The Only Poet (25 page)

(From any newspaper, 4 August 1944)

Toronto: The mystery of Thomas J. Smith, the Canadian Major fighting with Pierrot's patriots, is today dispelled. A distinguished veteran of World War No.I, he has spent the time between the wars operating in the insurance business in Toronto.

In February of last year he was transferred suddenly to the Army with rank of Major.

Back here in his home town Mrs Thomas J. Smith insists that her husband, DCM, underground fighter, infuriator of the Germans, is fundamentally a little boy and all this is part of a game of cowboys-and-Indians.

(Telegram sent to the Rt Hon. Anthony Eden by Denis Saurat, Professor of French Language and Literature in the University of London, Directeur de l'Institut Français du Royaume Uni. 15 October 1944)

ON BEHALF OF VAST MAJORITY OF FRENCHMEN IN ENGLAND WISH TO RECORD HORROR AND DISTRESS FELT BY YOUR ANNOUNCEMENT MADE THIS AFTERNOON IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS THAT THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT HAS RECOGNIZED MARSHAL PIERROT AS LEADER OF FRENCH MILITARY RESISTANCE AGAINST THE GERMANS STOP WE ARE UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND WHY THE FUTURE OF OUR GREAT COUNTRY SHOULD BE DECIDED BY REPORTS DRAWN UP BY YOUNG ENGLISHMAN WHO SPEAKS RUSSIAN FLUENTLY AND WEARS KILT AND BY CANADIAN INSURANCE AGENT HOWEVER COURAGEOUS THEY MAY BE AND FIND IT DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE THAT THE CABINET CAN BE SERIOUS IN CLAIMING THAT SO MOMENTOUS A CHANGE OF POLICY HAS BEEN DETERMINED SOLELY ON THE ADVICE OF THESE TWO AGENTS STOP WE BEG YOU TO REMEMBER THE FREE FRENCHMEN WHO IN THE DARKEST DAYS OF 1940 DID NOT ABANDON THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE NAZIS AND WERE PROUD TO STAND SHOULDER BY SHOULDER WITH THE BRITISH
.

DENIS SAURAT
.

(From the
Daily Barometer,
24 October 1944)

… and those of us who respect Professor Saurat for his well-known
History of Religion
and his scholarly studies of the works of Milton will hope that in future he will realize that a cobbler should stick to his last. Meanwhile Marshal Pierrot is showing himself a figure well fitted to promote friendship abroad and unity at home. Scenes of enthusiasm are reported in all those parts of France where he has appeared on his white horse. I hear that he is introducing many reforms into his country which have been long overdue. There were till recently a surprising number of illiterates in France. All those in the area controlled by Marshal Pierrot have been taught to read and write during the fourteen months during which Marshal Pierrot has been in power. Indeed, he has visited many of the schools where these illiterates have been taught, and has personally given them their lessons. On these occasions, of course, he leaves his horse outside.

(From a newsletter called
Seven Days,
27 October 1944)

Those who know smiled when they read of the basinful of scurrilous abuse of Marshal Pierrot which Professor Saurat emptied over Mr Eden last week. The explanation lies in the private interests of the Professor. He is a director of the French Institut, an organization which made itself notorious a few years ago by a function it held to inaugurate its new premises. The Princess Royal, the President of the French Republic, several peers, and many other notabilities of the same kidney sat on the platform, many of the women in the audience wore furs, and a large proportion of the audience arrived or left in motor cars and taxis; and there was a general feeling that there was something behind the party which left none too good a taste in the mouth. But the really amusing thing about the Professor is that when he took the trouble to write
A History of Religion
it was not for nothing. It was to get a reputation for superiority to worldly interests, which he badly needs. For as all his friends say, ‘he has given his whole life to Milton'. In other words he owns a controlling interest in Milton, the well-known disinfectant, and thinks of it first, last, and all the time. Hence, the famous telegram of last week. For nobody knows better than the Professor how urgently ‘Milton' needs new continental markets, and he knows well enough that Marshal Pierrot will put an end to that kind of filthy exploitation.

(From a letter written by a Frenchman early in November 1944)

At last we have fuller details of the incident about which you had heard.

