Authors: Christopher Serpell
I sat in some apprehension, for I had not minced matters, foolishly hoping that I would be able to get one last
uncontrolled
message through to my paper. Presently he looked up: “It seems you do not like the Germans, Mr. Fenton?” he remarked with a bland smile. I told him that I had no personal animosity, and that my message was intended entirely as an objective commentary on the situation. “Quite so,” he replied,
“but I am afraid that our friends in New Zealand might accidentally get a wrong impression from your words. If you please, you will keep your message to the facts, as the British Government has announced them. Perhaps you will revise it now? Here is a pencil.”
He handed me back my copy, and I spent some minutes in a dead silence cutting it. He examined what I had left closely. “Splendid,” he said, “and such a message is the better journalism, no?” I murmured something non-committal and turned to go. “One moment, if you please, Mr. Fenton,” he said. “In future we will have the names and addresses of correspondents. It is more convenient so. Where do you live, please?” With misgivings I told him. “Thank you very much,” were his parting words. “You will tell us if you change your home. I hope your English Mr. Billings, who is my opposite in Berlin, is received in a spirit so helpful. Good-bye, Mr. Fenton, and if you please more conservative messages in the future. Also be advised that journalists at present will send no private messages to their editors.”
Fleet Street was simmering with suppressed fury.
Representatives
of the German authorities were ensconced in all newspaper offices with full credentials and virtual control of the news. Editors were warned that attempts to evade the censorship would result in confiscation of an issue or even the suspension of a newspaper. Journalists are always the best rumour-mongers, and the mere fact of the censorship had charged the air with electricity. The wildest stories were flying about, and, when the known facts were so fantastic, it was not difficult to believe the wildest. One report, which no one seemed to doubt, left me with an unpleasant sensation at the pit of my stomach. It was to the effect that a large mental hospital in North London had been inspected by the Germans for possible future use as a place of “protective custody”.
Retribution had indeed been cruelly swift. The “new Europe” was Germany's, not ours. Within a month of the fatal treaty the great British Empire lay inert and inoperative, from the City of London, whence all financial confidence had flown, to the most distant of the outposts. In the Colonies authority was shaken, and isolated British officials feared for their lives. India, outside the neighbourhood of garrison towns, was given over to communal violence, and the tribes swooped down unresisted from the North-West Frontier. The Union of South Africa, through a
coup d'état
, became a republic, and formed its own independent alliance with
Germany
. My own New Zealand, with Canada and Australia, remained formally linked, as monarchies owning a common
King, but they began to look to America as their protector.
And in the heart of the Empire the canker was at workâhigh German officers at the War Office and the Admiralty, Nazi “experts” in all the industries, and certain of Himmler's policemen (not at first, perhaps, very many) who installed themselves in all the key points, and pored long over the records in Scotland Yard.
I
T
was early in May that the German Embassy took over Bush House. “Bosche House” the Londoners called it; and stopped to stare every time they passed. No such portentous diplomatic establishment had been known before.
I don’t remember how many rooms there were in that great skyscraper, but every one of them was occupied by Nazis enjoying full diplomatic immunity. Armed S.S. men in the vestibule paced up and down in front of a huge
indicator
which gave directions for reaching the Ambassador’s Suite, the offices of the Military Mission, the Publicity Bureau, the Passport Control, the Sports Alliance headquarters, the Cultural Institute, and a number of other sections marked only by mysterious letters and figures. There was a constant stream of people going in and out; and Aldwych assumed as weighty and official an atmosphere as Whitehall. “Any more for the Seat of Government?” facetious bus conductors would sometimes ask at the stop at the bottom of Kingsway.
In the first week a giant housewarming party was given. It was no mere affair of the Diplomatic Circle; everyone of note in London life was invited. What is more, a large
proportion
went, explaining to their friends that they did so out of curiosity.
There was a nightmarish touch about the event. One’s taxi moved slowly along the Strand, which was decorated for the occasion with Venetian masts bearing Swastikas and Union Jacks. The enormous Embassy was floodlit, and one surged into it beneath a gilt statue of Hitler, the Colossus of the modern world. Inside one was hustled from room to room,
where a system of loudspeakers relayed Wagner and guttural greetings from across the North Sea. And all the while one kept meeting one’s old English friends, and the familiar faces of the leaders of English life—faces known at Ascot, the Stock Exchange, and Church House, Westminster. People glanced at one another as contemporaries might be expected to do in the novel surroundings of the Day of Doom.
I found myself trapped in a corner with a broad-shouldered, keen-eyed Nazi Press official, a man named von Holtz, whom I knew and rather liked.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Mr. Fenton?” he asked. “It is splendid, is it not?”
I said I could understand that he thought it splendid, but added that I found it rather close.
“Come with me,” he said. “I badly want to talk to you. I can take you on to the roof.”
We escaped into a comparatively deserted corridor, and were soon climbing in the lift. Outside on the roof there was a pleasant breeze, just strong enough to give a slight motion to the folds of the huge Swastika flag. We leaned on the parapet, watching the lights of London and looking down the processional Strand to where Nelson stood on his column.
