15 March 1939.
Posters in the streets announce German troops enter Prague. My neighbour said at lunch, “It may seem cynical but I really cannot get excited over this. I do dislike all this sentimentality about the Czechs – as long as the Germans are going towards the east …” This seems to be the general view among the “people one meets at dinner.”
Went to the House of Commons. Chamberlain spoke of the disappearance of Czechoslovakia like a Birmingham solicitor winding up an estate. Eden was moved – even eloquent. I wish I could get rid of the haunting impression that he is still an undergraduate. Looking down from my place in the gallery in the House of Commons on the pomaded ringlets of a brace of young Conservative M.P.s who were lounging below I reflected on the excessive attraction which style exercises over my imagination. I would not like to be on the opposite side of the fence from beings so elegant, however clumsy and vulgar the ideas inside those sleek heads.
The moral weakness of the government’s foreign policy lies in the fact that they talk the language of trust while arming to the teeth. If Chamberlain believed in Hitler’s good faith we would not need our big guns. He does not believe in it, but wouldn’t it be better to give up a pretence which takes in nobody? Where are politeness and consideration for German susceptibilities getting us? The Germans evidently consider this façade meaningless.
Yet I cannot forget the remark of a middle-aged woman I met one day at a cocktail party. “If we had gone to the help of the Czechs my twenty-five-year-old son might be dead fighting in Central Europe by now, and what good would that do the Czechs?”
Chamberlain, if he used phrases, might have said, “Czechoslovakia is not worth the bones of a British Tommy.” That is what he means, and most Englishmen agree with him. They do not think of the corollary, “England is not worth the bones of an American or Canadian soldier.” They know that while the second proposition may seem as sensible as the first it is not true politically.
19 March 1939.
This latest crisis was at first exciting. One had the illusion of participating in “an historical event.” As I hurried from Trafalgar Square to the Foreign Office1 my brain was buzzing with clichés – “The Chancelleries of Europe are humming” – “The hour of destiny is at hand,” etc. The wireless transmitters over at the Admiralty would soon be tingling with commands to the fleet. This was the “pulse of the Empire.” It was in these buildings, the Admiralty, 10 Downing Street, and the Foreign Office, that fateful decisions would be taken. I hastened to the Foreign Office, my mind moving among images consecrated by historians, journalists, and radio broadcasters. This feeling of excitement and importance underlay my pessimistic language and my grave actor’s face. It was only today that I got bored with my role and bored with the crisis. I wanted to close the book, leave the theatre, turn off the radio. But I am no longer in America, so I cannot do any of these things. Boredom, worry, bewilderment, fear – these unpleasant sensations will be with us for months.
6 April 1939.
This is to say what it was like to be sitting in my office this afternoon after lunch, looking out of the window and wishing that I could settle down to work. There were memoranda of telephone calls which must be made immediately and notes for a speech to be ready by tomorrow morning. I would not touch this welter of paper but stared gloomily, nervously, out at Trafalgar Square. The sky was a stale grey of three days’ standing. St. Martin-in-the-Fields and the National Gallery were grey too, so was the water in the fountains – so were the pigeons. People passed in their dreary mackintoshes; the traffic filtered around the Square. There were sudden flights of pigeons – false alarms started by some panicky bird and obeyed in a perfunctory fashion by the others. As they flew they showed the paler grey of the underside of their wings. A wet wind blew the water in the fountains in fine showers over the passers-by. A man and a woman with their arms around each other stood near one of the fountains. He bent his head to her with some lover’s joke which made them laugh a little. Her arm tightened around him. Scarlet buses supplied the invariable London colour combination and the note was carried out by the red letters of the posters telling Londoners that Civil Defence is the business of every citizen. The day was too sterile to breed even a good war scare. Who could be frightened when there seems so little to lose? A good bomb I thought is just what this Square wants.
