Authors: Christopher Serpell
Our taximan, however, had heard something of what had happened, and displayed a mild interest in it. When he was being paid he remarked: “So they’ve been signing another treaty down in Whitehall, have they, gentlemen? Well, after that Nuremberg business, I suppose they might as well make a proper job of it.”
What, I wondered, was Hitler’s notion of a proper job? After I had sent my first startling cablegram I sat back for a moment, and my eye lighted on an old wartime copy of an illustrated paper. On the cover was a portrait of the Führer, his little eyes glowing with an inexhaustible fanaticism; and inside were some rather unpleasant pictures, smuggled out of Prague.
The tide of excitement soon began to rise, and by dusk the streets and clubs were full. On the whole, to my surprise, it was a pleasurable excitement, and the impression began to gain ground that the Government had cleverly averted another tiresome crisis in cutting the Gordian knot and frankly acknowledging the interdependence of the two greatest Powers in the world. Leader writers were busy describing this “great new experiment in international relations”, and one of them was tactless enough (but positively on this occasion only) to write of “new opportunities for the civilizing influence of Great Britain”.
Cabinet Ministers contributed nobly to the atmosphere of anti-crisis. Ribbentrop, wise man, had flown back early to Berlin, upon which they felt capable of assuming an attitude of dignified and assured insouciance. They lit complacent cigarettes on the steps of Number Ten, and the Prime Minister, within earshot of a gossip writer, remarked to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he had decided to make a start with pruning his roses. Sir John Naker threw some crumbs to the pelicans in St. James’s Park, dined informally at a popular restaurant, and then went to see the film version of
Merrie England
. All interviews were refused; and not even the Dominions High Commissioners were seen. “The policy of His Majesty’s Government,” it was officially explained, “of which the agreement with Germany forms a part, can be elaborated only in Parliament, but the Prime Minister will broadcast a statement to the nation at eight o’clock to-night.”
The broadcast stands on record as one of history’s most celebrated manifestations of unconscious hypocrisy.
Everyone
wanted to believe it, so it passed. But as soon as that tired but pathetically hopeful voice died on the ether England began talking again, and went on talking far into the night. All had their hopes—the privileged that they would keep their privileges in a world that had become far too restive, the workers that they would catch up with the cost of living, the unemployed that they would find jobs again. Perhaps in a stable balanced Europe all wishes would be fulfilled.
The Greyshirts also had their hopes. They marched down the Mile End Road, and beat up quite a number of Jews before order could be restored by the police.
I was up early next day to read the papers. The
Government
had a good Press, in the sense that no-one suggested that they might have taken a different course. Each journal in its own way put the best face it could on what had happened. There was nothing anywhere that was constructive, that indicated or commended a policy for the future.
The news columns were more revealing. Dispatches from Germany showed that the crowds in Berlin, in marked
contrast
to those in London, had spent a Sunday of triumphant rejoicing, culminating with a speech from the Führer in the Sport Palace. That speech was gone over in London with a toothcomb, but, though it contained many expressions of goodwill towards the British Empire, there was no clear indication of what he hoped to do with it in the future. The best indication was perhaps provided by the news that, while he was yet speaking (and anticipating somewhat the terms of the treaty), an unspecified number of troops had set sail from Hamburg, under convoy, to take possession of the former German colonies in Africa.
The interpretative message that I put together that morning was necessarily ill informed, but not more so than anyone else’s, and I felt that in a discreet way I had warned my startled readers to expect the worst. Usual sources of
information
had now completely broken down, and the busy London scene through which I walked to the cable office had suddenly become as remote as that of a strange city. Yet the red buses and the taxis were the same, like the people hurrying up familiar office stairs. It was as though some firm to which one had devoted one’s working life had quietly gone
bankrupt
, but was still being carried on as a going concern by a shadowy Official Receiver.
However, it was not long before I came up against the first signs of inner change. As I was about to hand in my painstaking cablegram the clerk, polite and friendly, said: “Ah, Mr. Fenton, we have a nice little office fixed up for Mr. Johnson already. Smart work, eh? Perhaps you will step along.”