Von Holtz was the best kind of Nazi. It was an
unpromising
best, but he was not without ideals, reticences, and a dim respect for the world beyond Hitler’s. He was old enough, and fortunate enough, to have inherited some
traditions
from the vanished Germany.
To-night he was happy, and could not stop talking of the grand “marriage feast” below. To him it was the symbol of a wonderful new alliance, by which the technique and spirit of British imperialism were to be forged by German
Kultur
into a weapon which was to rule the world, down to the last native in his hovel. It was a grotesque idea, but it was one which those Englishmen who were prepared to compromise with evil were beginning to formulate for themselves, if in rather different terms.
So von Holtz wanted to know particularly about some of the people who were at the reception. “Of course, we have them all fully card-indexed,” he said, “but I would like to confirm some preliminary impressions.” He whipped out a neatly multigraphed list of acceptances, carefully classified under such heads as “Society”, “Universities”, “Art and Literature”. “Tell me,” he said, “is this a good cross-section of the high officials of the Civil Service? And here, under Church, is it important that there is no representative of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion?” It appeared that every
hundredth man in Burke’s Landed Gentry not otherwise accounted for had been sent an invitation, and that but a small proportion of these people had come. (“Probably, they’re too poor,” I suggested, but he was not happy about the squires.) The pro-Nuremberg trade unions were fully
represented
, the economists had come in full force, and the City of London, von Holtz said, was “sound”. But why were there so few novelists and painters, and why, please, had both H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw, of whom so much had been
expected
, failed to turn up?
The list I found amusing, but it was a bore to take it too seriously. “Some people don’t like parties,” I said, and, though he thought this was frivolous, he reluctantly put his list away.
“At any rate,” he said, smiling but very earnest, “you will agree that, apart from the Führer’s coming visit, this is the most important event of the London Season? This, and the Nordic Games at Wembley.”
I laughed. “I had not thought of it that way,” I said, “I had not thought of a London Season. Why, there is no Court now, and many of the old rich and decorative people have gone abroad or are staying in the country. I don’t think we can talk about a Season this year.”
“Not, of course, in the old narrow sense,” he replied, “but why should not London become a brilliant centre of art and intellect, directed to the service of the people and the State? There will be the German season at Covent Garden, and all the other forms of cultural exchange. A new vitality, a new sense of purpose will be given to your intellectual activities, and in this regeneration the present leaders of your cultural and even your social life have an undoubted part to play.” Sublime in his racial conceit, he gazed over the twinkling West End. There was a note of wistfulness in his voice, and I rather wondered if he was looking for Mayfair and an
invitation
from a duchess. “London,” he cried, “why should she not become the Vienna of the West?”
“And is Vienna so very brilliant?” I put in.
“The Führer has decreed that Vienna shall become eventually the cultural capital of the German Reich,” he replied coldly. “And London——”
“Oh, and what has the Führer decreed for London?”
“The Führer believes that it is in London that yet new standards of pan-Nordic culture will be hammered out. It is a great task. Your fine traditionalism; our strength. Your forms; our spirit. What together cannot we do for
civilization
?”
He began to ask me whether I thought duelling was likely to become fashionable at Oxford and Cambridge. I felt I had heard enough.
“Look here,” I said, “we know that in a military sense you Germans are now in a pretty strong position in Europe and the world, but there are limits to your power. At the moment it goes little farther than the point of your bayonets. It may be that one day you will be able to assert such a moral
leadership
that we shall all delight in following it, in our different ways. But meanwhile don’t count too much either on the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion or on the Society people who happen to have come to your party.”
Von Holtz’s friendliness, his naïveté, did not leave him, but a new grimness tightened the corners of his mouth. He made no reply, and I felt what an incredible fool he was, wedded to his crude idea of harnessing the whole life of England to Nazidom by the methods of the card-index. To tell the truth I was nettled, and I added with bombastic
recklessness
: “Those who think like you have a good deal of brute force at their disposal, but they cannot with brute force kill the soul of England.”
Before I had finished speaking, I knew what he would reply. “The soul of England?” he said, “I don’t insult you, I try to understand you. But was not the soul of England conquered, and made Nordic again, in the Great Blockade?”
At any rate von Holtz was right about the Season. At first it had an artificially stimulated life. Official entertaining (led by the German Ambassador himself, who leased the Superb for the purpose) was never on so lavish a scale. If the usual London hostesses were shy, their places were taken by a charming cohort of German ladies out of the Almanach de Gotha, whose parties, their guests declared, were of
unexampled
brilliance. The postponed opening of the Royal Academy was a disappointment, but it had been a bad year for artists, some of whose works, the circumspect ventured to say, were sadly “decadent”. All who were expected to do so attended the Nordic League sports meetings, and there was a certain public excitement about the plan for the culminating Anglo-German Tattoo at Aldershot.