16 April 1939.
My mother is here1 and I refuse to wear an overcoat because I will not have my health fussed over. I refuse to turn out lights because of resentment at bourgeois economies. I also resent being waked up and being told I am late for breakfast. With this goes a revival of adolescent escapism. I wish for a new mistress or to risk my life in an airplane stunt. At the same time I insist on lecturing her on modern painting, reading aloud to her passages from Auden when she likes Shelley.
17 April 1939.
Quite another story. My mother and I went to a movie, came home, sat by the fire and talked – and this time it was like my youth again, but like the happy part of it. My mother seemed, as she does every now and then, to come back to herself. The ailing old woman disappears. She starts on one of her anecdotes full of mimicry, with a cruel eye for the comic effect – and sentimentality like a chapter of Dickens. She seems then for the moment as strong in vitality as ever she was.
20 April 1939.
Went to the Foreign Office to get telegrams.2 Hadow, who is in charge of the Foreign Office relations with the Dominions, looked grey with fatigue and says that the Chief of the Southern Division, who is the man most responsible in this crisis, has been working until two or three in the mornings for days.
10 May 1939.
Lunched at the Ritz in the Edwardian Louis Quinze dining-room. The women in feathered and flowered straw hats seem pre-last-war. It was like the opening chapter of an old-fashioned society novel. The London season seems unrealistic in the face of anti-gas precautions and evacuation orders. Snobbery must indeed be a lusty plant that grows even on the edge of the precipice.
14 May 1939.
Family life makes me long for the brothel or the anchorite’s cell.
16 May 1939.
I said to Mike Pearson today, “Well, we are out of danger of war for the time being.” “Do not be so sure,” he said, “if the Germans attack the Corridor, Poland will fight, and so will France, and then we shall be in.” One of the few independent acts in recent French foreign policy has been the guarantee to Poland to fight if the Germans seize Danzig and their definite promise to send army divisions. These assurances were given only four days ago. They may not keep their word if the British refuse to promise their support. Plainly the British attitude towards the threat to Poland is the most important question of the moment. I cannot believe that this country will go to war for the Polish Corridor. Therefore, I think the French will probably desert their Polish allies.
29 May 1939.
To be always patient, to win all the skirmishes with one’s own irritability and selfishness is to drain family life of its vitality. One has no right to pose for one’s obituary fan-mail to those one loves.
9 July 1939.
A picnic lunch party in the gardens of Eccleston Square – pickled herrings, meat pies, lemonade, and laughter. I shall remember this sunny week in the London season of 1939. It seems to belong to the past almost before it has had time to happen – sometime before the war – the next war I mean. The London season survived the last war and may survive the next. Will there always be cultivated rich girls who have read all this year’s books and been to Algiers and will not admit to themselves that marriage is now as tiresomely inevitable for them as it was for their grandmothers? And clever young men in the Foreign Office? And little luncheons of eight in Bryanston Square with an actress, an M.P., a girl three years “out” and getting on with her conversation, an American married woman, and a vigorous Edwardian hostess?
Bernard Shaw passed me today bowling down Jermyn Street in a grey tussore silk suit like a man of twenty
-four with false eyebrows and a cotton beard.
And Margot Asquith1 sat next to me in the cinema treating the performance as a background for her showing-off. No one shushed her – I suppose they recognized her and knew that it was useless, as no one in the last half century from King Edward VII on has succeeded in shutting her up.
Edwardian London,
Between interruptions – the first one 1914–1918 – the next 1939 -.
The pink and white telegrams in the worn Foreign Office leather boxes – “Urgent and Secret,” “According to your Lordship’s instructions I sought an interview with Signor Mussolini,” “The situation has deteriorated,” “His Holiness said,” “Monsieur Molotov with his habitual mixture of peasant naïveté and cunning.” For a mixture of naïveté and cunning give me any British Ambassador – and their prose – the casual style, the careful avoidance of purple patches and fine phrases, and every now and then the rather wry, tired, little joke.
