hole and Plassey or from the Mutiny, a century later, so Indian memories were to reckon from the day when General Dyer shot down close on two thousand people in Jalianwalabagh Square, and left the wounded to cry and crawl about all night untended. Nor did anyone suspect (not until nearly a year later, when the facts—some of them—were dragged to light) that an event had taken place which was presently to do almost as much as Irish affairs had done, to shatter any American readiness to admit that there might be after all some little difference between British imperialism and other imperialisms. Explain it as you can, the fact remains: the British public were kept in ignorance of what had happened.

Had they known, it is hard to think it would have made much difference. As the Duke of Wellington remarked (December 21, 1805): “The real truth is that the public mind cannot be brought to attend to an Indian subject”; and in 1816 (in a letter to Sir John Malcolm), “The great ones of this country are not interested in India”. “Indian history” (The Times, February 25, 1892) “has never been made interesting to English readers, except by rhetoric.” “The mere mention of the word ‘India’ is guaranteed to empty the smallest lecture-hall in the city” (Oxford saying, 1925).

It never has been possible, and never will be possible, to interest the British public in India. Once in every dozen years an occasional novel, provided it represents British residents as skipping in and out of each other’s beds or is steeped in bogus “mysticism”—or some book that excites sadistic thrills of horror—will have a vogue with “literary circles” and in circulating libraries But India is rarely “news”, and is never front-page news of first importance. (It will be some day.)

In 1919, moreover, the British public were not particularly interested in any happenings outside these islands. As they saw things, they had done their job by Europe, and wanted to get on with their own life, and to leave foreigners to sort themselves out, and to set their own foolish affairs in such order as was possible. As to our own Government, that Government did not know what it was doing. It was rather worried about Bolshevism, “a curse in comparison with which German militarism would have been a blessing”.

The “Russians”, by which was meant the anti-Bolshevist forces, were reported to be winning victories. Mr. Lloyd George and his colleagues could not make up their minds what course to take. He told the Commons (February 12) that he thought the suggested policy of “letting the Bolshevist fire burn itself out a brutal policy”. Yet we did not want to embark on a fresh war. “We thought we would try the experiment of summoning these people” (the anti-Bolshevist groups and armies) “to see whether it was possible to have some accommodation with them which would enable order to be restored in Russia. Such a course is by no means unknown on the North-West Frontier in India, and with brigands to deal with and assassins. When there is turbulence amongst tribes there they are summoned very often by our Commissioners to see whether some sort of order can be restored.” When the Bolshevists realised that the sahibs were angry, they would know the game was up and that they must behave. It was always so on the frontier. It would always be so on any frontier. So we thought—in 1919.

We had provided the White Russians with arms therefore—“pretty much the whole of their equipment”, setting the example which Italy and Germany have recently followed in Spain. This proved, after all, insufficient, and in April an expeditionary force was sent to Archangel. The Premier comforted the House and the nation with tidings (to be often repeated in the next twenty years) that Bolshevism was tottering. A British working man had just returned after five years in Russia, where he had been getting the jolly salary of £150 a week. But then—butter cost him £12 a lb., and sugar £8!

2

The nation still abounded in pockets of sanity, and by degrees those who inhabited these pockets raised their voices.

The Navy was quicker than the Army in drawing up its list of War Criminals—71 in all, including at their head Admiral Tirpitz; the names were to be sent to the German Government, with a demand for extradition.

In July, the Premier announced in the House of Commons that the Kaiser’s trial would be in London. This very much astonished the American Peace Delegation in Paris, who had assumed it would of course be in Geneva.

Immediately British voices protested, and many of the protests came from Conservatives. Why should our country be the jailor, perhaps the hangman, for all Europe? In Europe the habit had sprung up (in the last few years of isolation and disentanglement, it has completely died out again, and will not be revived) of appealing to the United States, as representing a Power fairer-minded and more detached, and nobler and more idealistic than the Powers wrangling in Paris. General Hindenburg sent America a message that the proposal to try the Kaiser re-established the ancient vile Roman precedent by which patriotic duty and defence of your country was held to be a crime if you were defeated. (He could not foresee that this very precedent was one day to be re-established by the Nazi administration of his own country.) In England, Lord Ribblesdale spoke for very many when he exclaimed, “I wish to goodness no such provision had ever been inserted in the Treaty of Versailles”. Suppose the Kaiser were acquitted, after a fair trial. It was not inconceivable. Where should we be then, and what kind of fools should we look?

Lord Northcliffe threw himself and his papers into the effort to bring a settlement in Ireland. While in Canada, he expressed a wish for “the future equally happy and prosperous Dominion of Ireland” (June, 1919). “Ireland is our one failure”, The Times asserted (June 18). It did not “regard Sinn Fein as a moral perversion. We look upon it as a crude political theory, which could not long sustain the test of administrative responsibility”. There was a hard and prolonged drive, by British of many shades of political opinion, to obtain peace in Ireland, by the immediate operation of the Home Rule Act (so foolishly held over during the War), and then, when it was seen that this now came too late, by a division of the island into two self-governing portions. All through this period we see our people often coming to wise decisions. Yet always when the decision was too late to be effective.

The Government had a huge majority. But it melted like snow whenever a by-election shone on it. Commander Kenworthy, on his ship in the Humber, was invited to stand as Liberal candidate for Hull, in April. The Government had already lost West Leyton, by a vote turnover of 7,687. Kenworthy accepted, and sailed into battle, telling Hull electors he refused to hoodwink them or to bolster up idiotic expectations of indemnity from Germany. He and his supporters were styled Bolshevists (so early was this a handy term of abuse!). He accepted the name, observing that he understood that it meant “majority”—it was going to prove prophetic in this election! It did. He defeated Lord Eustace Percy, turning a Coalition majority of over ten thousand into a Liberal majority of a thousand. Afterwards, Mr. Asquith, his head bloody but unbowed, presided over the victory celebrations. “We did not go into the War for selfish objects, and we should come out of the Peace with clean hands.” He owned up that the phrase “coupon election” was his, and was unrepentant.

Commander Kenworthy observed of the Russians, that they should be left to work out their own salvation, and our own Parliament of “profiteers and exploiters returned under false pretences” should be jerked back to their job of social reform. An increasing number were thinking this, especially in military and naval ranks.

At last, amid the exasperation of the nation, the Peace discussions came to an end. For long enough the German authorities were obdurate. “These terms”, said Mr. Lloyd George, “are written in the blood of fallen heroes.” He announced that he was going to say, “Gentlemen, you must sign! If you don’t do so in Versailles, you shall do so in Berlin!” The Rhine army got ready to move. Lord Curzon remarked that we still had hold of one weapon, the blockade (a weapon whose effects had stirred our soldiers of the occupation to pity and anger). At last, at last, the Germans scuttled their fleet in Scapa Flow, but signed.

Austria’s turn followed, and her people were stunned by the severity of their punishment. In the War Mr. Lloyd George had pictured Russia’s chivalrous intervention on behalf of Servia, the little brother. “If you lay a hand upon him, I will tear your ramshackle empire limb from limb.” This was now done, though not by Russia, who had retired from the limb-tearing business. But in the throes of the dissolution in which the War ended, Austria’s inhabitants had largely done this themselves, and the Allies accepted a number of accomplished facts.

There were no immediate signs of dissatisfaction with Treaties for which to-day very few dare venture a word of defence. The New York Tribune (not yet the Herald Tribune) voiced a fairly general satisfaction. “Not since Carthage has such a treaty” (as that of Versailles) “been written. In a way not soon to be obliterated is graven the warning—Behold what happened to Germany, and beware! . . . Her release and her acceptance depend on herself, her speed and thoroughness of repentance.” “The sardonic shade of Bismarck”, thought the Philadelphia Ledger, “must marvel at such restraint” as the victors had shown.

Ten years later I overheard two young American professors discussing a newcomer to their staff. “What sort of fellow is he?” “Oh” (scornfully), “he’s the sort of fellow who thinks that Germany began the War.” So far was opinion to travel, under the guidance of Mr. Harry Elmer Barnes and other thinkers.

And in reality the reaction began now. Great Britain claimed for her self-governing Dominions and for India seats on the League of Nations. That settled it for American opinion. “League Makes U.S. Vassal of Britain.” “Devised in Present Form by Britons to Unload Empire Burdens on America.” “League Gives England World Hegemony.” At this point in the post-War world’s history, Great Britain (to adapt a comment in one of Mr. W. W. Jacobs’ most delightful stories) was appointed by American opinion whipping-boy to the rest of the globe “and entered on her new duties without delay”. From now onward, when she swims up into transatlantic notice, it is usually for reasons that come under the general heading of “moral turpitude”.

Nevertheless, whatever their faults and follies, it is very hard for European nations that they have to live in a world which also includes Germany, and at intervals the rulers of that land with much bloodshed and terror remind them of this fact. A lack of magnanimity at the end of the Great War was foolish, and it was accompanied by every possible aggravation of imbecility. Yet it was not altogether unnatural.

Nor was the Treaty as bad as many (and the loudest of all are often those who supported its utmost stringency then, and for many years afterwards) now allege. It did give smothered nations a hope of life again, and in even its dismembering of the Hapsburg Empire it merely recognised the independence of certain countries which had already declared themselves independent and were fighting desperately to preserve that independence.

Politically, it was on the whole the fairest treaty (this is not claiming much) ever drafted after a great struggle; its main error, the refusal to allow Austria to join Germany, was a refusal for which Italy, dreading a mighty enemy on her frontiers, had much responsibility. It was a mistake to take the German colonies; but the Dominions—which were close to these colonies and realised even more than we did that, when well established, as in East Africa, Germany with her usual efficiency could put up a terrible campaign and threaten contiguous countries—opposed their surrender. So did those naval experts who foresaw submarine bases ringing the world and making the Eastern seas a death-trap in future wars. As for the inadequate share of colonial spoils awarded to Italy, Italian policy was partly to blame. For it was on the rampage, trying to collect all it could in Europe, along the Dalmatian coast, Fiume and the rest—lands to which Italy had no title beyond the desire to make the Adriatic an Italian lake on which other peoples plied only by permission—while Africa was allowed to lapse out of sight. Nor has Italian administration of Tripoli given us any reason to feel other than thankful that its empire was not greatly extended—this can be said without forgetting for one minute that at the present moment the British have small cause to feel happy about Kenya and South Africa.

Only the financial and economic provisions of the Treaty were utterly bad, being drafted amateurishly and in defiance of warnings by people who understood something of the limitations of international monetary transactions. But we were all of us more ignorant then than now; and even now, though we know the folly of trying to extract large debts across lofty tariff barriers, we all keep on wishing to do it. Our own public goes on lending vast sums which the receivers will certainly default on (leaving the loans as a debt on the nation whose financiers arranged it), and America goes on feeling that Britain ought to pay her debts, whatever else she leaves undone.

The Treaty and its good have gone now, and the smothered nations are again submerged, or are in the shadow of imminent submergence by a tyranny as ruthless as the world has ever known, in all its millenniums of cruelty and suffering.

Also, as the critics who felt most deeply about the Treaty comforted themselves with reflecting, in the League of Nations with which it was coupled the Treaty contained the medicine which should heal the nations, as the War passions died down and revision became possible. To-day there is a growing consensus of opinion, that if in France and England, or even if in England alone, we had had different Governments during these last twenty years, this would have happened.

The generation which was living when the Treaty was signed were too close to the War to be reasonably expected to be magnanimous (though many wanted to be, but had no power). On May 13, Nurse Cavell was brought back for burial in her native land, and Captain Fryatt on July 7. “The Unknown Warrior” reached England, November 10, and was buried next day (in soil of France) with Foch as a mourner, in the Abbey. Flanders poppies were on sale first in the following year, on Armistice Day.

The War, with the German Treaty signed or near to signing, seemed liquidated. In June, Abyssinia sent a mission to congratulate the victors. On September 11, the British Government decided to evacuate Russian territory. Steel strikes broke out in the United States, September 25. Then, on September 27, after long menace, came the British Railway Strike, bringing with it the dread of sympathetic strikes in the coal and transport unions.

Chapter III

Cleaning up the Débris

1

The great railway strike lasted nine days, during which Mr. J. H. Thomas, reproached as the first Privy Councillor to lead a strike, conducted negotiations towards peace again with skill and temperance.

The public was shocked, because the railwaymen had been regarded as the moderating element in the Triple Alliance. They proved true to this reputation. They took advertising space in the newspapers, and appealed to the public not to misunderstand their case and not to force them to sink below a pre-War level of wages and subsistence. They reminded their fellows that the Premier had promised them “a Land Fit for Heroes to Live in” (that phrase which was so soon to be generally interpreted as having meant “a Land which only Heroes could endure to live in”). The machinists at Carmelite House struck in sympathy, which very much shocked the right-thinking—that one section of the working-class community should consider it had any call to support another, and make an allied battle out of what should have been a lonely struggle. The machinists protested against the treatment of the National Union of Railwaymen by the Northcliffe papers, and Lord Northcliffe, who was sensitive to criticism by Liberal and Labour elements, defended himself in tones close to tears.

The usual kind of irrelevances were brought into the argument, but not very fiercely or in large measure. The few horses still kept by big railway companies to deliver goods were left unfed by the strikers, and a community animal-loving where dogs and horses are concerned cried out in indignation, and young women flew to their rescue. This was a good thing, which one is glad to be sure will always happen. Still, since the railwaymen were fighting for livelihood, emphasis on their wickedness in not remaining to do the stables work was misplaced. Another irrelevance, to be heard again and far more loudly, was that the strikers were “attacking the community”, were trying to force their will on the Government and the employers not by the ballot but by inflicting suffering on the general public.

The strike did, as a matter of fact, raise a problem which is still with us. We have democracy. That is, we elect at intervals parliaments which usually manage to be lopsided, owing to the party which is strategically placed having chosen a moment or a catchword which sweeps them in by a large majority. At any rate, that is what all parties try to achieve. Sometimes they fail, by hanging on too long in terror, until their time practically runs out—this is what the Balfour administration did in 1905, when they went out with a resounding bump. Yet even this illustration supports the thesis, for the Liberals, owing to the exasperation felt on so many grounds, then gained an exaggerated majority in the new House of Commons, a source of weakness and final destruction, and not of strength.

Having elected its Parliament, the public proceeds to repent at leisure, and to find itself powerless against the creation of its own votes. A Government which in 1935 was elected on its appeal for power to support collective security—the fact is not in dispute—subsequently declined to budge one inch in that direction, and no one could do anything about it. What is the community to do in such circumstances? The Coalition Parliament of 1919 was despised as hardly any other has been, the Government was vacillating beyond precedent. But they were there, and it would need scores of lost by-elections to nibble their strength away. The railwaymen struck therefore, and for the moment the public was frightened. This was a strike which involved not merely a few pits in Lanarkshire or Wales but the life of every part of the land.

The strike was of interest, also, as the attempt of a section to tackle a problem which the Government kept on shelving. Money and prices had been left enormously inflated by the War’s long-continued prodigality. Prices, everyone agreed (and the Government kept on saying it), must fall. But there was no co-ordinated effort to see how and in what degree they fell—and fell all round. The railwaymen refused to be selected for a reduction in wages, while other costs remained up.

Two facts made this strike significant. It was a rehearsal for the unsuccessful General Strike of 1926. In these ways. The public flew to its own assistance—young men and women rushed to drive cars and lorries, and even trams and trains; a few railway services were kept up after a fashion, with railwaymen derisively watching the amateur engine-drivers and afterwards reporting their findings to not unfriendly gatherings of the general public. “So I ran to the next bridge, to see what he would do there. I kep’ up with him easy!” The public quickly recovered from its first fright, and found that with butter and sugar strictly rationed and the young driving cars and motor-cycles it seemed to be not so badly off. It gained a confidence in the elasticity of its normal organisation, which it still keeps and which is certainly fallacious. For the Railway Strike was not a good test, any more than the half-hearted General Strike was; the strikers were too soft-hearted, had too shaky a conscience, and kept on appealing too tearfully not to be misunderstood or hardly judged.

Secondly, and far the most important result, for the first time the motor vehicle’s potentiality stood revealed, to an astounded community. Shouts went up that the car was at last “fool proof”; “driving a motor is literally child’s play”. It was not a matter for experts, as had been imagined; it did not require skill, as driving a railway engine did. The public was within a short distance of the low swift car, with a thin-faced young gentleman or engaging young lady lolling half back, cigarette in mouth, and shooting in and out of other traffic, a lightning procession in spirals (and damn any fool who does not jump in time to the honk honk). Perhaps it is a pity that this great light on the ease that attaches to motor propulsion did not dawn more gradually. Anyway, the car revealed its full stature (this is the last time I shall apologise, or half apologise, for mixed metaphors) and the Nuffield Age had arrived. And, appropriately, it was the railway that ushered it in. Lighter cars at an approximate cost of £500 came in about the end of 1920, and cars “of motor cycle type” at a cost of £170 to £300.

On October 5, Mr. Thomas, leaving Whitehall, waved his hand to the crowd and called out, “It’s all over, boys! Work restarts to-morrow”. Immense was the general relief; and the outside world, greatly impressed, said, “How well and with what quiet good-tempered efficiency these British do things! Nothing here of ‘the red fool fury of the Seine!’” The praise (even if given as fully as our papers reported) was not undeserved. “We have not won a victory in the sense that the Government is beaten”, said Mr. Thomas, “We did not want to beat the Government.” An “honourable settlement” had been obtained. Wages were to be stabilised for one year, until September 30, 1920, and no adult worker was to get less than 51 shillings a week, so long as the cost of living did not sink below 110 per cent above the pre-War level.

In the common judgment, from now onwards Mr. Thomas stood out as the one Labour leader who was essentially sane, moderate and patriotic. Nor had this opinion been won in any manner to which attached disgrace or disloyalty to his cause. However we may think of him in later years, we must remember this.

2

Whatever his political opinions, I think no intelligent person could look over the record of these years without disgust. We have known no Parliament more contemptible and selfish, no Government feebler or with fewer convictions—a hard saying, in the light of the years which have followed, but one that is true, or was true until the last two years.

They yammered about war profiteering and a capital levy. Britain had a War debt of nearly £8,000,000,000, of which £6,000,000,000 was held by British investors, which meant that £300,000,000 was paid in interest yearly inside the country, leading to financial demoralisation, to the sense (among those who received this vast sum) that money was abundant, and to a general slackening of the will to create real wealth and to export it abroad and thereby pay for imports which the less fortunate classes must have, to keep up a tolerable standard of living. The few saner financiers pressed for a voluntary abandonment of much of this huge burden. “Let us frankly recognise that by no financial jugglery can” (the speaker meant “should”) “sacrifices be confined to the battlefield. They must be fairly shared by the whole nation”. Three or four men who had done not too badly out of the War made voluntary contributions of £150,000 or £100,000 to the public funds—20 per cent was the usual cut at which they assessed themselves. But the practice did not become fashionable.

On June 3, 1920, when the Cabinet showed signs of belatedly coming to a decision to take some of the profits, a group of Unionist M.P.s, led (of course) by Sir Frederick Banbury, settled flatly any notion that they could do that. The rebels presented an ultimatum, “convinced that a levy on capital in any shape or form would be disastrous to the commerce, industry and trade of the country, and would cause widespread unemployment”. They would vote and act in every way against the Cabinet if it taxed War wealth. Conservative papers of the higher class supported them, and Adam Smith was cited as having settled the question long ago, when “with singular skill and felicity” he “laid down the principle that income should be taxed, and not the capital which produced it” (The Times, June 5, 1920). Mr. Churchill and Mr. Austen Chamberlain would have defied this opposition, but the Premier gave way, as he was to give way on everything.

“The era of 1,000-million Budgets” The Times had added, “must come to an end. We cannot afford them.” Lord Rothermere and his press daily assailed “frenzied finance” and this “Government of wasters”. Critics pointed out that nearly twelve months after the Armistice, in August, 1919, the Government was still spending 700 millions on the combatant services.

But all this was a brook that lost itself in the bog of vacillation and uncertainty. The Government accepted the sporadic gifts of rich men cursed with a community conscience, and proceeded to grant equal sums to many distinguished soldiers and sailors and to start on the long discussions of how many thousand pounds should be given to this and that person who had contributed an idea which had finally merged with other ideas, to result in the tank or some kind of gun or other device. It is very unjust to say that Governments cannot be generous. They can be very generous—when they find fit recipients.

In these years England was a rowdy place. The air was full of voices, all having their say. Every suggestion, every conceivable idea or solution, was flung up. Heligoland should be made a bird sanctuary. “A Truce of God” should be proclaimed in Ireland. Propaganda should be started in India, and vigorously pushed, to show the peasant what he did not realise, and surely would realise if it were once pointed out to him, that he was now in so high a state of ease and opulence because of his excellent Government and must not listen to agitators. On November 3, Lord Fisher, pointing out that after a year of peace 96,000 civilians were still employed in Admiralty establishments, for the first time raised the lion roar which he was to copyright and repeat at frequent intervals. “Sack the lot!”

Noisy vacuity did not lack its pius vates. Tennyson urged a politically-minded friend to

“shoot into the dark
Arrows of lightning! I will stand and mark!”

Sir William Watson, once a good poet but now merely a master of excruciating platitude and doubtful commonplace, applauded his obstreperous friend:

“The anger of the sea is on your lips,
The laughter of the sea is in your eye.”

However, no one was really paying much attention to what anyone else was saying. So it did not matter very much that few people were saying anything to the purpose.

Whilst we disported ourselves, like a Kiwanis club boosting their general prosperity and parading through some city suitably impressed and admiring, the international prospect was appalling.

Central Europe was in famine, and already the international comradeship of noble-minded men and women which has been one of the few compensations of the two dreadful decades through which we have lived was being formed. Students were holding out hands of help to students of less happy lands, and were proving that if our stars had not been so cross and thwarting we might have been a decent people. The posters of the “Save the Children” Fund and those showing Armenia’s martyrdom appealed to a casual but not hard-hearted nation. They were better than their Government, which showed its little sense repeatedly, and not least when it kept on expressing surprise that Germany, undefeated and sullenly recalcitrant with every fibre of her being, should co-operate with Russian Bolshevists in their more western wars. The Supreme Council even asked (October 9, 1919) the German Government, which knew all about the Allied blockade, to assist in a blockade of Russia, while from month to month the British and French were infuriatedly discussing and seeking facts on German disarmament and treaty evasion, and Foch was wanting to march beyond the Rhine and to Berlin.

Germany never accepted one iota of the treaty, and always and all along she evaded all that she could evade, and disarmament most of all. The counter-revolution began at once, with the Armistice, as did preparations for the war to overturn the war’s results. In 1921, there were 400 political murders in Germany. “It was the golden age of the ‘Feme’.”

Alexander Korda has told me of an experience of his in Vienna. He looked up a friend in one of those cafés which these wretched scarecrows haunted, their homes having vanished or become too full of grimness. He found him, cuffs frayed and clothes and general appearance showing every mark of destitution, reading Clausewitz. Korda expressed surprise. “Ah, you think,”, said his friend, “that the wars are over! They are just beginning! And I am going to be on top of the tide, and not beneath it. Yes, I am studying war.” This student became, in a very few years, a Chinese warlord.

The men who made the Nazi Revolution have been continuously fighting, since-1918 to the present day. There was always a war on somewhere, near Riga or in Poland or Lithuania. Presently came that cruellest of wars before the Abyssinian and Spanish wars, that in the Chaco. And if there were no war, then there was a putsch or attempted putsch at home. This is the mentality which to-day casts its black triumphant shadow over Europe. The world has long been run by men who for twenty years have never had a revolver out of their hands or murder out of their minds.

It would be tedious to detail the miscellaneous warrings of Europe and the Far East: how Poles and Bolshevists swayed to and fro, how Warsaw seemed certain to fall and was saved, how Denikin and Wrangel and many others received help and failed in the end, and how some of them were finally liquidated, like Admiral Koltchak (February 7, 1920), by a firing squad. It would be equally tedious to detail the miscellaneous warrings inside Germany and in other European countries. In these years a contempt of human life became widespread (far more so than in the War, when some dignity still attached to violent death) and the way was rapidly prepared for that general loss of belief in the value and rights of individuality which is now openly proclaimed in the totalitarian countries and has sunk as a corrosion into the spirits of every one of us, even in Britain and America.

In these years also, we squandered our powers of indignation, we had so many things to be indignant over. There were the pitiful and atrocious circumstances of the murder of the Tsar and his family, which came out fully, by August, 1920; there was the story of Rasputin. There were the terrible Marash massacres in the first months of 1920; the Turks (the Allies being still—it is incredible to recall—merely in the approach stages of the Peace with them, for the War which had ended much more than a year earlier) took advantage of the delays and glutted their anger by killing scores of thousands more of Armenians. From now on, it was certain that never again could any European country protect a weaker people. It is a pity that we do not see the lurid illumination in which our deeds, or our lack of ability to put deeds through, flare up in the sight of the world outside these islands; a pity, too, that of all nations we have the shortest and most brittle memories. We recall nothing, after it is six months old, except dimly and vaguely.

The Armenian massacres were filmed, in “The Auction of Souls,” by an American producer. Lord Gladstone thought that it was “not a film to be seen either for recreation or for amusement”, but nevertheless, “while the film fell far short of the hideous unspeakable reality”, it would bring home our duty to Armenia. This it did not do, however, for after a deal of hesitation and much semi-public showing it was not splashed on the general vision. It showed Armenian girls being stripped and flogged: buried alive: dragged at the heels of Turkish horses: and as a climax, a group crucified, with vultures waiting to tear their eyes out. Among those who thought the picture too terrible and sensational was Rider Haggard.

3

Meanwhile, the usual course of civilised life went on—in two or three fortunate lands. To very many, the most important problem was the Whaddon Hunt dispute. I believe that I could prove that The Times, for example, published more leading articles on this than on events in the Empire, and the juxtaposition of these leaders was often grotesque in grimness. The dispute had begun in July, 1917 (when one might have thought that even the British sporting classes might have had something else to exercise their minds on), and it continued for more than five years. The Hunt had two packs, owning separate, and angrily separate, allegiances. All through 1920, news from this front was printed side by side with news from the agony in Ireland, and solemn leaders were published, not once but repeatedly (I must get this fact home to you) alongside of leaders on—other matters. Men whose names carried weight wrote as portentously on this theme as on the murders of Black Sunday or the massacre of Amritsar. We belong to a very silly kind of animal, and a great deal of what has come to us (and is about to come to us) has been earned. “Vous l’avez voulu, Georges Dandin.”

The Douglas-Pennant case dragged on and on, and the Government seemed to think it was a fairly interesting spectacle but no concern of theirs.

It must not be thought that all folk were equally careless. A Frenchman called Landru, who for a long while was examined at intervals about a crop of murders ascribed to him,⁶ on October 22, appeared to be not his usual self of composure. The judge asked him about it sympathetically. “You seem preoccupied, Landru.” “True, monsieur, I am, and who could help being so? Alas! my thoughts are engrossed by the electoral situation of my unhappy country.” He sighed deeply. Such patriotism in the shadow of the guillotine to which he finally went deserves commemoration.

On November 11, 1919, the first Two Minutes’ Silence was observed. At night a Victory Ball was held. “The lady who came in as an aeroplane was the most original but not the most attractive figure. . . . About 11.30 there was a stir in the hall when Lady” (never mind her name) “was wheeled in in a bath chair, looking luminously beautiful in a Pompadour dress, and made the round of the ball apologising profusely to those whose movements her progress disconcerted. . . . One thought how much milk had been earned for the poor babies of the poorer centres . . . though perhaps few people of the groups that one-stepped remembered them at all” (The Times, November 12).

There were some people, however, who had other thoughts than of masquerading and waltzing on this commemoration day; Mr. Alfred Noyes spoke the thoughts of more than himself, when he pictured “shadows of dead men” watching

“Grapple and whirl
Ox-eyed matron
And slim white girl.

Fat wet bodies
Go waddling by . . .
Gripped by satyrs
In white and black,
With a fat wet hand
On the fat wet back . . .

‘Making earth better,
Or something silly,
Like whitewashing hell
Or Piccadilly,
They’ve a sense of humour,
These women of ours,
These exquisite lilies,
These fresh young flowers!’

‘Pish,’ said a statesman
Standing near,
‘I’m glad they can busy
Their thoughts elsewhere!
We mustn’t reproach them.
They’re young, you see’.
‘Ah,’ said the dead men,
‘So were we!’”

On October 20, the first National Rat Week started. Next day, the generals and admirals who had been ennobled for War services took their titles.

Two days later, in France, where from time to time they were still executing traitors, Lenoir was shot at Vincennes for intelligence and trading with the enemy.

It was a queer time, and in the Disposer of Affairs (if there is such an intelligence) was revealed daily a sardonic humour as full of slow jesting as Hardy ascribes to him.

We have grown so accustomed to Lady Astor, now credited (and not least by transatlantic opinion) with mysterious oversight of this island’s destinies, that it is hard to realise how recent was her arrival in politics, and that until a very few years ago no one was ever haunted by fear of what “Cliveden” might be up to! On October 26th, Lady Astor stood for the seat in Plymouth vacated by her husband’s elevation, and one of the most influential and in every way prominent figures of our post-War world had risen above the horizon.

It was a star that desired only a place in which to twinkle with graceful modesty, that at first announced its rising. She came “as a substitute for Lord Astor, who, even his opponents would admit, was one of the highest-minded men in the House of Commons”. She had, however, claims in her own right. She “knew the mind and heart of the British Tommy and Tar far better than the other candidates”. It is quite possible that she did. It is not a high claim.

An evening paper presently reported that she was “laughing her way into Parliament”. This impression became general, in so much that The Times had to correct it. “Lady Astor can be very serious, and is by no means the frivolous creature which some” supposed her. She was elected, November 28, by a 5,203 majority, and on the day that she took her seat two women journalists managed to push themselves into the Press gallery, hitherto a masculine preserve. She made her first speech, February 24, 1920, on the subject of drink and the working man’s addiction to it. A working man, to the amusement of the House, she defined as “anything from a countess to a docker”.

It needed courage, which the noble lady has in plenty, to enter that particular House of Commons. She has herself described them as resembling a pack of wolves. The speaker immediately before her, a retired Indian Civil Servant of outstanding truculence whenever anyone suggested any extension of rights for the natives of the land which he had served so well, concluded with that notorious jest of his, in so poor taste. “I see there is a rod in pickle for me. But I am prepared to kiss the rod.”

It seemed a queer anticlimax to the heroic and savage struggles, so long continued, to win the vote for women, that the first woman M.P., and for a long time the only woman M.P., should be a fantastically wealthy American, from the most sporting circles of aristocratic Virginia. Her success encouraged Lady Rhondda to claim a seat in the House of Lords, on the right of the viscountcy which came to her by special remainder from her father. Her claim was finally turned down; every door was not going to be opened to women, even though it is hard to see what harm they could do in the House of Lords. However, they were made eligible for the Victoria Cross (June 18, 1920), and the University of Oxford granted them academic equality (February 17, 1920). Cambridge was to haver and waver for a long while yet.

In November, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity attracted general notice. “Pussyfoot” Johnson invaded England, to advocate Prohibition, which was proving such a success in the United States. London medical students captured him, burst bags of flour over him and hurt his back badly with sticks. They paraded him in triumph, under banners suitably inscribed.

“Mr. Pussyfoot, miaow.
Mr. Pussyfoot, miaow.
Fancy coming from America to try
To make Old England dry!
Uncle Sam
Stood it like a lamb,
But if you think we are going to allow
Any crank
Of a Yank
To put us on the water tank,
Mr. Pussyfoot, miaow-wow!”

“London does not realise”, said one of the frolic’s leaders, “that it is a Varsity town. We think that a rag now and then will show the country that we are alive.”

Mr. Johnson lost the sight of an eye, and the incident, while no doubt bringing home to London its Varsity status, did nothing to assist our fast deteriorating relations with America. The sufferer behaved with a dignity and generosity beyond all praise. “It’s all right, boys! Don’t you worry! I know you never meant it.” The remorseful students called him “a good sport”.

Government announced that after November 20, 1919, the “dole”, now and for some years bitterly condemned in Conservative circles, would be discontinued except to ex-Service men. This time, Labour interposed a veto; and Government agreed that it had spoken too soon.

Jews were having a worse time in England than before or since—in reasonably civilised centuries, that is. With gross unfairness, it was continually said that the Bolshevist revolution was their work, and that owing to their international habits members of the same family had kept opposed allegiances during the War. In December, 1919, Sir Alfred Mond brought a libel action, and was awarded £5,000 damages, against a man who had alleged: “Sir Alfred Moritz Mond is a traitor; he allotted shares to Huns during the War.” Defending Counsel asked, “Are you aware that Christianity is the basis of the Constitution of this country?” But the question was disallowed.

This autumn and winter of 1919 people were laughing over The Young Visiters, and Miss Daisy Ashford was going about giving readings from it. Other people looked into old bureaux, and discovered similar juvenile masterpieces. Miss Ida Molesworth gave readings from The Jellous Governess. The scene rose on the husband reading the Strand Magazine. His wife remarks that she wishes they had a baby. “Elizabeth, it is the one thing I have been wishing. I would like to adopt one.” There is a knock at the door, and a baby is deposited. They ask its sex, but the doctor says he does not know.

Books with pity for your foes found a quick response, in the hearts of men and women whom the War had not demoralised (as the peace was to demoralise them presently). Chief of these was Johan Bojer’s The Great Hunger. “I sowed corn in my enemy’s field”—that was the sentence which sold the book (as one sentence can sometimes sell a book).

What about other literature? There were many War memoirs, and the British public was astonished when they discovered (and the ruffian rubbed it in by two subsequent articles, which were reprinted over here, translated) how deeply Von Tirpitz hated them. But this, like everything else that belonged to our peace, was quickly forgotten. Our peace, we thought, was safe above all threatening.

Many of the writers still active and famous were publishing books. Some merely dithered; and most wrote tentatively, and in a transition from the War excitements and general mood, they had not found their selves. It would be unkind to give examples.

John Masefield published Reynard the Fox. “The gathering of the clans”, observed the Provost of Oriel to an undergraduate, “is as good as Virgil.” “Virgil!” sniffed the young gentleman. “I should think so!” Virgil was not in much esteem with the post-War students. “We have decided that Virgil is played out”, announced Mr. “Dickon” Hughes to Mr. Percy Simpson, the Ben Jonson authority.

Most people who have read this poem of Masefield’s keep three pictures—“the gathering of the clans” (of course), but even more so, the hunted fox and the relief of his final escape, as he lies deep in a safe burrow. It seemed queer that the Times Literary Supplement saw in it the “epic of the soil and those who gallop over it”, and The Times “a sunny picture of rustic life, as jovial and full of the zest of life as Burns’s Hallowe’en. . . . Mr. Masefield, in his more objective moments, can be singularly attractive”.

Other books? The big seller was If Winter Comes. Then there was Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant, published January 30, 1920. In 1920, Colonel Repington began his astounding book reissue of his War diaries, which ought to have shown us what war is (for some people) if anything could. “We amused ourselves in forming a Cabinet of ladies, as all the political males appeared to us to be exhausted. . . . Some of the ladies refused to serve with others, but we ignored their protests. Lady Diana would go to India because she had fair hair, and for the sake of contrast. Got home after a crush in the Tube. The platforms five deep with women and children taking refuge” (February 17, 1918). “We all praise the past above the present, but it occurs to me that the six ladies whom I have met at lunch and dinner to-day would hold their own, and probably win the palm, in any aristocracy of any age and country, for looks, grace and charm” (June 28, 1917).

“So that’s your Diary—that’s your private mind . . .
The world discovers where you lunched and dined
On such and such a day, and what was hinted
By ministers and generals far behind
The all-important conflict, carnage-tinted.”⁷

In July, Mrs. Asquith’s Autobiography began serial publication in the Sunday Times. When it appeared in book form (November 4) The Times gave it a full four-column review.

The noblest of the War memoirs was Cardinal Mercier’s, telling of Belgium’s long martyrdom. Of other books—in June came the last two volumes of Monypeny and Buckle’s six-volume Disraeli, also Miss Macaulay’s Potterism. John Freeman was awarded the Hawthornden, and Mr. Clement Shorter looked into the matter and expressed his disgust. Dr. Marie Stopes published Radiant Motherhood, and in November came Mr. T. S. Eliot’s The Sacred Wood.

Not yet The Waste Land. Those who had fought in the War had not yet discovered in print how horrible an expense of spirit in a waste of shame it had all been. War books, and they were many, were decorous and informative. And over all of us shone still the sense of lightening which had come with the finish of the grisly business. It was true it was still being said with guns and bayonets and firing squads, just outside our islands—what of that then (as what of it to-day?)?

“The Kafirs also (whom God curse!)
Vex one another night and day.
Wilt thou have pity on all these?
No! nor on this dead dog, I say!”⁸

The poets were as cheerful as anyone else, were still “Georgians”.

In September, 1920, was issued the first Book of Public School Verse, edited by Hugh Lyon (now Headmaster of Rugby), Richard Hughes, and Martin Gilkes. J. C. Squire started the London Mercury, and for a while reigned as king in Parnassus, handing out the laurels where he thought they went by desert—a jovial monarch.

Sedition raised its voice presently, and complained of having to read “Squire on Shanks and Shanks on Squire”, and talked much of “log-rolling” (of which God knows, we have seen as much in the last twenty years as in the whole of our literary history): found also a lack of high poetic quality in the poetry produced under the London Mercury star:

“Mercury of old, ’twas said,
Had wingèd heels and wingèd head.
Our modern Mercury, by God!
Though light of head is leaden shod!”⁹

Yet if the accepted poets appeared by our later gloomy standards more cheerful “than bard beseems”, weren’t we all cheerful? Poets (on whom be peace!) have a right to be in the forefront of festival. Robert Graves published (1920) Country Sentiment. The voice of the turtle was the only voice that was heard in the land. The “literary public”, the silliest (except one) of all our coteries and “publics”, does not realise even now how much of what it styles “significant poetry” goes by sheer fashion, to be hooted out of court ten (no, five) years later. Squire has at least kept to the fashion which was his by nature.