There is a pitiable mistake into which responsible people here are being pushed by someone unknown whose interest seems to be to rob the British of the immense moral prestige with which, after
such
a war, they could have renovated Europe. No nation, however great, can live on broken pledges. And the present mistake in the British policy is transcribed down there with the blood of the elite that has been and is and was bound to be the natural ally of Great Britain's civilizing mission. These letters are so difficult to efface in history.

May I tell you that, in consequence of this mistake, we, the French, oppressed and starved by the Germans through so many years, have seen six thousand four hundred of our elite still left alive savagely massacred by so-called partisans in the second week of September, 1944. It was in the district of Lyons. There were eight thousand of them, amongst them twenty-eight seminarists, scores of students, the best boys of our peasant stock, who left their homes and went into the woods to wait for the Allies. The Free French representative with a War-Council of regular officers was with them. The Allies did not come. But Marshal Pierrot's partisans came, accompanied by Italian soldiers from the North of Italy, and armed with Italian guns, and massacred them down to 1500, who escaped into the Cévennes. That happened when there was not a single shot fired at the Germans, at a time when the BBC was saying that ‘Marshal Pierrot is mopping up the last pockets of enemy resistance'. It was with the applause of the BBC that men made mad by fanaticism killed the flower of the youth of our dying people. Such tragedies cannot be forgotten. Imagine the confusion of our people. They did not think that Great Britain and America would make it a condition of helping them that they would submit to a form
of
government to which Great Britain and America themselves do not submit.

I thought up to the present that this mistake was only a special form of tactics. I thought that Pierrot was only a tactical stroke in circumstances which impose a consideration of Pierrot's political friends. But we have collected sufficient proof now that Pierrot is not tactics but a well-determined
policy
of the Conservatives over here. And now my mind is blank when I look at the future.

(A drift of these passed across the crystal)

M. et Mme Louis Delaye, Miles Yvonne et Thérèse Delaye, M. et Mme Delaugerre née Delaye, M. et Mme Stephane Négre née Delaye et leurs enfants, et M. et Mme Eustachy et leurs enfants, font part du décès de M. Robert Delaye, leur fils, frère, neveu, et cousin, survenu accidentellement à l'age de 17 ans. On ne reçoit pas.

(Extract from ‘Simon's Diary' in
The New Simpleton,
30 December 1944)

The long and sorry tale of the French Generals has not yet come to an end. I hear these encumberers of the earth are still skulking with a remnant of their troops in the valleys of Auvergne, obstinately refusing to surrender to Marshal Pierrot and pay the just penalty for their collaboration with the Nazis. It shows how half-hearted our Government is in its democratic sympathies that no punitive expedition has been sent to wind up this intolerable situation. I think, by the way, there is a great deal of veiled Fascist propaganda in the criticism of Marshal Pierrot's Government. I do not see that it is any matter for regret that it contains no well-known names. Such a vigorous leader as Marshal Pierrot can easily find new blood. I think too much has been made of the circumstance that an important Ministerial post is filled by the former crossword puzzle editor of the newspaper
Mensonges de Paris.
We English progressives are far too apt to have a soberside contempt for the recreational side of life. And it is certainly most unfair to reproach Marshal Pierrot for his inclusion of certain Ministers who collaborated with the Nazis during the period of occupation. Surely we fought the war in order that we might have the opportunity to make such gestures. The restoration of France by this great man is a great encouragement; and we can turn with lighter hearts to the international task of which I think all right-minded people have become more and more conscious as our special moral obligation. I mean the creation of some sort of Borstal system for the treatment of all our allies except, of course, Russia and America. They must be purged, and purged soundly, for their reluctance to accept social revolution; and our own humiliating failure to produce social revolution, which is entirely due to the refusal of the governing classes to allow the most able of the population to take control of the community, at least leaves us free to administer this purgation. I think we may look forward to 1945 as a happy and busy year.

(There is some doubt as to what the following excerpt can be. Madame Sara declares she saw it in newspaper print, but says that ‘the letters looked a bit funny', and I imagine it is a leading article which would be published somewhere on 31 December 1944, if various people should tell the truth, an eventuality which, however, will not happen.)