In a moment I was standing before a nervous young man who, seated at a trestle table, looked as surprised to be there as I was to find him. The clerk announced me, and withdrew.
“Well, Mr. Fenton,” said this unexpected apparition, “I’m from the Foreign Office. It is a matter of glancing at outgoing cables, under the terms of the Treaty. No abuse of the other country’s institutions, and so on. A pure formality, of course,” he added hastily.
“What is this—a censorship?” I said, amazed.
“Well, no, it’s not that,” he replied. “It’s just that the F.O. thinks it would help the Press in this matter if there is
someone
at hand who can initial messages before they are sent.”
“But why pick on me?” I asked.
“Oh, but this applies to everybody, of course,” he said. “I’m here to cover the Eastern Union cablegrams, but there’s
someone in every newspaper office in London and at all the agencies.” He held out his hand for my typescript.
“Well, this beats me,” I said. “However, I don’t think I’ll trouble you. I am prepared to take full responsibility for what I have written.”
Then it all came out. Mr. Johnson coughed apologetically, and said: “As a matter of fact, I doubt if the cable company will dispatch the message if I haven’t initialled it. Those seem to be the instructions.”
So, in this little bare room, standing before a callow youth who was more of a straw than I was on the tide of change that was sweeping over England, I realized that we could no longer take for granted the Freedom of the Press. The young man picked up a blue pencil and poised it helplessly over the flimsy paper. He fumbled a little, initialled each page, and handed the wad back. “This looks all right,” he said weakly.
I thanked him, and walked out unhappily. Poor Mr.
Johnson
, little as he looked the part, was a portent, and a very unpleasant one.
“A tiresome business, this,” suggested the clerk, when I gave in the initialled sheets, “but we shall get used to it.”
I hurried back to the office, anxious to consult my colleagues upon this new development. On the way I had a bright idea. I called in at the Post Office, and dispatched a private cable to my editor. It ran something like this:
“TODAYS STUFF CANNOT ENTER NATIONAL SINCE ORMONDE RECENTLY ENTERED DERBY FENTON.”
At Wellington they tumbled to my elementary code, and that day the staid
Courier
was as effective as any of its rivals in bringing home to New Zealand a sense of great changes. My dignified message was read between the lines by the whole Dominion, for it achieved the distinction, incredible in that time of peace and liberty, of being headed:
“From Our Own Correspondent,
LONDON, March 13.
(Censored)”
As a matter of fact, Mr. Johnson, though a portent, was but a temporary one. The Foreign Secretary called the
important
editors together. With them went my Australian
colleague, Dorman, to represent the Dominion journalists, to whom he afterwards reported what had happened. He said that the tiny bubble of optimism that the Government had succeeded in blowing the day before had already burst. Naker had been unable to conceal his anxiety. He had spoken of “Herr Hitler’s somewhat natural impatience” and “the
necessity
of showing the utmost goodwill at the outset”, and had declared that “the success of this great experiment” depended altogether upon the discretion of the Press. But the outcry against a Foreign Office censorship had been too much for him, and he had agreed to the withdrawal of Mr. Johnson and his colleagues.
In the afternoon Parliament met. This simple fact was of great comfort to the people. The pre-Hitler machinery of State in the United Kingdom was vast and complicated, with feudal trappings, but the sovereign power ultimately rested with the sober and simple entity known as the House of Commons, and the House of Commons, as was often proudly and ungrammatically declared, “is us”. To the average
Englishman
the authority of Parliament was unchallenged and unchallengeable; subconsciously, he probably believed that its mere assembling would set a term to any unfortunate nonsense that Naker, say, might have been up to.