“Plain Horatio Bottomley” invented a sport which gave its inventor the keenest delight (until he was given other things to ponder over). It was baiting the Poet Laureate in the House of Commons. What masterpieces had Dr. Robert Bridges produced recently, to earn his canary¹⁰ and salary? He took to looking the work up for himself; and the poems produced by Bridges for special occasions (they are rather many, as a matter of fact) are not his best work. Bottomley would sometimes quote them in John Bull. “Take firm hold of the arms of your chair and hold tight while I read.” Bridges got into trouble with The Times also (October 11, 1920), for acting as secretary to a memorial signed by Oxford dons, approaching German scholars to re-establish “reconciliation” and co-operation. He was told quite clearly how mistaken he was—this “nauseating babble about common spiritual ideas”. Against his usual custom (“I don’t care—a—d-damn”), he defended himself in a long letter which was accorded Printing House Square’s smallest type. He was in disgrace, and this was the lowest point he ever reached.

Chapter IV

After the Versailles Treaty. National and International Matters

1

After settling the German and Austrian treaties, our rulers might have thought they were in for a season of calm weather. They were not.

“From the moment of the Versailles Treaty”, said a close associate of the Premier to me, “Lloyd George was always trying to get away from it.” That is so. The historian of the future, looking back on the last twenty years, is going to see the men and women who lived through them as a poor lot, as both their literature and their political actions show. Yet our own people, before they sank into their present utter despair and apathy, more often than any other people showed a knowledge of what was the right course. But our rulers, lacking courage, when met by opposition have slunk back, and have given way to a recalcitrant ally, a menacing enemy, or the greed of vested interests at home or in some unsavoury nook in the colonies.

The Government, which had got in on promises to squeeze the German orange till the pips squeaked, to hang the Kaiser, to make a land fit for heroes, when they tried to slide away from their follies found themselves blocked by people more resolute than they were. And the British had formed their habit of to-day, of not bothering about what their rulers were doing. The latter could get away, and easily, with anything they chose, from costly expeditions in Russia to a lavish disposal of well paid and unnecessary jobs at home. We were under a dictatorship, and the mere fact that it was a slipshod and bewildered dictatorship does not alter this fact. It would have been better for the ultimate reputation of practically every first-rank politician of those days, whether Liberal or Conservative, if he had died before he entered upon them. “The Prime Minister”, said Lord Robert Cecil (April 29, 1922), “goes to Genoa”— which was just then the Conference rendezvous—“with an olive branch in one hand and a thick stick, in the shape of reparations, in the other.”

A Labour Delegation visited Russia, and reported that “the present Russian Government should be unconditionally recognised. It has shown its stability by resisting for two and a half years the many efforts to destroy it. It has repeatedly shown its will to peace”. The British Government, beginning to realise that it had “got into a spin” over a country whose leaders were not the utter incompetents, either in war or politics, that they had been so often made out to be, wanted to reopen trade. There were difficulties: British financiers’ claims against Siberian gold mines, and for lost or confiscated property, and loans made under the tsarist régime. When these were raised, the Russians had the impudence to put up counterclaims, for expenses to which they had been put by the Allies’ generous help to men seeking to beat down Bolshevism and bring the old days back! Still, all this sort of thing is the ordinary chitchat of diplomatic argument, and would have been got round. Russia was passing into the grip of famine, and the “Save the Children” movement presently had another national agony on their hands (it helps self-respect now, to remember that our people contained then, as we do to-day, other groups than politicians, and these have kept alive a faith in our magnanimity). There was a Red Cross conference at Geneva in September, 1921, and Dr. Nansen was sent to Moscow.

Our Government’s feeble stirrings were quashed on the home front, and not by Bolshevist intransigence. The Times (November, 1919) issued a penny pamphlet, “The Horrors of Bolshevism”. “If there is any profit it will be spent on propaganda.” Russia was starving, and our Government were for quietly lifting their blockade. The attempt was detected. United States opinion, which was then not quite sane about anything “Red”, scolded us angrily. A description of the Premier, made earlier by the New York Times and much appreciated, comparing him to a Rocky Mountain goat—an animal which apparently skips from pinnacle to pinnacle and has no ability to make a stop anywhere—was eagerly revived. For some reason, politicians are sensitive about zoological comparisons.

“Tainted gold” was shouted wildly whenever keen eyes discovered our Government trying to sneak back to its project of a trade agreement with Russia. English hands must be kept clean.

The Daily Herald, which was then a Socialist paper, was charged with having received financial help from Russia. No one worries about tainted gold to-day; we have lived into a time when we realise that any sort of gold is desperately hard to get our clutch on, and that anyway the gold is not going to amount to anything to make a song about. But the outcry was then sufficient to make us drop the notion of normal relations with Russia, and to relapse into the line of least resistance.

Hindenburg was still Germany’s hero, and the always simmering rumours of her secret arming were soundly based, and Governments knew this. But they preferred to trust to luck—to the passage of time—to anything—rather than to get to grips with the fact that in the end reparations could not be wrung out of a nation on the scale they demanded, and least of all out of a nation as obstinate and strong as the Germans were. Blocked in one direction, the Germans meant to break out in another. In the summer of 1921, it was noticed that everywhere in Germany was a tremendous interest in aviation. They were the first people to take up gliding seriously.

During the last few years, France has been the satellite of Great Britain in foreign affairs, but eighteen years ago and for a long time Great Britain was tied to the tail of French policy, and dragged wherever it went. In each case, it has been desperately bad for the whole world.

In the spring of 1921, a plebiscite was taken in Silesia, as promised in the Versailles Treaty, to decide which parts were to go to Poland and which to Germany. Unfortunately, certain districts that were rich in minerals plumped hard for Germany. France came down firmly against the decision, and the Entente rocked in a storm. Mr. Lloyd George spoke frankly. “With all respect, I would say to the French Press that the habit of treating every expression of Allied opinion which does not coincide with their own as an impertinence is fraught with mischief” (May 18, 1921). “The children of the treaty”, he said (using a Scripture reference which would be lost on those he was addressing, for the Bible is not the familiar book in France which it is here, or used to be twenty years ago), “cannot be allowed to break crockery in Europe with impunity. Somebody must place a restraining hand on them, otherwise there will be continual trouble.” The Treaty, he added, must be applied justly, whether its terms happened to be for or against Germany.

France insisted that the matter must be referred to the Supreme Council. “Pertinax” was very very angry with us. Silesia passed into civil war. The Silesian Partition remained a source of friction between Britain and France, and relations were particularly inflamed in the late summer (August 12).

Our reputation was not helped by the publication of Mr. Robert Lansing’s book on The Peace Negotiations, showing the reactions of one influential and disgusted American. One thing that British opinion has never understood is that if we go in with crooks or opinionated idiots in a fright (and therefore acting from the narrowest views of their own interests), the whole world, and America most of all, will blame us solely. This is no doubt a great tribute to us, and we must get from it what comfort we can. No one ever blames the French or the Germans—excuses are always found for them; France has had a dreadful time, with Germany as her neighbour, and Germany was very badly treated at Versailles. Nor does anyone ever blame the Irish or Welsh or Scots, who are everywhere supposed to be “picturesque poetical little peoples, shockingly oppressed by the brutal English”.¹¹ The world has got only one whipping boy, and when the post is presently vacant and the world advertises for a successor it will have to be worded, “Strong boy wanted”. He will need to be strong, if he is going to take on all we have endured!

A consciousness of this fact is perhaps the reason why we react with such gratitude whenever an American speaks generously of us, and tend to overrate his representative quality. We rose with affection and delight to Admiral Sims, who had worked with our Navy and did not trouble to hide the fact that he liked and trusted us. He told the English-Speaking Union, June 7, 1921, that “the simple truth of the wretched business” (of the Sinn Fein sympathisers’ agitation in the American Congress) “was that there was the blood of English and American boys” on the hands of the Irish rebels (because of their assistance to German submarines during the War). Two days later, he called the votes for Irish independence in the Congress “jackass votes”, and added (he was speaking to a gathering of the House of Commons), “There is only one nation that I know of that does not boast about the grandeur of its Empire, its country, and its people, and that is the British. They do not think it necessary”. He was recalled, and officially ticked off. The U.S. Naval Department “expressed its strong unqualified disapproval of your conduct, having again delivered a highly improper speech in a foreign country, and you are hereby publicly reprimanded”. “I had it coming to me,” said the delinquent. “I am sorry if I caused the Administration any inconvenience.”

In these years, England was pathetically eager to have American opinion think well of us. We pretended not to see that the Irish rebels were waging war from the United States as their base. In 1921, London made a tremendous fuss over the Fourth of July, almost more than over the fact that the gallant King of the Belgians was a visitor. In January, when the favourite question in the United States was “What did England do in the War?”, The Times administered a ferocious snubbing to Punch. “We trust that the outburst of British philistinism in the current number of Punch will not cause him”—Mr. Owen Wister (author of The Pentecost of Calamity, an enthusiastic friend of Britain, and then visiting us)—“to hate our comic contemporary whose whole purpose is to inspire merriment. It is never so ludicrous as when it ventures seriously into the field of political controversy . . . when it essays to deal with matters beyond its ken.” Mr. Wister was mollified (if he had ever been upset), and reminded us that the War of 1812, to which our histories pay no attention, for we then had our hands full with Bonaparte, “is a perpetual raw spot in the brain of young America”, which learns that we burnt Washington but is not told that this stupid act was a reprisal for the burning of a town in Canada.

On July 28, 1920, the fine statue of Lincoln opposite the Houses of Parliament was unveiled. The unpleasant Washington statue (by Trafalgar Square) came six months later.

But everything went wrong with Anglo-American relations in these years. Persia had a narrow escape from being swallowed up in two halves, by Britain and Russia, and Mr. Morgan Schuster, the State’s American financial adviser, told the world what he thought of the episode. In September, 1922, Rudyard Kipling visited the States, and a woman journalist published an interview in which he was represented as observing that America had “the gold of the world, but we have saved our souls”. “America quit the day of the Armistice without waiting to see the thing through.” Kipling, who had married an American lady, was not an ordinary British visitor, so the Secretary of War issued a formal rebuke. “The history of America’s participation in the War was honourable in every respect. This could not be denied “ (September 12). Kipling merely remarked that the interview was bogus, and that he had not said the things put in his mouth.

2

The strategical importance of Egypt, where political assassination and train wrecking happened frequently, brought about a strong effort to make a reconciliation with its Nationalists, who were led by Zaghlul Pasha. By the winter of 1919, we were willing to make the country a protectorate, and negotiations were in progress which were to extend right up to almost the present and were to result in an alliance on terms which made most Egyptians temporarily contented.

In the War, Mesopotamia had employed no less than 900,000 men from first to last, and in June 1920 the British taxpayer was still finding between 30 and 40 millions annually for that arid waste. Mr. Lloyd George promised to set up an Arab administration. But this summer, insurrection broke out. British garrisons were cut off and had to be supplied by air. In September, an armoured train was lost to the insurgents. There were a number of minor disasters. Near Hilla, there was a retreat which “became a rout”,¹² costing the Manchesters 400 casualties. Captain G. S. Henderson won the V.C., posthumously. “He asked one of his N.C.O.’s to hold him up again on the embankment, saying, ‘I’m done now, don’t let them beat you’. He died fighting.”¹³ An occasional man has a kind of genius for battle and in the Mesopotamian campaign of the Great War, where he won the D.S.O. and M.C., after every engagement in which the Manchesters took part, Henderson’s name emerged out of a general dimness of universal valour. I knew him, and therefore remember him now.

Exasperation was deepened by the belief that all this blood and financial waste was merely to oblige the oil magnates. The Arabs got their self-government, and presently massacred the Assyrians, who had been England’s friends. The remnants of that unhappy people were to spend years seeking to find a home in some continent or other. The French vamped up an excuse to blow Faisal out of Damascus, and annex Syria.

Palestine could not have representative institutions, because that would place the Arabs over the Jews, who were a minority. Mr. Churchill, however, visited the Holy Land, and assured them, May 31, 1921, “You shall not be supplanted nor suffer, but you shall share in the benefits and the progress of Zionism . . . the existence of a national home does not mean a Jewish Government to dominate the Arabs”. In 1922 there was fierce and long-continued criticism of the gift of a monopoly of the Jordan Valley water power to Mr. Pinhas Rutenberg, who had come from Russia. It is a mystery how the Coalition Government ever got away with so colossal a gift outside this country, except that as a matter of fact they could, and continually did, get away with everything. Lord Balfour supported the concession, which soothed Conservative opposition. United States opinion supported it also, and was emphatic that it would be wrong “to turn over Palestine to the Arabs”.

Our politics are nowhere more mixed than on Palestine. The only people who fought angrily for the Arabs were a handful of Indian ex-Governors and a few soldiers, the very men who later opposed the Nationalist cause in India, which Labour and Liberalism championed, whereas on Palestine, as a rule, Liberalism and Labour were, and are, fiercely pro-Zionist, apart from Labour’s Communist fringes.

India remained in shadow, on the outside edges of British consciousness. Something bogus and slightly fantastic attaches to all our thought of India: a land where snakes and rajas and elephants and Brahmins and child widows prowl through illimitable jungle or disport themselves with wicked licentiousness. We happen to be at our worst in that country, a fact which the whole outside world now realises, and no doubt we shall some day realise it ourselves; the British in India have shocked everyone who has come to them from outside, including every Viceroy and Governor-General, from the time of Warren Hastings to our own. “There’s only one opinion among my people”, a P. and O. skipper told me, twenty odd years ago. “You’re the worst crowd we have to handle. You’re far worse than the China crowd. You’re worse than the South Africans.”

However, India was to be forced on notice as never before, since the Mutiny years.

The Jalianwalabagh massacre was in April, 1919, and its casualties (as we have seen) were admitted to be “about 200”. Then the matter died out of the British news. The facts began to leak out about ten days before Christmas, when the Hunter Enquiry Commission was sitting on them. It was astonishing (as Arthur Henderson remarked) that the Secretary of State himself had been kept in ignorance of them. Among details that now became known was the one “regrettable incident” to which Colonel Frank Johnson confessed as the “only” error in his administration of Lahore at that time—the flogging of a marriage party, ten in number, including their priest. He was not a person who expressed regret often, or for trivial cause, but he did concede that this episode was unfortunate. Marriage is visited with heavy enough penalties already.

British opinion was hurt to learn that Indians were proposing to boycott the new Councils presently, over such trifles as these (and the massacre itself). “One of the tragedies of Indian politics” (The Times, December 31, 1919) “is that the greater events are frequently obscured by the less.” The order by which Indians, who wished to pass along the street where Miss Sherwood, a lady missionary, had been beaten and left for dead, must crawl its whole length—the triangles set up for public whippings—the use of aeroplanes for bombing—the night of terror when women searched for their dead and wounded in the piled-up shambles at Jalianwalabagh—-became known by degrees. Indignation and humiliation in India offset the effect of the King Emperor’s consent to the new Act and of the Royal Amnesty presently (December 23, 1920) which forgave Indians for offences in the time of martial law. Letters were published in the chief English papers—letters signed by retired Indian officials and soldiers—nearly all of them upholding the utmost rigour. The impression spread among our fellow-subjects in India that any number of their lives were considered unimportant when weighed against one British life.

This impression was strengthened by two deplorable debates in the two Houses of Parliament, in July, 1920, and by a resolution in the Lords exonerating General Dyer. The usual people said the usual things. Sir Edward Carson was inflammatory about “armchair politicians”, in a speech which happened to be one of his thinnest and poorest. In the Lords, a phalanx of ex-Governors said what India has never forgotten or forgiven.

So little is known about the episode by our own people, even now, apart from the handful of us who take an interest from personal experience in India, that it is worth while re-emphasising the fact that this whole affair—the speeches having hurt more deeply than even the shooting down of close on two thousand people did—-has divided British-Indian relations historically into two periods—for Indian opinion. As for the harm it has done our reputation in other countries, that cannot be exaggerated. In a very short time, American opinion was as angry about it as about Ireland; every Englishman who has had the misfortune to speak in the United States on India has wished that the thing could be proved a dream. In Italy, during the last half-dozen years, General Dyer and his action at Amritsar have been dinned into popular knowledge until the Englishman is believed to be a monster. The Morning Post and the British community’s journals in India collected £26,000 as consolation for General Dyer, and this sum, together with a sword of honour, he accepted.

There are a few brighter touches, in what is so dark. In the Commons, Mr. Winston Churchill made as skilful and grave a speech as he has ever made, upholding the Government’s condemnation of the massacre. Mr. Asquith stuck to his guns, that in all our imperial history there was no other event like this one. The Army Council decided that General Dyer “cannot be acquitted of an error of judgment. . . . They accept the decision of the Commander-in-Chief in India and do not consider that further employment should be offered General Dyer outside India”. The actions of all these authorities, Sir Edward Carson stigmatised as “unEnglish”.

Others, perhaps as good judges, disagreed with him. Rabindranath Tagore, who repudiated his knighthood—“the time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who for their so-called insignificance are liable to suffer a degradation not fit for human beings”—even when in the depths of distress over those debates wrote (April 10, 1921), “A land should be judged by its best products, and I have no hesitation in saying that the best Englishmen are the best specimens of humanity in the world “, One merit which our system embodies, as no other does, is an inherent tendency to set mistakes right (if they have not gone too far). If you can only keep a hand of control on the men who run the gallows and firing squads in a time of emergency, nothing is beyond despair. For example, one Indian who was condemned to death during these Punjab troubles but was not hanged was, eighteen months later, a Minister of the Crown. Colonel Lynch, who was sentenced to death for high treason during the Boer War became a Member of Parliament. Some of our staunchest friends during years of threat and peril have been men who once fought against us, as Generals Botha and Smuts did. As Mr. Bonar Law once said, “After all, we are a very great nation”—so great that we can afford the frankest admission of our mistakes and can risk everything except a persistence in trying to whitewash them.

The first High Commissioner for India was appointed, and took over his duties, October 1, 1920.

3

But what were really important people doing, in the eighteen months that followed the signing of the Treaty?

Some, of course, were getting married.

Princess Mary’s betrothal to Viscount Lascelles was announced, November 22, 1921. People were ready to let themselves go in jollity, and the fact that the King’s only daughter was marrying an Englishman and not some Continental Prince (those Europeans had received far too much encouragement in the past, and look what had happened) gave great pleasure. When the wedding took place, February 22, 1922, the streets were crammed. Of the crowd in Whitehall (and probably elsewhere), 80 per cent were women, as always at big weddings.

The wedding breakfast was at Buckingham Palace, at 1 p.m., served in the State Dining-Room and the Supper-Room. This was the menu:

Consommé Soubrette
Filets de Sole à la Reine
Cotelettes d’Agneau à la Princesse
Petits pois
Chaudfroid à Poulard à la Harewood
Langue et Jambon découpées
Salade Caprice
Timbales de Gaufres à la Windsor
Friandisses
Dessert
Café

Nor were authors behind the general public in enthusiasm and loyalty. Princess Mary: a Biography let us into the secret life of Royalty, and was a big seller, as it richly deserved to be. “One invaluable sentence”, observed The Times, February 9, 1922, “gives precisely what we wanted:—

‘She was never really in the least spoilt, though it is not to be supposed that the Princess was not just like all other small girls or that she did not come in for the same share of correction as her brothers.’

There is the tiny pinch of salt that makes the coffee perfect. We have authority for our conviction that Princess Mary could not be what this book shows her to be, could not have done what this book shows her to have done, unless she had been, in her time, a wholesomely naughty child.”

The excerpt quoted by The Times reviewer is a very fine passage, as you can see for yourself. But I am wondering about the use of “though”— \“though it is not to be supposed that the Princess was not just like all other small girls”. As a professional writer of many years’ experience I have come to hold certain opinions of our language, and of its shortcomings as compared with some other languages that I know more or less. English is a good language, but has its faults. Among them is a poverty of disjunctives—we have only “but” and “though”, for “however” and “nevertheless” are such clumsy fellows (you have to use them for variety’s sake sometimes). I have a habit of going over every page for “buts” before sending it to press, and you will get a lot of fun if you listen to the way your friends use this word (and “though”). “He was tall, thin—but most broadminded”, said a chap once to a friend of mine.

And I was travelling from Birmingham to Oxford, some years ago, the sole male in a carriage packed with applewomen. Another man got in midway, and we managed to squeeze him in. He was a good fellow, and very religious; he began to tell us stories, which all led up to one point. Presently he was telling us about a friend of his who had died, and very impressively he did it (I mean, both of them, one the dying and the other the telling). The climax was (very very solemnly), “He used to drive a horse and cart. But he was a most devout, religious man!” “Ah, yes!” we all agreed. “He used to drive a horse and cart. But he was a most devout, religious man.”

So, when you are reading a passage of fine English prose, even if it is one specially selected by The Times (or by Mr. Arthur Bryant, in one of those Observer reviews of his which conclude by saying “Next time some young man asks me for a passage which shows English prose at its best and noblest, I shall lead him to the following”), just go over it and change every “but” and “though” into “and”, and see if it doesn’t make better sense. And now I have improved your own prose style 50 per cent. And this has been a digression.

What were other people doing? The Prince of Wales was touring and in these years he was giving us of his best. He said himself, in the War he found his manhood; he found also a genuine liking for his fellows and a dislike of ceremonial. In the autumn of 1919, he was in Canada and the United States, where he was as popular—and really popular—as he was in Australia and New Zealand afterwards. “I have had hundreds of charming letters since I came,” he told the American public when leaving, “and not a single disagreeable one. I am going to pay the United States another visit as soon as I can.” His success was the more personal, since it came at the very time when the American Senate and House of Representatives finally rejected the Versailles Treaty and when things were at their worst in Ireland. His tour in India, in 1921, was his only failure.

The Americans laughed at him (as you can see if you re-read Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) for falling off his horse. But he did not mind, and he was winning a lot of races. He won a Pytchley Hunt Point to Point, on Rifle Grenade, March 16, 1921. He won races in India; a first and two seconds at Lucknow.

In February, 1920, Dr. Jowett, the celebrated Congregationalist, preached in Durham Cathedral, which vexed a lot of people; a clergyman protested during the service. In January, 1921, Canon Barnes announced that he rejected the Genesis account of the Fall of Man, and this astonished the popular press.

On September 21, 1921, Charlie Chaplin reached London on a visit. A big push was made to get him knighted, as the greatest living Englishman. But the Government was paying little attention to even the popular press and the “women’s pages”. Possibly they thought it too close to the War, in which Mr. Chaplin had not served—a pressman had reported a message from him “to the boys”, that he was “straining at the leash” to join them, but felt he was doing his best service where he was (in California). Charlie was certainly right in that. Still, “straining at the leash” was perhaps an exaggeration of what he felt, at a time of great trial for all of us.

But I am sorry he did not get that knighthood.

Landru, the distinguished French murderer, was executed at last, February 26, 1922, after two and a half years in prison. His protracted trial had been thoroughly enjoyed, and a good time had been had by all (one keeps a doubt only about Landru himself). Laughter in court was very frequent, and the accused’s courtesy and wit kept it up. How could a gentleman reveal the secrets of his association with a lady, he would ask when pressed as to when he last saw this or that victim. “The Age of Chivalry is dead”, he sighed. “Mon Dieu, the short time I knew her indicates that we had no time to indulge in even the most elementary idylls.” When it was pointed out that on one date he had no less than five assignations, he agreed. “There was important business on hand, you see.”

Painted society women rolled up in luxurious cars, in the breaking of the dawn, to see him guillotined. “I would willingly attend Mass, M. l’Abbe,” he told the attendant priest, “but I do not wish to keep these gentlemen waiting” (pointing to the executioner and his assistant). Yet he was heard to mutter to himself, in the last desperate loneliness, “I will be brave, I will be brave”.

On February 22, 1922, a summons was served on Horatio Bottomley. He was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, May 29, for what the Judge styled “this long series of heartless frauds”, which had robbed poor folk of £150,000 in 10 months. He told the Judge that he was “under the impression” that it was usual to ask the prisoner if he had anything to say before sentence was passed. “Not in misdemeanours”, was the answer. “Oh! Had it been so, I should have had something rather offensive to say about your summing up.” It is hard to see how that would have helped him.

What hurt Bottomley most was his expulsion from the House of Commons, which had been his lifelong ambition and his pride when he got there. And it hurt the House to expel him, for reasons which anyone who followed his career can understand. No one pretended that the House was a better place after he had gone.

1922 was a year of murders memorable for several reasons. For one (which, though brutal, had not been intended) a pantry boy of 18 was hanged. For another, a particularly vile one, a young man of good social status was sent to Broadmoor. The juxtaposition of these decisions raised a storm. For days on end, leading articles expressed the public anger, and the general regret that it had not been the other way (June, 1922).

Saddest of all were the executions of a young naval petty officer and a woman, at the end of the year, for the murder of the latter’s husband. Many circumstances stirred public pity, although the tremendous campaign in the more popular papers, which resulted in a monster petition for the man’s life, was stigmatised as mere irrational sentimentalism. The boy was a decent boy, and his family were in humble circumstances; they were all shopping together for Christmas when the evening papers were announcing the murder, and it is horrible to think of what he suffered in his secret while the others idly wondered who had done it. The woman, though she had played with fire, as their correspondence proved, and no doubt was legally guilty, was believed by many of us to have been merely very very silly—as an older woman who plays on the excitement of an infatuated, much younger man is, of course. She was in a deathly faint long before she was borne to the gallows. The country was in a merciful mood, and hated the whole business.

The woman impressed those who saw her in court as one of the few who carry an ensnaring charm that is quite independent of face and youthfulness, and who far outshine many who possess pretty features. Thomas Hardy expressed a widespread compassion and sorrow, in his poem “On the Portrait of a Woman about to be Hanged”:

“Comely and capable one of our race,
Posing there in your gown of grace,
Plain yet becoming;
Could subtlest breast
Ever have guessed
What was behind that innocent face,
Drumming, drumming!”

Both the condemned are in the Chamber of Horrors. If we were a decent country, public opinion would not tolerate this. For the young man’s family are still living; and he was a decent boy, as I have said.

4

I have mentioned Charlie Chaplin. The Idle Class, in which he starred, aroused astonishment because of the huge price, £50,000 paid for the right to show it in Britain (autumn of 1921).

Here are a few films, in roughly chronological order, which you may remember (for people do remember films, so far as they remember anything). Polyanna, Way Down East, The Bigamist, Through the Back Door, A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, The Love Light, From the Manger to the Cross, The Great Illusion, The Great Accident, The Kid, Kipps, Sherlock Holmes, The Adventures of Pickwick, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Carnival, The Fifth Form at St. Dominic’s, My Boy, Little Lord Fauntleroy. Will Rogers (Jes’ Call Me Jim) was a favourite: Douglas Fairbanks and William Hart were in their prime: Jackie Coogan, who was under ten years old, was the juvenile lead. Films of Alaska and the Wild West gave delight.

The intelligentsia at last began to sit up and take notice. The film, it was discovered, was one of the four main industries of the United States, which was plotting to keep a monopoly of its own market, by erecting a tariff of 30 per cent on imported films—calculated, not on the actual cost in England, but on the far higher cost if the picture had been made in Hollywood. The question was debated whether German films should again be admitted.

The Times, in a special cinema number (February 21, 1922), gave good advice, which is still far from out of date. “What the English producer needs, if he wishes to make a place for himself in the American market, is courage. He must select new faces, pretty faces—even if they are insipid.” Pictures must deal “with plain, simple folk of no great social attractiveness, introducing by contrast (to convey the fact that expense has not been spared in making the picture) scenes depicting life of a more financially extravagant character”. The producer must play deliberately for tears . . . and must vary his moments of pathos by moments provocative of laughter and those morsels of artifice—such as kittens in a basket, puppies biting at a ball of worsted, and sows with litters of young pigs—that are known as “human touches”! There must be no patriotism, however, since it “is an emotion that the American tolerates in no country but his own”. The producer “must steer clear of the illegitimate child”, which (like miracles) does not happen. He “had better beware of a story containing a situation which involves the suggestion of impending maternity”. “Above all, he must spend money, lots of money”; films on which only £5,000 had been spent would be sniffed at. They betrayed their cheapness somewhere and somehow; the heroine at some moment or other, and probably an important moment, would fail to look like a million-dollar girl. Remember, the American public was one which liked what it liked and understood, and was an intolerant public, ready to give the bird to anything which contained the slightest touch of unfamiliarity.

The American public was vast, and its money was as good as anyone else’s. Had we the stories to entice that money out of its pockets? Most assuredly we had. “There are hundreds of such stories in England —written and in the writing, mostly from the pens of women novelists.” For examples—look at the vogue of Mrs. Hull’s The Shark (bowdlerised), and Elinor Glyn’s stories, and East Lynne, that certain success. Only be careful, be very careful. The American public, “basking in the moral protection” which its Censors provided, wanted films which showed “a far view of the edge of the precipice over which heroines are sometimes—unsuccessfully” (that is the operative word)—“tempted to fall”.

Is it not strange, with such excellent advice (which many were giving), that British films have not made a place for themselves? Or was it because of such advice? Because from the first our producers have seemed incapable of finding an English kind of film (our documentaries are good, but too much fuss is made of them), and can think of nothing better than copying American successes? Are we really—and incurably—a race of flats, and imitative flats (which is worse)? Or is there in us somewhere some glimmer of an artistic soul, which might have been warmed up into a genuine fight?

Anyway, people said, and said frankly, even in those days, that British films were pretty poor wash.

But they did you good morally! Mr. T. P. O’Connor was the President of the Board of Censors, and listed 67 reasons why he turned down films and intended always to turn them down. Among these reasons were the following: making young girls drunk, practice of the third degree in the United States, sub-titles in the nature of swearing, women fighting with knives (they were allowed to do it with sticks or guns), improper exhibition of feminine underclothing, incidents having a tendency to disparage friendly relations with our Allies, antagonistic relations of Capital and Labour, misrepresentation of police methods, holding up the King’s uniform to contempt or ridicule, excessive revolver shooting, women promiscuously taking up men, and suggestions that infidelity on the husband’s side justified adultery in the wife.

The political items in that catalogue, with many additional ones, are still operative. The film is the most ludicrously over-censored of all the arts. And the most capriciously censored. The most trivial details are dropped on and excised. Yet last autumn it was only with the utmost trouble that the Censor’s Office was persuaded to stop a projected film on an episode of the Indian Mutiny, which would have united Hindu and Moslem in a common fury and humiliation. Films like The Drum, which hurt Indians who saw it, and Bengal Lancer, get through easily. But try to introduce a little of the criticism of society and current politics, that simply abound in our drama of forty, thirty, twenty, even ten years ago, and see what happens!

To return to post-War conditions, or rather, post-Treaty conditions, people pointed out, even at that date, what they keep on pointing out ever since, the film’s value as a medium to boost your country in foreign parts or to bind the Empire together. “When will the Indian Government realise the use of the film as propaganda?” asked a lady despairingly. “Give the dark face its due! Why not make films of them?”

It was said often that we possessed no Mary Pickford. However, we had Betty Balfour, Alma Taylor, Ivy Duke, and such male stars as Fred Groves. Lady Diana Manners had appeared as Lady Beatrice Fair, and was to achieve a success as the Madonna.

Chapter V

Ireland

1

All through 1919 and 1920, Ireland seethed with murder. “The situation in Ireland”, telegraphed the Lord Mayor of Dublin, February 6, 1919, to the British Government, “is desperate.” In December, the Lord Lieutenant, Lord French, barely escaped assassination.

The Sinn Feiners found abundant occupation in the United States, where they joined with the Germans to explain the enormity and number of England’s crimes. In April, 1920, 88 Congressmen sent Mr. Lloyd George a cable of protest against the arrests in Ireland.

The Government were keen to obtain peace, but could come to no decision as to how to manage it. All they had resolved by the autumn of 1919 was to bring into operation, after peace had been made with Turkey (this, as it happened, was to take several years!), the pre-War Home Rule Act—which no party in Ireland would now accept. So refuge was taken in the usual measure of harassed Governments; a Joint Committee was appointed to consider the Act.

When the full horror of the situation began to be seen this side of the Channel, when Ireland became a nightmare of buildings going up in flames and of men falling to sudden shots from behind hedge and haystack, a very large body of British opinion worked night and day to bring their Government to what they considered its senses. They achieved this, but only after such infinite suffering that the effort remains as an object-lesson (if any is needed) of how little power our democracy exerts over its rulers, once it has elected them for the statutory term of years. These men and women, who were shaken by the dreadful spectacle of Ireland, were by no means solely what we now style the left wing. From first to last The Times, rendering perhaps the greatest public service of its career, pressed frankly and strongly for a real and generous settlement.

By midsummer, 1920, the rebels had established a curtain of terror everywhere but in Ulster. This terror the Government answered with the counter-terror of the Black and Tans, ex-service men recruited on special terms and clad in khaki and wearing dark glengarrys. Amid a hostile or cowed populace, where every peasant might turn at any moment into a franc-tireur and the women acted as despatch riders for their enemies, on ponies that knew their way through the bogs and intricate defiles, these auxiliary troops were soon in a state of nerves, confronting a warfare which had no rules and contained no pity. A rivalry in arson and murder was quickly established. “If you don’t produce a solution in the near future,” an Irish-American politician warned the British in June, 1920, “you will eventually have the alternative of sheer coercion or withdrawal.”

Dr. Mannix, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, told an American audience at Plattsburg, in July, “England was your enemy, she is your enemy to-day, she will be your enemy for all time”, and the demands that the Sinn Fein Republic be recognised became ever louder and louder. It became increasingly hard for any American administration, however lukewarm or even anglophile, to continue in association with this country. In August, Dr. Mannix tried to land in Ireland, and was prevented. He came to London, and sent out savagely sarcastic congratulations to the British on their greatest naval victory since Jutland—in chasing away one Archbishop’s invasion. When the Lord Mayor of Cork, Alderman MacSwiney, entered on his long hunger strike to death, cables exhorting him to stand firm poured in across the Atlantic. “Accept sympathy and support of 400,000 American citizens friends of Irish freedom” (August 27, 1920).

Terence MacSwiney’s death was what Asquith called it (well before it occurred), “a political blunder of the first magnitude”. The charges on which he was imprisoned were not of the first degree, as The Times pointed out, August 30. He was allowed to die by inches, while the world watched with a passion of admiration and sympathy and innumerable British men and women begged their Government not to be such a damned fool. The end came, after a week of constant delirium, in Brixton Gaol, on the seventy-fourth day of his hunger strike, October 25. His body was carried by the Sinn Fein through London openly, October 28, to its funeral in Cork, three days later. The wasted form, with its shrunken wretched face, lay in state in Cork City Hall, in the uniform of a Commandant of the Irish Volunteers. At the coffin’s head lay his commandant’s hat, at the foot a gold crucifix, and the lower part of the casket was draped by the Republican tricolour. Six Volunteers stood motionless on guard, in the light of candles dimly burning. At the graveside was a feeling of grief unutterable, of a nation united in exaltation of triumph, and in wrath and mourning.

Terence MacSwiney’s name is not in our Dictionary of National Biography.

2

The first fruits of his sacrifice showed while it was still unconsummated, in an intensification of a warfare already cruel in the extreme. The rebels surprised a detachment of the 17th Lancers, and in revenge the military sacked Mallow, September 29. The Black and Tans burned creameries all over the land, to drive home the miseries of famine, the hardest of all to bear.

For a moment, both sides seemed stricken by the spectacle of what was coming on Ireland. Mr. De Valera asked (September 30) to be given a Treaty, and offered to include in it an agreement that Ireland should never be used as a base for attack on the neighbour island. Mr. Asquith—who in all his long career never showed lack of courage and readiness to face the utmost of misrepresentation and unpopularity—on October 4 protested against the Government’s “paltering compromise” (the Home Rule which they were now willing to offer) under “the contemptuous and cynical patronage of Sir Edward Carson”. “I am not alarmed by the spectre of an Irish Republic. Men do not in the long run fight for phrases, but for realities.” The Times admitted, October 5, and justified the Irish utter distrust of the British Government. On October 13, Lord Grey and Lord Robert Cecil issued a manifesto answering the Prime Minister’s statement that “reprisals” had been confined to shooting men guilty of murder or under reasonable suspicion of planning to commit murder or to attack the Crown’s forces. “It is alleged on apparently overwhelming evidence that the armed forces of the Crown have for months past systematically burnt or destroyed buildings and other property . . . that they have fired rifles and thrown bombs at random, killing and wounding the inhabitants; that they have driven women and children of all ages and in all conditions of health in terror to the fields and mountains.” The Judge presiding over County Clare assizes refused to accept the pair of white gloves offered him in sign of the absence of serious cases, and pointed out that the land reeked with blood, and condemned the “competition in crime”. The same day (October 14), Sir Edward Carson jumped hard on the growing weakness, observing that he was becoming afraid to lunch at even the Carlton Club; “he might find himself next to a Sinn Feiner” (laughter and applause). Mr. Bonar Law charged Mr. Asquith with “a new catchword¹⁴—Dominion Home Rule” and with fighting ‘“with poisoned weapons” (November 30).

October 31 was “Black Sunday” in Ireland. The police were shot down in many places; 32 people were killed in 11 days. “Red Sunday” came, November 21, when 14 British officers were murdered in Dublin, surprised while in bed and dragged out and shot. Their bodies were carried solemnly through London, five days later, to a public funeral, the reply to that of Terence MacSwiney at Cork.

At bay and exasperated, the Premier made his statement, November 9: “We have murder by the throat.” Two days later, British flags were burned on Broadway, New York. Next day, Cardinal Bourne added his voice to the many that were desperately—and vainly—pleading for a truce to horror. When asked if he were in favour of Home Rule, “Of course I am. I want Home Rule for England”. Sir Hamar Greenwood, Secretary for Ireland, announced a Sinn Fein plot to spread germs of typhoid and glanders through Great Britain.

