Come the four corners of the world in arms
And we shall shock them: naught shall make us rue
If England to herself do rest but true.
It is right enough, if you interpret it rightly. But England has got to be true to herself. She is not being true to herself while the refugees who have sought our shores are penned up in concentration camps, and company directors work out subtle schemes to dodge their Excess Profits Tax. It is goodbye to the Tatler and the Bystander, and farewell to the lady in the Rolls-Royce car. The heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell are not in the House of Lords. They are in the fields and the streets, in the factories and the armed forces, in the four-ale bar and the suburban back garden; and at present they are still kept under by a generation of ghosts. Compared with the task of bringing the real England to the surface, even the winning of the war, necessary though it is, is secondary. By revolution we become more ourselves, not less. There is no question of stopping short, striking a compromise, salvaging "democracy", standing still. Nothing ever stands still. We must add to our heritage or lose it, we must grow greater or grow less, we must go forward or backward. I believe in England, and I believe that we shall go forward.
Part of England Your England with the title The Ruling Class appeared in Horizon, December 1940. England Your England was reprinted in S.J.; E.Y.E.; O.R.
18. Letter to the Reverend Iorwerth Jones
111 Langford Court
Abbey Road
London NWS
8 April 1941
Dear Mr Jones,8
Many thanks for your letter.9 Perhaps in one or two cases I expressed myself rather ambiguously and can make things clearer by answering some of your queries.
8. A Congregational minister.
9. In his letter the Rev. Iorwerth Jones had asked for the amplification of certain points Orwell had made in The Lion and the Unicorn.
1. "The U.S.A. will need a year to mobilize its resources even if Big Business can be brought to heel." You comment that it is the strikers who are holding up production. That is so, of course, but I was trying to look deeper than the immediate obstruction. The sort of effort that a nation at war now needs can only be made if both labour and capital are conscripted. Ultimately what is needed is that labour should be as much under discipline as the armed forces. This condition practically obtains in the U.S.S.R. and the totalitarian countries. But it is only practicable if all classes are disciplined alike, otherwise there is constant resentment and social friction, showing itself in strikes and sabotage. In the long run I think the hardest people to bring to heel will be the businessmen, who have most to lose by the passing of the present system and in some cases are consciously pro-Hitler. Beyond a certain point they will struggle against the loss of their economic freedom, and as long as they do so the causes of labour unrest will exist.
2. War aims. Of course I am in favour of declaring our war aims, though there is a danger in proclaiming any very detailed scheme for postwar reconstruction. In that Hitler, who is not troubled by any intention of keeping his promises, will make a higher bid as soon as our war aims are declared. All II protested against in the book was the idea that propaganda without a display of military strength can achieve anything. Acland's book Unser Kampf,10 which I referred to, seemed to assume that if we told the Germans we wanted a just peace they would stop fighting. The same idea is being put about, though in this case not in good faith, by the People's Convention11 crowd (Pritt12 and Co.).
10. See 35.
11. The People's Convention, organized in January 1941 by the Communists, was ostensibly founded to fight for public rights, higher wages, better air-raid precautions etc. and friendship with the U.S.S.R., but some historians say its true purpose was to agitate against the war effort. In July 1941, after Russia's entry into the war, it immediately called for a Second Front. By 1942 it had suspended active work.
12. D. N. Pritt (1887- ), Q.C., Labour M.P. 1935-40, then, on his expulsion from the Party for policy disagreements, Independent Socialist M.P. until 1950. Well known as a barrister and fervent supporter of leftwing causes and the Soviet Union.
3. A proFascist rebellion in India. I wasn't thinking of a rebellion primarily by Indians, I was thinking of the British community in India. A British general attempting a Fascist coup d'etat would probably use India as his jumping-off place, as Franco used Morocco. Of course it isn't a likelihood at this stage of the war, but one has got to think of the future. If an attempt to impose open naked Fascism upon Britain is ever made, I think coloured troops are almost certain to be used.