I went down to Southampton to see my mother off – the usual discouraging lot of passengers – yellow discoloured American women of no particular age. On the way home the tube was full of soldiers and young men in suits carrying rifles and kitbags. Someone said, “They have called up the militia.”
9 July 1939. Sunday.
Took a solitary walk by the river at World’s End – swans making scanty meals in the mud flats craning their necks after filthy crusts and paddling about on their clumsy snow-shoes. In Chelsea Old Church elderly women with wispy hair were squatting on their haunches to read the inscriptions at the base of the monuments.
The dreariness of these slum streets on a Sunday afternoon is something almost supernatural. The pubs are still closed, but here and there a small magazine and sweet shop is open, the overcrowded little interiors give some colour for the eye – bright, shiny, flesh colours of nudes on the backs of magazines – the yellows and reds of candies in glass jars.
At World’s End a Salvation Army band was practising in a drizzle of rain – trumpet notes and the tumpity-tumpity tune – the women of the Army in their bonnets seemed a piece of Victorian London.
10 July 1939.
To the House of Commons where Chamberlain made his statement of support for Poland over Danzig. It was in so tepid a tone, delivered in such a mechanical manner and received in such silence that one felt chilled. The German Ambassador must have felt relieved – the Pole disappointed.
29 July 1939.
From my porthole window at the top of Stansted1 I could admire the grand park in the manner of Le Nôtre with its noble avenues sweeping through the Sussex woods into the mist.
The Bessboroughs have made me feel at home at Stansted – Lord Bessborough has been kindness itself and is relaxed away from the fetters of Governor Generalship.
Moyra was there. I am getting more and more devoted to her. She has a charm compounded of candour and courage.
Lord Bessborough is a mixture of Whig magnifico and a modern businessman – the ruby ring on his hand – the occasional resonance of a phrase and amplitude of a gesture reveal his origins under the surface of a director of city companies. Someone said they had seen Lord Portarlington at Goodwood wearing a straw hat with a ribbon around it – “Such a paltry hat!” said Lord Bessborough. He puffed at his cigar and repeated with satisfaction “a very paltry hat.” When I asked him what he thought of Sam Hoare2 he said he shared a study with Hoare at Harrow. “He was always the same – twitter, twitter, twitter.”
Lady Bessborough glides through the flower-filled rooms of Stansted in an ever-changing succession of costumes. Her effects are calculated with French flair – the right jewels with each dress, the right flowers for each room, the right sauce for the fish.
9 August 1939.
Dined with Tony Balásy, Counsellor of the Hungarian Legation. He feels, coming from Washington where he was posted, the oppression of the preparation for war. He talked about the Hungarian minority in Romania. “Dear old Charles,” laying his long hand on my arm, “I should not perhaps pretend to be impartial but there are two million Hungarians in Romania – that dates to the Peace Treaty. Well, you know these countries in Central Europe, how many hatreds there are among them. What do I mean? Since the day that England gave her guarantee to Romania the Romanians have begun ill-treating the Hungarian minority. They say now, ‘What does it matter about those damn Hungarians? We have the British guarantee.’
“Then you must not judge Hungary by what you read in the newspapers. What do I mean? Hungary has no freedom of choice. We export sixty per cent of our products to Germany. Before these exports were divided among Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Austria. Now they are all Germany. What I mean is, take a look at the map. As for the Hungarian Nazis they have forty seats out of a parliament of two hundred and sixty. If Hungary was Nazi, why don’t the Hungarians vote Nazi?”
I did not tell him that the statistics of votes cast for the Nazis and Fascists did not strike me as conclusive. Poor Tony! He will soon be in a concentration camp if the Nazis get in. There is not much place for gentle liberals in Central Europe, and unless he is harder-boiled and more unscrupulous than he seems he will never stand the pace.
14 August 1939.
Lunched with Robert Byron1 who is going on a visit to the Kaiser. He hopes to be at Doorn when the next war breaks out (this September). He went last year to the Nuremberg Conference “disguised as a Mitford” with Lord Redesdale.1 The latter, he says, treated the Nazi Party Conference as though it were a house party to which five hundred thousand rather odd and unexpected guests had turned up.
