If Hitler Comes (4 page)

There is no need to repeat his arguments. They look false enough now, but most people welcomed them gladly enough at the time, as holding out the one chance of a prosperous and not undignified future for Great Britain. The House listened to them hopefully, but in silence.

He came at length to the circumstances of the last fatal week-end.

“As time went on”, he said, “it became increasingly clear to His Majesty’s Government and to the Government of the German Reich that the new situation should be clarified and crystallized, for all the world to see, in a treaty of friendship and mutual assistance. This instrument, freely negotiated, is that which the House——”

It was here that the first interruption occurred. There were cries of “Question”, and Churchill was first on his feet to ask with calm deliberation whether His Majesty’s Government, in these “free negotiations”, had been uninfluenced by the fact that Germany on the previous Thursday had begun the
transport
of twenty divisions from the interior to the north-east coast.

“And by Hitler’s threat on Friday night to bomb London to bits,” added a bold member of the Labour Opposition, guessing at the truth.

Almost the whole House was now on its feet, the Opposition back-benchers emboldened at last to make a demonstration, screaming “Traitors!” at the Government, and the
Government
members calling “Mischiefmakers!” in reply. The Speaker made no attempt to quell the tumult, and Naker remained seated until it had died down. Then (says my
Hansard
):

“Honourable members opposite”, he said (with a
deprecating
gesture of his hands), “are inclined to ignore the processes of history. Their antique jingoism has little meaning to-day. One could not but admire their valour (were it ever put to the test), but we on this side of the House prefer a higher patriotism. To us the British Empire is no mere temporary phenomenon, consistent with but one phase of historical development. We do not seek to preserve it by vainly trying to keep the rest of the world unchanged; we seek to develop it by meeting changing conditions in a spirit of realism and co-operation.”

So he went on, and no interruptions could break his apparent complacency. He became very plain and matter-offact, almost casual, and in a bare twenty minutes he had finished the speech in which, as British Foreign Secretary, he virtually handed his proud country to the mercy of the enemy. But when he sat down there was sweat on his
forehead
.

Some of the speeches that followed, on the Opposition side, were almost worthy of this great and tragic occasion. One notable Tory Parliamentarian evoked the great leaders of past times, who would have wept had they seen the extremity to which modern leadership had brought the nation. Labour leaders spoke of painfully won social reforms, and asked who would be their guardian now. All pleaded that the House might, at the last moment, take a mighty risk to redress a great error; all, at the same time, clearly knew they were making valedictory speeches.

On the Government side there was gallant wishful thinking. Backbenchers exhibited a renewed faith in Nazi promises, and the Lord Privy Seal almost made it appear that Great Britain, out of sheer altruism, had condescended to help Germany in her European problems. “Naught”, he said, with sublime inappropriateness, “shall make us rue.”

Chamberlain’s unforgettable speech will find its way (if
civilization
survives) in the school history books. “Peace was my
life’s ambition, but not this peace.” His voice trembled when he said that it was his faith in his country’s courage and integrity that had enabled him to make the great experiment of Munich. Could it be that faith was unjustified?

Evans rose to wind up the debate. One was aware of the strange similarity between the two men. They had many ideals in common, and were equals in sensibility, but Evans had no strength of character.

The House held its breath. Who knows but that in that brief moment there lay the chance that a great leader might have seized, to rescue England, if not from destruction, then from shame? Did the House feel that the shades of Pitt, Disraeli, Gladstone were crowding round the last holder of their great office, begging, even commanding him to shrink from the final betrayal? If so, the moment passed, and soon members were settling down to listen to an uninspired
recapitulation
of all the arguments which, during the last six months, had been brought to defend a policy of surrender. There was a sense of anticlimax as, rather unexpectedly, the Prime Minister sat down; and the question was put. No-one had the heart to challenge a division; the last formalities were rapidly attended to; and, in the midst of an intolerable silence, the Speaker rose and left the Chamber. British
democracy
, fruit of centuries of struggle on this hallowed spot, had gone by default.