To be riding in a bus along Whitehall, past the Cenotaph, and to be bound for yet another important debate in the cramped Press gallery of that tawdry, stuffy, and majestic Chamber had a steadying effect upon my nerves. Big Ben struck two, in the tones that meant “heart of Empire” to half the world. A good crowd had gathered, and there was some excitement in Parliament Square. It was caused by one of those tiresome Greyshirt processions, which the police were dispersing. Demonstrations of any kind, it will be remembered, were forbidden within half a mile of the High Court of Parliament.
Among my papers is Hansard for the Thirteenth of March. I have often glanced through it since the day I bought it, and it has assumed in my mind the proportions of a classic tragedy.
“The House met at a quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. Speaker in the Chair.” The formula calls to mind that dignified little procession, perhaps the most moving of all the State ceremonial of England, when, preceded by the
Serjeant-at
-Arms with his mace, the bewigged Speaker walked through the lobbies and the House to his chair. Everyone would bow, and it was an expression, not so much of patriotism, as with cheers for the King, but of an even deeper loyalty to the
ancient liberties of which Parliament was the age-long guardian.
How much had not been accomplished in this mock-Gothic Chamber in the course of a century, by the last Parliaments in the long line that went back centuries more! One thought of the wise social legislation brought to fruition, the scandals exposed and ended, the voices of successive statesmen
summoning
the nation to its constructive tasks. Thus had British democracy and empire been slowly and delicately integrated, through storm and calm, until to-day, it had come to provide the framework of millions of happy and useful lives.
And now this great institution, palladium of English liberties, was still in being, its meeting-place overflowing with the full complement of duly elected members. Everyone, I was told, was there for prayers; and very moving it must have been. Even the Cabinet were in their places, Naker and the rest; but surely those of them (I exclude Evans) who knew what they had done or assented to must have felt like Judas in the Upper Room.
I never mastered British Parliamentary procedure, and cannot explain how it came about that a meeting summoned during the Easter recess to deal with an emergency and to ratify a treaty should begin with a string of questions to Ministers about pensions and municipal finance in West Ham. But I have the clearest recollection of the famous incident that came in the middle of these proceedings, and added to the feeling of tension in the debate that followed.
There was suddenly a great commotion in the Distinguished Strangers’ Gallery. It was already stiff with diplomats, but here came the German Ambassador, followed by a suite of seven or eight attachés and brown-shirted secretaries such as had never before been seen in these surroundings. The Dutch and Flemish Ministers, with some others, hastened to make room for them, but they did not at once sit down. Instead, standing to attention and raising their right hands towards the Chair, they interrupted the quavering voice of the Minister of Health with the raucous, staccato cry, like blasphemy in church, “Heil Hitler!”
The Speaker made no sign, but, while the House kept shocked and humiliated silence, a bold member of the Labour Opposition jumped to his feet, and cried: “On a point of order, sir. Will not the officers of the House, in accordance with practice, see that the strangers responsible for this unseemly interruption are summarily ejected?”
The Germans had clattered down into their seats, like a
Roman emperor and his familiars at the circus. There was a pause; the Labour man remained on his feet, while a faint sound of “Hear, hear” came from the benches around him. The Treasury Bench tried to look as though nothing
remarkable
was happening.
At last the Speaker found his voice. It shook as he took the only dignified course, picking up the thread that had been rudely, perhaps permanently, broken. “The Right Honourable the Minister of Health,” he said, looking straight in front of him; and the thin voice that had been interrupted resumed its part in the orderly proceedings of the Mother of
Parliaments
.
At last the Foreign Secretary rose to open for the Government in the big debate. He had quite regained his self-possession; one could see that he knew exactly what he was going to say, that he was prepared to answer certain objections and determined to ignore others, and that by the sheer force of his personality he intended to keep the debate on the plane of slightly cynical, but genial, common sense.
His brisk, cheerful tones dispelled some of the gloom of the “Heil Hitler!” incident. He was, in fact, brilliantly persuasive. For all his tortuousness he had always been a good Commons man, and he wooed the House like a rather too practised lover. There at least he was sure of himself, however delicately he might still have to tread before the representatives of the Wilhelmstrasse.