Von Holtz flitted about at such of these functions as his duties led him to attend with a joyful earnestness. He always had his multigraphed lists, and the card-index must have swollen considerably. I even met him at the Derby, which as a popular festival seemed as happy as ever, although there was but a thin show of fashion in the Paddock. But I don’t think he was ever at a cricket match, and I often wondered
if he had got down on any list the names of those members of the M.C.C. who still came up from the country to watch matches at Lord’s, but went straight home again afterwards.
In general, what with the military missions and professorial exchanges, Germans were everywhere—in messrooms, senior common rooms and clubs. They did not, I am told, behave with conspicuous tact, but their very presence solved certain difficulties. In front of a German one was excused from saying what one thought about Hitler, the Grey shirts, and the policy of the Government.
About this time all sorts of familiar things quietly changed or disappeared. Anti-Hitler literature had long vanished from the bookshops, but now it was only with difficulty that one could buy the ordinary political writings of the pre-Nuremberg era. Churchmen ceased lecturing the politicians, and reverted to discussions on the nature of God. Most of the wealthy Jews had left just in time for America, taking their capital with them, and the British film industry collapsed in
consequence
. Many voluntary associations devoted to familiar causes held no meetings at all. Street oratory was forbidden, even at Hyde Park Corner. “Deutschland über Alles” followed “God Save the King” on public occasions. One or two great public schools failed to reopen after the Easter holidays, there were almost no worthy candidates for the I.C.S., and a Gilbert and Sullivan season at the Savoy was a failure.
Thus slowly the scene began to change, but against it the lives of ordinary people were, on the surface, very little altered. Troubles of work and wages, high prices and
in-security
of employment, had been common since the war; they were not lessened, but neither were they yet much increased, by alliance with the enemy. The future was uncertain, indeed, bound up with all kinds of decisions that might be taken, not in London or Manchester, but in Berlin and
Leipzig
; but it was not the habit of Englishmen to peer far into the future. There were still moments of leisure and fun, and these could be enjoyed to the full. There was the romance of the lengthening spring evenings, a time for lovers, when the dullest suburb quivered with enchantment; there were the Sunday papers, sensational about non-essentials, to be read deliciously in bed; there were the pub, and the Oval, and
dog-racing
and fish-and-chips. All these could be enjoyed even if several of one’s friends were joining the Greyshirts, and twice as many officials were busy at the town hall, and Sergeant O’Malley next door, of the local police, was
scratching
his head about the kind of report he must send in to the German inspector who had come to “co-operate”. True, the
picture-house was less attractive since there had been so many dull films that had to be fitted with “English sub-titles”, and the music hall seemed to have lost all spontaneity, and the wireless, between the extremes of Beethoven and brass bands, was simply not worth listening to. But on the whole, if one was lucky and in work, life jogged on as before, and, Hitler or no Hitler, one could expect births, marriages and deaths, breakfast, dinner and tea.
So it seemed; but a little below the surface there were unmistakable signs that the common people were not spared the humiliation and the fears that haunted their leaders. The bar parlour of the “Sawyer’s Arms”, round the corner from where I lived, had once been a great place for discussing foreign politics. Everyone had had his views on what Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, or Churchill were likely, or ought, to do next; and on most nights a friendly argument would develop, illustrated by head-shakings, scraps of private information, and expletives. Mr. Alf Stevens, a facile but dignified lawyer’s clerk, would sum it all up towards closing time, and, by sheer force of personality, have his reading accepted as final. But after the Treaty he drank his beer in silence, there being no debate calling for his analysis. Soon not even the home news was discussed—it was merely explained, illustrated, and
accepted
. During Registration Week, for instance, there was a lot of talk about how various people fared at the town hall, but when a young stranger ventured to draw dark pictures of the uses to which the registration particulars might be put in the future no-one else did more than grunt, or throw darts with greater intensity. It was not to be long before a cell of the Greyshirts adopted the “Sawyer’s Arms” as their
headquarters
, and Mr. Stevens and his boon companions were dispossessed of their red-plush cosiness. Perhaps they went to the “White Lion” farther down the street, but it was not their kind of place, and it is more likely that they drank bottled beer beside cheerless hearths at home. In either case, they must have preserved their latter-day silence, which was eloquent not so much of fear or foreboding as of a conviction that freedom of speech had suddenly become an empty privilege in England.
This queer silence, or, what was worse, a babble about indifferent things, descended in time on every honoured and popular institution. People went on doing the same things, but, it almost seemed, from new and depressing motives. My secretary, Smithers, was a pillar of North Street
Congregational
Church, Tanner’s End, and once, before the war, he had persuaded me to give a talk on New Zealand to the
debating society that was run in the schoolroom hard by. I spent a stimulating evening in the company of people who took life seriously, thought deeply within narrow limits, and had a strongly ethical approach to public affairs. Of the quality of their piety I was no judge, but it seemed to me that democracy at least was in no danger of senile decay while enough such earnest people were at hand to take humble parts in working it. The minister, over a farewell cup of cocoa, confessed that, with the introduction of conscription, pacifism was likely to become a big issue among his
congregation.
It was an admitted dilemma, when war and Fascism were regarded as equally abhorrent manifestations of evil; but to him the remedy in the human sphere was to go on working for conditions in which neither war nor Fascism could flourish.