One of the most pitiful casualties in the whole terrible story was belatedly made known in the last week of November. That great regiment, the Connaught Rangers, mutinied in India, June 28, shaken by private word that had reached them in letters from their homes. Fourteen were sentenced to death, of whom one was executed by shooting; 46 were sentenced to imprisonment terms, and many were dismissed the Army in ignominy. The Rangers were presently disbanded.

It was close on forty years since a British soldier had been executed in India except for murder, and the last instance was regarded as hard measure, and was meant to strike terror into grumblers. The inner history of the 1920 execution is not known to our public, but it caused the deepest distress to the officers of a very gallant regiment that had done the Empire noble service.

The rebels turned their attention to England and Scotland, burning and blowing up shops and houses, especially in Manchester, Liverpool and Bootle. London’s troubles came a little later; and this new pressure from now on was used frequently.

The Black and Tan were ambushed near Macroom, in County Cork (November 27); the leading lorry of a convoy was trapped by a trench across the road. The Government got in touch with the Sinn Fein leaders, December 3, and their thoughts grew more and more towards a settlement. Cork went up in flames, nine days later, the City Hall, Carnegie Library and Corn Exchange being gutted by Government troops. Martial law was introduced, and death was to be the penalty, after December 27, for possessing arms. On February 27, 1921, the Home Rule Act was published, a dead letter.

Miss MacSwiney, sister of the dead Lord Mayor of Cork, was now in America. Owen Wister, author of The Pentecost of Calamity and one of the lessening number of England’s friends, reported that she was doing immense harm. “She is, I am told, a pretty woman. The result is, she is being regarded as a kind of Joan of Arc.” On February 27, 1921, six rebels were shot at Cork, in pairs, at intervals of fifteen minutes, for “levying war”. The attendant priest testified that they “walked to their deaths like schoolboys on a holiday”. General Crozier resigned from the work he was ordered to do.

There were hopes of a beginning of reconciliation in St. Patrick’s week. But they were killed by six more executions (March 14). Dublin stopped work in mourning for the executed. Rebel arsenals were discovered in Cork and London.

The Irish elections, which the Government dared not face, were approaching. In May there were outrages in London, St. Albans, Liverpool. Hundreds of telephone wires round Liverpool and London were cut, June 7. On May 3, Mr. Lloyd George told an American journalist, “I will meet Mr. De Valera or any of the Irish leaders without condition on my part and without exacting promises from them”. May 31, a land mine was exploded under the Hampshires near Youghal, and 6 killed and 21 wounded. The first Ulster Parliament opened, June 22. Sinn Feiners bound and gagged railwaymen in England, and burned down signal boxes.

At last there was an opening in the clouds. The King appealed for peace in Ireland, and on June 24 the Premier wrote to Mr. De Valera (“as the chosen leader of the great majority in Southern Ireland”), and invited him and Sir James Craig, the Ulster leader, to conference in London. Sir James Craig would not see De Valera, but the latter talked with representatives of the Unionists of South Ireland (July 4), and Messrs. Griffith and John MacNeill were released from Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. General Smuts saw Mr. De Valera, who decided to accept the truce, despite angry cables from American Irish. He arrived in London, July 12, accompanied by Griffith, Austin Stack, R. C. Barton, Erskine Childers D.S.C., Count Plunket, Laurence O’Neill.

Michael Collins, who was not a delegate, was offered $10,000 by a U.S. publisher, for his memoirs, but replied that the time was not yet. Mr. De Valera sent out a message to the people of Ireland. “We have learnt one magnificent lesson . . . that it is by acts, and not by talk, that a nation will achieve its freedom. . . . If we act in the future as we have acted for the last couple of years, we will never have to talk about freedom, for we will have it.”

The negotiations suffered a heavy strain when the Irish Republican Army authorities revealed their execution of Mrs. Lindsay, an old lady, and her butler, some time previously, for having notified the British Army of a rebel ambush. (Like the American Revolutionaries, from the first the rebels assumed all rights of belligerency, executing spies and unfriendly persons in the areas under their control.) Nevertheless, the Government freed their Dail Eireann prisoners for a meeting of that body on August 16. Ireland was offered Dominion status, control of its own police and military for home defence, and financial autonomy, subject to six conditions—limitation of its territorial force, granting of facilities for the air services and land communications, leave for voluntary recruitment for Empire troops, no tariff barriers, British control of the seas, and an assumption of a share of the National Debt, to be determined by an Empire arbitrator. De Valera turned the offer down. He would not let (August 10) the British Government “mutilate our country” or settle the question at issue between “the political minority and the great majority of the Irish people” (the reference, of course, is to Ulster). He stood out for absolute separation. “Like the small States of Europe”, the Irish “are prepared to hazard their independence on the basis of moral right” (remember, this was 1921, and we have all of us since then seen reason to change our beliefs as to this being a sufficient bulwark of independence), “confident that as they would threaten no nation or people, they would in turn be free from aggression themselves”. To which the British Premier retorted, “The geographical propinquity of Ireland to the British Isles is a fundamental fact” (August 13).

General Smuts had vainly urged the Irish rebel leader to accept terms. It was in Ulster’s interest, he felt sure, to enter a United Ireland; “community of interests will force this” (August 4). “My strong advice to you is to leave Ulster alone.” “Ireland is travelling the same painful road as South Africa, and with wisdom and moderation in her leadership she is destined to achieve no less success.” There was in sight “no one single clean-cut solution”; the several stages towards full nationhood must be passed through. Dominion Status “is working with complete success in all parts of the British League. . . . What is good enough for these nations ought surely to be good enough for Ireland too.” Intransigence would alienate that sympathy “which has so far been the main support of the Irish cause”. The present British Premier, unlike his predecessors, was in a position “to deliver the goods”, not limited Gladstonian or Asquithian Home Rule. “Far more than was offered the Transvaal and Free State, who fought for Freedom one of the greatest wars in the history of Great Britain, and one which reduced their own countries to ashes and their little people to ruins”, was being offered now. The South African Dutch had accepted a “far less generous offer”, and had “proceeded to improve their position . . . until to-day South Africa is a happy, contented, united and completely free country”.¹⁵ The publication of this letter angered De Valera. On August 24 he was able to tell the Premier that by a unanimous vote Dail Eireann had rejected his offer.

His own findings were that British statesmen were trying “to sell a second-rate political margarine” under a “butter” label. General Smuts’s letter did De Valera’s cause no good, and there were many besides Ulstermen who agreed with Mr. St. John Ervine’s strictures on his “incorrigible pedantry”. “Ulster is the supreme and inescapable fact in the Irish situation” (September 7). The Cabinet met at Inverness, in the Town Hall, and asked Mr. De Valera to come to confer with them there on the 20th of September. The invitation was accepted, but the acceptance cancelled again.

Meanwhile exasperation was growing, even among many who sympathised. “Why argue,” observed the New York World, “as if this world were a place of absolute righteousness?” Some people in the United States looked at the map, and noticed that Ireland and Great Britain really were very close together, and Ireland’s complete independence not quite a matter of indifference, as was (say) that of Esthonia.

Mr. Lloyd George renewed his offer of conference (September 29), to be in London. It was accepted, and the Delegates, who this time included Michael Collins, reached London, October 8, and three days later entered on discussions with a panel consisting of the Premier, the Lord Chancellor, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Mr. Winston Churchill, Sir Hamar Greenwood, and Sir Worthington Evans. Mr. De Valera was not a Delegate, and in the background hovered the most irreconcilable man in Ireland, Erskine Childers, one of the Delegation’s two secretaries.

At this juncture Mr. de Valera sent a telegram to the Pope, repudiating the King, and claiming complete independence. This action brought Mike Collins back to Ireland in a hurry. Diehard Unionists challenged the Government over their Irish policy, in the House of Commons, but were handsomely beaten, 439 votes to 43.

After vicissitudes, a treaty was signed, December 6, 1921. Much of the credit was due to two apparently contrasted men, the Lord Chancellor and Michael Collins. These two—the former F. E. Smith, Galloper to Sir Edward Carson, in the days when Ulster was preparing civil war, and Collins, whose escapes and exploits had made him a legendary figure—formed a friendship. When agreement was reached, Lord Birkinhead remarked that in all probability he had signed “my own political death warrant”. Collins replied that in all probability “I have signed my own actual death warrant”. It took courage from both men—from the one who had driven home the charges which had taken Sir Roger Casement to the gallows, and from the one who had organised the terrible resistance which had brought his country’s secular foe to terms—and one of them was to pay the price which he foresaw. The agreement was “reasonable and sane”, said Birkenhead, who had fiercely opposed so much less far-reaching concessions in the past. “What I have signed,” said Arthur Griffith, “I shall stand by in the belief that the end of the conflict of centuries is at hand.”

And so, after infinite suffering, a mainly Conservative Government was forced to yield, to men who in its eyes were murderers or the employers of murderers, a settlement which could have been had on far less onerous terms at any time during the thirty years before the war. To general astonishment, Mr. Bonar Law supported the settlement in the Commons, who accepted its general lines by 401 votes to 58.

3

Ireland was still to persuade; and Mr. De Valera who with Mr. Childers was at no pains to hide his anger, said the Dail must ratify the agreement.

This was where the first storm burst. On January 2, 1922, the Countess Markievicz was pleased to be facetious at Michael Collins’s expense. Princess Mary had become engaged, and she said she had heard Lord Lascelles mentioned as likely to be the new Governor-General. “I have heard another funny suggestion, which is that Princess Mary’s engagement might be broken off and that she might be married to Michael Collins.” Collins was absent, but took the trouble to speak his mind later. “I do not come,” said this representative of the people, “from the class that the Deputy for Dublin comes from.” He knew nothing personally of the lady she had mentioned but understood that she was betrothed, and Madame Markievicz’s humour “may cause her pain and it may cause pain to the lady betrothed to me. I will not allow without challenge any Deputy in any Assembly of my nation to insult any lady of this nation or any other nation.” Mike Collins was already popular in England, and he began to be a general hero.

Mr. De Valera was thought by many to be hairsplitting when he pressed an alternative proposal, “that for purposes of common concern Ireland shall be associated with the States of the British Commonwealth . . . and shall recognise his Britannic Majesty as head of the Association . . . for purposes of this Association Resigning the Dail’s Presidency, January 6, he said that if re-elected he would offer this genuine Peace Treaty to the Empire. Next to Ireland’s independence, reconciliation with England had been his earliest dream. We need not doubt this statement; he has been an outstandingly consistent man. He was “so sick of politics” that in any case he was going to retire into private life. This, however, he has never done.

Next day, by 64 votes to 57 the Dail accepted the Treaty, members rising as their names were called and voting “Is tol” (“It is my will”) or “Ni tol” (“It is not my will”). In the election for a new President, Mr. De Valera was defeated by 60 votes to 58.

Ireland had passed through dark times, but still darker were ahead, and their shadows began to show themselves. On January 10, Arthur Griffith was elected President—of a Government which, De Valera maintained, was that of a Republic and nothing else. De Valera and his followers walked out, but returned later. When Erskine Childers tried to ask the new President questions about his policy, Griffith said, “I will not reply to any Englishman in this Dail. . . . Your constituents did not know your nationality when they elected you, and I will not answer a damned thing from you”. Childers pleaded, “I could show you in private that I am not an Englishman in the true sense. If you had banged the table in the face of Lloyd George as you have done here, we should not be in our present position.” Mme. Markievicz observed that Griffith was “a Welsh name”.

On January 12 was a general amnesty, and over a thousand rebels were freed. Dublin Castle was handed over to the Free State, January 16. Collins and Sir James Craig made an agreement on boundary and other matters, January 21. The agreement did not prevent extensive raiding within the Ulster borders by Sinn Feiners in cars. For a long while a sort of guerrilla warfare continued on these borders.

Michael Collins, who showed exemplary patience during his short life as statesman, received from the American Society for the Recognition of the Irish Republic cables protesting (February 7 and 8) against his lack of patriotism and courage. In reply he begged, “Do not torpedo us”. He alleged that the Republicans were preparing violence. “I warn you not to assist or countenance the coup d’état.” The rumours of it had caused a check in the evacuation of British troops. “De Valera has made it perfectly clear that we are regarded as greater enemies than the British Government.” Yet, if the Irish people decided for war, “none of you need doubt where I shall stand”.

Mr. De Valera, though he complained (February 21) that “Ireland was a mother country, and there were those who would never consent to make her an illegitimate daughter”, certainly did not want a war with his late colleagues. At an Ard Fheis, or Sinn Fein Convention, in Dublin, it was unanimously agreed to postpone the elections for three months, while the Treaty signatories drafted a Constitution to be submitted for decision between the Free Staters and Republicans. News of these negotiations, which came through in a confused and confusing shape, caused some alarm and anger in Great Britain. Those Irish were going to double-cross us (to use a phrase which the movies had not yet brought in). Michael Collins and Griffith, however, were not the men to doublecross anybody, once they had given their word. But they had a duty laid on them, to avoid civil war with their own comrades—that was all.

4

The civil war started in March, 1922, simmering for a while in isolated attacks and assassinations. Then, on April 14, Rory O’Connor, a celebrated fighter, and Liam Mellowes, whom De Valera had appointed Minister of Defence in his own rival “Republican” Cabinet, quietly seized the Four Courts in Dublin, just after midnight. At first nothing was done about it, and they were allowed to stay there.

Terror again overspread the land. The Republicans raided many banks. The issue was for a time confused by the emergence of extreme Socialism as their ally; that organisation better known in the United States, the I.W.W. (Independent Workers of the World), took some kind of a hand, and the red flag flew on buildings. This always upsets some people in England more than any amount of actual killing does. Sir Henry Wilson (who never had any use for politicians anyway) made inflamed speeches against the Irish, whether Free Staters or Republicans, and against the British Premier. “You have shaken hands with murder,” he said, referring to Mr. Lloyd George (who was not present at this meeting of Unionists, May 9), “and I have finished with you.”

Collins and De Valera agreed on a truce for the elections, May 20. The Treaty signatories reappeared in London to discuss the drafting of the Constitution, May 27. The British Government plainly told them that a Republic would not be tolerated. The text of the Constitution was issued from Downing Street, June 15. The Irish elections were held and out of 128 deputies returned, 94 were in favour of the Treaty. De Valera had lost. But almost simultaneously, Sir Henry Wilson was murdered in London, June 22, and the exasperation of the Government was put into an “ultimatum” by Mr. Winston Churchill, in a speech in the Commons, June 26. Sinn Fein must put down murder and arson and border warfare. “This sort of thing must come to an end.”

Under this pressure the Free State acted, and the Four Courts were shelled into surrender, June 28 to 30. Cathal Brugha, one of the most renowned of the Irish leaders, died of his wounds, July 7, and Rory O’Connor, who was wounded, was captured. There was heavy fighting elsewhere, notably at Limerick and Waterford.

From point to point the rebels were driven, and into the south-west and west. They fled from their stronghold, Cork, August 12, leaving it again in ruins. Arthur Griffith, the Free State President, died the same day, and Lord Northcliffe, who had done his best for Ireland before the cause was popular, died two days later. The retreating rebels were subjected to a verbal bombardment by Mr. George Bernard Shaw, who declared, August 21: “The existing brigandage is not good-natured, and Ireland is obviously on the point of losing its temper with Robin Hood, Allanadale, Friar Tuck, and the rest of them. When the explosion comes, General Collins will be able to let himself go in earnest.” “The difficulty of the overcrowded jails”, and of irregulars who when caught and released slipped behind hedges again and picked up a rifle to snipe as before, would be solved by taking no prisoners. “The strain will be on the cemeteries.” “Of course” Mr. De Valera “can enjoy the luxury of dying for Ireland after doing Ireland all the damage he can . . . ‘What matter if for Ireland dear we fall?’ is still the idiots’ little song. The idiocy is sanctified by memories of a time when there was really nothing to be done for Irish freedom but die for it”. The time had come to live for Ireland.

Next day, August 22, Collins was mortally wounded, in the hilly country near Macroom.

At the grave of Arthur Griffith, he had said good-bye to a friend. “I shall not come back.” When he was shot down, his body was taken to Dublin, where it lay in state. Richard Mulcahy, his Chief of Staff, sent out the order: “Stand calmly by your posts. . . . Let no cruel act of reprisal blemish your bright honour. Every dark hour that Michael Collins met since 1916 seemed but to steel that bright strength of his and temper his gay bravery.” Cosgrave had succeeded Griffith, with Kevin O’Higgins in charge of Home Affairs and Mulcahy of Defence. The rebellion, Cosgrave announced, was “not entitled to much consideration as a military proposition”. Belligerent rights were taken from its upholders, and military courts set up, September 27. An amnesty was offered, to expire, October 14.

England, busy with an election of her own, was paying no attention to Irish affairs, whose stringency came with a sudden shock. On November 17, four men were executed in Dublin for being in possession of revolvers. The country was awed and angered. This was but the beginning of a short repression in which 77 rebels were executed (before the truce of midsummer, 1923). On November 10, Erskine Childers was taken at his old home, Glendalough House, in Wicklow, and on him was found a pistol which had been Michael Collins’s gift to him in days when they were both comrades in war. He was court-martialled and condemned to death, the same day that the four men were shot.

A strange thing then happened. On his behalf it was submitted that, since the British Parliament had not yet passed the Treaty Act, the court which condemned him was illegal and the Restoration of Order (Ireland) Act, a British Act, was still the law of the land. After these lawyers’ delays and an appeal to habeas corpus, he was executed, November 24. “I am at peace with the world,” he said, as he shook hands with each member of the firing party. “Whether I am to live or die,” he had told the court before he was tried, “it must help Ireland.” He stepped to his place in front of the rifles, still limping from a wound received in the Boer War, fighting for England.

So died Erskine Childers the Englishman, distinguished writer and soldier, lieutenant-commander in the Royal Naval Air Service and major in the Royal Air Force. His death awed and stirred Ireland, and England no less. Before the end came he had suffered greatly, and his frame was worn and his face care-ridden.

“Tim” Healy became the first Governor-General of the Irish Free State, and the Royal Assents were given to the Treaty and Constitution Bills, December 5. On December 7, a Deputy of the Dail was murdered, and next day the Irish Government brought out Rory O’Connor and Liam Mellowes and two other of its prisoners from the Four Courts—whose seizure had started the new rebellion—and shot them as reprisal, four lives for one, “as a solemn warning to those associated with them who are engaged in a conspiracy of assassination against the representatives of the Irish people”.

This deed was done under the direction of Kevin O’Higgins—like Collins, a young man; he was only thirty. On the deaths of Griffith and Collins, he became Minister of Justice. At his wedding in the previous year, Rory O’Connor had been best man; and O’Connor, who had entered on the initial act of war somewhat light-heartedly (for after all, they had been warring in Ireland for years, and the Four Courts were seized quietly), was close to fainting when ordered out to the firing squad. The deed was so stern, almost beyond precedent, that Ireland was shaken. But men who had known so many years of desperate struggle were not going to be pedantic, and this was the Government’s way of announcing the fact that they meant their deputies’ lives to be safe. The step, General Mulcahy announced, was “taken as a deterrent”; they were not arguing about its justice.

In this savagely fought war were innumerable skirmishes. Cables were cut, houses and villages gutted. The rebels took to train wrecking, and when caught were executed. The Government tightened grip. On February 8, 1923, Liam Deasy, the rebels’ Deputy Chief of Staff, wounded and a prisoner under sentence of death, promised to use his influence to bring about immediate unconditional surrender of men and arms. The Chief of Staff rejected his appeal. The British Government assisted the Irish one, by arresting and handing over Sinn Fein plotters in England, against which some of the British Labour Party protested, as they did against the executions.

Liam Lynch, Chief of the rebel Staff, died of wounds, April 10. On April 14, Austin Stack, an unkempt unshaven man worn out with want of sleep, was captured. Two days later, Dan Breen was caught; and of the leaders, only De Valera was still at large. He had been sentenced to death by a British court in the Easter 1916 rising, and now had narrowly escaped execution in this new rebellion which he had roused. On April 27 he appealed for peace, while still fighting for peace on his terms—talking of the inalienable sovereign rights of all nations, and of sovereignty as derived only from the people. He suspended operations, April 30, and on May 21 sent out his order: “Soldiers of Liberty, Legion of the Rearguard—The Republic can no longer be defended successfully by your arms.” This was captured and published, May 28. It was the end, and peace was at last made.

Peace, though made, came slowly, with occasional outrages, including one particularly brutal one, when British privates who landed for a holiday were shot down by men who raced off in a car to safety.

The spirit of revenge, by Irishmen against Irishmen, died hard. On February 11, 1923, Dr. O’Higgins, Kevin’s father, had been murdered in his house, as a substitute for his son. Four years later, on July 10, 1927, Kevin himself was assassinated on his way to Mass. “A figure out of antiquity cast in bronze”, is Mr. Winston Churchill’s often-quoted description of this man resolute in sternness. His executions crushed the rebellion, but it will be long before resentment dies. In the year of Kevin O’Higgins’ death I saw, chalked up on buildings in Cork, “Vote against Cosgrave and his gang of murderers”: “No more executions”.

In half a dozen years, between the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and the final beating down of the Republicans, the outside world’s idle and insulting impression disappeared, of Ireland as the land of hunting and jollity, where “Pat” and “Mike”, creatures abounding in bulls rolled out “in a rich brogue”, disported themselves and duly admired “the gin try”. England, Ireland’s secular enemy, was appalled by a grimness which put her own repression in the shade. “How is the new Government doing?” a friend of mine asked a leading Southern Unionist in 1923. “Oh, they’re doing very well, very well indeed”, was the unexpectedly cordial reply. “They’ve shot more fellows than we did, already!”

It was a grisly test, but it was one of those which were unconsciously applied by the outside world, which during the last fifteen years has been slowly learning how vapid its generalisations are—that the Irishman is far from merely funny and childlike, the Scot from being pawky, the Indian “spiritual”, or even the Englishman the man he is thought in America and Europe. It was noted, in Egypt and India, that the Irish had won what they wanted, because they had shown that there was nothing at which they would stick in the effort; having won it, in the welding of their own nation they sacrificed ruthlessly even old comradeship in arms. It was a new kind of Irishman, and it was made certain that henceforward Great Britain would never again stand out against him if he made up his mind.

From first to last, ever since “Easter slew Connolly’s men”, the episode was a blood-stained milestone on the road which we have travelled to where we stand to-day, in a waste land where the individual hardly matters, and mercy and pity are out of date.

It was hard for Englishmen at that time to think of the Irish as foreigners; and there are very many of us who have Irish blood in our veins. Few of us knew even at the time, and still fewer of us know to-day, how terrible were the deeds done at our doors, and many of them in our name. It was in a way a rehearsal of the terror which we have seen in Spain.

Ireland’s sufferings from the stronger people have been very great. The difference in religion, and her usefulness to a foe who wished to secure a base from which to attack us, have intensified cruelty by the passions of bigotry and fear. In defence, the English can plead that no one living is responsible for what was done in Elizabeth’s or Cromwell’s time or in 1798; and that our own humbler classes, the ancestors of most of us now living, had to live repressed and poverty-stricken lives when a handful of our rulers were doing the things that are now remembered against all of us. Until recently, also, we simply did not know anything of the Elizabethan savagery, for example. But knowledge is spreading. And if the Irish people will only believe it, the people of this island are ready not to stand on anything they may have of legal right, but to do everything they can to establish friendship with a nation whom (as I have said) they find it hard to think of as foreigners.

I am merely an ordinary Englishman. Because of this I am representative; and I can truthfully say that nothing, though in the Great War I saw my share of horror, has ever given me the feeling of shame and remorse that I had when I learnt of the events in the Connaught Rangers (a gallant regiment which I knew) in India. As one Englishman, with just this individual share of responsibility for whatever is done in my people’s name, I want to say this somewhere, in the hope that some Irish men and women may hear me.

Ulster, and its severance from the rest of Ireland, remains to darken relations. And with Ireland, to darken relations means to steep them in blood. In this year of grace, 1939, we seem to be beginning the old sequence over again. The gunmen are once more busy, leaving their bombs in tube station cloakrooms and anywhere else where innocent passers-by may be maimed or killed. It seems to be bad luck for both islands that they are so near together!

If we ever get self-government in Great Britain, surely this Ulster quarrel can and will be settled!

Chapter VI

The Return of Thought

1

It was not all massacre. Civilisation even showed signs of recovery.

Drama was uncertain; it was a time of revivals. Directors seemed to say, “What playwrights are doing is bunk. Better fall back on Gilbert and Sullivan, on Shakespeare, on Sheridan, even on Jonson and Massinger”. The great success of 1921 was Gay’s The Beggars’ Opera. Even Shelley’s The Cenci was staged. Even the Sakuntala of the ancient Sanskrit poet Kalidasa (with Sybil Thorndike in the title role; not one of her good performances). Even The Duchess of Malfi, for which intellectuals had clamoured for so many years. They do not clamour now.¹⁶ At the first murder, the audience was impressed: at the second, restive: at the third, it laughed, and the rest of the evening was hilarity.

These are some of the plays you could have seen in London, in the years 1919 to 1923: The League of Notions (a Cochran revue, in 1921), Medea and The Trojan Women (Sybil Thorndike in both), Lord Richard in the Pantry, The Maid of the Mountains, Chu Chin Chow (of course—its run ended July 22, 1922), Mr. Pim Passes By, various plays by Mr. Galsworthy—Defeat, The Skin Game (in the winter of 1921); Heartbreak House, Will Shakespeare, A Bill of Divorcement, Christopher Sly, The Bat, Other People’s Worries; (in 1922, autumn) The Truth About Blayds, Somerset Maugham’s East of Suez, Pinero’s Mid-Channel, The Dybuk (November, 1922), The Insect Play (May 6, 1923), Arnold Bennett’s The Love Match, Tons of Money (hailed as at last proving beyond question that English playwrights could be very funny).

Much biography was published, and much of it was well written, not at all the skimpy stuff that is now put out for a more impatient and jazzed-up public. Also, a new kind of War books appeared, in C. E. Montague’s Disenchantment (February, 1922). Here at last we were using our brains on the experiences we had gone through. Do you think you will ever forget the pity of that book and of the truths it so drove home, without sentimentalism and without thought for your suffering as you realised them? The contrast between G.H.Q,. and other H.Q. camps, far in the rear, set in old chateaux and amid long soft-turfed delightful downs over which you could gallop in the intervals of planning fresh offensives, and those shattered fields where other sections of our nation were paying the price of our generations of neglect of our ordinary people!

“You had already seen them meet on roads in the rear: battalions of colourless, stunted, half-toothless lads from hot, humid Lancashire mills; battalions of slow, staring faces, gargoyles out of the tragical-comical-historical-pastoral edifice of modern English rural life; Dominion battalions of men startlingly taller, stronger, handsomer, prouder, firmer in nerve, better schooled, more boldly interested in life, quicker to take means to an end and to parry and counter any new blow of circumstance, men who had learned already to look at our men with the half-curious, half-pitying look of a higher, happier caste at a lower. And now you saw them, all these kinds, arise in one continuous line out of the earth and walk forward to bear in the riddled flesh and wrung spirit the sins of their several fathers, pastors and masters.”

Are you still fooling yourself that the War did nothing but knit the Empire together in one common enthusiasm and mutual admiration? Have you forgotten that, before the War had been six months over, a Canadian general amid angry shouts of agreement was accusing our High Command of having wasted Canadian ;ives? Did you never know the sort of thing that the Australians said (often very unfairly, it is true) of what they considered our physical inadequacy and our slavishness of discipline? We are a threatened people, and there is no point in going on, with our brains blind to the things that would upset complacency.

“Perhaps the undersized boys from our slums and the under-witted boys from the ‘agricultural, residential, and sporting estates’ of our auctioneers’ advertisements would get to their goal, the spirit wresting prodigies of valour out of the wronged flesh, hold on there for an hour or two . . . and then fall back, under orders, without any need, the brain of our army failing to know how to use what its muscle had won. Then, while you saw the triumphant Australians throw back a protective flank . . . you knew bitterly what the Australians were saying once more. . . . Our men could only draw on such funds of nerve and physique, knowledge and skill, as we had put into the bank for them. Not they, but their rulers and ‘betters’ had lost their heads in the joy of making money fast out of steam, and so made half of our nation slum-dwellers.”

Here are a few of the other publications of this period. Vernon Lee’s Satan the Waster, whose title misled people into thinking it was politically topical; Walter Page’s Letters,¹⁷ Crome Yellow, the very popular natural history books of Beebe, Edmund Gosse’s critical essays, Tarzan of the Apes, Hilaire Belloc’s The Jew, Hall Caine’s The Christian, Candler’s Abdication, Tomlinson’s Waiting for Daylight, Mencken’s A Book of Prefaces, Dean Inge’s The Victorian Age, Edmund Blunden’s The Waggoner (“a small book of much promise,” The Times called it, and Robert Bridges wrote a special number of the S.P.E. tracts on its outlandish words), This Freedom (which repeated the success of If Winter Comes, by the same author), Santayana’s Soliloquies in England, John Buchan’s Huntingtower, Mrs. Edith Wharton’s Glimpses of the Moon, Hendrik Van Loon’s Story of Mankind (a tremendous seller, first in America and then here), Hugh Walpole’s The Cathedral, L. H. Myers’s The Onssers, Strachey’s Queen Victoria, Miss Macaulay’s Dangerous Ages, A. E. Housman’s Last Poems (October, 1922), Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt (which continued the work of Main Street, and began to teach us about America), W. H. Hudson’s A Hind in Richmond Park, Sir Walter Raleigh’s Laughter from a Cloud (February, 1923), Mr. Churchill’s The World Crisis, Stannard Baker’s Woodrow Wilson and the World Settlement, Caradoc Evans’s books—Capel Sion, My People, My Neighbours—which proved popular, except in Wales, Men Like Gods (H. G. Wells), Compton Mackenzie’s The Seven Ages of Woman, Alfred Noyes’s The Torchbearers, D. H. Lawrence’s The Ladybird (which shocked no one, and was considered full of quiet charm), Kipling’s two volumes, The Irish Guards in the Great War, his tribute to the memory of his only son, killed serving with them in Flanders.

The popular press might beat up a fuss by revealing that an Anglican canon rejected the Genesis story of the Fall of Man. But the War had made readjustments necessary, especially where theology influenced ethics and conduct, and the Church of England Modernists were producing a series of books, now forgotten but at the time influential. Miss Lily Dougall, a Canadian lady who had already outlived one reputation (as a novelist of distinction), in her home outside Oxford evolved what was styled the “Cumnor Conference” method. Thinkers, who were not necessarily theologians, gathered here for a week or longer, and thrashed out in the freest argument some one selected problem, and afterwards divided this problem up into sections on which they wrote essays.

People then believed that you could find a way of reconciling intellect and faith, and might say not only “Dear City of God”, as the pagan philosopher tried to say, but also “Dear City of Cecrops” (Athens, as symbolising the mother city of man’s intellectual and imaginative effort). Most of the minds that busied themselves in this fashion are now dead: Miss Dougall herself, Cyril Emmet, Canon Streeter, J. N. Farquhar (the best man we ever produced in general Indian studies, apart from the specialised ones of Sanskrit and History). Others have ceased to bother with theology, in a world where we are so hard put to it to keep alive elementary pity.

If you had any sort of alertness of brain, in 1923 you were infinitely better catered for than you are now, and by periodicals which still assumed that you had some intelligence. For a time the Church of England ran a weekly, The Challenge, which tried to print general and political articles and book reviews that were up to the standard of the best literary weeklies. It failed to win support, perhaps partly because it was thought to be tied up with “modernism”. You had more daily morning papers, among them the Morning Post and Daily Chronicle. Whatever the Morning Post’s politics, in its literary reviews it was the fairest paper of our age. You had very good weeklies, which have now gone: the Outlook, the Nation, the Athenaeum. The Saturday Review was still a serious paper, and not a platform for Lady Houston. To-day you have in London just three evening papers. But in 1923 you had your choice far wider, and it included five which were good papers: the Globe, St. James’s Gazette, Pall Mall Gazette, Westminster Gazette, and the Echo, a very decent little halfpenny paper.

But there is really no support for such journalism in England. The Westminster Gazette could not rise beyond a 20,000 circulation. It was inevitable that our press should fall into the hands of two or three very rich men and women, who in some cases manage very skilfully to make the best of opposed worlds. That is, they can have one paper which caters for the Puritans and is aggressively “clean” in the news it prints or goes dead against racing; while they control also another paper which shovels on the dirt and packs it tight, and tells you all the winners (in advance). Your daughter can read one paper and you can read the other; and then you can exchange, so that each can see how dreadful or how stuffy and dull the other is.

We have still the universities, and for those who can afford them they keep alive a memory of a time when man was an intelligent being. Rich men from time to time help them with funds. Mr. J. D. Rockefeller made a huge Christmas gift in 1919 of 25,000,000 dollars to colleges in the United States; part of this sum was to go to medical studies in Canada. In 1920, Lord Rothermere did a very good thing, when he gave Oxford £20,000 for a Chair of American History.

Flying took a steady toll of lives. Sir John Alcock, who (with A. W. Brown) first flew the Atlantic, was killed, December 18, 1919: Hawker, July 12, 1921: Sir Ross Smith and Lieutenant J. W. Bennett, in April, 1922. Sir Ernest Shackleton died, on the eve of pushing into the Antarctic again in the Quest, from South Georgia, January 5, 1922. On May 21, 1922, Mallory, Norton and Somervell reached the stupendous height of 27,000 feet on Everest; Norton and Somervell notched a still loftier record, 28,126 feet, June 4, 1924, but on June 8 Irvine and Mallory perished, passing into clouds about 800 feet below the peak at 28,200 feet.

In May, 1921, people talked by wireless across the North Sea, from Holland to Southwold. It was reported to have been “an unqualified success”. On October 1, 1922, 200 people collected at Selfridge’s, at 6 a.m., to hear a message from America. They heard a woman’s voice very faintly, “but owing to bad jamming—by a battleship, it was thought”, they could not be sure if it was what they were listening for. Nevertheless, Sir Henry Norman, on September 30 opening the first All British Wireless Exhibition, predicted that one day there would be a set in every home and that the final triumph of all would come, when the King addressed the Parliaments of the Empire. In 1922 there were reports of German propaganda by wireless in the Far East. An Empire wireless chain was established, March 5, 1923. Private enterprise, however, was not as yet forbidden.

By the middle of 1922, telephones were becoming common in private houses.

In the summer of 1922, Boy Scouts made the word “hike” popular.

A Frenchman glided the Channel, May 6, 1923.

2

A few miscellaneous details, before we end with politics.

The National Trust was pushing ahead with its beneficent work, little noticed. Leith Hill and Box Hill, Surrey, were purchased at intervals. Public subscription, unconnected with the National Trust, saved Ken Wood from the builder.

Khama, the great chief of the Bechuana, died, February 21, 1921. He had lived on to a great age, and into a time when the African’s remaining rights and freedom were to be increasingly restricted; and his memories went back to the heroic names of Moffat and David Livingstone. He had shown the dignity and worth of which his race is capable.

The heroines of tennis fans were a brilliant and temperamental French lady, Mlle. Suzanne Lenglen, and Mrs. Mallory.

Newspapers competed for your custom, by the insurances they offered. Even The Times for a while entered this arena. In September, 1922, one of its women readers, who had injured her left leg playing tennis at home, was awarded a four pounds a week annuity. Another reader who had strained his back lifting a tub of water for his bath got the same amount.

July 8, 1921, The Times blossomed, for the first time, into the full photograph manner—with portraits of the Eton and Harrow elevens.

In September, 1922, Battling Siki knocked out Carpentier in Paris, and won the light-heavyweight championship of the world. This was before Mr. P. G. Wodehouse’s Ukridge discovered “Battling Billson”.

The price of cars was dropping. An Austin Seven occasional four-seater cost £225 in the autumn of 1922; a Vulcan 12 horse-power two-seater £385, a four-seater £395.

Australia set aside (and not too soon) Kangaroo Island, a large island, for the fast disappearing fauna and flora.

The “Willy and Nicky” correspondence of the late Tsar and ex-Kaiser was published (December, 1922).

Mrs. Alice Meynell, that fine poet, died, November 27, and George Meredith’s letters to her were published, May, 1923. Katharine Mansfield died, January 9, 1923.

The chief excitement of early 1923 (and it began much earlier) was the opening of Tutankhamen’s Tomb in Egypt. This was the first time that the tomb of an ancient Egyptian monarch had been found unrobbed, with its doorways sealed as they had been left by the cemetery inspectors of Rameses IX. The works of art brought to light were perhaps a shock, in more ways than one; they showed that the Ancients could be as gimcrack as we are, as lavish in gilt and glitter. But the profusion was staggering and stupendous, and a wave of excitement united the world. When Lord Carnarvon, who with Mr. Carter had opened up the grave, died (April 5, 1923) of the bite of a mosquito which attacked him in the Valley of the Kings in Upper Egypt, superstitious people told each other that it was the spirit of the dead who had taken vengeance. The tale went round of a mummy once in the British Museum, which slew everyone who smiled disrespectfully in its presence, and finally, when on a voyage to the United States, took the Titanic to the bottom of the sea.