Few of the faithful Commons could trust themselves to speak, either to themselves or to the familiar, courteous attendants, as they struggled into their overcoats and were gone. “Who goes home?” Many, many things, that would not bear thinking of. 

F
ATE
, you may remember, allowed Sir John Naker three days in which to enjoy the full triumph of his foreign policy. Three spring-like days they were, so that, discarding an overcoat, he could walk jauntily across the Park each morning to the Foreign Office, surveying, through the burgeoning trees, the
gallant towers of Westminster, symbols of the mighty State machine that he had set rumbling on the course he had chosen for it. They were honeymoon days, with the diplomatic wires buzzing with congratulatory messages, from Göring, from Ribbentrop, from Hitler himself, while the British Press played up nicely and the Stock Exchange boomed. There was no need for him to listen at Cabinet meetings to the tale of woe of the Minister of Labour; he, Naker, had now provided the international conditions for a trade revival, and it was for the other fellows to take advantage of them. Still less need he bother much with the Egyptian Ambassador who kept anxiously asking for certain assurances, and for a promise of mediation in some incipient dispute; trust him, Naker, not to interfere in anyone else's
Lebensraum
. Soon it would be time to settle some of the details of the brave new world, and Hitler's State visit, expected in May, would be a busy time for him; meanwhile, he felt he could afford to climb with leisurely aplomb into the biggish niche that history, he was sure, had provided for him.

So I read his attitude, but I do not pretend to know what came into his mind when the three days were over and the ground opened before his feet. I do not know whether even then he foresaw the full disaster, or whether the thing that meant so much for the rest of us had little or no significance for him. He was a man without roots, patrician or plebeian, and he could have been betrayed by his cynicism into grave miscalculations.

But none of us, indeed, had realized quite how large a place the monarchy played in British nationhood. When the
Renown
slipped silently out of Plymouth Sound, flying the last Royal Standard ever rightfully to flutter in an English breeze, it took away more than the Crown. It took away our faith in our future and in ourselves. Constitutional propriety allowed only this supreme rebuke from the monarch to his people. There had never been a juster one.

The quiet honeymoon was over. Shorn of our ancient symbol of continuing tradition, we found ourselves face to face with grim reality of the present. We felt uncomfortable when Herr Hitler sent a telegram of congratulation to our makeshift, and probably unconstitutional, Council of Regency, upon their good fortune in “opening a new and glorious chapter in Anglo-German Nordic history”. We were afflicted with painful doubts about the legal status of the British Empire, under the Statute of Westminster. We trembled when we came to examine the problems that demanded solution at home.

“Watch the Greyshirts” came as an entirely unnecessary admonition from my editor. Who in England was not now watching them? Within a few days, wherever Englishmen met and talked the same question was asked: “What will the Greyshirts do now?”

Looking back, I am ashamed to think that I had not paid more attention to the rise of Fascism in England. It was an alien, injected poison, but when the right conditions for its growth appeared it began to flourish soon enough.

Our body politic had long before been deliberately
inoculated
by the adroit pathologists of Nazi expansion. The technique which, after years of careful tending, turned Austria into a hotbed of sedition, which converted the Sudeten
Germans
from a comparatively passive minority into a raging fever of protest, and which pushed the Trojan horse into Norway, Holland, and Belgium, was from the very outbreak of hostilities directed towards fomenting divisions and
dissensions
not only between the chief Allies but between parties and bodies of opinion in both nations.

For a time these efforts had no results. Goebbels
undoubtedly
thought at the beginning that the tolerant
atmosphere
of a democracy would present an ideal field for his experiments. He forgot that he was attacking a healthy body, which centuries of open political discussion and criticism, and the traditions of a free Press, had immunized against the poison of seditious propaganda. A few pacifists, purblind with the immature ideals of youth, could be found to heckle the public speeches of Ministers and glory in the martyrdom of being expelled by the police. The I.R.A. could be subsidized to distribute a few bombs and so-called Communists could be bribed to foment disorder, but the British public could never be persuaded to adopt the right terrified attitude towards the melodramatic type of agitator. It was only mildly
indignant
at an added inconvenience to existence. Thus the first German attempts to introduce sedition failed miserably. People were too absorbed in the magnitude of the task undertaken by the nation to pay much attention to those who sought to sow doubts; and where there were just grievances the Constitution still allowed a remedy.