Looked at Poussins in the National Gallery. My heart swelled at their beauty and was subdued by their finality. This is art in the grand manner – no restlessness.
15 August 1939.
We are to sell out the Poles apparently although I still find it hard to credit, but the advice going out to them from the Foreign Office over Danzig is just what we told the Czechs this time last year over the Sudeten crisis. Hitler says that if absolute calm prevails and his prestige is not attacked the problem can wait, but at the slightest incident he will attack Poland. Hadow at the Foreign Office says we led the Poles down the garden path and now we must lead them back again. He was always against the Polish guarantee. He said then, “We shall promise them too much and go back on our word. Better make a realistic settlement now.” He may be proved right. It is sickening. But how can one blame the Government with the sneaking desire inside one that they behave dishonourably as long as they avoid war. “Let them do the dirty work and then we will curse them later for it.” Such must be the subconscious feelings of many critics of the Government.
21 August 1939.
An ominous, thunderous, heavy day – close grey weather – a weight on one’s chest – not panic but a dull certainty that it is coming. This is a most peculiar crisis. It has not broken yet – it is like one of these heavy, leaden clouds which have been hanging over London all day and which must break in loud thunder and lightning. People are mystified and bewildered by the news. It is menacing but imprecise. No one has defined the immediate danger. Hitler has not said a word in public about Danzig or about Poland. There is nothing ostensible to make this immediately necessary – simply “his patience is exhausted.” “We cannot go on like this” – that is what everyone is saying. With fatalism we drift into the alternative; we almost embrace the alternative. This tragedy which, when I was in America, seemed too stupid to be true now seems inevitable. I could no more go back to America than I could leave this planet. There will be a war.
22 August 1939.
Coming down Hollywood Road on my way to the bus I saw the placards “Russo-German Pact.” During the morning several journalists came to my office – they were as stunned by the news as I was. It is probably no exaggeration to say that a war to defend Poland with Russia benevolent to Germany would be suicide for this country. The present Government will in the end do anything to stay out of such a war. They should never have given the guarantee t
o Poland without a prior arrangement with Russia. However we get out of it, it will be so discreditable that the Government will not be able to go on unless they could participate in some kind of European Conference which would save their faces – “undoing the wrongs of Versailles.” The results would be a further and far-reaching surrender to Germany who would promise for the time being to leave us alone. This seems the most likely upshot unless Beck, the Polish Prime Minister, either cannot or will not give in to the Germans.
Mr. Massey went to a High Commissioners’ Meeting. The British Government pointed out that if Germany had access to Russian raw materials it would be impossible to blockade her. They said, however, that they were going to issue a press communiqué stating that they would stand by their obligations to Poland. Bruce, the Australian High Commissioner, protested against this and said it would lead Poland to resist and she would then be destroyed. Halifax was impressed and took him to put his arguments to the Prime Minister. He should find a ready listener. Of course there is the possibility that Parliament will revolt against the Government and then we shall have a war. If we can still get Russian support we should not discourage the Poles, but unless we can get Russia or the United States to come into this I suppose we must tell the Poles to give in. It all depends how far the Russians are committed. If they are really deep in with the Germans we might as well climb down. If they are likely to switch to us if it comes to a war, then we should fight. My God, how often have I heard the Foreign Office say that a Russo-German pact was an impossibility. They do not seem to have believed what any journalist in London or New York could have told them was likely to happen. Poor Mr. Massey – he has a cold and no role to play and no idea what he would do if he had such a role. He is as undecided as I am as to what is the proper line for the Canadian Government to take. He put the pros and cons to me without any idea of interpreting them and said pathetically, “Of course Bruce” – the Australian High Commissioner – “has a fine mind.” He left relieved at my view that in the end the Poles would have to give in.
Siren Years : A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937-1945 (9781551996783) Page 4