Lord Northcliffe, who owned the Daily Mail and The Times, had revolutionised journalism and made a fortune. The mischief he did was immense and “various”. The good was equally immense, and (as we shall see) included the boon of peace with Ireland. In the post-War years he suffered from a megalomania that was not a bad thing, since it fit up with humour a stricken world. In May, 1921, he gave a luncheon to 7,000 journalists employed on his many papers, in Olympia—according to the present editor of The Times, “the only building in London large enough for the purpose”—and a parson thanked the Almighty in adequate terms. “Thou hast endued Thy servant Alfred with many singular and excellent gifts,” to enable him for his work of “guiding aright the destinies of this great Empire”. When Lord Northcliffe went round the globe in 1921, The Times—which was the expression of his personality, to an extent to which no single man has ever dominated it, or perhaps any paper, since—chronicled each day and episode in a fashion which Punch skilfully travestied (it did not need much travesty—mainly compression and selection) as the journey of “Lord Thanet”. Under him, The Times introduced its features of to-day, including brief excerpts from the same issue of a century previously (May 1, 1922) and “shorts” from its minor correspondence (April 29, 1922). In early 1922, Lord Northcliffe visited Germany, and came back sure that his enemies had poisoned him. He died, August 14. On January 1, 1923, the present editor of The Times, Mr. Geoffrey Dawson, took up control of the paper, as successor to Mr. Wickham Steed.

The consumption of beer and spirits dropped during 1922-1923.

The age when wealth would display itself on the most lavish fashion, contrary to the predictions of those who had once thought this would stir up envy, had begun. In February, 1923, a hunting lady had her favourite snow-white horses waiting in the church porch while she was married. Afterwards they went round the village and estate bearing large panniers full of wedding cake, which was distributed to the people.

One of the things that worried certain sections of English life was our inferiority in polo to the United States, whose players could afford better ponies and a longer string of them. The rot has since gone far indeed. Last year (1938) I saw a notice outside a London cinema: “Come and see Polo, the American Game.”

In the summer of 1921, people began to look about them in the old restful manner; the first thing they saw was how badly the modern girl was behaving. She was wearing evening dress which showed too much of her form, and frocks open at the throat. She was using rouge, and had taken to tobacco, once that

“Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society’s chief joys,
Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
The sex whose presence civilises ours!
Thou art indeed the drug a gardener wants
To poison vermin that infests his plants!
But are we so to wit and beauty blind
As to despise the glory of our kind,
And show the softest minds and fairest forms
As little mercy as the grubs and worms?
They dare not wait the riotous abuse
Thy thirst-creating steams at length produce,
When wine has given indecent language birth
And forced the floodgates of licentious mirth”.¹⁸

Anklet watches were a fashion of 1921. People were saying “quate” for “quite” in 1922, the year when escalators were introduced on London railways.

3

Finance and political affairs lagged, as they always do, except when war and revolution quicken their pace to a tempestuous and agonised run.

The Allies were very slow in releasing their prisoners. When 1920 opened, there were still many German and Austrian prisoners in England. Tremendous profiteering continued, especially in wool. The public was shocked to learn that one large firm reckoned to make 165 per cent profit, and still more shocked when other firms said they considered this a moderate profit.

Through the autumn of 1920, strikes at a place in Spain called Rio Tinto were much in the news. Spanish workers complained that they were inadequately paid.

Among the bigger outrages in the United States was one in which part of the Pierpont Morgan Banks was blown up and 30 people killed and 200 injured (September, 1920). Early in 1921 the Spanish Premier was murdered; and, in March, Talaat Pasha (by an Armenian, in revenge for the massacres of his people).

The Census showed that on June 19, 1921, Great Britain contained a population of 42,767,530, an increase of 1,936,134 on 1911.

Mrs. Wintringham (Liberal) became the second woman M.P. in 1921. Like Lady Astor, she succeeded to her husband’s seat, in this case vacated by death, not by promotion to the House of Lords.

During the War the non-combatant part of the nation had had a thin time (and “thin” is a very good word in this connection) as regards nourishment. All through the blazing summer of 1916, in Mesopotamia each one of us received twice a week (I fancy it was thrice) a tin of rancid oil which had been butter. Every tin was immediately buried in the desert sands. It never occurred to anyone to stop this waste and use the transport that stoppage would set free, to send us fresh vegetables (for want of which we were eating the salt plant, a shrub with succulent leaves, not a bad sort of spinach) while deflecting the butter where it would be welcome. When the War ended, national physique was below par. As things sorted themselves out into some semblance of peacetime order, our papers got busy on the question as to whether public school boys were properly fed. Words like “vitamines” and “calories” began to be tossed about, and the stage was setting for the pseudomedical ballyhoo of so many present-day advertisements. Schoolboys themselves were not consulted on this question of whether they were fed as they should be, but “Anxious Parent” and “Baffled” wrote troubled letters. “Is the Breed Deteriorating?” editors asked, and on this question alone there was a very successful silly season, beginning in the spring of 1922.

Money was still fluid, and for some people seemed abundant. This was the golden age of “the prep. school”. We have never thought out a system of education, and for most people the “public school” kind seems to be the ideal, if they can attain it. Public schools of the second class (it would be wrong to give examples) to-day are doing badly, and many of them will gradually stagger to a conclusion. Fifteen years ago, they were doing extraordinarily well, and preparatory schools to feed them sprang up in pleasant places by sea or downs.. “England’s stiff with fat children of fat profiteers. . . . And their fathers are determined that these remarkable beings shall have the education and advantages that they themselves missed. All you have to do is to buy up one of the huge derelict country houses that are going cheap—lay in a stock of chalk and canes—and then advertise all the extras and luxuries, along with whopping fees! You can staff with convicts and lunatics—it simply doesn’t matter, so long as you have the other attractions and necessities! The parents of the new England to be roll up in their cars, and lead their ghastly offspring to you.”¹⁹

That golden age has utterly vanished. But it once seemed to stretch before us, in never-ending vista, like the shining path over a tract of sleeping ocean to the sunset. Influential people were looking round to see if they could establish new public schools, and a number were started, to continue ancient educational traditions. Stowe School was the first, as a younger brother of Eton (March, 1923).

How restive Conservatives were getting at the delay in return to undiluted party politics was shown in March, 1922, when the Government of India, alarmed by British severity against Turkey, asked leave to publish a protest against the Treaty of Sèvres, just concluded. “The doctrine of Cabinet responsibility had worn thin under coalition government” (has anything changed for the better, in the last twenty years?), but Mr. Edwin Montagu was to learn that while one man may steal a horse, another, particularly if he is a Jew and a Liberal, may not look over the hedge. Without troubling his colleagues he sanctioned the request, and Lord Curzon, Foreign Minister, insisted that the Premier demand his resignation. This was received in the Commons with a yell of delight, “the biggest cheer of the session”.

4

In foreign affairs, France dragged us whither she wished. Sometimes we were dragged protestingly, but it made no difference.

Faisal and his Arabs were turned out of Syria, and Damascus taken after a battle of sorts in the pass that leads into Antilebanon (July 25, 1920). “So fell . . . a State created and fostered by Great Britain in partial fulfilment of her pledge to the Arabs. It fell because its existence was in direct conflict with French ambitions, in circumstances which prevented British influence being made effective for its preservation.”²⁰ This was awkward for Great Britain, which during the War had made to Jews and Arabs, and to French and Arabs, promises very hard to reconcile with each other. In any case, the French were determined to have Damascus. Our policy being opportunist, we presently tried to kill two birds with one stone (and largely succeeded), closing the Mesopotamian insurrection and making Faisal King of a new State, Iraq.

The people of Syria would have preferred Great Britain as a mandatory power. Best of all in their eyes would have been America, whose nationals have made for their country so fine a reputation, by their University at Beirut. Mr. Lloyd George shuffled along, making no peace with Turkey, because he hoped that the United States might come in—if the French would not tolerate this in Syria, then perhaps in Armenia or Anatolia. “Until America declared what she would do, any attempt to precipitate the position might have led to misunderstandings with America, and would have caused a good deal of suspicion. We regard a good understanding with America as something which is so vital that, whatever its cost in the way of increased burdens on our shoulders and the possibilities of revolt, we considered it worth while not to precipitate the decision which we were prepared at any moment to take. That is the reason why we could not make peace with Turkey. . . . I do not know what the decision of America will be, but it does not look promising” (December 18, 1919).

Turkey, of all the combatants, had been the one most utterly vanquished, and she would have accepted any terms thankfully. She was down and out, by the end of September, 1918; and her peace, the Treaty of Sèvres, did not come until two years later, August 10, 1920. As a matter of fact, it did not come then, for Turkey did not sign! She had recovered swiftly, under a strong leader, Mustafa Kamel Pasha, and her nationalism was to prove unbreakable. The Greeks, whose army had perpetrated in Smyrna, in May, 1919, the massacres which seem inseparable from any Balkan Power’s activities, were encouraged to try to annex Asia Minor, in the summer of 1921. For a while they appeared to do well, with the British Government their silent backers and the French disapproving. The adventure closed in disaster complete and irremediable, on the Sakaria River, in August. They poured back in disorder, and Smyrna was again given up to massacre (September 9 and following days), on the thoroughness of scale which in Gladstonian times won for the Turk the name of “Unspeakable”. Many thousands of its inhabitants disappeared up country, into concentration camps.

The Great War lasted over seven years. November 11 was only its official finish; after the bigger campaigns closed down, it sprayed out widely into smaller (yet by pre-War standards very extensive) campaigns, and petered out slowly in these and in civil tumults and executions. To-day the order has been reversed. The new World War has already begun, in the smaller campaigns which will presently merge into the main ones. It began in Manchuria, then went on to Abyssinia and Spain and Czechoslovakia and Albania. The firing squads, in Addis Ababa and Badajoz and Barcelona and Malaga and Bilbao, and a hundred other towns and villages, are all part of its preliminaries.

On September 27, 1922, King Constantine abdicated, and Greece went through a revolution. On November 28, six of her statesmen were executed for incompetence which had led to her disasters. As is usual when the people get angry, the wrong men were shot.

Russia wanted Turkey to have the Straits and Constantinople. France, very pro-Turkish, wanted her to have Thrace. England, without allies, found herself at Chanak, on the Straits into the Black Sea, confronted by an army flushed with victory and under a great soldier whom it trusted; the ragged unhappy phantoms whom Allenby’s push to Aleppo had gathered up in thousands no longer existed, in the new Turkey that had been born.

France was delighted. She was not going to worry if her Ally’s handful of troops were shot to pieces. “Imperialistic France”, said her newspapers, in sarcastic headlines flinging back the charge which British papers had brought against her own policy, “is not going to follow pacific England into a new war.” (In these days, something happened in the British mind, which is still there, and is having a disastrous effect in our own time, when France and England are both threatened.) However, though Turkish troops pressed inside the area which the British commander, Sir Charles Harington, notified them must be kept neutral, war was avoided by a hair’s breadth, though only after days and even weeks when it was touch and go. The Dominions were appealed to, to support the Mother Country, and on September 23, 1922, the late Allies, Britain, France and Italy, despatched a joint note to Angora. The Turks gave way (October 12). They got back in the Treaty of Lausanne all that they wanted, except that they agreed to keep the navigation of the Straits open.

In the years which have followed, the international behaviour of the once “unspeakable Turk” has been like a good light in a naughty world. But our standards of “unspeakability” have been raised, very much indeed.

On January 14, 1920, having settled the “War criminals” problem to their own satisfaction, the Allies demanded of Holland the ex-Kaiser’s extradition. Holland refused, and this was expected and was a relief to most people. Germany sank ever deeper into financial chaos, largely deliberately induced by inflation and wholesale printing of paper money. At each succeeding Conference, and they were many, her representatives showed themselves truculent and defiant, over Reparations and Disarmament. In February, 1921, they made a concession (which the French rejected with fury); they suggested that the sum due—£11,300,000,000, payable in gold over 42 years—should be reduced to £1,500,000,000, payable in the same period (£550,000,000 in gold, and the rest in goods and labour and the proceeds of a loan to Germany by more prosperous countries). As the loan would of course have ultimately been allowed to lapse, a loss to the lending countries (which would have been to all practical purposes one country, our own), the figure proposed was not so very different, allowing for differences of the War’s colossal scale of ruin and outrage, from the £240,000,000 indemnity which Germany had actually obtained from France after 1871. The indignant Allies marched and occupied the right bank of the Rhine (March 8); this was called “Military Sanctions”. The British were reported to be very popular in Cologne and elsewhere, and by comparison with the French they were. Germany was told she must pay £6,750,000,000, partly by a 25 per cent tariff on all her exports.

She was steadily stiffening. She set up her own tribunal in Leipzig, and tried her War criminals herself, giving a few light sentences. The mark falling and falling continually, in June, 1922, Germany asked for a moratorium. By August 23, marks were 27 to the penny. France said she would make no further sacrifices. The British financial representative, Sir John Bradbury (pound notes, you will remember, were called “bradburys”) supported the moratorium request, and to please France a compromise was come to, which did not call itself this yet was this in effect—a six months’ suspension of reparation payments, with “guarantees” on treasury notes issued to be redeemed at the end of that period. The Reichsbank was printing 3,000 million marks a day, and a million million a year, and Germany’s finances were in a condition which only Austria surpassed for chaos. By October, the mark stood at 12,900 to the pound sterling, and was still falling.

For some time there had been reports of a movement in Italy, believed to be socialist or socialistic, of people who styled themselves Fascisti. An Austrian whose name was then usually spelled Hittler began to appear occasionally in the news. He was reported as having beaten up a hotel in Munich, on the pretence that he was looking for Jews. He sent an emissary to study and report on the methods of Signor Mussolini, the Fascisti’s leader. Mussolini marched on Rome, and his followers, who wore black shirts, entered it at 11 a.m., October 30, 1922. He handed in to the King of Italy the list of his Cabinet, and informed foreign journalists who enquired about his policy, “We shall be friends to those who treat us as friends”. He set to work, and presently the better-class English papers were delightedly reporting the results of “this astonishing revolution”. Railways were run to time, and porters were being civil and were gratefully accepting quite small tips. Italy had become a civilised country again, in which one could travel. One charmingly amusing feature of the Fascists’ methods was that children in the schools were being drilled and taught to raise their right hands in salute to the “Duce”. Signor Mussolini was a great leader and ruler, and a moderate and sensible man. “I have imposed limits on myself”, he announced, November 16, 1922. “The first phase is over,” he said, two months later.

In Paris, in January, 1923, another of the eternal conferences on Reparations took place. France invaded the Ruhr, Germany’s great western industrial and mining area, January 8, and the United States showed her indignation by announcing that she was withdrawing the last of her troops from German soil.

The Ruhr invasion was one of the events that changed the course of history, even though it is an exaggeration (and an absurd one) to say that without it a menacing resurgent Germany would not have come into existence. The Germans in the Ruhr flatly refused to deliver the coal consignments demanded, and behind them was all Germany, concentrated in one fury of hate.

The French did not care.

Presently they had cut off from the rest of Germany the British, in the area which they had occupied since the Armistice, and were interfering with our army’s mails. “Hats off to France”, shouted a London newspaper daily. The French executed Germans for murder and sabotage, and on January 24 inflicted enormous fines on six industrial leaders, including Herr Thyssen, the mining magnate who to-day is by many considered one of his country’s most sinister figures. These men were tried by court martial, and fined sums ranging downwards from 500,000 francs. The mark sank to 120,000 to the pound, the Reichsbank bank rate rose to 18 per cent, and 20 per cent for loans. Herr Thyssen and his colleagues, no friends to freedom or any kind of democratic government, had been made martyrs in Germany’s eyes. The date of their conviction and sentence was also the date when “Herr Hitler’s ‘Storm Troops’” rushed that Munich hotel, and were so rude and contemptuous to British and Americans whom they found there.

The only good thing that ensued was that France now wanted peace with Turkey at all costs, and swiftly. She found herself holding a wolf by the ears, and the wolf was beyond her strength to hold much longer. She could take on no distraction from this task, however slight that distraction.

5

With tumultuous widespread heavings, the world subsided slowly. In Spanish Morocco, Abdul Krim inflicted on Spain a defeat (battle of Anual, July, 1921) which cost the defeated 12,000 casualties (some said more). Not until France and Spain conducted a joint campaign, in 1925, were the Rif tribes put down. The campaign did the prestige of these two Governments no good, and here again was a sowing whose harvest has blossomed in the last two years. Italy, having a dispute with Greece, bombarded the unoffending island of Corfu (August 31, 1923) and exacted a fine of fifty million lire.

Italy did not consider that she was making war. She was merely asserting the imperishable dignity of the Fascist State, and showing herself a pioneer in the new arts of diplomacy and argument between nations.

Another sowing whose harvest is for our own time—it is ripening while these lines pass from the pen—was in Syria. We have seen how France turned out Faisal, in 1920. The Mandates system at this time was, as its critics asserted, eyewash, to cover up annexation. The French colonial system is unlike ours: we reserve the highest posts for our own nationals, as far and as long as possible, they flood a country with petty officials. They are the world’s perfect bureaucrats.

That mysterious people, the Druzes, for centuries had considered themselves in relations of special friendship with the British. They resented the French mandate more than even the people of the rest of Syria did. The Near East, accustomed to conquerors, understands conquerors who keep for themselves what they have won. What is not understood (and this goes for more than Syria) is conquerors who generously hand their conquest over to a third party. “In any case,” observed the French representative at Geneva, in 1924, “the little State of Jebel Druze is of small importance. It has only about 50,000 inhabitants.”

The acts and causes which precipitated the rebellion have never been frankly set out in print. In Syria, they tell of demands that towns and villages, which were to have the honour of a garrison’s sojourn, must have ready for its service a specified number of women: of nocturnal visits by Senegalese and Annamese troops, knocking at doors and asking for the same commodity. Such stories are commonly told of French armies of occupation, and no doubt imagination enters into them. It was not imagination at all, however, when the whole town of Suweida was fined (the fine was afterwards excused) because a French officer lost his cat, or when Druze men of good family were set to stone-breaking. Major incidents were the abrupt dismissal of delegations (May, 1925) and the contemptuous relegation of the 1921 Franco-Druze agreement “to the French archives as a document of historical interest only”,²¹ and the arrest of Druze chieftains who had been lured to Damascus to discuss grievances.

The Druzes rose, July 18, 1925: cut up 175 French troops, besieged the garrison of Suweida in the citadel, routed between three and four thousand troops sent to relieve it, inflicting close on a thousand casualties and capturing a battery of artillery, as well as 12 machine-guns and 2,000 rifles. The French authorities replied, as authorities usually do, by styling their opponents “bandits”, and by summary punishment of them when caught. The Foreign Legion saved the situation. Their valour held Rasheiyeh (near Mount Hermon), whose shattered walls, when I saw them two years later, witnessed to the desperate nature of the fighting, and relieved the Suweida garrison (September 24).

The disturbances spread over all Syria, as well as the Druze country and the Lebanon, and lasted well into 1926. The French bombed inhabited areas, executed peasants assumed guilty of complicity, and sent their bodies round Damascus and showed them in the public square, and finally shocked the world by two bombardments of Damascus itself. In brief, everything that has deadened the conscience of the nations by sheer repetition and horror—in Abyssinia, China, Spain—was started, and carried to a very fair degree, though far short of what the totalitarian Powers have achieved, by the democratic nations on the morrow of the Great War.

The Syrian disturbances rendered a hundred thousand people homeless. The memories of this period have made it certain that the French are merely sojourners in the land, about which so many of their traditions and so much sentiment have clustered, claiming it (as they do) by right of the nationality of many of the leading Crusaders in past centuries. The first great war in which the French are engaged will see a nationalist rising in Syria (and not in Syria only). Resentment, when its roots go deep, bides its time.

The Syrian Rising has brought us prematurely to the limits of our survey. Looking back a moment, remember the rebellion in the Rand (March, 1922) and the British Note to Egypt, after the murder of the Sirdar (November, 1924), demanding a fine of half a million pounds and the immediate evacuation of all Egyptian troops from the Sudan. In June, 1921, the United States ceased to be a refuge to the broken or ambitious of all nations, and shut its doors with quotas. The fiery cross of the Ku Klux Klan appeared again on the hills, and night became a terror to negroes and white people suspected of discontent with the social structure. An English clergyman accused of liberalism was flogged. In India, was the Moplah Rebellion (1921). In what had been German South-West Africa, the Bondelswartz natives, who “had resisted the German control”, and expected freedom, “and regarded themselves as allies whose services were ill repaid”,²² were reduced to contentment by bombing (May, 1922), an action which the Mandates Commission censured as barbarous. In 1925, by the publication of his Kenya, Dr. Norman Leys shocked people who still had liberal tendencies and a belief in human rights, even if the claimant were of dark skin—and in 1925 there were many of these remaining—and he left no excuse for thinking that to be under British rule was any better for a negro than to be under German rule, at any rate in pre-Nazi days.

But this list of disorders, which signified that the patient, though the poison was working itself out, was far from health, could be extended till it embraced almost the whole world.

Almost the only honourable glimpse in world politics was afforded when Mr. Gandhi, in 1922, was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. The Judge expressed the hope that his early release might be rendered possible by events, and the trial was marked by courtesy on all sides. No one pretended to think that the prisoner was anything less than a man of high nobility. The Judge’s hope was fulfilled, in early 1924, when Mr. Gandhi was freed, after a hurried operation by lantern light (the electric light having fused), for appendicitis. Mr. Gandhi has resented Miss Mayo’s sneering account²³ of this episode, “a sacred experience”, creditable to his jailers, “and, I trust, to myself”. He had been offered his own choice of medical attendants, and, answering courtesy with courtesy, had accepted the surgeon provided—with whom, a wide divergence of political opinion nowise making any impediment, Mr. Gandhi afterwards formed a friendship. His polemics have always been hampered by his unfortunate habit of liking Englishmen, if they give him a chance to do so.

Chapter VII

Sound Party Politics Again

England returned to sound party politics. This meant, as the man who handled the Conservative machine (Sir George Younger) saw plainly, a return to Tory domination.

Labour looked dangerous; as Mr. Lloyd George had pointed out (January, 1921), it was “no longer a wing of the Liberal Party—an advanced left wing—it was a pretty formidable bird on its own . . . a great formidable menace”. This, under Ramsay MacDonald, turned out to be all blague and façade. Labour was tactically unskilled. Its two shots at government were to end abruptly and without dignity; the leaders let themselves be manoeuvred out of office by tricks that a Kamchatkan could have seen through.

A meeting was held at the Carlton Club, October 19, 1922, when Sir George Younger “brought the party together with a snap”, his instruments in this happy action being Mr. Bonar Law and Mr. Baldwin, the two leaders who as Premiers were to give such good consecutive impersonations of King Log following King Stork. As Mr. Bonar Law, elected Leader of the Conservative Party on the day that he succeeded Mr. Lloyd George as Prime Minister (October 23, 1922), remarked, “There are times when it is good to sit still and go slowly”. There are, and we shall never see them again in our generation.

Mr. Lloyd George, rejected, retired with a mysterious political fund, the alleged Liberal share of the swag accumulated during the Coalition’s control of the honours which it had distributed with unprecedented generosity. “Cardiff became ‘the City of Dreadful Knights’.”²⁴ People used to enquire assiduously about this fund, until they gave up in defeat and exhaustion. It seems likely to join the great unsolved mysteries of the ages, and to lie beside The Letters of Junius and The Man in the Iron Mask.

Mr. Lloyd George, who had cold-bloodedly smashed the Liberal Party, now proposed to return to it, and after years of effort he succeeded—after a fashion. To-day he may be best placed as a party by himself, with a small shadow cabinet completed by inclusion of his son and daughter. The Tory Party, relieved of his presence, went on its way rejoicing, like the Pilgrims after chastisement by the man in shining garments (plus a whip).

Lord Birkenhead styled his own Party’s behaviour “an act of monumental folly and ingratitude”, and “expressed himself in the country with acrimony and in the House of Lords with speeches which were regarded as vindictive and flippant”.²⁵ He was “intellectually honest and impatient of the pretentious platitude that abounds even in the Lords, most intellectual of assemblies”.²⁶ He had been educated at a grammar school, and knew no better.

His untimely death, in 1930, robbed us of Lord Birkenhead’s views on the National Governments of Messrs. MacDonald, Baldwin, and Chamberlain, and of speeches which might have been an adequate complement to his friend Mr. Winston Churchill’s scalding philippics in the Commons. We know what he thought of the pure Conservative product bottled by Mr. Baldwin before he received the assistance of Messrs. MacDonald, Snowden and Thomas. He considered it a collection “of second-class brains”.

With what abandonment of exultation the Tory Party, which for so long had had to share government with men like this, and sometimes with Labour people like Arthur Henderson, took up its responsibilities again, was hardly noticed at the time by the nation generally, it was so weary of its politicians of all parties. Anyone who managed to get hold of the reins of power could from now on “get away with anything”, so long as it was done quietly.

The first thing that was got away with was the American debt settlement. No one understood debts between nations, and American opinion was too angry with Britain on many counts for any decent settlement to be acceptable to it. The fiercest resentment of his own representatives’ settlement was felt (it is interesting to recall) by Bonar Law, the Prime Minister, a Canadian. He was now a dying man.

The British Government had proposed cancellation of debts all round. This was rejected, not merely firmly but with wrath, by the United States, which regarded it as an attempt to concentrate ill feeling on her as a grasping Shylock. Britain was considered to have done very well out of the War, having mopped up so many German colonies. America paid insistent attention to her, as the one solvent debtor who could and must pay. On March 10, 1922, the Allies, who were amicably (more or less) dividing up fifty million pounds of reparations, received a claim from the U.S. for £48,200,000, on account of costs of their troops in the Army of Occupation on the Rhine. As Congress had refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, this action, which on a stringent interpretation fell outside legality, was considered unkind. Britain was presently called peremptorily to a settlement, and on January 4, 1923, Mr. Montagu Norman and Mr. Baldwin arrived in Washington to effect one. A settlement was made, on terms against which not only the Premier, as we have seen, but a banker like Mr. McKenna and Mr. Keynes the economist (whose record was clean, since he had been severe on the terms imposed on defeated Germany) protested, as crippling and harsh. When he landed at Southampton, January 27, Mr. Baldwin, who at this period of his career was not as experienced a politician as the man the whole world reveres to-day, did some thinking aloud in the presence of journalists. These “observations . . . stiffened opinion in the United States against further concession”.²⁷

At all times it is hard for Great Britain and for British public men of any kind not to do or say what stiffens U.S. opinion against us; and it was very very hard in these unhappy years. Sometimes the trouble was local and passing, as when, in September 1922, the American Consulate at Newcastle was closed, after request from the British Government, which accused the Consul of putting difficulties in the way of visaing passports, unless the applicants promised to travel by U.S. lines. There has been plenty of trouble not very dissimilar, in subsequent years: charges that discrimination and reservation of coastal trade over immense oceanic tracts, and heavy subsidies, have been driving British shipping out of the Pacific. We hear such complaints no longer, for the reason that we feel so desperately threatened that if we are to survive at all, we must have American help—as much as, or of any kind that, she will give us. So it is better not to rile her people any further than the normal course of our own ingrained turpitude will rile them in any case.

This turpitude was a great bother in 1923, when Britain was still an independent Power. “Rum Row” put the United States to great expense: the line of vessels lying off the territorial waters limit, to unload liquor. In November, 1922, over a hundred whisky vessels were lying off New Jersey. The Great Lakes between Canada and the United States were a frontier that resembled a battlefield. Cases arose continually, when some vessel was chased and sunk, with some loss of life, outside territorial waters, and immense was the relief of this country when the most notorious of these, the I’m Alone, turned out to be a Canadian vessel. United States opinion views Canada with a kindlier eye, as less sunken in long traditions of sinfulness, than her Mother Country. British shipping lines made complaints against being compelled to destroy liquor, or to engage not to carry it.

Labour, too, was behaving badly. Instead of contentedly sinking back to lower wages, the miners in particular were having strike on strike. They were led by Mr. A. J. Cook, a brave and selfless man, represented throughout his life as a reckless enemy of society and peace. They fell lower and lower in misery. In the middle of 1922 (June 24), the Notts miners begged to be allowed to reopen their pits, and humbly besought the owners “to offer us a square deal which will give justice to the miners and leave no stigma of defeat”. The Notts Union was £110,000 in debt. In November, Labour issued a manifesto urging nationalisation of the coal industry (it will be remembered that a Government Commission, the Sankey Commission, later recommended this course, and that their recommendation has received the same attention that most Commissions nowadays receive). This inconsiderate action hurt Sir Hall Caine grievously. “All my life”, he wailed, “I have been heart and soul on the side of Labour, and this morning I am suffering intensely.”

In December, 1923, was a general election. Mr. Bonar Law had died, and his successor (who never makes the same mistake twice) told the country frankly what was in his mind: that the abandonment of free trade was essential, and that he could not embark on this without a mandate. He was unwise enough to ask for one, and failed. The Conservatives returned in a minority of nearly a hundred, but Labour (191 seats) could not form a Government without the support of the Liberals, the third strongest party (158 seats). Mr. Asquith was offered Conservative support, if he would take office, to avoid the disaster of a Socialist Government, but he refused. “I have never forgiven Mr. Asquith”, observed a Professor of the University of Oxford to me, years afterwards, “for the wickedest action of all our history, when he allowed Labour to begin the ruin of our noble country and noble traditions.”

There remains to this day considerable divergence of opinion as to Mr. Asquith’s and the Liberal Party’s subsequent behaviour. Labour complains, with some justification, that Liberalism used a curb and often jerked it tight, with an undertone of nagging. On the other hand, Labour forgets Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s quite extraordinary preening of himself: how he sped from place to place, flying by preference, entertaining his audiences with accounts of the “mess” in which “I” had found everything on taking over. Generosity was not his strong suit, was it—either to the Conservatives whom he had supplanted, or to the Liberals, of whom he spoke with unvarying contempt, while expecting unmurmuring assistance? In the end, his more skilful opponents jerked him out of office with surprising ease, in October, 1924, by the aid of what Asquith styled (and was he mistaken?) “two squalid crises, each of which could have been avoided, or at least circumvented, if” the Labour Government “had played their cards with a modicum of either luck or skill”. The country resented what it considered dictation, by the Trade Unions outside Parliament, to a Government that was supposed to function in and through Parliament. A tiny deputation, of three determined figures, walked to 10 Downing Street, and issued their orders, to withdraw a charge brought by the Attorney-General against the author and printers of a pamphlet said to have incited troops to withdraw their allegiance; and in a quarter of an hour that business, one of the “two squalid crises”, was settled. The whip had been cracked, and the oratorically busy Prime Minister had slunk to heel.

The other crisis was over the Zinoviev Letter. Since then this country has learnt a fitting meekness to foreign dictation, and listens not merely privately to what one Tory Foreign Minister (who resigned over it) has said was a demand that we negotiate under threat but to periodical animal hubbubs in Rome or Germany, yells of glee as scrannel voices tell the rest of the world (and England in particular) what will happen if it does not spring to attention and obey instructions. We are now almost imbecilely happy for a few words that fall below a towering standard of harshness. How very very happy did the Führer make us on January 31, 1939, when he was gracious enough not to deliver an actual ultimatum, with date for compliance! Into what a sunshine of delight we passed, until the Führer so basely “let down” the Prime Minister on March 15! At the first by-election after Munich, that at Oxford, Mr. Malcolm McCorquodale, Conservative M.P. for Sowerby, Yorkshire, pleading for support for the Hon. Quintin Hogg, begged his fellow countrymen not to grieve the Führer by electing Mr. Lindsay. “If Mr. Hogg were defeated here Herr Hitler would say, ‘You may like Neville Chamberlain, but he is not supported ‘. If Mr. Hogg wins, the story which Herr Hitler has been trying to make up, that the Prime Minister is not strongly supported, could not be upheld.”²⁸ So low have a once-great Party sunk, who used to be guardians-in-chief of our prestige and imperial status! Conservative M.P.s now openly deplore, in the Commons and out of it, the liberty still indulged in, by a few public men and journals, of expressing dissatisfaction, when it seems called for, with foreign Powers who dictate this country’s action to it.

In 1924 it was very different. Do you remember the fury with which Conservatives greeted the Zinoviev Letter? That it had been sent at all was sufficient proof of the overwhelming treason of the Labour Government and Party. We talked and felt “biggity” then, and did not go mousing about cautiously, hoping we should be overlooked. Did you never have the misfortune, in Zinoviev Letter week, to be at a tea-party with Tory ladies?

Ramsay MacDonald had a gift, amounting to inspiration, for using mutually destructive arguments. We may think this a common gift to-day, when the same speakers daily stress in juxtaposition the marvellous success of the policy of Appeasement and the appalling need for feverish rearmament—when they point out the reliability of the Duce’s promises to evacuate Spain, at the same time as the Foreign Secretary observes casually that Signor Mussolini has said clearly that he intends to ensure a Franco triumph. But logic has long ceased to matter, whereas in 1924 it was still apt to embarrass a public man who handled it carelessly.

Mr. MacDonald had also a genius for making the greatest possible tactical mess, in any difficult situation—until he found allies who guided his steps more wisely. He might have answered that the Letter was genuine, and what did it matter, anyway? Or have said it was bogus. Instead, he poured scorn on the supposition that it was genuine, and flared up because a newspaper had betrayed a secret by publishing it. His enemies joyously shot him all to pieces, and shot to pieces the movement whose titular chief he was. There was a General Election, and Conservatism returned to power.

Liberalism was out of the way, never to revive. Conservatism was on the road, and could roll its chariot along, with no opposition that need be taken seriously. Labour was beaten down and wretched:

“Fallen cherub! to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering!”

It was to be “suffering” only, for a long while. Labour could carry on, only by means of strikes, exasperating the comfortable and powerful section of the community that could see no sense in striking.

What would have happened if the first Labour Government had made an effort to put in practice the doctrines it professed to believe? The effort would have gone down swiftly, in failure and a cloud of savage wrath. But that first Labour Government would have gone down nobly, in a battle worth fighting. It would have left an inspiration that would have carried it to a real victory later: would have awed its enemies and enheartened its friends: it would have given conclusive evidence that Socialism was not a mere “slogan”, but something believed in. We are without that evidence to-day, and no one expects ever to see it, from the present Labour leaders. Commander King-Hall says well, “The first business of a Socialist in office is to be a Socialist.”²⁹

Their foreign policy had been good, the best we have had.

In May, 1926, in sheer despair and sense of helplessness and wrong inflicted, Labour went into the General Strike. In that mood, and against the serried forces it opposed, it had not a chance. The Strike proved its Tannenberg.

The middle and upper classes, still in the glow of their successful indignant rejection of foreign and trade union “dictation”, rallied. Young men and women drove lorries and trams, and for a brief excited period did all kinds of hard work which the normal practitioners had abandoned. They learnt that this work, about which the working classes made so much fuss, was really a prolonged picnic; and they learnt their strength, even more than in the Railway Strike of 1919. Sir John Simon, commonly believed to be Liberal, won some return of favour for that Party (but not such as to have any result at the polls), by a pronunciamento that the Strike was illegal. This revelation, which to many of us seemed about as helpful and as relevant as the piping of linnets in a hurricane, accelerated the slump of the more hesitant Liberals towards the Tory Party, and is said (hard as this is to believe) to have done a lot to cow the dispirited strikers.

Just as the Railway Strike had discovered the full importance of the motor-car, so the General Strike discovered that of wireless. The strikers made the mistake of suppressing the newspapers, on which they had many sympathetic writers; and this was not only action easily represented as an interference with “freedom of thought and speech” (a thing which no Conservative Government has ever attempted), but it left the Government in full possession of the only means of touching public opinion, which they did by a specially issued broadsheet of “news” as well as by radio.

The strike was precipitated by an activity of the ladies of the Whaddon Chase. Feeling that their hunt had been unduly long out of the public eye, they took part in a protest march of women against these foolish strikes which unscrupulous men had been making for so long. They had their horses brought to London, and their leader was photographed for the press, riding her white hunter. On the eve of the strike, the procession filed through the slums, the Whaddon ladies riding in front, to shouts of “How do you manage to do it? On thirty bob a week! Miners’ wives!” In all, twenty young women, of various hunts, with outriders on greys, were in this pageant.

The feeling was common, that England was on the edge of revolution, even of dissolution. Solemnity took hold of the prosperous classes, and those who were old felt that they confronted the finish of our long story. The Archbishop of Canterbury issued an appeal for a settlement by consent, without defeat and without reprisals. A living writer tried to obtain signatures on Boars Hill. His stickiest interviewee was the Poet Laureate, who refused flatly. “No, the old ship’s going down, and I’m going down with it.” “Ah,” said G. N. Clark of Oriel (now of All Souls), when he overheard his account, “he was thinking of the chaps on the quarterdeck, not the poor devils in the engine-room!”

Americans in our midst testified to the wonderful calmness, strength, stability of the British people, who were greatly comforted by the way they came through their ordeal.

The General Strike, which ended in collapse, closed the first of the three-post-war periods: the Years of Confusion.

The Years of Security lasted from May, 1926, until the financial crisis, as a result of which the “National Government” under Ramsay MacDonald was formed, in the autumn of 1931.

The Years of Menace and Insecurity have lasted from 1931 to the present day.

Part II

Epilogue

“It is certain that the ‘common-sense’ judgment of the majority, of the official, of the average, is anything but final in matters that lie ever so little below the surface of the ordinary and self-evident. To fear that judgment, to work for it, to live for it, is to be the slave of human respect—to forfeit one’s spiritual liberty and manhood.

But there is surely a ‘divine respect’ whereof no man need be ashamed, and to lack which is mere insolence and self-sufficiency.

We cannot sift them out from the mass, but there is always a minority, a saving leaven, whose judgment is in truth the judgment of God, and before whom we stand as before an invisible eye that watches and judges, condemns or acquits. . . . To wish to justify ourselves at its bar is no weakness; to fear its censure, no dishonour. . . .

To be heard by this silent few, it is unfortunately necessary to be overheard by the loud multitude through which they are scattered at wide intervals. One may regret such publicity, but one cannot avoid it. Auricular confession is not possible, and the bystanders may suffer in consequence.”

— George Tyrrell, Preface to Through Scylla and Charybdis (1907)

Chapter I

The Years of Security

The Years of Security, and The Years of Insecurity! In seven and a half years that followed the Armistice—November, 1918, to May, 1926—every harvest that is now waving ripe for Death’s sickle had its sowing. It would be tedious to go in detail through the thirteen ramshackle years that have followed.