In reviewing the events of 1944 … in reviewing the events of 1944 … in reviewing the events of 1944 … what fun it would be if one could say what one really thought. Then we could admit that there was one event of 1944 on which we of the Right Wing could look back with satisfaction, and that was the recognition of Marshal Pierrot. Quite apart from the reasons which made us take that step, the way it was taken made us feel fine. We are always a little afraid of the Left-Wing intellectuals. But that's all over now. We feel quite safe in the saddle, thank you.

For the recognition of Marshal Pierrot was a Right-Wing stunt from first to last. We might have told the truth about him. We might have owned up that there was civil war in France, and that the revolutionaries were led by a man called Marshal Pierrot, and that the others who wanted to live in the same sort of society as ours were fighting against him, and that there were good people on both sides, and that probably the best man would win, and anyway it was France's business. Instead we played him up as if all conceivable kinds of right were on his side and all conceivable kinds of wrong on the other side. It was some of our Right-Wing boys who got that idea and worked it out to the last detail. But not only did the Left-Wing intellectuals not offer any opposition to the policy, though it was dead against half their principles, they swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, and even took on the job of selling it to the public. There wasn't any question of leading them up the garden path. They ran up it of their own accord, and fetched up just at that dark spot in the shrubbery we wanted them to be. Honest, it was a shame to take their money. There wasn't a silly story they wouldn't believe, on evidence that wouldn't justify hanging a cat; and I don't think it ever struck them that most of those stories were told them by Government officials. No, we don't worry about Left-Wing intellectuals any more.

Why did we recognize Marshal Pierrot? For several reasons. There are some of us who carry the people in their minds as a good man carries his wife and children. A man works for his wife and children. If he is out of luck he may have to work for them in torturing conditions. Many a man has woken up in the night and said to himself, ‘I cannot go on working in that sweat-shop for one more day, it would be better to starve.' Then he has heard his wife and children breathing quietly, and he has known that he was lying, and he has gone on working the next day, and the next, and the next. There are some of us who when they wake up in the night hear the people breathing quietly and know that they would pay any price to keep safe those poor dear afflicted millions. So they go back to their sort of sweat-shops, and do what is demanded of them. And if it is demanded of them in that sweat-shop that they should sacrifice a scruple, they make that sacrifice.

There are others who are not of this kind, who do not read their files and have no notion that the matter is not simple, or who have a fancy that when the mob bursts open the library door they will flash a wide grin, lay a hand on the decanter of second-best port (the best being buried in the gladiolus bed) and roar genially, ‘Come right in, boys, and drink a toast with me to Marshal Pierrot.' But most can claim to care for the people, and if the special form of our care is to be called appeasement, in this hour we will not be ashamed of that name. Surely it is not a disgrace to seek the salvation of the people, and often, as many of us have found in our lives, appeasement answers. But if it fails, it is not easy to see what we can do. For then we will have to defend ourselves in the real situation; and then, since the people are now utterly confused by lies, it is not possible to know how we can acquaint the people with the truth in the amount of time which will be left to us. And that is where those others were to blame, for we are men of action whose profession is the deed, but they were intellectuals, clerks, whose profession was the truth. So may the Lord have mercy on all our souls.

As I said at the beginning, I do not really believe that anything in this monstrous sequence of revelations from Madame Sara's magic crystal will take place in the future. Yet all the same, it disquiets me. For, somehow, it reminds me of something, but I can't think what …

30 January 1944

The Second Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Make Any Graven Image

This appeared in an anthology,
The Ten Commandments, Ten Short Novels of Hitler's War Against the Moral Code,
Cassell and Company Ltd, London, 1945. Avowedly propaganda – of a very high order
–
it was edited by Armin L. Robinson, who commissioned internationally renowned writers. As well as Rebecca West's story, there are contributions from Thomas Mann (a magnificent tale of the life of the prophet Moses and the formulation of all ten commandments; the commandment in question here is the first, ‘Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods But Me'), Franz Werfel, John Erskine, Bruno Frank, Jules Romains, Andr
é
Maurois, Sigrid Undset, Hendrik Willem Van Loon and Louis Bromfield. Even allowing for unusual despatch in commissioning and publishing, it is unlikely that this project dated much later than 1944, when the tide of war was starting to turn in favour of the Allies and, significantly, considering the theme of Rebecca West's story – and others in the collection – the full monstrosity of what Hitler was doing to the Jewish population in his territories was just beginning to emerge.