4. Gandhi and pacifism. Perhaps I ought not to have implied that pacifists are always people who as individuals have led sheltered lives, though it is a fact that "pure" pacifists usually belong to the middle classes and have grown up in somewhat exceptional circumstances. But it is a fact that pacifism as a movement barely exists except in communities where people don't feel foreign invasion and conquest to be likely. That is why pacifist movements are always found in maritime countries (there is even I believe a fairly considerable pacifist movement in Japan). Government cannot be conducted on "pure" pacifist lines, because any government which refused in all circumstances to use force could be overthrown by anyone, even any individual, who was willing to use force. Pacifism refuses to face the problem of government and pacifists think always as people who will never be in a position of control, which is why I call them irresponsible.
Gandhi has been regarded for twenty years by the Government of India as one of its right-hand men. I know what I am talking about -- I used to be an officer in the Indian police. It was always admitted in the most cynical way that Gandhi made it easier for the British to rule India, because his influence was always against taking any action that would make any difference. The reason why Gandhi when in prison is always treated with such lenience, and small concessions sometimes made when he has prolonged one of his fasts to a dangerous extent, is that the British officials are in terror that he may die and be replaced by someone who believes less in "soul force" and more in bombs. Gandhi is of course personally quite honest and unaware of the way in which he is made use of, and his personal integrity makes him all the more useful. I won't undertake to say that his methods will not succeed in the long run. One can at any rate say that by preventing violence and therefore preventing relations being embittered beyond a certain point, he has made it more likely that the problem of India will ultimately be settled in a peaceful way. But it is hard to believe that the British will ever be got out of India by those means, and certainly the British on the spot don't think so. As to the conquest of England, Gandhi would certainly advise us to let the Germans rule here rather than fight against them -- in fact he did advocate just that. And if Hitler conquered England he would, I imagine, try to bring into being a nationwide pacifist movement, which would prevent serious resistance and therefore make it easier for him to rule. Thank you for writing.
Yours sincerely
George Orwell
19. London Letter to Partisan Review
London NW8
15 April 1941
Dear Editors,
As you see by the above date, I only received your letter a month after it was sent, so there is not much hope of my getting a reply to you by 20 April. I expect this will reach you before June, however. I will try to make some sort of answer to all your questions, but I should go over the allotted space if I answered them all in full, so I will concentrate on the ones I know most about. You don't mention anything in my previous letter having been blacked out by the censor, so I presume I can speak fairly freely.13
13. The British Censorship Bureau later notified Orwell it excised from his letter of 15 April a reference to the possible lynching of German airmen who baled out.
1. What is the level and tone of the popular press these days? How much real information about the war effort comes out? How fully are strikes and labour troubles reported? Debates in Parliament? How dominant is the propaganda note
? Is this propaganda mostly anti-Hun and jingoistic flag-waving as in the last war, or is it more anti-Fascist? What about the radio? Cinema?
The tone of the popular press has improved out of recognition during the last year. This is especially notable in the Daily Mirror and Sunday Pictorial ("tabloid" papers of vast circulation, read largely by the army), and the Beaverbrook papers, the Daily Express, Sunday Express and Evening Standard. Except for the Daily Mail and certain Sunday papers these used to be the most lowbrow section of the press, but they have all grown politically serious, while preserving their "stunt" make-up, with screaming headlines, etc. All of them print articles which would have been considered hopelessly above their readers' heads a couple of years ago, and the Mirror and the Standard are noticeably "left". The Standard is the least important of Beaverbrook's three papers, and he has apparently taken his eye off it and left its direction almost entirely to young journalists of leftwing views who are allowed to say what they like so long as they don't attack the boss directly. Nearly the whole of the press is now "left" compared with what it was before Dunkirk -- even The Times mumbles about the need for centralized ownership and greater social equality -- and to find any straightforward expression of reactionary opinions, i.e. reactionary in the old pre-Fascist sense, you now have to go to obscure weekly and monthly papers, mostly Catholic papers. There is an element of eyewash in all this, but it is partly due to the fact that the decline in the trade in consumption goods has robbed the advertisers of much of their power over editorial policy. Ultimately this will bankrupt the newspapers and compel the State to take them over, but at the moment they are in an interim period when they are controlled by journalists rather than advertisers, which is all to the good for the short time it will last.