Can you recall a few of the high spots?

There was the “Mr. A.” case, when the heir to one of the five leading Indian States was trapped by a woman and a man, and mulcted of enormous hush-money.

There were the stories which poured in, to the delighted horror of Europe, of gangsterism apparently rampant throughout the wealthy and highly moral (or at any rate, moralising) United States—a condition of affairs so unlike what could ever happen in dear old England. Rackets run by men who extorted “protection money” and conducted private war with machine-guns, and executed rivals. Al Capone’s legendary fame, and his final jailing on the charge of, not robbery and murder right and left, but—-evasion of income tax.

Scandal after scandal from America! Such things never happened in England!

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti: arrested, May 5, 1920: burnt up in the electric chair, August 23, 1927. Between those dates lies one of the most poignant chapters in the story of our race. The obscure and helpless sufferers came “from the lowest social layer of wops and hunkies and polaks”, and their conviction, Eugene Lyons considers, was “a frame-up implicit in the social structure”.³⁰ Think that out! Europe was shaken with impotent rage, especially Latin Europe, which felt that America’s growing xenophobia, and her scorn for those of non-Nordic race, worked powerfully towards the consummation of the tragedy. This impressed you, not only in the comments of newspapers and the fury of meetings of protest, but in the chalked-up phrases on walls in Marseilles and Paris. In Liberal England and America what oppressed was the feeling that a thing supposed to be banished for ever from civilised countries, capital punishment for political opinions, might come back; this, and the long-drawn-out cruelty of reprieves and re-examinations. “They are Reds, and should hang”, was a widely quoted judgment ascribed to one of the original jury that had condemned them; and Vanzetti’s dying statement, in courage and the dignity of despair resting on its own admitted weakness (“I am only a poor fish-peddlar”) stuck in the mind, not to be eradicated. Another feature of the trial and execution, which Americans have noted, was the wide divergence between private opinion and newspaper opinion. The press had begun its lapse from independence, which to-day has gone so far as to trouble many in every political camp.

The climax of all this strange news from America was the death of the Lindbergh baby, an event too fantastic (like so many events of our time) for any novelist to have dared to invent it. And even the appalling pity of this was lost, so steeped in vulgarity is our age and our own souls along with it, in the newspaper ballyhoo and the ballyhoo of the kidnapper’s trial and execution. Even that scene, where the father looked on the remains of his recovered child and brokenly identified them (and the birth of the Lindbergh baby had been a national event, as deeply longed for and hailed with joy as genuine as ever accompanied the much publicised births of European royal families), was merely material for press photographers and columnists. Charles Lindbergh and his wife became wanderers on the face of the earth, and exiles from the land that had worshipped them.

One of the many who gave assistance in the search for the baby appealed in verse to the exile to return. “O Lindy, Come Back Home!” If you want to begin to realise how all feeling, all imagination, everything that makes civilisation, is dying out, ponder a few lines from this appeal!

“Some people say I failed, Lindy.
It was not in my power
To find the little baby
Stolen from your bower.
His curly locks, his bright blue eyes,
His toys I cherish so,
Bring back my mind to that dark night. . . .

The scoundrel snatched the baby,
But vengeance claimed its toll,
And then the ladder cracked and broke,
Before he reached his goal. . . .

Note how this continues the broadsheet tradition—living, as in Elizabeth’s days, in the land of Jesse James, and far from dead in London. Broadsheets sell in Bloomsbury even, outside the British Museum.

I wrote to have the snatcher
Meet me where he would.
One thousand grand I offered—
I thought I could do good.

Through every state in our Union
I travelled to find the child;
Canadian hills, Cuba’s swamps,
And jungles fierce and wild;
The sandy plains of Panama
And Costa Rica’s brush;
Over Morgan’s murderous trail,
Through heat and rain I’d rush. . . .

Jack Field’s and Al Capone’s
I visited to implore
To help me get the baby,
His parents’ joy and pride.
But May the twelfth the news was spread—
The baby boy had died.
What a crime! What a deal! . . . .

The law was truly carried out;
The man went to the chair;
The juries gave one hundred straight;
They put the culprit there . . .

So now, dear Lindy, foreign soil
Is not the place for you. . . .

Let no mean scoundrel drive away
Our hero bold and brave!
Dear Lindy, come back home to us
Across the surging wave!”

The Rector of Stiffkey. The press reported his delightful similes: his disapproval of “the icebergs of the Church, who draw their skirts aside”. Papers showed him sitting inside his barrel, book in hand, pretending to read while visitors filed by; or entering the cage of the lion that ended his pitiful existence. Women rushed to gather pebbles, as “souvenirs”, from his grave, when his body was being interred. And no one bothered (for religion, and especially that of the Church by law established, has ceased to be a serious matter) about the amazing implications—no, they are not amazing, they are taken for granted; they merely ought to be amazing—of the whole case; that there should be no let or bar to such men holding the cure of souls, and that before a man can be dismissed from that cure he has to be confronted by the most complicated and cumbrous and costly procedure, and to be proved not merely a fool (that by itself does not signify anything against his position) but . . . well, you know now how hesitatingly and how far out the line is drawn, before a man is admitted to be unfit to be a priest.

Then there was the Loch Ness Monster, which, after the first scepticism and delight had exhausted themselves, hoaxed nearly all of us into the belief that there must be something in it. Eye-witnesses were so numerous and respectable, and scientists, or at any rate near-scientists, vouched for it. One eye-witness told us over the air how he and his wife had seen it cross the road from the mountains to the lake, closely in front of his car—it had been raiding the flocks, had it not, and carried a sheep between its jaws, as it beat down a mighty trail through the reeds?

What has happened to the Monster now?

Some glance back over political affairs is necessary, to refresh our memories, that fade so rapidly.

It is better not to glance too closely, or to dwell on the details of these wasted years, lest the mind hardens against France and the part she played. Civilisation had one job, which it was the duty of all its sections to see to, and that was to guard the security of the only really civilised nation. The League of Nations, as Lord Robert Cecil once remarked, was useful as an umbrella for France when it was raining; at other times it was better folded up and standing aside somewhere. Its purpose was to be a shield to preserve the Versailles settlement unchanged for ever.

In July, 1931, France, with an action entirely typical, would let Germany have the loan she needed, “but only on strict political conditions . . . secured on the German customs and an explicit promise . . . that there should be no treaty-revision for ten years—the suggested period of the loan”. Bruening received a telegram from Herr Hitler and his associates, “warning him that they would not recognise any agreement of the type demanded by France”.³¹

Yet did the other two Powers who were most interested in keeping a more or less normal world behave any better? For years on end, the British Foreign Minister skipped on tour, from one European capital to another, achieving—what? Paying steady lip-worship to the League, this country steadily withdrew its life-blood into a combination of two or three supreme Powers, that imposed their will through a pretence of collective action. We hung on to our right to blow up mud huts in Kurdistan or on the Indian frontier, and to-day London grimly dreams of what her own fate may be.

The United States, whose pressure was all towards lifting the cost of the War off Germany’s shoulders, was angry and astonished when it was discovered that France considered that reparations and war debts were interlinked, and that a scaling down of one implied a scaling down of the other. France, whose sense of logic is so strong, and strongest where her own interests are concerned, thought that this exertion of pressure brought with it a moral responsibility to share its consequences.

Britain, which is not logical, is not clear-thinking, but in the dark recesses of the communal mind broods with a slow heavy fire, felt much the same. Its people resented, and to-day resent as much as ever, the constant criticism from across the Atlantic, the resolute will to find this country in the wrong, whatever we do, and just as wrong if we turn to do the opposite. Where was the sense, people felt, of being so cross over Ottawa, when everyone knew who drove to an extreme of absurdity the game of raising tariff walls?

The people of the United States are so great and attractive a people, and their authority in the world is now so overwhelming, that one wishes they could forget that their start as an independent nation necessitated the rejection of Great Britain. To most of the still-remembered grudges, of that period or later, there are extenuating circumstances. And sometimes there is misrepresentation. In 1930, the present writer, visiting the National Park on the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, was informed—by one of the official guides, whom you have to take and who are closely coached in their patter—“This battle was fought because a foreign Power, England, had promised to join the South if General Lee won a battle on Northern soil”. That happens to be not true. Yet how many thousands are told it every year!

That Civil War, almost the most interesting war ever fought and therefore the one war that people will always refuse to forget, and will remember long after they have become bored with the colossal massacres of hordes that have clashed in other lands and ages, remains a source of ill feeling. The repudiated debts of some American States are in America represented as money which England lent to the rebel Confederates. This was not so, in any one instance; and over here repudiation was resented the more, because Federal protection prevented any action in law against individual States in default. To such men as Dickens and Emerson these debts were a living issue, of resentment on the one part and of shame on the other, before misrepresentation took hold of the whole question. When Britain in her turn defaulted on debts, in 1934, in this country was an under-current of feeling that an old wrong had been partly redressed by a new one on the other side.

As American papers from time to time show, the sympathy of our ruling classes for the South, reflected in the cartoons of Punch, is still resented. The sympathy of the starving classes of Lancashire for the North, and their willingness to endure starvation if it contributed to victory, are forgotten. And for an Englishman it is painful reading, to go over the fierce (and justified) protests in verse, of such a man as James Russell Lowell. There is no excuse for those of our people who merely wanted an aristocracy to stay in power, underpinned by slavery, and to gather in cotton and profits. But these people have been, and to-day still are, the enemies of freedom in every country, including and beginning with their own.

For those over here who were genuinely puzzled, there was much excuse. The seceding States seemed to be exercising the same right as the Original Thirteen Colonies, when they left the Mother Country. Lincoln himself insisted that he was fighting, not to end slavery, but to keep the Union, whether as half slave and half free or as wholly free being a secondary consideration. Only a later generation, looking past the valour and prowess of the Confederates, winning victory after victory resoundingly, could see that this did not mean that a new nation had been created, as so many imagined, but that an existent one was being tested and strengthened:

“Had not defeat upon defeat,
Disaster on disaster come,
The slave’s emancipated feet
Had never marched behind the drum!”³²

When he first comes to a country, the foreigner has no choice but to accept the judgment of the best-informed persons he meets. When William Howard Russell, The Times correspondent, reached Washington, shortly after Lincoln’s election, he found “Society’ convulsed with amusement that so ridiculous a figure had been made President. Of course he was only to be a figurehead, but what a figurehead! with his lanky form, his stark face, his uncouth ways, his obscure origin! Who knew then that this was the greatest and noblest man of his century,

"That spirit made for sorrow, as the sea
For storms to beat on"?³³

The real man in the Administration was Mr. Secretary Seward, a belief held by Mr. Seward himself, as among the truths that are self-evident. Stories abounded, of Mrs. Lincoln’s absurdity. “My dear! you simply can’t take such people seriously!” Yet it needed only one interview for Russell to discover that Lincoln was immeasurably the greatest man there, a belief from which he never wavered, and from this time onward British opinion about the War underwent a process of change. “The Times supported the Southern cause, but Russell had not been long in that country before he discovered that his sympathies were strongly with the North. A visit to the South made him dislike the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery so intensely that he was unable to tolerate even the most indirect excuses for it.”³⁴

Lastly, though it is true that we in this country know suspiciously far too much about that War, and take too much interest in it, this also has reasons which no American need resent. It was an interesting war, supremely interesting; it ranks with our own Civil War of the seventeenth century, as one of the extremely few wars which a humanist can study without a deal of shame. These two civil wars were fought on the whole fairly decently, as wars go, and threw up on both sides an exceptional number of men who were individuals. We had, besides the world-famous principals, such men as the Verneys, Astley, Hopton, Falkland, Waller, and others. America had a host of names which it would be invidious to begin listing.

And, for the admiration felt over here for the greatest of these names on the side of the South, there is quite a tolerable excuse. Garnet Wolseley, while still a young man, visited the United States as a military observer. He met, and fell completely under the spell of Generals Lee and Stonewall Jackson, as men and soldiers. He lost his heart to Lee especially. In later years, this hero-worshipper became the head of the British Army, and reorganised it, making himself a name for outstanding efficiency and wisdom. “It’s all Sir Garnet,” said the music-halls, to signify that something was a hundred per cent sound. He handed on to the British Army his enthusiastic admiration of Robert E. Lee. If any nation happens to possess a man as attractive as Robert E. Lee, it cannot prevent such accidents as this happening. American opinion ought to begin to forgive this country for some of its interest in the Civil War.

All this is a digression.

In these last fifteen years, how often, and how often, have the peoples hailed a sunrise as the genuine day of the millennium at last! In 1925, there was Locarno, “the real dividing line between the years of war and the years of peace” (Sir Austen Chamberlain). “In the light of these treaties we are Europeans only” (M. Briand). In 1928, the Kellogg Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of policy, was signed at Paris (August 27). This really was the end of war—so effectively so, that, a few years later, Japan, engaged in “the incident” of slaughtering Chinese by thousands, pointed out that it would be wrong for her to declare war, as that would be a breach of her obligations under the Kellogg Pact! The British Government, signing the Pact, put up their own Monroe Doctrine, reserving from its operations the Suez Canal and Indian Frontier, “certain regions of the world, the welfare and integrity of which constitute a special and vital interest for our peace and safety. H. M. Government have been at pains to make it clear in the past that no interference with these regions can be suffered”.

How many “disarmament” conferences there were! When the world had “the public scandal of the U.S.A, and Great Britain—with Japan attempting to mediate—publicly quarrelling as to their respective equipment for making war on each other!”³⁵ Henry Nevinson wrote to me, from Geneva, “We listen while the nations discuss what size guns they shall kill each other with.”

In 1927, Britain and the United States, Japan being tertius gaudens in a three-cornered discussion, finished up a talk wittily styled a Disarmament Conference, with bad temper about equal on both sides. Britain was presently wrathful over the revelations of the activities of a paid agent provocateur at Geneva, employed, on the Conference’s outskirts, by American steel firms. America brooded over Britain’s unwillingness to concede cruiser parity.

Lord Cecil, whom The Times in 1919, when he was first moving towards detachment, could still describe as “a high Tory”, resigned from the Cabinet in disagreement, and from now onwards can hardly be counted a high Tory any longer.

How many were the financial squabbles and crashes!

In August, 1929, Philip Snowden shocked other nations, but delighted his own, by refusing to let Britain take on all the War Reparations sacrifices which the Young Plan entailed. Punch had a cartoon of him retiring from the wickets, with a score only in the eighties, but with the spectators in the pavilion assuring him that they considered he had done very well, very well indeed. “Well played, sir!”

Well played over what? Not only posterity, but we who are still so near to these popgun battles, may ask! Is it not as plain as anything can be, that we have been for the last dozen years living through the sunset of an epoch, and that our statesmen have been trying to pin together the straining fabric of the old power politics?

October 29, 1929. The American crash, the greatest horror that has befallen the financial world since our own South Sea Bubble in the eighteenth century.

May 11, 1931. The failure of the Rothschild-controlled Credit-Anstalt in Austria.

Crash following crash: the German utter collapse: the Hoover moratorium. Then the crash that politically was most terrifying of all, the British Crisis of August and September, 1931.

And we began to learn how little we knew of finance.

The misery of that time, when all property went down, was driven deep into the German mind, and into the mind of one man deepest of all. And, as a fire throws out shadows, so this threw out the shape of things to come. There is no feeling so intense as that of the man who is conscious that for the time being he is helpless! This is the secret worm that eats into the heart of passionate wretchedness everywhere. For wrongs real or imaginary (the distinction is immaterial), the Führer has a way of getting back more than his own.

In Britain, the second Labour Government once more showed how little they had learnt of political tactics, and entered on a shaking experience which gave the Party that terror of ever holding office again, that still grips them. They published, July 31, the Report of the May Committee on public finances. This showed that, if there were no cuts in expenditure and if the customary sinking fund for reduction of debt was provided, there would be a Budget deficit of close on a hundred and twenty million pounds.

The Report was allowed to go out without any explanation that the deficit included a sinking fund of fifty million pounds, and without any comparison with the condition of other supposedly more flourishing countries, notably the United States, which were not bothering about balancing budgets at all. Panic ensued, and Labour circles still debate whether this was spontaneous or politically engineered, to eject the Government and force the unemployed to a lower rate of assistance. Labour listened, bewildered and immobilised, while those who pretended to know warned us that if we went off the gold standard (no one knew what this was, but the phrase frightened all) we should be ruined. Fifty million pounds were borrowed by the Bank of England, from banks in France and the United States. This sum, by methods known to high finance, was whisked across seas in the twinkling of an eye (very nearly), and the British taxpayer was left with the debt for it. “The owl had the dish as his share of the treat.”

The King invited Mr. MacDonald to form a new Government, not Labour but “National”; and we have enjoyed the ministrations of such Governments ever since, we have done with “mere party government”. Mr. MacDonald kept two of his Cabinet, Messrs. Snowden and Thomas; and a few Liberals came in for a year. The others were nearly all Conservatives.

No one has put better than King-Hall the Government’s inconsistency and lack of tactical sense: “the spectacle of a self-styled Socialist Cabinet struggling to save from disaster the capitalist system which for many years Socialists had declared was inefficient, obsolete, and doomed”.³⁶ They could have shown that they could govern, or have gone down in the attempt to show this. Instead, they gave such an exhibition of ineffectiveness and dithered minds, as the country has never forgotten. Its shadow dogs Labour still, and dogs it most of all in the present year. When Labour politicians denounce co-operation with any but pure Socialists, even while the sky darkens daily above us all, everyone remembers that for years and years Messrs. MacDonald and Snowden talked exactly so, and that in 1931 we saw how much they meant it. It was a grimly comic dénouement, when the generals who had led their army into a Caudine Forks skipped over to the opposite camp, and from it directed the artillery on their late comrades and subordinates.

Another eighty million pounds were borrowed from the former lenders, and the same people who had explained how dreadful it would be to go off the gold standard explained how dreadful it would be if we did not go off it at once, and how very much our trade and everything else would benefit by our going off it. So we went off it.

America then was shocked by the “dole”, not dreaming of the blizzard preparing for herself, and of bread lines and soup kitchens and nation-wide public assistance. “It was—and still is—a matter of acute controversy as to whether the grant of the £80 million was contingent upon the British Government effecting ‘financial reforms’”—that is, cuts in unemployment pay.³⁷ There was much talk of economy; there was even suggestion that some of the big pensions, of anything from £5,000 downwards, which the heirs of men who won battles a century or two centuries or longer ago still enjoy, might at last terminate. It was felt, however, that this would be a dishonourable course, and also would not bring in very much. Cuts were therefore enforced where there could be no dishonour, in the pay of the unemployed and the public services.

The immediate response was mutiny, in September, in the Atlantic Fleet, at Invergordon. Nothing in pre-Munich years has happened to Great Britain that has so shaken foreign opinion. The present writer was returning from Norway; on the boat was an American big business magnate, who could think, dream, talk of nothing but “this terrible mutiny in your Fleet. Gosh! if the British Fleet mutinies, I guess there’s not much left of you!”

We looked to be down and out, with nothing remaining but a slow steady lapse into the sunset haze where lie Nineveh and Troy and Carthage and Spain.

The King’s responsibility for the formation of the National Government remains mysterious. Referring to it, the late Graham Wallas, shortly before he died, remarked to me that nothing could be done to bring about in this country an equitable social and political system, “unless we get rid of the influence of Buckingham Palace”. The Labour Party, however, were too beaten down to dare to pursue this line of investigation, even if it had seemed worth while. The Party was fighting for its life, and its late leaders, notably Philip Snowden, attacked it, over the wireless and on platforms, with a ferocity never shown when they commanded it. Labour, at the Election which followed, won 52 seats only. The National Government won no less than 554, of which 471 were Conservative.

So we went on to camouflaged Conservative Government, which repaired the cracked structure of capitalist society; and then, confronted by the challenge of Fascism and Nazism, developed increasing feebleness, such as to-day puts even MacDonaldism into a higher and different class. Only—so completely did Labour ruin its chances and its own unity—there is no alternative Government, so we must stagger on till we reach the end! And both the bigger parties prefer it so, rather than that Liberals should escape from disfranchisement. They both agree against proportional representation.

Labour and Conservative headquarters agree on a great deal, and most of all on helping each other to keep out unofficial candidates from Parliament. It was a small thing, to outward appearance, and passed without protest, when the monstrous injustice of demanding that a man be fined £100 if he stood, and failed to get a certain proportion of votes, was imposed. This, it was explained, was to prevent “freak candidates”. Why even freak candidates should be wicked in what is alleged to be a democracy no one has ever thought it necessary to tell us. Keir Hardie was once “a freak candidate”. Christianity (as well as trade unions and Labour representation generally) began with “freak candidates”. The great advantage of the deposit and its likely forfeiture is that it penalises the very beginning of any nonconformity from the programmes authorised by the two parties that consider themselves licensed to take places for the political dog-fight, and makes any change all but impossible. It sounds plausible to say noisily, “Gad, sir, let a feller go about preaching his stuff, and win a crowd to follow him, before he wastes our time asking us to vote for him! “ In effect it ensures that a new creed will be impotent till there have been generations of slow hard propaganda. Meanwhile the prophet has died; and the fire of his first perception with him.

It was a beginning of standardisation, and official politicians learnt what they had always suspected, that the British were becoming a tired people, too tired for their old individualism to flourish, and that you could get away with increasing standardisation, if you only did it quietly.

Under safe Conservative government at last, Britain became a country of high tariffs, and at Ottawa, in 1932, tried to steel-bind the Empire with them. There has never been much enthusiasm over here for what was done; it seems to have been better for the Dominions than for the densely populated Mother Country. The Liberals left the National Government, leaving behind them Mr. Runciman and Sir John Simon, whose subsequent services to democracy, Liberalism and small nations are not likely ever to be forgotten. They have made the name of England memorable all the world over.

One result of the new fallacious security which came for a while, as a result of the coming of a “National” Government, was that Russia became a fashionable trip. The British people have never taken kindly to executions for political reasons, and Russia had done quite enough of these to loom up as a savage monstrosity. She has become that again since, with her demonstration trials and subsequent liquidations, and a section of the Labour Party, which persists in shouting “Russia” in the House of Commons and in whitewashing this side of the Bolshevist record, merely hamstrings the Party in general elections. Or, to change the metaphor, it makes it like a dog that insists on running with a tin can tied to its tail. This reflection has nothing to do with another question, that of the wisdom of doing all we can to have Russia, which has long ceased to be anything but correct in its international relations, on our side if war comes against Powers that to-day are infinitely more of a menace to everything we can call civilisation.

Round about the beginning of the thirties, it became the thing for “intellectuals” to make the Russian tour. In the August of 1931, the most prominent of all British intellectuals, Mr. Bernard Shaw, who makes “the best of both worlds, enjoying Irish citizenship when visiting Dublin, but being a British subject or Irish national as fancy prefers in foreign lands”,³⁸ “swept down on Moscow” in company with another distinguished possessor of double nationality “his white whiskers and coat-tails and wisecracks flying—Lady Astor holding on breathlessly to the coat-tails, the American correspondents scrambling desperately for the wisecracks, the Russians gazing goggle-eyed at the strange antics”. It was not a time to take Russia seriously; for a while we could jest again. “The Kremlin was too good an eminence from which to thumb his nose at the conventional capitalist world. . . . Shaw was clearly in his most expansive and playful mood, and would praise everything Soviet if only to annoy dear Nancy Astor. She mothered him, and the least he could do was to act the bad boy.” Mrs. Shaw was worried lest he should neglect his beard, and his companion saw to it by washing it herself. “It was a fortnight of clowning that ran us” (press correspondents in Moscow) “ragged. . . . It is no accident that Shaw has praised Hitler too” (and Mussolini).³⁹

What a world we have lived in, and what gimcrack gods we have made ourselves! 1931; and already it seems a whole epoch away from us!

“Robin! that warld is all awa’,
And quiht brocht till an end!”

Chapter II

The Years of Menace

Do you remember the Peace Ballot, of June 1935, when eleven and three-quarter million people voted, and voted overwhelmingly for support of the League of Nations and for collective security and international action against aggressors? It was, even at the time, an action of doubtful wisdom, by people who meant well to the depth of their souls but had not thought out the implications of what they were doing. In retrospect it is invested with the pathos that clings to finished ways of thought and life. It expressed the simplicity and earnestness of ordinary people, who care nothing for glory or high position, but want only security and quiet pleasures. The Ballot startled the Government, which had steadily sabotaged the League and all it stood for, and its effect was seen in foreign policy for a while.

Then there was the debate of the Union of the University of Oxford, which ended in a vote that this House is not prepared to “fight for King and country”. What a howl went up! Oxford’s defeats in the Boat Race were now explained; the young men there were yellow, were decadent, were defeatist and traitorous! The effect is not yet worked out. Even now, big business employers write snarling letters declining to take any young man who comes from so wicked a seminary.

As a sunset lingers, so—as long as King George was alive—the rosy quietness of apparent security lingered, into the Years of Menace. Christmas by Christmas, he broadcast to his people; Christmas by Christmas, not the Empire only, but other lands, and the United States especially, listened, and felt that the world contained still one centre of comparative sanity. In the summer of 1935, was his Jubilee (not really a jubilee, but we called it that; now that Time has become so swift a runner, sweeping our own lives from change to change before we can see what is happening, we have not the patience to wait through fifty years of slow rich fulfilment). A few months later, on January 17, 1936, was his sudden illness; then, towards midnight of January 20, that message over the wireless, “The King’s life is moving peacefully to its close”.

It would have been well if the matter had been allowed to rest in the brief and touching perfection of that announcement. But imagination has been dying out from the world, and must be jazzed up and stimulated. The BBC peppered the final hour with gusts of song, as if the whole thing were a third-rate play—the more maddening because they were so plainly supposed to represent the hush of music softly wavering about a (stage) death-bed. You see what happens if you let a nation’s standards drop! all you do becomes haphazard and jumbled and in bad taste and idiotically inartistic and teasing.

The dead King lay in state. His people filed by and paid their last homage; and were brought face to face with their majestic past, to which this monarch, the last who would see the Empire in its greatness, “throned above trembling, puissant, grandiose, calm”, had gone his way. His successor by a noble inspiration caught the world’s attention, when he and his brothers stood for a while on vigil, at the four corners of their father’s bier.

And we listened to the wild music with which the King was laid to rest; the piping of the Admiral aboard. We watched the procession through London streets and to the grave at Windsor.

The new Coronation was to be on May 12, 1937.

But all through that summer the rumours were coming in from America, of the King’s private life. Nightly, from St. Louis a broadcaster told stories, which Canada heard with indignation and dismay. American journalists in London were commanded, were urged, to send in “stories of the King and Mrs. Simpson”; and very remarkable some of those stories were. American journals, before they were sold on stalls in this country, had paragraphs blacked out. What is most surprising of all is that these measures were so effective. Germany ruthlessly cut out the stories. Otherwise, the whole civilised world knew, except Great Britain and India.

But there was a divorce, at Ipswich, of all places, where the elaborate means taken to shut out publicity ensured publicity; and in the United States appeared a notorious head-line, which even in this age it would still be bad taste to reproduce in England. The Premier acted, and saw the King, who told him, “I am going to marry Mrs. Simpson, and I am prepared to go”.

We may have forgotten everything else, but we must remember that sequence of “sensations”: the shaken and hesitant nation, the sudden swing over, from sympathy with the King to a feeling that there was no way out but his abdication, his farewell speech before he put off from our shores at dead of night—“Now at last I can say something of my own free will”—the Archbishop of Canterbury’s parting shot as he went. And we had a new King and Queen; and, to pull together the loyalty that had been so strained and tested, gusts of royalty-worship blew over the land. The King and Queen, accompanied by the Princesses, had attended Divine Worship; they had gone for a walk in the Park; they had been seen in a carriage. Then common sense, and not too soon, came in to ration what by being sown broadcast was being made so cheap.

The episode revealed again how queer an amalgam of the hard-boiled and the sentimental is this civilisation of ours. A woman journalist has published an account of how the United States heard of the Abdication. “Then the announcer’s voice hesitated, and said softly, ‘Prince Charming is no more!’ And every woman in the room burst into tears.” An American Professor wrote angrily to the present writer, “We lined up in loyalty behind your King. Why could not you?” A prominent business man wrote, “By his action he has shown himself the greatest man of any age or any country, and England has shown herself unworthy of him. He has given up all for the woman he loves”.

All nonsense, of course. I mean, such excitement as this. Yes, but how much nonsense has sunk deep into our minds, and into that communal mind that functions all around us!

Certainly it was the perfect cinema story, the perfect “romance” of all time. But is it comforting to know that movie standards have pushed out all others, and that henceforward not only art and literature, but the life and political course of whole nations, must be conformed to what the screen considers effective (which in the last analysis, and not so very last either, means “box-office”)? And nothing will ever eradicate from American opinion the belief that the King was forced to go, because of his sympathy with the unemployed.

The episode is over. Of course. But its results went deep, and persist. Ireland and South Africa took advantage of the change over to another King, to loosen yet further the ties between them and the Empire, and to assert their status as independent sovereign States. Our own ruling classes had been shaken and frightened; if a King could so lightly forgo his position, which safeguarded and held together their own, as the sun does the solar system, their position suffered loss of security. Their minds set hard against him. To-day they distrust Mr. Winston Churchill, and turn from him as a possible leader, because he is believed to have shown a chivalrous wavering to the King’s side. “He lacks judgment”, they say; and cite, in proof, not any of the acts of his earlier career, but just this episode.

Throughout the Empire there was a loosening of the old loyalty. The monarchy (we are constantly told) knits the Empire, which without it has no common link. But—if a King can be dismissed so quietly, so quickly, and by the deed of a few men, what follows? The sentiment, if not the sentence, was heard: “To your tents, O Israel: look to thine own house, David!” It was not a shout, it was merely a whisper, and sometimes a whisper heard only in the sub-conscious. But the whisper went round the Empire. This is not imagination. It is fact, and it is a pity that the people of this island do not realise it. (But then, we know so little of what has just happened, and is happening now, outside our borders.)

The Years of Menace. At first they moved slowly, but their pace has steadily accelerated, till now there are times when we can almost hear the Twilight of the Gods rushing towards the world.

We are continually told to-day that the League of Nations has “failed”. It was too ambitious, it took too much on itself, it behaved (one is given to understand) very bumptiously and badly.

The League, of course, never was anything but what the Powers that governed it chose it should be. It was certain to be camouflaged power politics, from the moment when its constitution was made one in which there were Great Powers, entitled to a permanent seat on its Council, and little fellows who might come up for periodical election.

We know what the League was for France. For England, it was a phrase, worth a good many votes at election times, when the country was regularly told that the Government stood four-square for a policy of collective security. Europe enjoyed the jest that Sir John Simon, when he represented us at Geneva, gave the impression that he felt he was a barrister defending a shady client.

Who would dispute Sir John’s judgment, if he really felt this? Certainly not the present writer. As I was one of Sir John’s constituents, at the very start of his public career, when he stood for Walthamstow in the 1906 election, I was privileged to see the rose in bud, long before it opened to the wide unblushing flower. I may claim, in St. Paul’s words, that I am not ignorant of his devices. But he does not need my space just now.

As to the League, Mr. Winston Churchill has observed recently, in the House of Commons, February 22, 1939, that the present Prime Minister tried his listeners “a bit high”, and not his listeners of the Opposition only, by his homily on the way the League had failed—because of its own turpitude. As Mr. Churchill reminded the House, this very Government had fought, and won, elections on its policy of full support for the League and collective security. We are now offered appeasement instead, and staggering armaments and a future of ever-mounting debts, with no money for anything but armaments.

In September, 1931, in the very height of the British financial crisis, Japan invaded Manchuria. In February, 1932, she made her first onslaught on Shanghai.

Japan, like Italy and Germany, is always very sorry for herself, and very much bemused with admiration for her own superhumanly noble conduct. Her representative at the League of Nations, Mr. Matsuoka, on December 8, 1932, observed that his country was “grappling with the great question of restoring peace and order in the Far East”. “Gentlemen, Japan stands ready to be crucified. But we do believe, and firmly believe, that in a very few years world opinion will be changed, and that we also shall be understood by the world as Jesus of Nazareth was.” That was a high claim indeed! He went on to use the one overmastering argument that, with so many of our own ruling classes, is “an end to controversy”. “We find Sovietism in the heart of China.”

In every generation there is some one word whose mere utterance paralyses a large section of our people, and makes them incapable of any thought, and of any action except panic-stricken obedience. It used to be Jacobin, then Republican, then democrat, then Chartist, then Radical, then Socialist. Now, it is Communist; or Bolshevist. “Our policy”, wrote Mr. F. L. Lucas (Manchester Guardian, February 16, 1937)⁴⁰, “is palsied by one fundamental thing. More and more it stands out over every other factor. A large section of English opinion is obsessed with a delirium tremens which sees everywhere the red rat of Bolshevism gnawing its way into its bank cellars. . . . Hitler, they think, may save them from being plundered by ‘the Reds’. Nothing will get done till we are cured of this ignoble paranoia.” Mr. J. L. Hammond, almost exactly a year later, wrote in the same paper, “the fear of Communism has produced a phenomenon new in English history. . . . To-day there is a large class of Englishmen who in their dread of Communism think that the success of Franco in Spain, of Mussolini in Italy, and of Hitler in Germany is so important that the fate of British power in the Mediterranean is a secondary matter”.

To-day it may seem utterly inconceivable, with our knowledge of the unspeakable horrors Japan has perpetrated in China, striving to destroy a civilisation nobler than her own, in the name of preserving that civilisation from “Communism”—when we know of her massed executions of prisoners, her organised raping of captured women, her using of prisoners for bayonet practice—I say, it may seem utterly inconceivable that British statesmen could have really welcomed her invasion of China. However, their views are on record (only, like so much else that ought to have bitten into our brains ineradicably, they have been forgotten). Look up Sir John Simon’s speech of February 27, 1933. On the same day, supporting him, Sir Austen Chamberlain said: “having regard to the long continued and severe provocation which the Japanese had suffered at the hands of China, my sympathies were wholly with Japan” (“when these troubles began in Manchuria”), “and I found it difficult to keep a balanced judgment, which it was right and proper we should maintain”, Mr. Amery said, “Japan has got a very powerful case based upon fundamental realities”. She was quite right in acting “with the object of creating peace and order in Manchuria and defending herself against the continual aggression of vigorous Chinese nationalism. Our whole policy in India, our whole policy in Egypt, stand condemned if we condemn Japan”. Another Conservative M.P., Sir Nairn Stuart Sandeman, said: “I frankly am pro-Japanese, entirely pro-Japanese, because I believe that the Japanese will settle the question in Manchuria and settle it very quickly, and the less time that is spent in settling the row” (Japan always calls this dust-up, which has already cost millions of lives, “the incident”) “in Manchuria the sooner we shall get on to doing trade in China.” The Japanese in China would “set up a beneficent autocracy, which is possibly the best form of rule that you can get”. Sir John Simon, in the previous December, before the League of Nations, had saved Mr. Matsuoka (the gentleman who made the striking comparison of Imperialist Japan with crucified Jesus of Nazareth) the trouble of defending his country’s action. “On going out of the room, Mr. Matsuoka . . . was overheard to exclaim delightedly that Sir John Simon had said in half an hour what he had been trying to tell the Assembly for weeks.”⁴¹ What a superb advocate Sir John is!

But how very badly China, and most of all “vigorous Chinese nationalism”, has behaved! Instead of letting the F.B.I. and the City “get on to doing trade” she has held up the civilising work of the Japanese hordes. She, and not Japan, is to blame for the long series of unpleasant happenings that have followed remorselessly, as week came after week: the drowning of ten thousand Hongkong fisherfolk, the shelling of their craft by submarines, the shooting up of the British Ambassador, the bombing of the Panay, the insolence to British officials and citizens, the general thumbing of the nose as yet another outrage was launched on Western interests and prestige.

“As surely as a calf will find out its mother among a thousand cows,” says a well-known passage in the Upanishads, “so surely will an evil deed find out its doer.” Over Manchuria, our Government lost the fairest chance of bringing the United States back into co-operation with the rest of the world. Along with a bewildering amount of sheer caprice, some moral law operates with terrifying certainty. When “sanctions” were applied against Italy over Abyssinia, the most important Members of the League who refused to participate in them were Austria and Spain. We know what has happened to those countries since!

As to Sir John Simon’s and our Government’s attitude over the invasion of China: our “non-intervention” policy in Spain—the day draws on when war between Japan and Britain may be (will be, if it comes) represented, and plausibly, as mere war over Hongkong, and when non-intervention may be enforced against ourselves, and our own vessels left to bring through submarine-infested seas such food and munitions as we can get from the Dominions. The Manchurian affair so startled America that she began to sell out her interests in China, which to-day are small in comparison with ours, that remain vast (on paper). Then there was Abyssinia. What a fool was its Emperor, to keep on trusting the League, and, above all, trusting us! What memories do these names stir: Walwal, Mr. Ricketts (“I am an Englishman of the deepest dye”), Stresa? “The Stresa Front”—formed in April 1935, when Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and Sir John Simon kept so strictly quiet on Abyssinia, in their determination to hold Mussolini in a common front against Germany (and never mind what happened in the rest of the world!), that when sanctions were begun Italy had real indignation in her anger—for she thought that what she intended to do had been condoned in advance by Britain, and she has said since that Laval promised her a free hand in Abyssinia?

You have forgotten much. But ought you to forget that speech whereby Sir Samuel Hoare for one week gave our nation back the moral and political leadership of a bewildered and frightened world? Do you remember seeing him in the cinema, with that right hand of his emphatically beating agreement with the slow deliberate tones of his voice as it drove home such words as “steady . . . collective . . . resistance . . . all acts . . . of unprovoked aggression”?