Demobilization brought back into the civilian life thousands upon thousands of young men who had thrown up jobs and prospects to fight for the ideals which had now been betrayed. They came back disillusioned and exasperated. They had experienced all the boredom and misery of war, and all its horrors; some of them had even tasted its triumphs on the field of battle. But their determination and their endurance
had suddenly been nullified by the action of “politicians” and they were faced with an intolerable anticlimax. All were
convinced
that they would have “brought it off” if they had been given a chance. Consequently, from the very beginning, the mood of the average demobilized man, with his
weather-beaten
old-young face and the green “Nuremberg ribbon” in his button hole, was one of sulkiness and wounded pride. But he was to suffer a worse blow yet. He and nine-tenths of his fellows had been assured that their jobs would be kept for them when they came home. Now they were to find that industry was hard put to it to absorb one-third of their numbers. No-one had taken their jobs: the jobs had simply ceased to exist. Firms which had begun the war by
complaining
of being short-handed had very soon begun to be thankful for their depleted pay-roll. Now there was no question of rapid expansion. Supplies were still short, and demand was restricted by the thin purse of the average citizen.

I remember talking to one of these men early in January. I met him in a small public house off Fleet Street where both he and I had taken shelter from a heavy downpour soon after opening time. He had just been to see his old firm—he was a paper-maker—and his former manager, who had been, I gathered, kindly though firm, had tried to explain the position to him. The bar was empty except for us two at first, and he had perforce to unburden himself to me.

At first his mood was one of blank bewilderment. Here was he, a man of twenty-eight, with a wartime wife and a mother to support, with his bounty nearly spent, and with the
foundation
of his existence, his “safe” job, suddenly removed from beneath him. What on earth were they going to do now? His mother had run a small lodging-house for respectable working-class folk before the war, but that had petered out after six months, “what with evacuation and all”. Then he had married Renee on leave, and Renee had secured a job in a munitions factory on which she had been able to support herself and his mother. Renee's job had come to an end just before he was “demobbed”, and they hadn't minded then, because his civilian job was good enough for them both, and he didn't hold with the wife going out to work. Now they were left without anything.

“There's no kid, anyway,” he said slowly. “We were
meaning
to have one when the war ended … but now, well, we'll just have to change our minds.”

After a couple of drinks his mood had changed to one of self-pity and an outraged sense of justice. It was no longer what Renee and Mother were going to say that mattered—it
was what his boss had said to him—Joe Richards—when he left to join up.

“He shook me by the hand, and he said:' Richards, there'll be a place for you here when the show's over.' That's what he said. ‘The firm will look after you,' he said. That was a promise, wasn't it?”

The story of this parting interview was repeated several times, with mounting indignation. He wouldn't have put up with that perishing cold and that stinking mud and that asterisked sergeant if he hadn't thought that a promise was a promise. Not only the economic but the moral foundations of life had been shattered for Joe Richards by this second interview with his manager. If the boss wasn't going to keep his word, who in this world was?

By this time the bar had filled up, and Joe Richards's
audience
had swollen. I had murmured my ineffectual sympathy, and it was now being reduplicated profanely and forcibly by a couple of printers, an elderly taxi-driver and a battered old office-cleaner. And as his audience swelled and bought him drinks, so the wrath of Joe Richards mounted, and his eloquence rose to greater heights. I perceived that I was no longer necessary, and unobtrusively retired as yet another round of drinks was bought, this time out of the remnants of the depleted bounty. As I left I had an uneasy premonition that the end of Joe Richards's evening would be a
blasphemous
encounter with a policeman and a night in the cells.