As to accuracy of news, I believe this is the most truthful war that has been fought in modern times. Of course one only sees enemy newspapers very rarely, but in our own papers there is certainly nothing to compare with the frightful lies that were told on both sides in 1914-18 or in the Spanish Civil War. I believe that the radio, especially in countries where listening-in to foreign broadcasts is not forbidden, is making large-scale lying more and more difficult. The Germans have now sunk the British navy several times over in their published pronouncements, but don't otherwise seem to have lied much about major events. When things are going badly our own Government lies in a rather stupid way, withholding information and being vaguely optimistic, but generally has to come out with the truth within a few days. I have it on very good authority that reports of air-battles etc. issued by the Air Ministry are substantially truthful, though of course favourably coloured. As to the other two fighting services I can't speak. I doubt whether labour troubles are really fully reported. News of a large-scale strike would probably never be suppressed, but I think you can take it that there is a strong tendency to pipe down on labour friction, and also on the discontent caused by billeting, evacuation, separation allowances for soldiers' wives etc. etc. Debates in Parliament are probably not misrepresented in the press, but with a House full of deadheads they are growing less and less interesting and only about four newspapers now give them prominence.
Propaganda enters into our lives more than it did a year ago, but not so grossly as it might. The flag-waving and Hun-hating is absolutely nothing to what it was in 1914-18, but it is growing. I think the majority opinion would now be that we are fighting the German people and not merely the Nazis. Vansittart's hate-Germany pamphlet, Black Record, sold like hot cakes. It is idle to pretend that this is simply something peculiar to the bourgeoisie. There have been very ugly manifestations of it among the common people. Still, as wars go, there has been remarkably little hatred so far, at any rate in this country. Nor is "anti-Fascism", of the kind that was fashionable during the Popular Front period, a strong force yet. The English people have never caught up with that. Their war morale depends more on old-fashioned patriotism, unwillingness to be governed by foreigners, and simple inability to grasp when they are in danger.
I believe that the B.B.C., in spite of the stupidity of its foreign propaganda and the unbearable voices of its announcers, is very truthful. It is generally regarded here as more reliable than the press. The movies seem almost unaffected by the war, i.e. in technique and subject-matter. They go on and on with the same treacly rubbish, and when they do touch on politics they are years behind the popular press and decades behind the average book.
2. Is there any serious writing being done? Is there any antiwar literature like Barbusse etc. in the last war? Over here we hear there is a tendency towards romanticism and escapism in current British writing. Is this true?
So far as I know, nothing of consequence is being written, except in fragmentary form, diaries and short sketches for instance. The best novels I have read during the past year were either American or translations of foreign books written several years earlier. There is much production of antiwar literature, but of a one-eyed irresponsible kind. There is nothing corresponding to the characteristic war books of 1914-18. All of those in their different ways depended on a belief in the unity of European civilization, and generally on a belief in international working-class solidarity. That doesn't exist any longer -- Fascism has killed it. No one believes any longer that a war can be stopped by the workers on both sides simultaneously refusing to fight. To be effectively antiwar in England now one has to be pro-Hitler, and few people have the intellectual courage to be that, at any rate wholeheartedly. I don't see why good books shouldn't be written from the pro-Hitler angle, but none are appearing as yet.
I don't see any tendency to escapism in current literature, but I believe that if any major work were now produced it would be escapist, or at any rate subjective. I infer this from looking into my own mind. If I could get the time and mental peace to write a novel now, I should want to write about the past, the pre-1914 period, which I suppose comes under the heading of "escapism".