“It is to the principles of the League, and not to any particular manifestation, that the British nation has demonstrated its adherence. Any other view is at once an under-estimate of our good faith and an imputation upon our sincerity. In conformity with its precise and explicit obligations the League stands, and my country stands with it, for the collective maintenance of the Covenant in its entirety, and particularly for steady and collective resistance to all acts of unprovoked aggression. The attitude of the British nation in the last few weeks has clearly demonstrated the fact that this is no variable and unreliable sentiment, but a principle of international conduct to which they and their Government hold with firm, enduring and universal persistence.

There, then, is the British attitude towards the Covenant. I cannot believe that it will be changed so long as the League remains an effective body and the main bridge between the United Kingdom and the Continent remains intact.”

A time must come, when this generation and its problems and sufferings have gone into the dust, when the public men of our age will be assessed, and their place taken in the judgment of the world and their own country. Do you think the reputation of the Right Honourable Sir Samuel Hoare can survive that speech and the lurid light flung back upon it by the deeds that followed? Do you think the cynical standards which our own age has come to apply to politics will obtain for ever?

The speech was received with astonishment, that rose to delight and measureless relief. Britain then, after all, was what other nations are always in danger of hoping and half-believing she may be! She was at last—at last—taking her rightful place, hers because of power and the wide stretches of earth under her control; she was gathering the peoples together, to the defence of decency and good faith! And the representatives of country after country rose, and pledged their own nation to follow “wherever we would lead”.⁴²

This outburst of incredulous joy took the British Government by surprise, as did the pride (it was the very last time we were to feel pride) of their own people. The British spokesman himself was certainly taken aback. I suppose the ordinary man and woman will never realise that a politician’s public support of the moral law is never to be accepted at face value. It is in the same class with our conventional enquiries after each other’s health when we meet. “How are you, old boy?” “Well, to tell the truth, I’ve been having a pretty thin time lately, what with . . . and with . . .” “Good heavens! you surely don’t suppose I meant you to take me seriously!”

For a flash, other nations did take us seriously. Italy was thunderstruck, Germany impressed. Even Japan faltered in her work of civilising China:

“The wild hawk stopped, with the down on his beak,
And stared, with his foot on the prey.”

The British Government proceeded to a General Election, and fought it (the fact is not in dispute) on Collective Security. It was high treason, bitterly resented by Government speaker after speaker, to insinuate a doubt as to their whole-hearted enthusiasm for the League. French newspapers meanwhile soothed their own people, frightened at the prospect of antagonising Italy, with assurances that all this League talk in England was merely in order to win the election, and that afterwards everything would be quite all right. “You will see, It will all fall out pat as I have said.” “‘Why, Father, is the net removed?’ ‘Son, it has caught the fish!’”

Professor Arnold Toynbee’s comment on the whole episode is:

“When Sir Samuel Hoare immediately proceeded to speak, as he did speak, in the League Assembly, and when thereafter Mr. Baldwin and his political associates took this proclamation of loyalty to the League as the main plank in an electioneering campaign through which they obtained another four or five years’ tenure of office, the most charitable account of their conduct would be that they were bluffing, while, on a harsher interpretation, they were deliberately throwing dust in the eyes of the electorate of the United Kingdom and of the Governments and peoples of all the states members of the League whom they persuaded to participate in the imposition of economic sanctions.”⁴³

When Abyssinia asked to be admitted into the League, in 1923, the British delegate questioned her fitness for membership. France dispersed these doubts, and the Italian delegate considered that Abyssinia “had acquired titles of nobility to which due justice must be paid”. The end of the squalid and dreadful story was the rain of bombs and blinding scorching gases from the air (“One group of horsemen gave me the impression of a budding rose unfolding as the bomb fell in their midst and blew them up. It was exceptionally good fun”⁴⁴): the massacre of Addis Ababa, and the execution of every Abyssinian of any education, including the two sons of the Ethiopian Minister in London and the gallant commander of the last organised army in the field for his country. As to the sanctions, the one that would have settled the whole business, that of oil, was withheld.

I think no one to-day will deny that our Government, and that of France, made the worst of all possible worlds. France now finds herself indignantly attacked for possession of Jibuti, which is represented as an excrescence on Italy’s “Empire”. England earned a name for cowardice and hypocrisy which she will not live down without paying a price which is likely to be staggering. Italy for the time being was blinded, by hatred for Britain, to the fact that she had become a satellite state in the Nazi system, and could no longer preserve Austria as a buffer.

One of the most disquieting characteristics of the Prime Minister is his insensitiveness to moral issues. He continues to talk, whatever happens, as if Italy and Germany were conducting a high civilising mission, marred by only occasional lapses of no great importance; and he seems not to care about the sound of the firing squads, first distant in Manchuria or Abyssinia but now steadily nearing our own land. There is a widespread sympathy, felt in all parties, with what Gilbert Murray expressed, in a truly magnificent letter in The Times (March 4, 1939):

“When a large part, and perhaps the most thoughtful part, of the nation is daily and hourly harassed by thoughts of the hideous sufferings inflicted on millions of innocent human beings, and the monstrous crimes against humanity which are being daily perpetrated, the Prime Minister somehow leaves the impression—no doubt an unjustified impression—of being entirely indifferent to such issues. His kind words are all for the oppressors; his unkind words for the sufferers. His words of comfort are devoted to showing how this country can, after all, make money out of the agonies of others. He seems to ignore completely that moral idealism which lies near the root of the British character, he pours contempt upon the League of Nations, and when people passionately protest in the streets against this attitude, he imagines—apparently he really does imagine—that they are Communists. . . .

There must be some way in which the Government can convince us that it has some generous enthusiasm, that its policy has some moral basis, that it is not always ready to side with the strong against the weak and to radiate satisfaction over the calamities of the innocent. Lord Baldwin once admitted frankly that events in Abyssinia were to him ‘a bitter humiliation’ and that one phrase took the sting out of opposition criticism.”

No such admission will ever come from Mr. Chamberlain. His speeches all register complete complacency and satisfaction with his course and attitude, and while he may be vexed at Nazi Germany’s refusal to continue the love-feast of Munich, he does not realise that the main cause of the reluctance of this nation, and of the young in particular, to join in that “unity” for which he calls is the fact that he has made us the friends and accomplices of crooks and murderers. Even when outraged public opinion shook him at last into condemnation of this year’s rape of Czechoslovakia, his loudest complaint was that he personally had been let down. He had a “right” to be consulted, the assumption being that he and the Führer had a right to settle European affairs in consultation together. Bombing from the air, the blotting out of whole cities or the devastation of terrified mobs fleeing along the roads, seem not to make any impression on him. He has “a freezing gift of understatement”, of “superb understatement”.⁴⁵ Criticism of the Government under which these things have become daily incidents of the news is to him “fouling our own nest”. The Observer pointed out, October 2, 1938, the “strong personal sympathy” that “exists between Signor Mussolini and the Chamberlain Family. . . . It persisted even after the dark stupid days of sanctions, thanks to the courage of Lady Chamberlain, Sir Austen’s widow, who came unofficially to Rome to sound and correct Anglo-Italian feelings”. That is how he prefers to work: unofficially, and not through our trained services. Later, Lady Chamberlain’s photograph, in a group of high officers at General Franco’s headquarters, went the round of our press, and similar paragraphs told us that she was doing this country (of which she is technically merely a private citizen) this same tremendous service, of reinforcing our diplomacy. Would there be any harm in returning to the older ways of negotiation, by our trained personnel? We were having (we still have) a few trifling differences with General Franco, who was bombing and machine-gunning British ships and killing British seamen. But what do these things matter? It is strange that the Conservative Party, once a great and patriotic political party, which cared that public affairs should be carried out at any rate correctly, stands for such diplomacy, except that it has sunk so low that now it will stand for anything except British and Imperial interests.

How great a change has come over Conservatism and its expression you can see if you contrast The Times of to-day with The Times of only a year or two ago, when it gave the full story of the deliberate expunging of Guernica, and set out in burning sentences the shame of that deed!

Signor Martelli, the Rome Correspondent of the Morning Post, explained one of the incidents of the Ethiopian war—in the ultimate orgy of cruelty, it became a merely minor one—the bombing of the British Red Cross, which “had been treating gas cases at the rate of eighty to a hundred a day”, as “just a sheer piece of ‘frightfulness’, with hatred of the English as an additional motive”.⁴⁶ It is pleasant to know that, thanks to the Prime Minister and his real ambassadors, this hatred has completely gone—just as if you believe in fairies it is jolly to know that they live in a valley behind your house!

Do you remember that extraordinary display, at the Paris Exhibition, in a world that was terrifyingly earnest and grimly purposeful, of the activities of this island of ours? Apparently we were at ease in the gathering storm: we were shown as riding to hounds, as fishing and shooting: our Premier with fishing-rod presiding over

“This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands.”

Chapter III

Peace with Honour

We in this country did not bother overmuch about the coming of the Nazis, until June 30, 1934, when the Führer “swung up into the nocturnal heavens” and attended to the summary execution (greatly to their surprise) of a still unknown number of his friends and associates. “In these twenty-four hours I was the Supreme Court of the nation in my own person.” He found he liked the position, and appointed himself to it permanently. He has assistants, of course; and People’s Courts—

“A body for my needs, that so
I may not all unclothed go.”⁴⁷

The episode was a new thing in civilised history, and at the time did rather startle the world. A friend who is strongly Conservative—rightly, and naturally, for he was once Member of an Indian Governor’s Executive Council—brooded deeply over it. “Just fancy how we should have felt in Calcutta, if Lord Carmichael had suddenly walked in, and announced that he was going to execute the lot of us!” Or, as an Oxford don put it, bringing this point of view up to date, “Just fancy what Public Enemy Number Two would feel if Public Enemy Number One suddenly walked in, and said he was going to bump him off!”

We quickly learnt, however, that it had been all right; the executions, though by British notions a bit irregular, had been justified. Röhm was a moral pervert.

It is noteworthy, how easily and on what flimsy grounds—you need only throw out one of two or three phrases—executions are now taken for granted, or accepted as praiseworthy. When the Spanish insurgents, after capturing Bilbao, set to their grisly work questions were asked in Parliament. But they were effectively silenced with the reply that it was only a few “Communists” who were being shot. If they were “Communists”, it was quite all right. Similarly, more recently, perhaps a majority of this nation thought that, before General Franco was recognised, our Government should insist on an amnesty for political offences. Mr. Chamberlain with indignation said that we had no right to press for the forgiveness of men “guilty of horrible crimes”: General Franco had indicated in a general kind of way his inclination towards clemency. So, again, the question dropped. Men “guilty of horrible crimes” ought to be shot (though we might have remembered, if we were not so utterly weary and disillusioned, that to General Franco “horrible crimes” is a very wide category indeed, and includes, as the very worst, opposition to General Franco).

At first, and to many even now, the Nazi régime seemed to our ruling classes good. It gave Europe a bulwark against that fiendish “Communism”. It saved us a deal of trouble and expense, by keeping Russia in her place. Some aspects of Nazism were even funny. The Head of a woman’s college, travelling in the summer of 1937, in a desolate and forested region of Germany came upon what she took for a jolly open-air drama or charade. A number of fine persons, of both sexes, stood around, wearing chiefly horns. A man and a woman, more resplendently horned, stood in front, and before them was the biggest “head” of all, a superb set of antlers worn by a man who wore also a wolfskin.

They learnt afterwards that it was a neo-pagan wedding. The gentleman in the biggest antlers was a Priest of Odin.

We are often told how kind the Führer is to children. After the Munich Settlement a lady suggested that Mr. Chamberlain should make him another visit, and this time take the two Princesses. Herr Hitler’s notorious love for the very young could not fail to melt him in their presence, and he and our own Premier would bring in the Golden Age immediately.

This fondness for children is a mark of all the great Nazi leaders. Field-Marshal Goering has a Battle Game on top of his house, occupying a hundred square yards. Here, says his worshipping biographer, his friend and chief assistant,

“there is nothing lacking that could delight the heart of a boy. Fire-spitting tanks roll onward relentlessly against the foe. The infantry is gassed, anti-aircraft guns fire on aeroplanes, which drop their bombs.

“And Hermann Goering, the children’s friend, sits in the midst of this mimic warfare, his face beaming with delight, while he watches the faces of his nephews, alternately expressing amusement and gravity as they see this pageant of battle, and as he listens to the childish laughter of his youngest niece.”⁴⁸

How could there still be people hankering after friendship with the United States and our own Dominions and India; and countries like Sweden and Denmark and Norway and Holland? People dissatisfied with the Premier’s determination to bring us and France into a Four-Power Pact with nations ruled by such noble characters as the Duce and Führer, and Count Ciano, and Himmler and Goering and Von Ribbentrop, with such pii vates as Signor Gayda and Dr. Goebbels?

So we winked at Germany’s steady rearming, and we did a major piece of agreement-breaking ourselves, stepping outside the League and Stresa Front both, to conclude an Anglo-German Naval Pact (June 18, 1935), to France’s boundless anger and indignation. Both parties to this Pact were very proud of it—until yesterday. Herr Hitler often adduced it as a proof of how very reasonable he can be when he has reasonable people to deal with; our own Government cited it, as a fine example of their flair for combining realism with peacefulness, as perhaps the major success of their extremely successful foreign policy. The latter argument is now generally dropped, since we know something of what Germany has done despite the Pact, and suspect more of what she is at present doing. Also, it does not now seem to have been such a master-stroke to concede that she should have as many submarines, working from impregnable bases on her own coast, as we are to have all the world over.

In May, 1936, the Führer having repeatedly said that the treaties he thought it right to break were those that had been against Germany’s will, our Government sent him a questionnaire, desiring to know if now he thought she could enter into binding agreements. That questionnaire has not yet been answered.

But no one should fuss about agreements. There is no difficulty in making them. Nor need we doubt that they will be kept just as long as it suits our enemies to keep them.

You live in a world where the dictionary, as well as statesmanship, has been struck dizzy. “Pact” has acquired a sinister meaning, which has nothing to do with peace. “Plebiscite” used to be the refuge of the ultra-democratically-minded. “We ought to have plebiscites”, they would cry, and would point to Switzerland. Plebiscite! The word sends a shudder down the spine of anyone who lives in a small nation inside the range of the Nazi stroke. What if some day, having conquered Britain, the Führer kindly extends the boon to us? Then there is “self-determination” in whose name Germany occupied Prague, March 15, 1939.⁴⁹

Things have marched fast. In 1909, the whole of the civilised world was shocked by the execution of one man, Francisco Ferrer the schoolmaster, at Barcelona, for a political offence. Now in Germany is an average of four beheadings a week. Russia has had her periodical purges, which have sent the dead crowding fast into the shadows. The example spreads, till even the Irish Free State, at our very doors, has now imposed the death sentence for treason. We have lived through the brutal military suppression, and subsequent hangings, of the Austrian Socialists: the murder of one Austrian Chancellor, and the summoning of his successor to Berchtesgaden, to be rated like a dog—the first event that really brought home to the outside world the tremendous power and ruthless arrogance of Nazi Germany: the summary annexation of Austria.

Then we sent Lord Runciman to Prague, to mediate—surely the most impertinent interference with the affairs of another State that ever happened! His mission and purpose were well understood from the first (though not in his own country). Bands of Germans marched through Czechoslovakian streets, chanting that they had no need of Father Christmas, they had their Runciman:

“Lieber Runciman, mach uns frei!
Befrei uns von Czechoslovakie!”

“And they did, and he did, and they did”, as the breathless little girl said, concluding the bears and Elisha story.

We lived through the slow incredible horror of that week when the BBC nightly warned us of mines that were being laid in our territorial waters, as a defence against war that was coming. We steeled ourselves to bear the first shock. We felt the delirious relief of hearing that our Premier was flying to Germany, in a last-minute effort to avoid war. In one day, we passed into a tranquillity we had not enjoyed for two years. We breathed again, and walked the streets unfearing, where yesterday London had half glanced upward, as though wondering when the bombs would begin to drop. For at least three days we knew we were safe from sudden attack, after we had grown inured to expecting destruction at any moment, and without warning—an immensity of relief hardly ever known before. After such a reprieve you cannot easily knit nerves up to the sticking-point again!

Then we were plunged back into horror, when the Premier returned, and reported that the terms the Führer was imposing were utterly unacceptable.⁵⁰ We thought that at last Hitler had over-played his band; we were to find that against this Government of ours this is not possible. How strange, and how kind, it was of the Duce to arrange another meeting of Führer and Premier, and to send that message—timed (by accident, of course) to arrive just as the Premier was addressing a House of Commons awed with knowledge that it was standing in the very shadow of war! How often, and how very often, we have since been reminded that we must be eternally grateful to the Duce, for having enabled our Premier to save us! How the House of Commons and the crowded galleries went mad with joy and thankfulness, the American Ambassador (so the press reported) shouting “Attaboy!” at the Italian Ambassador, the Archbishop of Canterbury beating with his fists on the woodwork before him, Royal Dukes and Duchesses forgetting that they were above human excitements! Then we cheered in the cinemas the sight of the Premier’s smile and wave of the hand, as he came back, bringing what he styled boyishly and facetiously, “Peace with Honour”, and flourished his glorious trophy, a piece of paper on which “both the German Chancellor and I have signed our names”. We saw his colleagues madly welcoming him (Mr. Malcolm MacDonald clambering up some precipitous place in Downing Street—to get a snapshot, was it not?), and were they not right, for he had not only prevented war, he had assured a discredited Government of a long new lease of power! Henceforward, all a Government candidate need do was to ask his opponent, “Then would you prefer to have war?”—no other hint or adumbration of policy has been necessary. In the silence that followed this question, you could add of course, that if the National Government’s opponents had had their way this country would have fought “four wars” (all, apparently, unsuccessful), over China, Ethiopia, Czechoslovakia, Spain. The Premier’s voice came over the wires and into the theatres, assuring us it was “all right this time”, and telling us to prepare for a Merry Christmas. The Czech Government, whose attitude throughout unbearable wrong and cruelty had been perfect in dignity and courage, “bequeathed their sorrow” to the British and French peoples, and their soldiers abandoned their costly defences and fell quietly back. The Nazi troops moved forward, glutted with loot and confiscations, and Germany went on to an immensity of terrorism against her Jews, that left the world all but stunned, as if in presence of some horror watched in the helplessness of a dream.

We have shut our eyes to what has happened in the land which with such proud scorn bequeathed its sorrow to us who had enforced that sorrow. Our guarantee of its new frontiers has gone where so many other guarantees have gone. For our own peace of mind we ask to be told as little as possible, we draw into ourselves and wait for our own time of testing.

To-day we are told that the Premier did what he did, to gain time; with this comfort troubled Conservatives strengthen their spirits: we were not ready (this, at any rate, seems to be true).

Whatever the reason, the long-drawn-out and costly meddling, the Runciman Mission and the rest, ended in one man pulling off one day’s work, such as no other statesman in the world’s whole history ever had to his credit! Nothing that has happened since can dim the completeness of it. Dr. Goebbels immediately supplied the perfect commentary. “It is necessary for pauses to save the nerves of our people. Like the boa constrictor we wanted to digest everything we ate before we started again. . . . To-day we reap the first harvest, and if we now set ourselves new aims . . . we are just as sure to achieve them. . . . The man in the street to-day asks quite casually, ‘Well, well, when will the colonies be served up?’.” If the British Premier were a newly appointed Gauleiter, for the district of Britain, he would be spoken of exactly as he now was. “Some cowards now say, ‘Suppose this Chamberlain had not come’ . . . To which I can only reply, ‘This Chamberlain did come’ . . . He came because the West knew that we meant business, and we are strong enough to mean business. . . . Never in history was the German Reich so big or so powerful as in 1938.” This point of view was reinforced by the Führer himself, who kindly indicated by name those British politicians who must not be included in any future Cabinets.

France’s bulwark of Pacts laid low: the resources of half a dozen great countries poured out at the Führer’s feet: the Danube waterway opened at a stroke: the Skoda works gone: the Czech two thousand ’planes and their skilled and fearless pilots gone: the Czech armies and fortifications and their secrets gone: thirty to forty German divisions freed to act against the Western front: country after country jumping to come to terms with the all-conquering Nazis: the United States shocked and scornful: the Empire dismayed: small nations distressed.

It is not to be supposed, however, that our Government worked without a plan or policy. With skill they kept Russia out of everything. “Thank God!” (observed to me an Oxford Professor whom I never thought to hear thank God for anything—and to this extent, like Dr. Johnson with the printer’s devil, I must be grateful, and bring the incident under the head of signs of that religious revival for which we are praying and hoping) “that when we do fight we shall not have to fight with Russia on our side.” “Did you notice”, asked another Conservative friend, “the smart way our Premier managed to pull the affair off without bringing in Russia at all?”

Yes, one noticed it. As the old lady said, when watching Don Bradman steadily amassing another hundred in a Test match, “I do think those bowlers are clever, to keep on hitting the bat every time!”

Then, March 15, 1939, what might have seemed impossible—a deeper humiliation yet—came to the mind of our once-proud people, as German troops occupied Czech cities, Moravia and Bohemia became a protectorate, and Slovakia was proclaimed “independent”. Europe, as the Hamburger Fremdenblatt observed, ceased “to be exposed to periodic excesses of Czech terrorism”; the Czechs lost their gold, and the control of the Skoda works offset for Hitler the brief anxiety caused by the French and British frantic rearming. “It is my hope, and my belief”, the Premier had observed at the conclusion of his work at Munich, “that under the new system of guarantees the new Czechoslovakia will find a greater security than she has ever enjoyed in the past.” A brave and enlightened people passed into slavery—with courage to the last, greeting the Nazi barbarians with clenched fists and defiant singing of their own National Anthem.

But why did this country have to do the Nazis’ dirty work for them?

And why, all through a crisis that lasted for some weeks, when the terms that Mr. Chamberlain was imposing on the Czechs were known in every country in the world, when the Prague Government had passionately protested against them, in print and by broadcast, were we in this country scolded, by the Government and by The Times, for daring to have any opinion about matters of which (we were reminded) we knew nothing, and apparently had no right to expect to know anything? And why did the Cabinet consent to be treated as a nucleus of a Big Four, and the rest so many yes-men?

No Premier in all our history has so ignored the Constitution and all this country’s hard-won rights under it: dismissing one Foreign Minister, and doing another’s work for him, without his presence, when he made his flights to Germany: treating Parliament, to quote Mr. Harold Macmillan, as if it were a Reichstag, flatly refusing to recall it when he was pushing through single-handed commitments for all time, that involved our very existence, and confronting it as Professor Seton-Watson has said, with one accomplished fact after another: doing all, through an Inner Cabinet of Four: and, dividing Czechoslovakia without admitting its representatives to a hearing, until they were finally called in to be merely told their fate, while he yawned without any sign of embarrassment—in our name fixing upon us this infamy, which will make for all time 1938 the most humiliating year in British history (unless 1939 is going to surpass it)! He did all this, and we still do not know what are his aims and his policy for the future. We know nothing of what he plans to do with those colonies, the one “awkward question” which the Führer reminded him, and continues to remind him and us, remains between us. We do know that they have often been privately discussed.

Knowing something of the passion of rage and shame and distrust that burns in the young, and not in the young only, I have no hesitation in saying that under Mr. Chamberlain this country has gone a long step nearer to the possibility (not yet—but if events march as swiftly and grimly as they have done, this possibility also will come closer, with men’s deepening sense of helplessness) of civil riots and violence.

He and his friends are ruthless in their control of Parliament and all the means and power that wealth and the captaincy of industry give them. Gilbert Murray, in the letter I have already quoted, underlines this ruthlessness, and the feeling of despair that has seized large sections of our nation:

“I take it as fairly certain that the Conservatives will remain in office for the rest of my life. Their political machine is still whole; the other two are broken; and even if much more than half the country were against the Government it would still be sure of thumping majorities in the House of Commons. In critical times like these that is a dangerous situation. Unless it is very wise, such a Government will mistake its Parliamentary majorities for an expression of the national will, and forget that it needs the allegiance of a united nation.

Now the Baldwin Government, though open in my opinion to much criticism, did not make this fundamental mistake. They tried to be ‘National’; they were at least Conservative in the best sense of that much-abused word. They believed in the generous and kindly traditions of the British people and its concern for moral ideals.”

Murray goes on to speak of “a large minority at any rate” who are “full of an almost savage mistrust of the real aims of the Prime Minister”. “It is not enough for a Government in times like these to confute the Opposition by smart party speeches and vote them down triumphantly in the House.”

Nor is Fleet Street likely to forgive in a hurry such episodes as the lunch of last summer, when a party of American and Canadian journalists at Lady Astor’s house were taken into a confidence regarding his aims, which was refused to our own press, and which indeed was of such a kind as to make the long-drawn-out and expensive misery which ended in the Munich capitulation a cynical farce.

Yet this double demand is dunned into us, and dunned day after day, that we must show eternal gratitude for his work of Appeasement, and must show also unity, unity, unity, as if the whole of England were an excited flapper, wildly applauding the Führer!

And we must arm, arm, arm, feverishly, desperately, both to support this policy of Appeasement and to ward off the terrors coming on us.

No one outside the Government thinks they have done an even moderately efficient job in their rearming hitherto, despite the money they have poured out. Can we trust them now? A man distinguished equally as a soldier and a Conservative was asked during the Oxford by-election of last October, “Can we trust Mr. Chamberlain?” After deep thought he answered pausingly, “Ye-es. If he is gingered up!” That is a tribute, doubtless; but the chill is hardly off it. We failed to ginger our Premier up at Oxford. Last June, the father of a leading Conservative M.P. said to me, “My boy tells me he hasn’t agreed with a thing the Government has done for six months. But the Whips always drive you into the Lobby!”

Is not this the way the whole country talks—quietly and dispiritedly? No Government has ever had such scathing and repeated criticism from its own followers (some of them), but criticism stops at criticism, it does not go into the lobbies. Meanwhile the whole world has watched with amazement, so utter as to verge on stupor, while a ruling class that had everything in its hands has let the Empire and its affairs drift from peril to ever-deeper peril, until now despair has bitten to its own soul.

Yet we must support this Government that does not know what it is doing—that is beginning to be terrified of the prospect of expenditure and debt before it—that can do nothing about unemployment—that is too bewildered to look to its dependent countries and see what is happening there! We must support the Government! We must support our Party! As a speaker observed during the Oxford by-election, “We must stand by our captain, even if he is taking the ship on to the rocks!” (and he was not consciously saying anything funny). “The Whips always drive you into the Lobby!”

In old days—between 1900 and 1906, for example—men crossed the floor freely,⁵¹ they dared to vote according to their consciences. But to-day, democracy means grumbling in private, and in public some hundreds like “my boy”, a baronet whom the Whips always drive into their lobby.

How much we forget, or dare not dwell on! Or do not know! In this age of wireless and ’planes that can fly up to hundreds of miles an hour, it is easier than ever to shut down heart-shaking news, so that it either is shut down for ever or creeps out only by degrees and to a few—and so late, and so slowly, that other horrors have long since overtaken it.

In the summer of 1938, at a public luncheon I found myself next to a lady who is a J.P., and active political and social worker, a high official in the educational department of her county. I mentioned in passing the concentration camps in Germany. She turned surprised eyes upon me. “Oh, but I thought all that kind of thing had finished long ago!”

Two months later, there were the mass executions of Jews in Nazi concentration camps (which did not get into the papers; I have no doubt that not a whisper of them has even yet reached my neighbour of that luncheon), followed by the preposterous fine on the German Jews and the cruelties beyond all precedent in that country which daily surpasses even its own precedents. “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?”

Nothing, except armed invasion, will shake from their complacency a vast section of our people. When Hitler seized Austria, The Times (which in those days could still be shocked, whereas to-day it takes an unkind word of Mr. Attlee to the Premier to rouse it to sorrow) in its account of the scenes in Vienna was awed and troubled. As its Special Correspondent said, they were a revelation, even to those who had thought they knew Austria, of hidden xenophobia now frankly expressing itself—in smiling friendly Austria! We have more such shocks before us. Scorn and envy are the parents of hatred, and hatred and scorn are growing for the sleek gorged democratic nations.

The Manchester Guardian has written of “the frivolous optimism of the Left”: their readiness, after being frightened into wakefulness, to exaggerate the difficulties of those whose failure they desire to see. Japan is bound to come to grief in China! Italy has bitten off more than she can chew! Germany has economic indigestion, she simply cannot go on without a crash! It never occurs to us that the economic laws of our own capitalist system may not operate so rigidly, in a system which has seized everything, in kind or cash or personal effort, within its borders. Or that our own economic strength will slump instantaneously, the moment we are engaged in a desperate war; that it is built on “prestige”, and that this, and not any gold standard or absence of one, sustains the pound sterling.

Daily, if you use your ears, you can learn for yourself what a world of rose-tinted sham is the home of many of your fellow-citizens.

Three conversations, widely apart, swim up into my memory. The first was in a garden in India, on the evening of August 4, 1914. Our morning paper had spoken to us comfortably, and had pointed out that the war could not, by any stretch of imagination, last until Christmas. “Economic difficulties” would see to that. As we sat there, drinking our pegs between tennis sets, the Police Superintendent kept saying, “Well, I give Germany two months!” It seemed to me, though I did not pretend to understand high finance, that Germany’s rulers must have looked a little further ahead than that, and must know as much as we did about her problems. But I was torn to pieces. “Haven’t you read what the Statesman said this morning? How can Germany find the money for more than two months?”

Well, she did find it.

The next was in a hotel in Sherborne, about six years ago. There was a woman of the overbearing type that always talks like a steam-roller driving remorselessly on. No one had ever contradicted her, no one had ever tried to enlighten her; the whole room was silent, all conversation stilled, as we all had to listen to her. “It isn’t the unemployed that I blame,” she said generously. “It’s their leaders! I believe that many of the men are quite decent at heart! I blame their leaders, for not telling them that the dole is charity, and nothing else. I am sure that many of them do not realise this, and that, if they were once told it, they would be too ashamed—and too decent—to take what they have no right to, but get, as I say, by charity.” The man who was with her was terribly nervous, and kept looking round. “Oh I say, you know,” he said, “some of them can’t get work, they can’t, really.” “Have they tried?” asked the lady, with an imperious tilt of a horselike face and enormous nose (yes, she was like that; I am inventing nothing). “Oh, yes, er, yes. At least, I believe so. Some of them have never had a chance of getting any work.” She did not seem to have heard this, and was quiet for a minute or two.

The third conversation was last January, in a railway train:

“Isn’t it funny, the way we live now! There’s a Crisis, and we all get terribly excited. Then it all blows over, and we go to sleep again!”

“Yes” (ecstatically). “But isn’t that dear old England all over!”

“Yes!” (a triumphant wave of a cigaretted hand). “And every time we get away with it!”

Of course, Germany is not the only portent in our sky.

We have had our own brief distractions, some of them carrying a kind of symbolic quality, like the omens that the populace discovered in Ancient Rome, when disaster was marching on them. There were the days when we waited in sympathy beside the deathbed of unconscious T. E. Lawrence; and when his spirit fled there were few of us who did not feel that something of our greatness, now fast growing legendary, had taken wing with it. We in this island felt this, but could not express it. The best appraisement of his enigmatical character, that I have ever seen, appeared in The New Yorker; the best corrective of the abundant nonsense talked and written (about what, in any event, was a unique and very great personality and career) is in Mr. Antonius’s book, The Arab Awakening. He died, May 18, 1935.

Then there was the Mayfair Gangster case, in early 1938, when two public school boys were sentenced to the cat. What an excitement that caused! and what a sadistic outpouring, in the letters published in the papers read by the prosperous classes! Some of them, some with titled names attached, are too horrible to quote. But we learnt what foul beasts of ravin lurk in comfortable homes. We are not as far removed, as we like to imagine, from the re-establishment (or the welcoming of such re-establishment) of the public gallows and the bloody whip in our streets.

All these excitements passed. The peril outside did not pass, but grew ever more menacing. Have you forgotten the Mediterranean “piracy”, so very mysterious in its agents?⁵² Who could be doing it? No one knew, certainly not our Government. Yet it was ended, sharply and completely, by our last spasm of firmness, the Nyon Agreement of France and England. For this achievement, Mr. Winston Churchill, a generous man, gave the credit to the Duce, who did what “only Julius Caesar” before him had done, by his own single decision ending piracy in the Middle Sea. This, no doubt, was so. Still, England and France strengthened his hand, behind the scenes.

Have you forgotten Guernica? Or the orgies of Spanish massacre by court-martial? Or those promises on promises, which we were told it would be discourteous and wicked to doubt, which nevertheless proved one straightforward lie following another?

Condition after condition, which we were told would be insisted on, which nevertheless we watched cold-bloodedly scrapped? And our Foreign Minister remarked, almost casually, that Signor Mussolini had made it plain, for reasons which we all understood that while he was prepared to work with the Non-Intervention Committee, he was determined to ensure General Franco’s victory; and is said to have remarked also, more privately, “After all, you must admit that Signor Mussolini had a spiritual mission in Spain!” So Minorca was handed over to Franco, a British cruiser being lent as a platter for the occasion. Now we could get on to trade with Spain, ourselves providing the credits!

Yet none of these things were any business of the British people! Just as the terms dictated to Czechoslovakia (not by Hitler, but by France and Britain) were not our business, so it was not our business when the Premier told a group of American journalists at a Cliveden luncheon of his plans for Europe, or when a Cabinet Minister said that Hitler was to be allowed “to eat his bellyful” (so long as it was elsewhere than in our own Empire). We have one business, and one only! To show Unity, Unity, Unity! To goose-step behind our “National” Government!

We must have Unity. And we must have Moral Rearmament.

Chapter IV

The Lights Go Out in the Empire

Those who are old can remember the Diamond Jubilee. Those who are middle-aged can remember August 4, 1914, and the solemnity with which we watched what Grey called the lights of Europe and civilisation “going out one by one”; they remember the Silver Jubilee of King George.

At all those pausing-points in history the British Empire remained great and strong.

Look round it now, and see where you can pick up comfort!

Ireland? The shadow of 1919 falls on this island again, terrorist gangs are busy in Britain, threats of reawakening civil war are sounding.

Gibraltar? There are guns in range of it, German and Italian bases can send bombing ’planes over it. Malta? Italy has neutralised it by the island of Pantellaria, and for years has agitated to make it untenable by Britain. Cyprus? An island sunk in misery and discontent. Palestine? A country where close on 30,000 British troops wage war night and day, where land mines explode under buses, where aeroplanes mop up a hundred of the enemy, where men are hanged for “sabotage”.

What happens when any army finds itself up against insurgents, blind in a country where all the eyes (except those of aeroplanes) are with its assailants? Only one thing happens, ever has happened, ever can or will happen: a war without rules or pity: terrorism and counter-terrorism: murders of the cruellest kind, and in return “black-and-tan” methods: for a while the veil of a strict censorship, and ignorance in our own people: then, in the end, shame before the whole world, and (unless you put through massacre, to completeness of victory, as happened in Abyssinia) retreat or surrender, with abiding hatred.

Here are extracts from a letter written (September 16, 1938) by an Englishman, who served in Allenby’s Army, who has lived in the Holy Land ever since and has been energetic in every patriotic activity there.

“The savagery of the authorities here, who have apparently embarked upon a policy of out-terrorising terrorism is a matter upon which few of the British civilian population generally can trust themselves to speak or write. After Moffat’s assassination they ‘savaged’ the little town of Jenin by blowing it (or a large portion of it) to smithereens. The official Statement said ‘150’ houses had been demolished, an estimate not erring in exaggeration. Certain persons were ‘shot down while trying to escape’, in true ‘Nazi’ fashion. Some of the means resorted to in order to obtain information from the population will not bear repetition. After having blown up the houses, and boasted on the broadcast of so doing, the authorities suddenly found that some of the property belonged to . . . the (Arab) confidential adviser to His Excellency on Arab affairs! Much ‘back patting’ accompanied by ‘very sorry, old chap’, and the production of a cheque book for compensation purposes calmed him down. He, owing to his influence of course, will get prompt compensation, but the other wretched owners are equally as innocent as he. It was done to strike terror into the people, not to punish the guilty. Not only were houses demolished, but I am sorry to say many of the people were robbed (money, jewelry, etc.), including the safe and contents belonging to the Standard Oil Company of New York, concerning which the American Consul has had something to say.

It is impossible to tell you everything that is going on here. I know of amazing cases! Government employees (loyal and brave Arabs) engaged, for instance, on repairing sabotaged telephone wires for which they may be shot at any moment by the rebels, have returned after a day’s dangerous work to find their wives and children sitting homeless upon a heap of rubble. From such incidents it is that the rebels are now gaining not merely reinforcements, but what is more serious, an ascending morale.

On Saturday, in Jaffa, the troops were merely shooting at sight anyone whom they had a mind to aim at! A Government Surveyor, English-speaking, an educated man, returning from his duties was shot dead in the street; also a little girl of seven on the same day. This morning a cheerful little newspaper boy who brings my morning paper did not arrive. I enquire and am told he is shot.

I was talking to an English judge a few days ago, who expressed himself violently concerning the sights he had just seen in the Manshiye Quarter of Jaffa. The English doctor in Hebron could tell of cold-blooded murder and destruction perpetrated in Hebron by troops and police, apart from looting Arab cafés and shops.

This is the first time the Holy Land has been administered by a Christian Government since the days of the Crusaders! God forgive us!

‘The healing hand of Christ,’ as understood and applied to the people of Palestine by the people of England, is a source of shame to us all.”

We have thrown away a great and (I think) a noble story, that of Allenby’s army; and only by martial law and military occupation extended indefinitely, and by constant use of gallows and bombing ’planes, can the present situation be continued. If America, or any other country, demands a policy that entails such a price, then that country should supply the bombers and hangmen. There must be another way out, if we had another Government!

Continue your Empire voyage. The Red Sea? It is shut to us when war comes. Ceylon? At Trincomali, till recently a neglected fort of ancient story, where you need go only a mile or two for a very fair chance of seeing a leopard, behind a “hush-hush” curtain is preparing a second base, to be behind threatened Singapore.