Joe Richards and his fellows were represented statistically by a catastrophic leap in the already swollen unemployment figure. The harassed Government hurriedly evolved a
makeshift
programme of public works, intended to absorb some of the labour surplus, but, not unaccountably, men who had once given up skilled jobs to, face the necessary drudgery of
military
life declined in peacetime to do navvy's work at navvy's rates of pay in road building and land reclamation schemes. They preferred the only alternative—the dole, feeling in their angry misery that they were owed something by their country.

Here at last was a promising culture for infection by the Nazi propagandists, and the virus they chose to start with was inevitable—anti-Semitism. The refugee population of the country had swollen enormously during the years leading up to the war, and, although some misgivings had been felt, the popular sympathy for the victims of the worst type of Nazi brutality had overridden them. Besides, it was then felt that this increase was only a temporary one until Germany was made safe again for non-Aryans. But, by the time the armies were demobilized, many thousands of these hunted people
had begun to look on Britain not merely as a refuge in the time of trouble but as a home where they might be safe and free to establish themselves. Had not Britain been waging a war against their persecutors?

Some of the Jews were deeply grateful to their protectors, and did their best to show it. Others, uneducated and
inarticulate
, merely felt that here at last was the good time coming—the opportunity which mankind owed them in return for their sufferings, a little peace and time to start the business which was their second nature. They had not reached the stage of feeling allegiance to their new country: many of them could not yet speak her language, and in any case were they not themselves children of Israel, a race apart, who through all the centuries of their wanderings had never allowed themselves to be fully absorbed by any other nationality? They were timid and peace-loving; they were incredibly industrious; and they were prolific. It was not for them to realize the problems which their advent would
provoke
for their new hosts. They were content to obey the laws and asked only the right to work and make a living.
Moreover
, after their privations, they were ready to begin work for very little. This characteristic appealed, of course, to the employer who was struggling with rising costs; and, although the restrictions on aliens which prevented many of them from being taken into the fighting services applied to some extent to the conditions of employment, a “way round” could often be found, when both employer and would-be employee were willing. Once in employment, their inherent business acumen and their industry stood them in good stead. They were
inventive
and ambitious, and whenever possible they found vacancies for their brethren.

Thus the Jews became an easy target for all the confused resentment and ill-feeling which was latent in the demobilized unemployed. Anti-Jewish riots broke out more than once in the East End, even before the Treaty of St. James's had been signed. The severity with which they were repressed added fuel to the flames, and the fact that the new Home Secretary, Mr. Bernard Goldsmith, was popularly supposed to be of Jewish descent did not help to keep the peace.

It was about this time that the Greyshirts began to make their appearance under the leadership of the meteoric Patrick Rosse. Long before the war began, when the Government was coping with the ineffectual Fascism of the early ‘thirties, there had been legislation against political uniforms, and the “shirt” of various hues had been banned. But the philanthropic War Office, ably seconded by a North Country manufacturer
of shoddy, issued each man on demobilization with a complete suit of “mufti”, including a grey flannel shirt. When Patrick Rosse began his series of meetings up and down the country it was men in grey shirts who flocked to hear him, and when the League of Britons was formed by the same Patrick Rosse its members wore grey shirts. Who was to forbid them? Who was to deprive the ex-Service man of the gift which his own country had made him?

It is not easy to present a convincing portrait of their leader now. There are so many damning facts, so many equally damning suspicions attached to his history, that it is almost impossible for those who never came into contact with him to imagine the personality of a man who, in spite of his Irish origin and doubtful antecedents, could induce many thousands of Englishmen to follow him over the
precipice
of their own ruin. There is no doubt that he had been a member of the I.R.A.; his enemies said that he had been one of its leading organizers, but, if that was so, he had abstained from taking any active part in its campaign for some months before the war began. By hook or by crook he then entered the ranks of the British army—according to his enemies as a paid agitator. This at least is doubtful; it may well have been the Irish instinct to join in the biggest fight going. There is no record of his having indulged in any treasonable activity in France; on the contrary he was decorated for gallantry and his promotion was obstructed only by minor incidents of indiscipline which were natural in so obstreperous and reckless a character.