India? Had war come over Czechoslovakia, India would have stayed quiet, and would have been wholeheartedly on our side. But now? Japan and Italy and Germany have shaken our prestige as I never thought it could be shaken. The Indian Army is not likely to remain always an unthinkingly loyal force. And, if war comes against the totalitarian powers, it is India that will probably turn the scale.

You see, the Empire is now cut in two. If war comes, we shall not have the command of the Mediterranean until after heavy fighting and heavy casualties. With the Mediterranean and the Red Sea both closed to us, the only way that the Near East and the Suez Canal will be saved, if they are saved, will be by another Mesopotamian expedition, by a force based on India and on Iraq, necessitating the friendliness of the Arab and Indian worlds, and using the British garrison in India as its spearhead. In the former Mesopotamian and Palestine campaigns, my division, which fought in both, was transhipped from Iraq to Port Said; we spent a long while on the water, and in perfect security, for there were no submarines in those shark-infested seas. In the next war, such a journey will be impossible, and even to get up the Gulf to Basra you will have to run the gauntlet of submarines with a wide oceanic range, and with bases in Eritrea.

Australia? During the September Crisis, a Japanese fleet, with landing party on board, turned up to annex New Guinea. Nothing was said of this in our papers, but it impressed Australia.

China? Having heard Japan’s voice so long, so dulcet-toned and highly moral and full of suffering nobly endured—

“‘The lyre’s voice is lovely anywhere!”—hear the voice of puppet China, telling us what we must expect if we do not do as we are bidden! The Nanking Government (February 26, 1939) finds itself sorrowfully compelled

“to announce a silent declaration of war against the International Settlement and British and French ships for aiding Chiang Kai-shek, with the Yangtse River as their base.

We rely entirely on Japan, who helps us to the utmost in setting up the new order, but we have no choice but to take our own steps against the terrorists, as we cannot depend on others alone when human lives are imperilled.”

Human lives! of which Japan is so tender—“Japan, who always adheres faithfully to her international obligations, cannot be expected to fight openly against the Settlement and Concession without a formal declaration of war, but we believe that there should be a limit to Japan’s gentlemanly attitude”. British traders are now styled “terrorists”—-just as, when war comes, Mr. Chamberlain, Sir John Simon, Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Halifax will find that to the Powers of the Anti-Comintern Pact they are a “Communist Government”! Hitler has a low standard of Communism.

This might seem funny, if it had not grown so familiar. But year following year, and day after day, we have been told what Signor Gayda and Dr. Goebbels and all the rest have just said, we have heard what were once the terms and phrases of morality used inside out, until they mean exactly the opposite. International faith and the sanctity of treaties must be preserved, says some Power that keeps no word whatever: Germany takes steps against Jewish aggression and insolence, Japan against Chinese, Italy against Abyssinian: our own Government stresses the absolute necessity of preserving “democratic principles”, while the Tory papers of the decent sort frankly deplore the sale of seats. “It is important that a wider public should realise that the Reform Act of 1832”, says a letter in the Daily Telegraph, February 28, 1939, “did not put an end to the ‘auction’ of seats in the House of Commons. In a number of cases it merely changed the auctioneer by substituting the local association for the territorial magnate.”

But we have not finished our journey round the Empire.

Canada, as leading Canadian statesmen testified, drew closer to this country because of Sir Samuel Hoare’s magnificent speech at Geneva. She swung away again, how far no one cares or dares consider, when the Hoare-Laval proposals leaked out (to be officially denied, then admitted—the ordinary sequence).

The West Indies, as a Conservative paper (Evening Standard, February 27, 1939) remarks, “have become slums of Empire, where poverty finds its only remedy in rebellion”.⁵³ If war comes, and if the United States assists us with material resources, there will be no second debt, to be afterwards scaled down or defaulted on. The opinion grows there, and has been expressed by its most widely printed columnist, that the West Indies and British Guiana must be taken over by the U.S.A.; and, as things have come to pass in these regions, probably this is the happiest fate that could befall them. It was a Conservative Government, history will record, that ended the British Empire.

South Africa? It is still nominally within the Empire. Its native policy is such that its Defence Minister, Mr. Pirow, considers the liberality of British policy elsewhere in that Continent an intolerable outrage. In his view, “not only is the Union bound to be able to repress native unrest in her own areas”, but “it is important that she should be able to do so in respect of Basutoland, the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and Swaziland. Further, he contemplates the concern of the Union with the defence of Europeans against native unrest in the whole of British South Africa south of the Sudan, throughout which one native policy ought in his opinion to prevail”. It will prevail, if his plans come to fruition. He “has committed the Union to readiness to welcome Germany as possessed of sovereignty over African territory, but has hastily explained that the sovereignty must not be that of South-West Africa which the Union holds as her spolia belli, or Tanganyika which she holds to fall within her sphere of influence.”⁵⁴ Mr. Pirow’s peace journey to Lisbon, Brussels, Berlin, was one of the minor political problems and events of last year.

As to the position of natives in Kenya and South Africa, the less said the better.

West Africa? For enlightened Conservative judgment of it, I refer the reader to the same leading article in the Evening Standard, already quoted about the West Indies. It has become another slum of Empire—or very nearly so, except perhaps Nigeria.

Minds are troubled as never before, since the darkest days of the Great War. Hope is hard to find, though we cheer up for a week or less, if the Führer falls below his lofty standard of scolding or the Duce remains quiet.

Labour, which has lost ground steadily, is busy with internecine quarrels. Working-class votes are cast steadily for Tory candidates, and will continue to be, until the Labour leaders take a good slow look at themselves as they appear in the mirror of ordinary opinion.

There is a profound distrust of the Trade Union mentality, which governs the Party’s political actions. It was built up on the idea of negotiation, and cannot get rid of the inertia and satisfaction that come from such an idea carried out to some fulfilment. It still sleeps under the opiate of its original policy: which was to obtain power enough to make its weight felt and respected, and to be able to bring about wages agreements. Is the country wrong in its impression that the Trade Union leaders do not want power to guide the State and form policy, that they dread the possibility that Labour might have to make a Government again? Having killed the Liberal Party, organised Labour is afraid to take its place.

Mr. Duff Cooper, one of the many Conservatives who feel that Labour as a political force is so negligible that they may as well be generous with some advice, to help it to pick up and make a fight of it again, thinks that it suffers from carrying the banner inscribed “Socialism”. I think it does, but not for the reason he gives—that Socialism is out of date. I have suggested part of my own reason for thinking as he does: the widespread impression that to say “Socialism” has become merely a habit, and that what was once a conviction and a passionate desire is now an election “slogan”. Another part of the reason is the fact that the British people seems to me incurably “bourgeois” in its desires; it wants to get into the class that owns not only radio but a car, that has money for outings to the sea and to cinemas and even for trips to France and Belgium. The mechanisation of the age has brought in an immense and ever-increasing class of “workers”, who are on the fringes of what used to be the middle classes and constantly move across those fringes, who dislike what they consider to be the connotation of the word “Labour”, and vaguely mistrust Socialism and its aims. This is all wrong, of course, but it means votes thousands and thousands of them—and all against Labour.

Finally, nothing can prevent the coming of essential Socialism. It will come, either by a conquest at the polls by a genuine Socialist Party, or by force and hand-in-hand with Fascism (as it has come in Germany). These gigantic and quite intolerable armaments, which have not even yet reached their peak, mean inflation, mean a mounting rise in the cost of living: mean that “the bourgeoisie” are going to be skinned to the bone: mean that the lifeblood will be drained out of every trade and business except those that have to do with weapons and means of destruction: mean that the State will have no choice (and, under our present rulers, no wish) except to grasp all into its hands and allot to each what it decides.

I would prefer to have Socialism come in another way than that way, the German way—the way it will come, unless we get rid of a Government under which things will drift till they become so bad that it is either that (“a state of national emergency”) or a throwing up of the sponge as regards government at all. Yet Labour prefers to act in a manner that will present Hoare and Simon and Halifax and Chamberlain with another five years of office.

I have said nothing of Communism. I reverence the courage of the British Communists in Spain; they seem to me the truest and bravest young Englishmen of my day. I know that many of the bravest and most decent of our students are Communists, and possess what the rest of us lack, a flame in their spirits. But the Communists, too, carry a burden of catchwords: “the bourgeois mentality”, “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. I do not want a dictatorship of the proletariat, unless the proletariat gets better education and better ideals than it has now (in which case, I fear, it would develop a bourgeois mentality). Nor does “the proletariat” want a dictatorship; it will not take it as a gift, but only if it is forced upon it, and even then it will quickly relinquish this dictatorship.⁵⁵ It is proletarian votes that send back Government after Government, that is stolidly Tory. There is no way of bringing about a dictatorship of the proletariat, except by force; and to appeal to force merely means that the people who have the weapons already will liquidate you, long before you will have a chance of liquidating them.

One service, some offset to the mighty defences he has thrown away, Mr. Chamberlain has done. He did bring home to the publics of Italy and Germany the fact that, despite all that official (and there is no other) propaganda had told them, the people of Britain did not want war; and he did (until Hitler’s resounding conquest of March 15 came to intoxicate them) shock the German public into realisation that war had come close to them. How much this will avail against our stupendous losses of strength and allies, I hope will never be put to the test! No statesman ever had less to show to his credit. It is his one achievement, a by-product of humiliating journeyings: let us admit its existence.

It is not possible to rebuild our own people in prosperity and happiness and intelligence, even if we escape destruction in war, and to keep the social order unchanged. But, as Mr. Priestley has pointed out, we shall have a happier merrier England when the present snobbery and divisions of class from class have vanished. We are not happy or merry now. We are living in dread; and our standards of living, in every class except the very wealthiest—the armament manufacturers and the brewers and the possessors of land in great cities—are falling, and steadily threatened with falling, ever lower and ever more rapidly.

Suppose we had as little of class as our Dominions, or Scandinavian countries? Who would suffer, except a handful who have been driving the Empire ever nearer to ruin? How many years is it since you opened a paper or turned on the wireless without a sinking heart? Has any generation ever lost so many years?

How often, as we have seen his frankness to his people, and in facing moral issues—as we have heard of a “New Deal”, of nation-wide reconstruction, including even the arts and theatre—have we longed to exchange our rulers for America’s! We have a heritage as rich as even theirs, we are a people as well worth building up.

The twenty years end, as they began, under a fumbling dictatorship. Are you willing to live through another such twenty years?

Chapter V

Literature and the Arts of Life

1

What has happened to literature during the last fifteen years?

Fifteen years ago, it had a wider range than now. Poetry still had a public, apart from that obtained by one dominant constellation (and only the few central stars in that). There were many private presses, which produced, and sold, limited signed editions. Publishers could find a reading public for plays, and such a series as Messrs. Ernest Benn’s “Contemporary British Dramatists “ often went into reprint, even with plays that were not performed. This was by no means the only series of published plays. Mr. Hubert Griffith’s Tunnel Trench, a War play not inferior to Journey’s End, came too soon to be acted by the commercial theatre, but not too soon to find readers who appreciated its quality. Publishers could accept volumes of short stories, whereas to-day you have to be a very good-selling novelist to have your short stories welcomed, and even then the welcome is one with the chill on it. Books on a wide variety of matters of merely intellectual interest, not practical or immediate at all, found a public. You could do a serious historical study of a little-known episode, without jazzing up all the values, and people found it enthralling, as a record of the way that men and women had once lived and acted and thought. Scattered over Europe was a public of some five hundred wealthy and intelligent persons, who could be relied on to buy, at a price that made publication possible, practically any really well produced book of the fine arts kind.

Of course, the many financial crises have killed off progressively the demand for books, and the last-mentioned public was the one that went first, in the economic blizzard of 1930. But literature and the arts have had to contend with other enemies than high taxes and slumps in the stock market.

In 1923, the Georgian Poets still held the field. But already,

“The priest that slew the slayer
And shall himself be slain”,

was abroad with his silver knife, and was whetting it for his victims’ throats. Mr. Robert Graves, supposedly a Georgian, was discontented to be in such a crew, and, as his Whipperginny showed, was already sniping at them, and slipping away from the edges of their march. Then, in 1923, came The Waste Land.

The present writer first heard of it from a well-known poet, who had been feeling his path away from Georgianism. “There’s a most important book just out, by a man called T. S. Eliot, called The Waste Land. It’s tremendously important.” (“Important” was then the word, to be succeeded later by “dynamic” and then by “significant”.) “What makes it important?” “Oh, it’s very important. Really, tremendously important.” “Yes. But why?” “Well, he says that everything’s just too bloody for words. That everything’s just feeding up!” And this was so; and this witness, who has an augur’s nose for the scent of things to come, was entirely right, even though his listener, who had not yet read The Waste Land, and could only go by this necessarily inadequate summary of its qualities, might feel inclined to protest, with Horatio,

“There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the dead
To tell us this!”

So by degrees, like the savour of gas in the air, the influence of The Waste Land stole abroad. The Georgians would last a while longer, but the day was coming when they would be a byword for incompetence and sentimentalism. Mr. Victor Gollancz, by skilful massed attack, might shake a public of over seven thousand (think of it! seven thousand sales for a book of verse) into buying one of Humbert Wolfe’s poems, but this was a solitary triumph, the isolated sally of an army about to be exterminated. Two years later, the first editor of Benn’s “Sixpenny Poets”, launching his idea and going from publisher to publisher, found himself confronting gentlemen all in a maze that anyone so daft should exist outside an asylum! “Here,” said one publisher, hurling his catalogue at him, “take every poet I’ve got, since you’re as crazy as all that!”

Those Poets, by the way, were not set up as the “Sixpenny Poets”, because of a flash of last-minute wisdom. Someone, when all was ready for machining off, pointed out that, if you blazoned them at so low a price, no one would dare to buy them, to send to his girl or to friends as Christmas cards. “By’r lakin, a parlous fear!” So Benn’s office hurriedly searched a dictionary, for a word of exactly the same number of letters as “Sixpenny”, and the first one found was “Augustan”. They became “The Augustan Poets” therefore; and people were at liberty to ask, as they did ask, “Why Augustan?” I have now told them.

The biggest seller, from start to finish, was Rupert Brooke, one of the first half-dozen. So fast had literary opinion travelled that this fact, when mentioned to a child who was acting as literary editor of a leading journal, knocked the child over with amazement. “I thought the Brooke bubble was pricked,” he moaned. This in its turn amazed Walter de la Mare. “Good heavens! fancy talking like that of a man who, if he were alive, would only be in his early thirties, and presumably still a force in contemporary letters!” But you see, neither de la Mare nor any others of us then knew how swift a foreshortening of life had come upon our generation, and how soon a man was to be regarded (in literature, not in business or politics) as an aged aged man, utterly spent and dithering, who ought to be “a-sitting on a gate” and enjoying the evening sun.

Poetry to-day is what it is. It will never again be anything else, until readers dare to trust their minds, and, trusting them, read afresh what has been put across them—with such success that it has now ousted every other kind of poetry.

Test yourself, reader—not by the hangers-on of the dominant school, but by their captains. You find yourself abreast of light-hearted lyrics that exhort you after some such fashion as this:

“Let us honour if we can
The vertical man.
Though we value none
But the horizontal one”:⁵⁶

or hold out such promise as this:

“Who’ll save, who Who’ll save John Bull From losing his wool? Now, Bull, now I’ll tell you who I’ll tell you how The flying stationer flies round the corner.”⁵⁷

Part of the trouble is that this kind of thing is so dead easy, that the first chaps to get into their stride get all the fame. Others who are a bit late get little.

How many readers can place the author of this?

“—White skin bruised in a boozing bout,
ungovernable cub certain to bite out a
permanent memorandum on
those lips.—-Take my advice, better not count on your
tough guy’s mumbling your pretty mouth
always. Only the thrice blest are in love for life,
we others are divorced at heart
soon, soon torn apart by wretched bickerings.”⁵⁸

Not that you cannot get plenty of fun out of poetry, of the kinds still permitted! Here is a jolly picture, for example, by a poet who, twenty years ago, took a deal of trouble with his poems, and gave pleasure (admittedly, to minds still “bourgeois”):

“How agreeable it would be
To see a herd of elephants vomit on those greens
At half-past two
On a bright Saturday afternoon!”⁵⁹

And I like this—by a man who has been awarded very little of the cake of contemporary reputation, yet abounds in vignettes whose lines are perfectly clear:

“Here is the Mayoress of Knype lapping an ice
Next to the Vicar of Tunstall. Here is the Vice-
President of the Vice-Abatement Guild,

Week-ending with an ex-scullery maid;
(Yes, that’s the one—looks like a giant sloth);
Mackrow and Stilton (criticasters both)
Are here, and so are the Girls of the Old Brigade.”⁶⁰

The writer of that passage, and of others like it, seems to me not much inferior to Mr. T. S. Eliot, except that the latter had the wit to get in first. (I mean, when I say this, the Eliot of The Waste Land, not the Eliot of The Journey of the Magi and other poems that seem to belong to another incarnation altogether.)

Thousands of such poems, satirical solely, sometimes witty and finely observant (though rarely imaginative), often merely incomprehensible, have been produced in the last fifteen years. The young have chiefly written them, but the young have admitted some place for some of the old. “There is always one old poet whom they pass as great,” explained a good poet to me. “It was once Hardy. It is now Yeats.” Yeats, who in his last years found an entirely new style for himself. Yes, but it was the most tortuous and altogether puzzling of his poems in the new mode that were valued most highly!

For the débâcle which overtook them, the poets had themselves largely to blame. During the War they had learnt how jolly it was to be part of a cult. Verses of quite a low content of inspiration had knocked all of a heap people who were supposed to be good judges. There was a piece, by a Bath railway porter, about The Day—which I disremember, as Terence Mulvaney would say, but I know it hammered pitilessly at its rhymes. “You have longed for the Day, You have wronged for the Day, You have dreamed for the Day, You have screamed for the Day”—something like that. Once you hit on the opening notion, the poem wrote itself, so to speak (as so many poems do, and perhaps ought to do). The President of Magdalen College (Sir Herbert Warren) thought this very very remarkable, and other great critics agreed with him; the poem as a pamphlet went into many reprints.

There was a poem by a more established author, which was praised with what would have been extravagance if applied to the dying words of Hamlet or the shout from unseen deity (that draws the garrulous Oedipus to the netherworld which claims him so impatiently). I refrain the names of those who praised it, but remind them of the poem: Men Who March Away:

“Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye,
Who watch us stepping by
With doubt and dolorous sigh?
Can much pondering so hoodwink you!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye?”⁶¹

The post-War years were a great age of log-rolling, and poets were the first and worst offenders, and they first held the field. And the public, which only by a miracle once in a century can be coaxed to take to verse, tired of poetry very rapidly. To-day except for the group which clusters round the names of Auden Spender, Day Lewis, and only for a very few of these, you cannot get a publisher to risk poetry at his own cost. The only exception to this statement is that of course a poet who was well established in the pre-Audenic Age—de la Mare, Binyon, Sassoon, Graves, Blunden—can find a publisher (but very little notice or sale, compared with what he had fifteen years ago).

As the public grew jaded and sceptical, from its often deception, its palate had to be quickened. Publishers began the process, with mass advertising. This for a while succeeded, but it was a disastrous success. Publishers who could not stand the pace swiftly fell out, and lost the more professionally minded of their authors, who could not afford not to have their books sell. And advertising had to get more and more strident. Advertisements and reviews which formerly would have put a book into a second printing now failed to stir readers to bat even an eyelid.

If you could say of any book, honestly, that in it there was a mind thinking behind every sentence you would be putting it in a small class, of books of all tongues and periods. But this, praise that in a world where words meant anything would be good enough for a Dante or Tolstoi, would not cut any ice in the world to-day. To make the public sit up and notice a book, first the reviewers have to scream at the top of their voice: to say that the book kept them awake all night, that at one time they were helpless with laughter, at another time shaking with pity or terror, and that when it was finished they were trembling, it had been not a book but an experience. And this kind of thing has to be said, not once but repeatedly, and then the advertisements have to rub it in afresh.

The last year or two, things have become a little better, mainly because sales are now so trivial that there is no money to boost books. Boosting has had to pipe down.

Not reviewing, however. I suppose, if I dare to mention the name of Mrs. Virginia Woolf I must make a gesture of awe, as if I were entering a church; and that it will not suffice to protest that I think I know her merits, and am not criticising praise of Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. Nevertheless, I will risk dismissal for blasphemy and utter brainlessness, by citing, as examples of sheer extravagance gone mad, the notices of The Tears. Try them where you will—the one exception I remember was in the News Chronicle’ have a look at the idiotic squeal of joy in The Times, then turn to John O’ London’s Weekly, and look at all the papers in between. Was it really quite the unique masterpiece it was shouted to be? Really a book that cut out everything else that this century has seen? And was Three Guineas “this year’s finest example of what England can produce in literature . . . a revolutionary bomb of a book delicately aimed at the heart of our mad, armament-ridden world”?⁶² “Many readers will applaud, others grind their teeth. . . . This brilliant and searching pamphlet might mark an epoch in the world’s history.”⁶³ Do you really think so? Is this light javelin really going to mark an epoch in the world’s history—in the age of Hitler and Mussolini and Chamberlain?

Or was The Waves so—so wonderful? Or Orlando? Or Flush? I know what the reply will be, from the masters of current opinion. “A Yes! a Yes to both!”

“‘That—or nothing!—I believe!’
‘For God’s sake, believe it then!’”

I have taken Mrs. Woolf, not from any disregard for her gifts, but merely because it is in her case that contemporary exaggeration reaches its peak. Is it any service to her, or to literature, to write as reviewers always do about her work? Do not reviewers know how silly the enthusiasms of every age are almost sure to seem, only ten years later? Is it fair to get ready a reaction which will certainly deny (in 1945) that she is a good writer at all? Remember what has happened to George Meredith’s overpowering reputation, in one generation. Is it wrong to suggest that we should get back to some sense of eternity and of proportion in our praising, and to a quieter style?

America started the Book of the Month Club. In 1920, Mr. Hugh Walpole thought it would be a good thing over here, and despite protests, especially by Allen Monkhouse of the Manchester Guardian, he gave it to us, with a Committee consisting of himself, the President of Magdalen (as he now is), Mr. Priestley,⁶⁴ Mrs. Sylvia Lynd, and Miss Clemence Dane. This did more harm to literature than any other single thing in the post-War years.

How can one make that out? Listen. First of all, very few people have any literary opinions of their own; most people are very humble in this respect. If they are told that such pundits as three great novelists and an Oxford professor promise every month (and the Book Club’s circulars stress this promise and their ability to give you such mighty service for nothing) to pick out for you the Book of the Month, many accept gratefully. The Book Club picks up especially (see what booksellers say, in Indian papers) all those who, because they live in outlying hamlets like Calcutta or Sydney or Singapore, feel peculiarly liable to miss the best of what their generation is thinking and saying. Others, less sheeplike, are nevertheless impressed; and, instead of trying to find out, by a careful scanning of the reviews, what are the best books, they take the Book Club’s say-so as settling this. There is always only a comparatively small public for what deserves to be styled literature, and the interest, which used to be spread out over a fairish number of books and authors, by the Book Club was canalised, month by month, on to half a dozen. So were the sales scooped together and canalised. The book chosen as the book not only had a start of a clear twenty thousand sale (I speak of the Book Club’s beginnings), but since everyone wants to read “what everyone is reading” others beside Book Club members bought this book, and the booksellers stocked it. To be chosen by the Book Club made all the difference between a three or four thousand sale and forty thousand. If there was increasing poverty for Mr. Walpole’s less fortunate fellow-novelists, there were prizes indeed for one every month!

It was hard on publishers who tried to keep literary standards, and many do; though there are bad hats in the ranks of the Barabbadae, publishers as a class are high in character and ability, many of them care about quality, they make little money for all the risk and trouble they take, and they gamble readily on books which they consider good but unlikely to pay expenses. For decency and attractiveness, they are streets ahead of authors. In fact, they are a different kind of animal altogether.

I remember the hard choice of a firm who had just started, with all the expenditure that starting involves. They had accepted a novel, on their reader’s recommendation, when at the proof stage they discovered for themselves that it contained passages which would once have seemed in bad taste. I saw these proofs, and remember the passages. I am not (I think) easily shocked, but they were—well, steep. The publishers, who had been well brought up, did not like to begin their career with this book. On the other hand, a Book Society had signified their intention of choosing it, which meant invaluable publicity and a deal of money. The publishers hesitated, but decided to stick to ideals, at any rate for a while longer. Another publisher took the book over. The vogue of this kind of book burnt itself out in a few years. No Club would choose it now.

With such prizes available, for publishers who were having a hard time, and for authors who were struggling to find a public, what wonder that the cocktail parties got busy and reviewing began its steady slump downwards? Do you deny that slump? Ask any author whose character, as well as his brain, you respect, if reviewing is not to-day deplorably lower in quality than it was ten years ago.

How many reviewers have had such experiences as this, of the present writer’s, who in days when he belonged to the criminal classes did quite a lot of reviewing? One day he received, from a great journal for which he did not review, a book, by a just-deceased author, with a note whose implications were unmistakable, that this author “was an esteemed contributor to our columns”. He read the book, and found it sheerly bogus. It had no merit of any kind or degree, and he returned it, saying so. The journal sent him a charming note in reply, observing sadly that this fact, which they had evidently hoped might escape the proposed reviewer, had been suspected already, but (and here, I think, but is right, is preferable to and, which is however permissible) “if you are a literary editor you ought to know nobody and go to no parties”. In due course a long review appeared, in which this book was extolled as the most shaking experience of the reviewer’s life, the most wonderful book that had appeared during the century, marvellous, a revelation, dazzlingly witty, searchingly true and illuminating, and all the rest. The book went swiftly into a second edition.

And it was bogus from start to finish, the work of a bogus mind, nurtured on bogosities, living surrounded by prisms of brightly tinted humbug.

What happened to advertising? Publishers, like other business men, have to live. But surely you know by now, when you read that such-and-such a paper, or so-and-so, said this and that of a book, that he very likely said it with qualifications that took the tribute clean away? A Times Literary Supplement reviewer once protested that he had not said that “we might call Mr. So-and-so a Dante”. What he had said was that Mr. So-and-so’s choice of themes was so ambitious that, if Mr. So-and-So had possessed any imagination, any power of expression, and any share of several other qualities, we might call him a Dante. Every reviewer remembers similar truncations of his own statements.

Perhaps the high spot was reached when Arnold Bennett wrote, of a book by a boosted author: “For sheer indecency, I never read any book to equal it.” This reappeared as “Mr. Arnold Bennett writes ‘I never read any book to equal it’.” An added beauty about this citation was the fact that Bennett did not even say what he said about the book that was being advertised, but about another book by the same author.

But why am I wasting my time in this way? Qualifications, by common consent, have vanished from the world. Many will think that I am quibbling. Bennett did say, “I never read any book to equal it.” What does the qualification matter?

People chuckled over a set of verses beginning

“I want a book that Walpole does not like”.

Then by degrees that large army, which had gathered round the banner with the strange device, that he had raised, melted away. The truth is, if you guarantee to pick out the book of the month regularly, you cannot do it, except for sheep that never think. If any who do slip into your flock, they will presently grind their jaws wryly on the cag you have provided, then eject it and shamble away to other pasture. This happened now. I wonder what the membership of the Book Society is to-day. I am prepared to bet it is much less than half its former highest level.

If you have a Book Society, you cannot help yourself, you must keep an eye on your flock. You must select books that are “daring”, but not too daring: highbrow, yet not excluding a lowbrow quality that modifies its altitude to a comfortable middlebrowness. Authors began to study the Book Club’s habits, and to write with the hope of being chosen. The middle years of the last two decades have been marked by a Book Club school of literature. Further, anyone can start a notion, but how are you going to keep it to yourself? There was no patent for this “best book of the month” idea, and anyone, who was madly ambitious enough, was free to imagine that his critical brains were as good as Mr. Walpole’s and his colleagues’, especially when he saw their choices. Book Clubs multiplied, till now we have an Evening Standard Book of the Month, a Daily Mail Book of the Month, children’s and religious and crime Books of the Month, and how many others! Not to speak of Mr. Gollancz’s very successful Left Book Club, and its opposite number, the Right Book Club (which started off with the wittiest gaffe of all, by choosing a book to which the ex-King objected, so that it had to be withdrawn! Never mind, it has since given its members Mr. Baldwin’s speeches!). And now there is a Liberal Book Club.

Meanwhile, you can motor through town after town—take the prosperous south coast, for example—and find never a bookshop, except for a handful of neglected looking “cheaps” (Traveller’s Library and Everyman) on a shelf in a stationer’s.

Then came the financial crises, so many and so many of them! In times of financial stress, the first thing the public gives up buying is books. It is not cigarettes, cinema or theatre seats, chocolates, cars, cosmetics. It is books. And another way of economising is to exchange your guaranteed subscription for a cheaper one, non-guaranteed. That brings down the circulating library purchases.

And for obvious reasons the monster book the vast amorphous novel which shambles and sprawls over a wilderness of pages, was encouraged. You see the short novel (the shortest of all, that you can style a novel and ask seven-and-sixpence for, is 50,000 words; To The Lighthouse is about 51,000) is read in a day. The journey which the mind has to make is too brief for it to get clogged, and stumble to a pause and a rest. The novel of 120,000 words, on the other hand, hangs about in the home indefinitely, and uses up a month’s subscription. It takes such a long time to finish! and when A has finished it, B has not, and B protests against its return. So the vast book, in an age when overhead expenses and ever-tightening financial stringency govern all intellectual activity, became the vogue. A pity, when you consider how many of the most delightful books of previous ages were brief ones, all sinews and no padding!

Then, round about the early thirties of this century, came the sex cult. A book had to show how daring was its writer’s mind. Whenever there was an attempt at censorship, of some book that frankly talked like a sergeant’s mess on Christmas Eve, there would be a rally of intellectuals to the defence of freedom of thought and the status of literature. This was the one cause which used to be a Ducdame, calling into a circle not fools merely, but men and women who in all other affairs kept their heads and sense of proportion!

That phase has passed. You can now be as dirty as you like, and no one will think you deserve praise for courage and originality. How dirty for a time literature had to be, to be held notable (“For you must sing Ho! to be a gay cavalier!”), you have probably forgotten. The vogue was strong enough (for, as I have reminded you, very few people have any literary opinions of their own) to draw astray even the Abdiels of the press. There was a book (the lawyers say I must suppress its title) which had enthusiastic columns in papers I wish I dared name. It thinks cancer beautiful, and impalation and homosexuality artistic.

Poor “Jix”, who had the bad luck to seem funny, whatever he did—whether it was raiding Arcos or sending round the countryside in vans films of a Home Secretary’s activities—first seated purposeful at his desk, then taking well-earned relaxation on a cob, while music struck up and voices chanted:

“Jix the boy for work!
Jix the boy for play!
Jix the lad, when times are bad,
To chase the Reds away!”—

Jix tried to cleanse literature, and failed.

He was conscious (and it made him unhappy) of the world’s bad arrangement, by which the good so often appear merely comic. A friend of mine, who as a matter of curiosity called on him one day and showed him the book I am not allowed to mention, moved him to tears by this act of simple kindness. “I looked on you as an ‘intellectual’,” wailed the Home Secretary, “and I thought all intellectuals had dirty minds!”

Every man of letters will admit that coarseness and ribaldry can be artistically effective, and if you need them you must use them. But there is no artistic or intellectual merit in indecency merely as indecency, and besides, it is so easy! The late Earl of Suffolk, killed in 1917, commanding a battery in Mesopotamia, whenever a man was brought before him for outrageous language would address the offender sadly thus: “My man, if I began to use such language, and let myself go all out, I could make you weep! But I have given it up while this War is on! And if I can give it up, why can’t you?” This sweet reasonableness had its effect; I was told that his battery had become a company of saints comparable with the men who served in Oliver Cromwell’s command.

Then there was, and still is, worse than ever, multiple reviewing. There was a time when this shocked old-fashioned people. I remember, in 1927, an editor told me that Miss Hope Mirrlees’s new novel, out of its first six notices, had received five sweepingly adverse. All five were by one reviewer (using anonymity and four separate signatures). Miss Mirrlees had expressed dissatisfaction. However, no one any longer bothers about multiple reviewing, and it is pedantry that makes me mention it.

There are, however, real grounds of complaint against the multiple reviewer. A reviewer can do only one satisfactory review of a book, and if he does more some editor has to be content with reviewer-and-water, “and the water not of the best quality”. Also, your own reaction to a book depends on more factors than the book itself. The book that in one mood seems teasing and trifling, in another may appear airy and delightful; and so on. Also, you may be mistaken. Stephen Phillips’s Herod, according to the Mr. Max Beerbohm of forty years ago, was

“so fiery coloured, so intense, the character so largely projected, the action so relentlessly progresses till the final drops of awe are wrung from us, that only the greatest of dramatic poets could accompany with verse quite worthy of it.”

We do not know what Mr. Max Beerbohm of to-day thinks, but probably he is not so enthusiastic? Make no mistake, stuff quite as meretricious as Herod has been excitedly praised in our own time, by critics as alert as Mr. Beerbohm, by our very best critics, or at any rate by those who are esteemed the very best critics that we have. So why should one man write the whole press, or even half the press, for one book?

One way and another—the causes adduced may be inadequate, but the result is with us, and is unmistakable; imaginative literature to-day is in a mess—we have got where we have.

Nevertheless, though imaginative literature—poetry and fiction—reeled, in other branches of literature there was a steady rise, up to a point reached perhaps ten years ago, in both quality and output. The present writer was one day feeling less cheerful than usual, when the Poet Laureate happened to drop in on him. Mr. Robert Bridges listened sympathetically to his anatomy of the universe, and then said soothingly, “Well, I am an old man. I am over eighty. And never in all my life have I known a time when so many good books are being published as now”. At that time, he was right. He did not mean fiction, by the way; he rarely read it.

The final blow to authors and publishers was dealt by the Penguin and other sixpennies. Very few people are ever going to pay more than sixpence for a book in future, except for Christmas and birthdays.

And to-day authors to whom literature is something deeper than a way with words find themselves sunk in a despondence that makes all literature seem a vexation and wearing of the spirit. Mr. T. S. Eliot, ceasing in this January publication of The Criterion, gives as his reason:

“In the present state of public affairs—which has induced in myself a depression of spirits so different from any other experience of fifty years as to be a new emotion—I no longer feel the enthusiasm necessary to make a review what it should be”.

Briefly, civilisation is disintegrating beneath us, and we are in an age so profoundly discouraging that we can only hope it will pass with our own lives, and change to something that will give creative minds a chance again.

I see I have strayed back to the conviction with which I started my own life as author: the conviction that imaginative literature is an act, and employs the depths of mind and experience, and is not a mere skill in verbal arrangement, which is what our numerous “book clubs” have made it! They have made it with complete success, so that (as advertisements assure us) “Anyone Has Literary Ability” and “You Can Write If You Try”. A doctor has given the ordinary opinion, with a felicity and clarity one could not improve on, in the Spring issue for 1939 of The Author:

“To put it briefly, many modern ‘authors’ are half-baked, pacifist semi-intellectual duds. Luckily the public knows that, unlike regular professions or such avocations as soldiering, agriculture and plumbing, ordinary authorship requires no qualifications, training or experience of any special type”.

What of “literature” of the periodical kind? This, especially if it caters for “woman’s world”, is aimed at a public that might have a bib under its chin! “This delightful little lady—so beloved the world over through her enchanting ‘fragrant Minute’ verses—is, in future, contributing a monthly article of infinite charm. . . . It is interesting to note that Miss Stitch has written a rhyme a day for exactly seven and a half years, and has received upwards of seventeen thousand letters from all parts of the world. . . . She has become one of England’s most popular lecturers—some say the most popular; while the sales of her little books exceed three hundred thousand! . . .

“I want to welcome particularly my new readers, and to tell my old ones (and my new ones, too, of course!) something of what we have planned. . . . I think October is a lovely month in which to start a new issue, for then the days are drawing in and a monthly magazine becomes a greater joy than ever.

“Miss Fay Inchfawn . . . has stepped into the place left vacant by dear Mrs. Lily Watson. . . . I am sure you will all agree with me that if anyone could fill Mrs. Watson’s place it is Miss Inchfawn. . . . Another popular writer—Miss Ursula Bloom—is contributing some very charming articles from time to time. . . .”

Such is an average sample of what the higher civilisation, for whom with such infinite pains and bother the vote was obtained, is offered. It is regarded as Mr. Bertie Wooster was by Jeeves, as “barely sentient”. A year ago, I noted the headings of the Sunday papers, and this was my catch—for one day! “Lovely Women’s Amazing Duel with Whips”: “Love’s Ten Commandments, by Mae West”: “I See an Electrocution” (a Viscount saw it): “The Life of Shirley Temple, By Her Mother”: “Is Your Girl Friend Poisoning You?”

Judging by advertisements, it is extremely likely that your girl friend is poisoning you. America started the business of attacking whatever sense of personal delicacy you possess, with hints of “athlete’s foot” and “halitosis”. But we have done very well in imitation. “Lonely Lad Becomes Eligible Escort!” He is seen, in top hat and evening dress, hugging a girl’s head on his shoulder. Ah, but before he could achieve that he had to be told to use a certain soap! The girl is seen, with fright and gloom on her face, telling him through the telephone, that she cannot join him in the proposed revels, she has a date already. Her mother correcting her for such a fib, she answers that Alec is impossible. “He’s got ‘B.O.’” The rejected swain has his attention drawn to this—tactfully—by a male chum. “Forgive my saying so, old man, but I think I know why she won’t go out with you.” The scene of this drama moves next to the bathroom, where Alec is getting rid of “B.O.” And all ends triumphantly.

Matthew Arnold was terribly upset by “Wragg Is In Custody”. He was lucky in dying when no one could guess that the bottom of the slope of vulgarity contained a swamp so noisome as “Lonely Lad Becomes Eligible Escort”.

If the male is attacked along the line of his personal undesirability, so is the female; and she is apparently equally susceptible to this line of assault. “Auntie,” asks the terrible little girl “is bad breath catching?” “Of course not, Sally! Why do you ask such a silly question?” “Well, when I grow up I wanna husband! So I don’t wanna catch your breath, Auntie May!” “My breath!” “Uh-huh. ’Cause Daddy says bad breath is why you aren’t married.”

Buddhism stressed our physical foulness, in a way that the West used to consider morbid. Many Christian contemplatives have let their minds dwell on the body’s distressing by-products, especially when ill and aged. But that was at least for a decent reason, to remind us that in this muddy vesture of decay was an immortal spirit striving to free itself, with the hope of succeeding when dissolution had done its worst. Advancing years convince each one of us that we are “chained to a dying animal”.⁶⁵ But need we have it daily forced on our notice that it is an animal of a particularly beastly kind, even to others of its species?

Many of the finest brains are said to be in advertising. Presumably, therefore, such advertisements as this (and they abound on every side), or the advertisements which ascribe to the use of this or that eatable or drinkable every kind of imaginable success, from getting a job as errand boy to entering the Cabinet, really bring home the goods.

Finally, the snob columns and snob advertisements. There was a time when, as Mr. E. M. Forster complained, press and BBC seemed to be conspiring to turn this once mighty nation into a huge servants’ hall; when news of baby princesses piped through all we were told of graver affairs, and we were exasperated by being held to attention for Royalty until not foreigners only grew weary of the strains of “God Save the King”. There was a swift improvement, but it stopped at a certain point.

There is still abundance of this sub-moronic printed matter, and beyond doubt people must like it. The funniest columns of the press are not those of Punch, they are the grave and self-revealing articles of “Our Hunting Correspondent”, on what a long way a little bit of attention goes, such as acknowledging the yokel’s courtesy in opening a gate for you, or how much heavier expenditure you can avert by tossing an occasional sixpence to him as you ride through.

But I am talking of advertisements. “They lead into the luxurious dressing-rooms of lovely women everywhere . . . . these two paths to a flawless skin. . . . Slim fingers of lovely aristocrats dip deep into . . . to safeguard satin cheeks, arms and shoulders.” Lady This expresses her gratitude (with photograph to justify it) for her “flowerlike complexion”. Lady That, “whose complexion has a rose-petal delicacy”, “ardent lover of sports, is able to expose her white skin to sun, wind and dust in all seasons”—and you are told why. The charwoman on her knees, the girl hustled in a factory, can acquire the beauty that grows out of infinite rest and leisure, by spending a steady proportion of their wages! For not the least interesting thing about advertising now is the fact that it more and more concentrates on the ill-educated and poor. The rich at any rate know too much to be exploited by stuff so crude and so bare-faced in its absurdity. There is no money in trying to cajole the rich. They keep their cash to themselves.

One hears that these professional beauties (for so one must style them) get very little for permission to blazon their charms and their cause, the racket has become so widespread. Sometimes, however, unforeseen extras may fall in. A friend tells me of a titled lady, his relation, whose wedding had been a big event of just a year previous to the appearance of her portrait, with her first-born in her arms, boosting a food to which she ascribed their health. Unfortunately, the picture showed a borrowed baby (her own being down with a chill), and the artist, who was hazy as to the date of her marriage, had shown her with a child of certainly three or four summers. She was paid only a smallish sum for her “endorsement”. But the artist had laid himself open to a libel action.

There are those who still haver about “agitators” who stir up “class hatred”, and shatter that National Unity for which Britain, a band of happy sisters and brothers, was once renowned. But it is the aristocracy itself that has made itself a jest. How can you respect a class whose women sell their great names and personal beauty, to boost articles of trade?

As to “honours”, and titles, apart from those that come with attainment of some position that brings almost automatic decoration, they are now so well understood that it is an established convention that some classes—for example, men of letters—do not want them. Arnold Bennett was gazetted knight, and declined the handle to his name. The really good writers of the last century, with hardly an exception, remained untitled. Robert Bridges, when sounded as to the poet laureateship, replied characteristically, “Yes, but there must be no nonsense of knighthoods or anything of that sort”—a reply which was tactlessly reported to His Majesty, who remembered it years later, when Bridges’s claims to the Order of Merit were urged. Since 1915, I think hardly any men of letters have accepted titles: William Watson, who thoroughly deserved his knighthood for a surprising book of verse about Mr. Lloyd George, The Man Who Did: Hugh Walpole and J. G. Squire, who both of them also deserved it, in different ways—Sir John Squire did a grand job when he put through the saving of the Stonehenge sky-line. Such knighthoods as those of Bruce Richmond and Humphrey Milford come under the head of not literary merit but public service, in both cases conspicuously rendered.

But what a queer thing it is, that it should now be as late in the world’s history as 1939, and one nation, and one only, out of all the nations, should still have this elaborate paraphernalia of titles and tinsel inherited from the Middle Ages, and aldermen and brewers and company directors should be disporting themselves as barons and knights of tourney! The system amazes everyone outside these islands. Our own Dominions now refuse to have any of their citizens honoured without their Government’s previous permission. It helps to buttress up what is far and away the most top-heavy social structure in the world, one which is bound to go down in another decade or so, with a crash that will stun the nations.

There is sense and dignity in the camps for public school boys and boys from the working classes. But where is either, when unemployed youths are asked to Eton for the day, and the press shows them on the stairs in their kerchiefed ruggedness, as a foil to the top hats and conventional jackets? Miners tea in twos, with Mrs. Neville Chamberlain, so that the Premier may “know at first hand” what it is like to work in those pits where an average of three lives a day are lost throughout the year (and at intervals some appalling disaster sends this average leaping up, and for a short spell awes us all with pity). The Daily Telegraph announces (February 9, 1939) that on March 29 will be held an evening party at the Guildhall, for Safer Motherhood, which the Queen will attend, along with Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress and the Sheriffs in State. “There will be a guard of honour of mothers from poor homes in Wales, Yorkshire, Durham, London and other parts of the country. Debutantes will form a second guard of honour. Supper will be served in the crypt” (cost, ten-and-sixpence). The poor mothers were to watch from the gallery.

When I was young, the rich were terribly afraid of “showing off”. It would make the poor angry and jealous. They have long ago got over that fear. The film has shown how avid we are for luxury. If we cannot get it in person, let us have it by proxy. Let us watch it on the screen, let us see well-groomed animals of both sexes eating and drinking to repletion, and waltzing and playing together. Let us read about it in the paper.

“O, who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?”

What a fool Shakespeare was! Why, all of us can! Or nearly all of us.

Meanwhile, within an hour’s bombing distance of these islands, is the majestic, enthralling, terrifying spectacle of a nation of ninety million people, who (like the people of Cornwall, when John Wesley came among them) “have changed their sins” and have got clean rid of all these idiocies, and are night and day arming, arming, arming. Some of our statesmen hold that they are doing this for fun, and for sheer joy of the exercise and expenditure. But there are some spectators in the world, who hold otherwise.

“Is Your Girl Friend Poisoning You?”

Was there ever a time when our standards of art and taste were lower? Or a time when so recklessly all of beauty that has come down to us was destroyed? We once had ideals of a sort, of what was styled sportsmanship. To-day the motor-car runs down lovely forms of life, and as their hearts and limbs are straining they are shot: it glides out along jungle roads, with glaring lights on full, to immobilise anything that is crossing from cover to cover.

“Spotlight shooting was great fun. In three or four cars, taking different roads, we careered through the jungle, one of us leaning out with a torch, the other with rifle ready. As soon as we saw two eyes, we tried to put in a shot between them. . . . If he were wounded, we had to pursue him, most unpleasantly, into thick bushes, with a barrage of torchlight to make him keep his distance. The bag was varied”.⁶⁶

We kill out in such fashion the interesting and varied fauna, of country after country in the Empire. We kill out in our own everything except pheasants and grouse and rabbits and partridges and foxes.

We mop up the green countryside, slice it into eligible building sites. Against all this wastefulness and insensitiveness, a handful of men and women work night and day, supporting the National Trust, the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, and the London County Council puts up, as a last minute defence, its Green Belt. These men and women deserve a national support, but our national follies have made this impossible. The first budgeted cost of “Tegart’s Wall” of barbed wire to rust round the Holy Land was £90,000, to be far exceeded later. What could not the National Trust have done with £90,000?

Chapter VI

Moral Rearmament

“Our fathers and grandfathers knew no such terrors as those that haunt our dreams now, and even if they had they could at least have relieved the stress through the religious services they were then in the habit of attending. Many of these services . . . had a high emotional quality and a strong purging effect.” So Mr. Priestley (News Chronicle, March 1, 1939). “We pick up a newspaper—and it bristles with menace and aches with misery. We turn on the wireless—and voices, almost ironically smooth and honeyed, immediately tell us dreadful things. We go to the cinema—and the news reel and such terrible documentary films as the March of Time picture of the refugees show us horror piled on horror.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, two years ago, sounded a Recall to Religion. The Recall was a flop. For my part, I make no bones of saying frankly, that I have a notion that much of what he means by Religion is something I have no intention of being recalled to. A letter was printed in The Times, after Munich, signed by Lord Baldwin and a number of other very distinguished names, distinguished in the fighting forces, in politics, in society, asking for Moral Rearmament. I studied the names closely, and—to be frank again—disliked what I thought were their affiliations. From what I knew of some of the signatories I suspected that the appeal was Buchmanite or near-Buchmanite, and I remembered that “Frank” had “thanked God for Hitler”, and that Herr Himmler is said to be a member of “the Oxford Group” (which so unwarrantably usurps the name of a University that has won respect). Then, a book on Moral Rearmament was edited by a celebrated tennis player, who was known to be a “Groupist”. At this moment, it is still selling largely. Why?

People are hungry for religion. But they are not finding it inside the Churches.

Hymns have never mattered much, except to Nonconformists. The Presbyterians for the most part have been happy to sing booming doggerel with a scriptural basis. The best hymnal (and it is pretty bad) is the Methodist. It is skies above Hymns Ancient and Modern, which in its turn is better than Roman Catholic hymnals. But the lowest depth of all, as literature and as sentiment, is reached in the hymns sung reverently by Spiritualists, every Sunday evening; surprising stuff, telling you to be hushed, because old friends are hovering round.

But people are now so desperately unhappy, that they will ignore any amount of artistic deficiency in religion, if it will give them anything definite for the mind to rest on—such as the Catholic Church gives to peasants in Galway, such as the Spiritualists give to their packed audiences. Go to one of the Spiritualist gatherings, and do some thinking. The talks are as bad as the hymns, many of them; vulgar and airy and noisy. But what does that matter? The people are assured that life has a meaning: that the spirit lives on beyond death: that all our courage and misery and striving is not so much water poured through a sieve held over sand. Look round at the company in which you find yourself! It is the typical church-going crowd of a previous generation. Nearly all those people are poor, they are all earnest, they are all troubled and want to find unseen help. And nearly all of them were once church-goers.

A Recall to Religion!

What is Religion? First of all, what are Religions?

Christianity goes back to a life of poverty and simplicity, that ended in a death of shame and agony. In its first propagation there was nothing of state churches or ecclesiastical statesmen: there were only such figures as Peter the fisherman, the Rock, the man who knew abject fear yet died so grandly: Stephen the protomartyr, whose face was as the face of an angel, turned towards the men who were breaking his body: Paul the traveller, journeying on in a divine restlessness:

“Lone on the land—and homeless on the water”—

the man whose consideration for others, unable to look into the eyes of death with his own coolness of long familiarity, was as perfect as his valour.⁶⁷

Islam too has its memories of saints and men of courage: heretics like Mansur, who when they brought him out to die by impalation could remark, “My Friend does me no wrong! The cup which He gives me to drink He has first drunk Himself”; missionaries who made their way in advance of the conquering Moslem armies, into Afghan heights and Ganges swamps. Islam gives a genuineness of brotherhood which Christianity does not. It has an austerity about its approach to the Unseen which Christianity has lost.

Hinduism is a morass and amalgam (never mind how it can manage to be both, for it does) of the basest and the highest. Remember now the highest only: that masterword of the Vedanta, to the spirit troubled and shaken, “Thou art That”—a human spirit resting on the eternal, and exempt from the temporal and its miseries!

Buddhism began with a King’s son (yes, he was that, though “king” must be taken in the earlier simpler sense, of days when every Norwegian valley had its “king”) who gave up all, and for fifty years lived for people who had no sort of claim upon him except that of common humanity. “No man ever lived more godless yet more godlike”; his courage, his common sense, his kindness, his selflessness, were beyond all praise. He was a “pessimist”, if you like. But the countries that believed in his doctrine were far happier than our Christian countries, until the West infected them with its own poison of the machine and the weapons of war.

Confucianism? It made a civilisation, and that civilisation you have watched confronting brutal cruelty with dignity and with gentleness—Chinese ’planes flying over inflammable Japanese cities and dropping not bombs, but pamphlets—Chinese men and women and children dying with patience and without complaint, even against America and England, who had supplied the aggressor with the sinews of his aggression.

So let us clear our minds as to what a Recall to Religion means.

There was a Great War, a little over twenty years ago. The Churches had their chance—a supreme chance; the manhood of the nation was compelled to attend their services. The Churches failed, and the extent of their failure their leaders have never recognised. Every service man knows the reasons of their failure, and I am not going to discuss them; my business is with the present, and I firmly believe that the leaders of the Churches, the ecclesiastical statesmen, are utterly unteachable.

The chaplains of the Roman Catholic Church did best, taken as a body; this, I know, is common ground, as is also the opinion as to which body did worst. That is why, though no Catholic, I deplore what seems to me the terrible mistake of that Church in our own days; its attitude towards the Abyssinian and Spanish conflicts. The Roman Catholic Church has (I think) a more living spiritual life at present than any other Church. But it has not yet paid the price that will be exacted presently, for its ecclesiastics’ identification of religion and things that were matters of political opinion.

I believe there is an awakening of troubled thought among the younger Catholics, and in this country (and still more in France) there is a group who deplore the acceptance of General Franco as a “Crusader” and of his victims as demons and criminals. “The People and Freedom Group”, consisting “of Catholics who have the cause of freedom at heart”, have had the courage and independence to press for “constant co-operation”, not merely with France, but with the United States, “for the defence of the values of our Christian civilisation”. In a letter (February 13, 1939) to the Manchester Guardian, they went as far as any Christian community in Great Britain, in urging that our Government should do what it had not done, and that is, make clear to General Franco beyond a peradventure that British opinion would not forgive him if he refused to “exercise restraint in his victory and refrain from acts of vengeance”:

“Insistence on this point is very necessary. We cannot forget how, in spite of the repeated efforts of the Foreign Office (besides those of other countries and of high ecclesiastical authorities), the life of the Catholic Catalan deputy Carrasco i Formiguera was not spared, any more than were those of the many Basques, both priests and laymen who, as appears from the official documentation of their Government, have been executed on no other grounds than their Basque loyalty. Any official recognition of the Burgos Government should be conditional on a guarantee that there shall be no more acts of vengeance or public reprisals, as being inhuman, unchristian, and inimical to any possibility of appeasement.”

We have had a much publicised religious revival, which I have already mentioned: that associated with Dr. Buchman’s name. It has drawn in not merely such leaders of thought as Bunny Austin and Mr. Beverley Nichols, it attracted even so masculine (but lazy) a mind as that of Canon Streeter. Several Countesses are in it, and it was said at one time to be strong in South Africa, and to have “solved” the problems of Dutch and British, of whites and negroes. It has to its credit other remarkable achievements; it has drawn together Generals, Admirals, Society Ladies, Labour and Conservative politicians, all singing happily and with national unity, “Wise Old Horsie” in a sanctified recension:

“You got to be willin’! Yes, absolutely willin’!
To let God hold the reins His way!”

Then we have broadcast religion. And I want to say something about this.

In January of this year, a Bishop broadcast a sermon, in which he used the following homely illustration, an incident told him by a Canon (whom he named). The Canon was holding his first-born in his arms. He thought he saw a smile on the infant’s face, and his fatherly pride—“the pride of the young father”— was stirred. The baby knew that these arms were those of its father! But the nurse, more experienced, informed him it was merely wind! She turned the baby over, patted its back, and the wind was expelled. And the father went away, a wiser man, pondering on the ways of Nature and Nature’s God, and having learnt something “of the mysteries of indigestion.”

There is plenty of that kind of religion about, mainly Anglican, that (as a lady who had just heard this sermon remarked) “just stinks of the nursery!” No doubt it is all very simple and very good, and helps us to feel that religion is not something terrible and far away, and that God comes right into our homes (and into the nursery); that He is only too ready, not merely to hold the reins for “Wise Old Horsie”, but to play bears with Wise Old Horsie’s babies.

But there is not in the whole world a single mosque where such a sermon and such an illustration would have been possible for one moment. The worshippers would have risen in horror and have rushed out, except that (as I say) the incident is inconceivable. Islam has its faults, but it never makes the mistake of cheapening the Invisible King. God to the Moslem is a very great and majestic God, as He was to Isaiah and to St. Paul. If the Epistle to the Romans is religion, then this kind of thing is blasphemy and rots the brains of the Church by law established in England.

Having made such a mess of one tremendous chance, that presented by the Great War, are the Churches determined to throw away this second chance, presented by broadcasting? Do they not think it important to use preachers with brains and some fundamental seriousness of outlook? The quality of broadcast sermons is terrible.

There was a time, the ten years before the War, when the Free Churches mattered in national affairs. What preachers they had! R. J. Campbell, Thomas Yates, Phillips of Bloomsbury, R. F. Horton, Brown of Ferme Park, Warburton Lewis, T. R. Maltby in his prime, Dr. Clifford, Principals Forsyth and Fairbairn, Campbell Morgan, and how many others! A mixed lot; but has anyone ever heard Maltby (for example) preach a sermon that was not merely wistful and moving, in his own individual manner, but had brains behind it? He is now old, but he is still Maltby. Unfortunately, he has no successor.

Listen in to-day (you can get them on the wireless) to the really popular Free Church preachers, who draw the crowds! They are good chaps. But have they ever known a single moment of imagination in their whole lives? They preach a Good Friday sermon—and all they can do is to tell you of a Holy Land trip they once took, and they go off into pretty-pretty stuff, about how nice the hollyhocks look in the Garden of Gethsemane, and how kind the Franciscans who keep the Garden are.

But I have talked enough in my own person. Let us hear what a Free Church layman, a Congregationalist, thinks about it all:

“The readings from the Old and New Testament scriptures have dwindled to a snippet of one lesson. The hymns are not paraphrases, nor are they charged in every line with scriptural content. They discuss mountain scenery (with special attention to sunsets), psychological disorders, priggish ambitions, and political programmes. The preaching of the Word has evaporated into flabby platitudes about the dangers of the international situation or the benevolent commonplaces of Ella Wheeler Wilcox expressed even more prosaically than in her poetry.”⁶⁸

After Munich, I read many religious papers. They contained sermons and letters pointing out that Christianity taught “vicarious suffering”: that Czechoslovakia was “a martyr state”, that, though her agony was great, she felt “pride” also, to realise that she was being “crucified” for the rest of the world.

What manner of religion is this, that accepts the suffering of others so light-heartedly, and that uses words like “crucified “ with so utter a lack of perception of the grim fact behind that word? Then I remember that words have ceased to mean anything for us—that imagination is dying out—that a bothersome aunt is now “a cross”—that our minds are padded about with belief that dreadful things are things that happen in other countries, for us to read about or to hear of on the wireless.

Nevertheless, do you really believe that—in a world where, along with abundance of sheer caprice, there does operate a stern moral law—after what has befallen China, Abyssinia, Czechoslovakia, Spain, the future is going “to put up a free show” for us in this island? Does it never come home to you that all these words which we use so casually and unthinkingly, words like “cross” and “crucifixion”, are about to become realities for us, and for the young most of all—that this generation will not pass away till all these things are fulfilled?

I am sure we have to think out this matter of Moral Rearmament, of Moral Regeneration. I want to say something about the most overrated merit, that of Sincerity; and the most underrated sin, that of Stupidity. If the months that lie before us are as menacing as they seem, then we shall before long find ourselves in a position where nothing will help us except our own spirits and the unseen world on which they rest. What does Moral Regeneration mean?

Its meaning varies. There have been periods in the world’s history when men and women have required above all things to be emotionally awakened, to be shaken back to pity and perception of what others suffer and endure. In a well-known poem Matthew Arnold, speaking of the Age in which Christ was born, says:

“On that hard pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell.
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.”

He calls it that hard world. It needed emotion as our own eighteenth century needed emotion, and found it when John Wesley and his preachers went up and down the land.

But for a long time, where our own age, and religious people in particular, have failed is not in emotion but in thought. Our hearts are fairly sound. But our heads are not; our thinking, for years past, has been of wretched quality. That is one reason—a main reason—why all these Recalls to Religion and to Moral Regeneration have had so little effect.

People say—how often you hear them say it!—such things as this: “The main thing is to be sincere”; “It does not matter what a man believes, so long as he is sincere.” If I were to say that now—be honest with yourself!—if I said it with sufficient noise and fervour, would you not catch yourself saying, “True! true! how true that is!”

As a matter of fact, it is about the most damnable lie in the world. And it is largely because we have been repeating it during these last few years that our outlook is now so full of frightening shadows.

Sincerity has caused more crimes and cruelty than almost anything else. Men have been sincere in putting others to death for their opinions. They were sincere in their belief right up to our own day, that women belonged to an inferior order, to be treated as such. At the present time men believe sincerely that if they are of Nordic race they are entitled to rule everyone else; that, if their skins are white, or if they are of higher caste than some others are, they are, without any argument, superior.

I have heard thousands of Christian sermons. But I have never heard one on a sentence which is almost the most searching that Christ ever spoke. “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” If your beliefs are all wrong, how terrible it is that you sincerely hold them! The great religious teachers had a very poor opinion of sincerity, yet it is the most overrated of the virtues to-day! Christ tells us that at the Final Judgment hard-working and earnest men and women are going to offer their sincerity as their excuse, and be thunderstruck to find it is in reality the most damning fact about their lives and the mischief they did.

“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

I cannot find that either Buddha or Muhammad held any high opinion of sincerity per se. To them, it was infinitely more important to be right, than to be sincere. If you strive with all your powers to cleanse the inner springs of thought and action, you need not worry about your sincerity. It will follow as the bloom follows from the plant whose root is sound.

But if sincerity is the most overrated virtue, stupidity is the most underrated sin. This is not the same thing as dullness. Dullness you cannot help; but stupidity you can. We all of us have in us great streaks of sheer dullness and mental inefficiency, and our friends know they have to put up with it. But stupidity is a sin—a sin which these people who recall us to Moral Regeneration never think it necessary to mention or to warn us against! It is almost the worst sin of all, and includes almost every other sin. And it is the besetting sin of the age in which we live.

You find this stupidity now walking through the world, with devastating and terrible results. Good people say, “Oh, but we did not realise that this was going to happen.” They did not realise it—because they deliberately shut their eyes! People—and whole nations—are now expressing astonishment over things that took a long time to happen, and during that time happened slowly before their eyes! They are astonished because the lunatic piling up of tariffs and restrictions has killed trade: because dishonesty in reviewing has brought authors and publishers to a state of distress: because years of deliberate training in theories and practice of violence have brought us face to face with the certainty that violence is going to break out somewhere and soon, on a scale that will appal us; because cowardly actions have brought us to a place of peril, where cowardice will not save us.

“Things are what they are, and the consequences will be what they will be. Why then should we deceive ourselves?”⁶⁹ Why, indeed? What right has any one of us to be a bigger fool than God intended him to be?

I have used political examples because politics have become the overmastering fact of all existence. But in your own private life you know quite well that you shut your eyes continually, that you continually ignore plain evidence, that you continually act in a way that makes nonsense of what you say your religion or your common sense tells you. One thing that Christians can learn from Gautama Buddha is his insistence that stupidity is a sin. In all you do, he says in a well-known passage, whether you rise or sit, even if you merely extend your arm, let mind be the master. Act with your whole being, and with your mind alert and watchful. If others deceive you, that is dullness, and perhaps you cannot help it. But if you deceive yourself, that is stupidity, one of the blackest of sins, and the sin which in this world is most unpityingly and terribly punished.

I have attended many public meetings during the last year; there never was a time when so many heartbreaking causes called for meetings of support or protest. These meetings have been crowded—with the young! with people who have no votes, no money, no influence, no power! Many of them, even among those who are University students, look as if they do not get enough to eat, and they are poorly clad. There is being sacrifice somewhere.

As a matter of fact, there is being sacrifice in a great many places. People give generously, as, one after another, Ethiopians who have been gassed and blinded, Czechs and Jews who have been pillaged and evicted and made homeless, Chinese whose poor huts and whose schools and universities have been destroyed, Spaniards who dare not return to the mercy of their conqueror, appeal to our help and practical pity.

But let us go back to the young. We are a decent people, the most useful and decent (I believe) in the whole world; and the young are the best among us. There they sit, these boys and girls, with passion in their eyes, and misery in their souls. They are where you and I were, my contemporaries, thirty, forty, fifty years ago—when we would have thanked God, as for life’s greatest happiness, if He had shown us a cause worth dying for, and had asked us to die for it! Their courage and power to respond to a call for sacrifice and straight dealing and straight thinking are immeasurable. It is only we who are wrong—we who are old and disillusioned, and whose thinking is such utter drivel and utter treachery, and whose leadership is so daft and selfish that we think we can use words dishonestly and not be caught out, and that the young can be appealed to by policies of funk and self-interest.

An Indian of international reputation said to me: “You are dying. That does not matter! Nations, as well as individuals, have to die. But you might at least die with dignity! For you have been a great nation!”

Yes, we are dying—unless we pull ourselves together. Nazis and Fascists have a political philosophy, and it knits them (never mind by what accompanying terror) into tremendous strength. A succession of purely opportunist Governments, which have brought us to a pass where we spend our whole time apprehensively watching Japan and Hitler and Mussolini—while Palestine is another Ireland—while Indian and Colonial and American opinion moves from bewilderment to bewilderment—while our immeasurably rich and varied interests and life are neglected—are breaking the nerve of this great nation. If you squander such spontaneous outbursts of feeling as we have known at least half a dozen times in the last three years, and oil it all into smoothness afterwards, by deeds which are a direct denial of what our rulers officially told the world, you are going to make us incapable of generous response. If you take the heart out of us by an absence of policy, and destroy our belief that the British name really stands for certain qualities, you are going to find us nerveless and divided when the testing comes.

If our Government has secured us a shivering respite, what else is it going to do? I know of no politician who promises anything except continuance without visible limit of arming, and a process of replacing and improving armaments: life under the eternal shadow of a big stick; newspapers gravely reporting the latest impudence of Signor Gayda and Dr. Goebbels (and we must never be rude back, for that might annoy them): and every few weeks another crisis, and further respite purchased by yielding to blackmail. Will our rulers tell us categorically, in terms of action, exactly what they mean by Moral Rearmament and Moral Regeneration? Taking all the evidence together, I am afraid I suspect that they mean a general rallying towards standpatness and a woolly-minded pretence that things are not what we know they are. Are we to wait while the Empire, and our name all over the world, and our own character, steadily deteriorate, and sense of helplessness eats into our brains?

Will the Churches face the situation? Mere repetition of the “need to fight for truth” (when we have seen ourselves unwilling to fight—not in a phrase, but in reality—for the oppressed and brutally misused), mere repetition of terms and clichés, which once had a meaning but now have none, is so much childish prattle, vexing to the ear and arousing contempt. The Churches, confronted by deep moral issues, are making a mistake greater than any they have made since the War, and (I think) greater even than that which they made in the War. Most of my Christian friends, especially the clergy, put religion above ethics, the surest way of killing religion. There is nothing before them but merited failure, unless they realise what the young are feeling: which is, that we have sunk to depths of unparalleled humiliation, that the moral temperature of the world has lowered everywhere, that the prestige of Christianity has gone in the eyes of non-Christian lands, and that our leaders refuse to offer us any cause worth living for and worth taking the risk of dying for.

We want an answer from our rulers, to such questions as these: Have you any philosophy of Empire? Is there any justification for the retention of Britain’s immense territorial possessions, other than the backing we can give them by piling up armaments which will scare other Powers from trying to wrest them from us? What is our plan and purpose for the people who live in these possessions? Are you going to ask us to fight for Hongkong and Tanganyika and Mediterranean trade routes, or have you any glimmering of a moral notion in your brains? Do you really think that our own country must remain for ever as it now is, and that there is no way out for the misery and futility of the lives of millions of our people?

It is useless to point to the fact that this or that political leader is a strong churchman and has acknowledged divine guidance in public speeches and by the practice of attendance at divine worship.⁷⁰ If there is Mind in the universe, that Mind cannot be obsessed with our own conviction of the outstanding importance of British (or American) men and women. It must be wrung with pity for what is happening to Abyssinians and Czechs and Chinese and Spanish “Communists”, and must be seeking for men and women who do not consider death the worst of all the evils that can befall them, and are open to an appeal other than that which speaks of their material interests. “For the Father seeketh such to worship him.” It is not because they are wicked and violent that so many of the young are turning to Communism—that crime which, like “mutiny”, is so horrible that there is no penalty for it but the firing-squad or the gallows! It is because their spirits are shaken with humiliation and imagination and compassion.

“If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Chapter VII

National Unity?

When the easier rebellion of 1916 showed that Augustine Birrell had been “let down” by the Irish rebels, and had failed in optimism, he was howled out of office immediately. To-day, after failure following on failure, if the Premier makes one speech that admits his failure and expresses pain at the Führer’s conduct, we are told that he has done his best, and that we must forgive our rulers and rally round them. “National Service is the Test of Unity”, say Conservative newspapers.

I have quoted what the Manchester Guardian has said about “the frivolous optimism of the Left”. It is nothing to the frivolous optimism of the Right. Let Duce or Führer keep quiet for one fortnight, or merely refrain from outrageous action, and joy flows unconfined. One week before the pounce on Prague, Sir Samuel Hoare was calling the unjoyful “jitterbugs”. “Jitterbugs!” shouted the Government’s supporters. On the date March 15, Punch came out with a cartoon, “The Ides of March”, showing a fat prosperous John Bull yawning as he awoke. “Thank God that’s safely over!” Above his bed was a calendar open at the date “March 15”. Out of the window was flying a black figure labelled “War scare”. The cartoon’s caption stated that “Pessimists had predicted another ‘major crisis’ in the middle of this month”.

We knew Hitler’s programme. “A shrewd victor will, if possible, keep imposing his demands by degrees. He can then, in dealing with a nation that has lost its character—and that means every one that submits voluntarily—count on its never finding in any particular act of aggression a sufficient excuse for taking up arms again. On the contrary, the more the exactions that have been willingly endured, the less justifiable does it seem to resist at last, because of a new and apparently isolated (though, to be sure, constantly recurring) imposition” (Mein Kampf).

Events in racing sequence fill out what these pages show in shadow, ever nearing. Appeasement, “the negative policy of buying off the aggressor at the lowest possible price that will divert him for the moment” (News Chronicle, April 3), has gone. We have pacts with Poland and Rumania, for the friendship of the bravest land in Europe; when the Daily Telegraph’s Correspondent left Czechoslovakia, the frontier official would not touch his passport. Spain, which might have been our bastion, is in the Axis, “a result of the British Government’s self-delusion and wilful obstinacy”, ignoring signs clear for years to men in all parties. A German fleet has sailed to Spain. Memel, Albania, have fallen.

No doubt the people of Britain can forgive a great deal. But ought we to forgive the smiles and exultation that greeted Munich, the flourished piece of paper, the cheers, the utter forgetfulness of the price that was being paid for our own skins’ temporary safety, by men and women worth as much as ourselves, who now must take refuge in suicide or pass into the devilry of the Nazi concentration camps?

Ought we to forgive the highly-placed people who all through last year were sabotaging any chance there was of saving Europe and civilisation, by secretly assuring the enemy that it was quite all right—that if by chance our Government ever appeared to be standing firm, it was merely making frightful faces, like a Chinese general of the old days?

We are confronted by an Adversary who is like something out of the Book of Revelations. We have given away to him—not by any sudden surprise on his part, but by slow deliberate process on our own—the key positions all over the world, that were our most effective “armament”. In the very height of the world’s horror and anger over the Nazi seizure of Czechoslovakia, the F.B.I. was placidly making its own arrangements with Germany, to join in a drive for trade (in which we should have to supply the credits) at the expense of America, whose help we must have if we are to survive. The Financial Times and the Evening Standard both found the deal too steep and suicidal to support.

Our rulers hankered after fulfilment of their old plan, of persuading Germany to get its claws caught in the Russian net, although Stalin had noted it, and remarked that Russia is not going to be so simple (even if Hitler is). There is still a naïve belief that, if the worst comes to the worst, it does not matter how long or how much we have cold-shouldered Russia (or the United States). All we need do, to secure their help, is to say that we should now like to have it.

When the Nazi ultimatum to Rumania was known, “the double-cross appeared above the horizon”⁷¹ promptly. It would be a good arrangement to let the Nazis have the oil without which their ’planes cannot bomb this island for more than a few weeks—they must get oil somewhere, either by foreign exchange (which still eludes them) or by what amounts to extortion from Rumania, which is a long way off from us:

“Unwelcome though such an arrangement might be in certain respects both to Rumania herself and the other countries which trade with her, it might conceivably have formed the basis of discussion if it had been known to form part of a genuine scheme for the economic reorganisation of Europe.”⁷²

“All that Chamberlain’s Britain demands nowadays is the jackal’s share”⁷³ of trade pickings. Could anyone have predicted, even three years ago, that a great ruling class could ever sink to such pusillanimity?

Punch’s fat and yawning John Bull, happy that misery has again kindly passed him by, now represents the outside world’s resentful picture of our nation. The latest hit in New York cabarets is The Chamberlain Crawl, “in which the chorus goes through the motions indicated” as it sings:

“First I go down on my knees,
Then get ready to appease!
It’s gemuetlich
To bootlick . . .
Doin’ the Chamberlain Crawl!”⁷⁴

On March 13, President Roosevelt requested the press of the United States not to speak of his discussions with American business as his “Appeasement Policy”. He said it was not his intention to chop business into little bits, and give it away to other people.

We may feel American opinion is unfair. Most of us recognise the Premier’s personal honesty. And (it is urged) he took over a situation for whose danger others were responsible.

Yet, one way and another, he has had rule for years—years of deepening humiliation. “No Prime Minister in modern times has had so much personal power. . . . There never has been in England such a one-man Government” (Mr. Winston Churchill, Daily Telegraph, April 20). He was Mr. Baldwin’s Chancellor, and uttered those “inspired indiscretions”, that sanctions were “midsummer madness”, that it was folly for small nations to hope for help from great nations. His Government that styles itself National is not that, whatever else it is. It is not even Conservative in foreign and Empire affairs.

It will not save itself, or save the country. Only the people of England can now do this. Not the Liberals and Labour and Communists only, but all those Conservatives who care about our good name and about the survival of freedom and decency and standards of honour and international truthfulness. They are many in number still. Will they not, before too late, leave the ranks of those who are like “my boy, whom the Whips always drive into their Lobby”?

For there are worse whips than even the whips of these Whips! And the men who wield them are itching to use them, not merely on helpless Jews and Abyssinians, but on soft-bodied luxuriating John Bull. “You have lived through all this”. But are you likely to live through the next three years?

We could recover, even now, a policy for this Empire of ours, and could make a proclamation, generous and frank and clear, that would rally all its peoples to us, and persuade them—even now—that the real England is not the England they saw at Munich, but another and nobler one.

“The England of my heart is she,
Long hoped and long deferred,
That ever promises to be,
And ever breaks her word”—⁷⁵

yet could keep her word at last, bringing all her sister and dependent nations into one equal commonwealth of human spirits. There is no other way in which you can keep this Empire of which you are so proud.

The Nazi terror has given us a chance. Even our worst critics would now condemn us if we handed over one acre of land inhabited by flesh and blood. But this will pass, whether we are defeated or escape defeat, and then there will be no answer to the world’s distrust except a genuinely democratic policy for dependent countries.

At that failure of a meeting, to inaugurate “The First Hundred Thousand Meeting”, our chairman, Mr. Duncan Sandys, said firmly, “This is not to become a ‘Chamberlain Must Go’ movement”. But—either Chamberlain or National Unity has got to go. You can have your choice, and you know that this is so.

With Labour divided and hesitant, the Government may get another majority at the polls. But until this Cabinet has gone, it will only drive this nation down into deeper unhappiness and rage of humiliation and helplessness and sense of shame, and into the agony of the final crisis of all. And when that is on us—

“The rest of the National programme will follow immediately.”

Postscript. It will be urged that the Government has repented, so an Act of Indemnity and Oblivion should be drawn over their record.

It is true that a certain naïvety has been shocked almost out of existence. Offers “to eat my hat”, derision of predictions which were scarcely prediction at all but merely reading off a blackboard, references to “far-off countries of which we know nothing”, grow rarer. But it is the same Government. It takes every step only after obstinate resistance. It is always in the lag of the best-informed opinion of even its own supporters. A wish-fulfilment policy haunts it still.

And we cannot live for ever for war, or in the shadow and fear of war. Other nations have in different ways been rebuilt, and at least given immense public values and amenities, while we have had twenty years of doles and drift. Soon we must face the alternatives, of sinking into third-rateness or reconstruction. Our nation has the courage and the ability to rebuild itself and to rebuild an Empire which is fast growing ramshackle. But that courage and ability are not in the National Government. National Unity lies at your side, to be picked up. But not by those hands.

If when this book appears we have a different Government, there still remains the bill to pay for these twenty years. And for some part of us there remains a future.