3. What is the morale of the regular army like? Is there any tendency towards more democracy? Is it, so to speak, a British army primarily, or an anti-Fascist army -- like the Loyalist army in Spain?
I believe that the morale of the army is very good in a fighting sense but that there is much discontent about low separation allowances and class-privilege in the matter of promotion, and that the troops in England are horribly bored by the long inaction, the dull, muddy camps where they have spent the winter while their families were being bombed in the big towns, and the stupidity of a military system which was designed for illiterate mercenaries and is now being applied to fairly well-educated conscripts. It is still primarily a "non-political" British army. But there are now regular classes in political instruction, and subject to local variation, depending on the commander of the unit, there seems to be a good deal of freedom of discussion. As to "tendency towards democracy", I should say that there is probably less than there was a year ago, but that if one looks back five years the advance is enormous. On active service the officers now wear almost the same uniform as the men (battledress), and some of them habitually wear this on home service. The practice of saluting officers in the street has largely lapsed. New drafts of recruits all have to pass through the ranks and promotion is theoretically on merit alone, but the official claim, based on this, that the army is now entirely democratic should not be taken seriously. The framework of regular officers is still there and newcomers tend to be promoted on social grounds, with, no doubt, an eye to political reliability. But all this will gradually change if the war goes on. The need for able men will be too great, and the difference between the middle class and the better-paid working class is now too small, for at any rate the lower ranks of the army to remain on a class basis. The disasters now probably ahead of us may push the process of democratization forward, as the disaster in Flanders did a year ago.
4. We read your interesting article in a recent Tribune on the Home Guards. Could you tell us something of the present status of the movement? Is Wintringham the moving
force behind it still? Is it mostly a middle-class or a working-class army? How democratic is it today?
The Home Guard is the most anti-Fascist body existing in England at this moment, and at the same time is an astonishing phenomenon, a sort of People's Army officered by Blimps. The rank and file are predominantly working class, with a strong middle-class seasoning, but practically all the commands are held by wealthy elderly men, a lot of whom are utterly incompetent. The Home Guard is a part-time force, practically unpaid, and at the beginning it was organized, I think consciously and intentionally, in such a way that a working-class person would never have enough spare time to hold any post above that of sergeant. Just recently the higher positions have been stuffed with retired generals, admirals and titled dugouts of all kinds. Principal age-groups of the rank and file are between thirty-five and fifty or under twenty. Officers from Company Commander (Captain) upwards are much older on average, sometimes as old as seventy.
Given this set-up you can imagine the struggle that has gone on between the blimpocracy, wanting a parade-ground army of pre-1914 type, and the rank and file wanting, though less articulately, a more democratic type of force specializing in guerilla methods and weapons. The controversy has never been overtly political but has turned upon technical points of organization, discipline and tactics, all of which, of course, have political implications which are half-consciously grasped on both sides. The War Office has been fairly open-minded and helpful, but I think it is true to say that the higher ranks within the Home Guard have fought steadily against a realistic view of war and that all experimentation and attempts at serious training have been due to proddings from below. Wintringham and some of his associates are still at the Home Guard training school (started unofficially by the weekly Picture Post and afterwards taken over by the War Office), but the Wintringham ("People's Army") school of thought has lost ground during the past six months. It or something like it will probably gain ground again during the coming months, and Wintringham has had very great influence, as thousands of men from all parts of the country have passed through his hands in three-day training courses. Although the Home Guard is now more similar to the regular army, or rather to the pre-war Territorials, than it was when it began, it is much more democratic and consciously anti-Fascist than some of its commanders would wish. It has several times been rumoured that the Government was growing nervous about it and contemplated disbanding it, but no move has been made to do this. A very important point, technically necessary to a force of this kind but only obtained after a struggle, is that the men keep their rifles and usually some ammunition in their own homes. The officers wear practically the same uniform as the men and there is no saluting off parade. Although the class nature of the command is widely grasped there has not been much friction. Within the lower ranks the spirit is extremely democratic and comradely, with an absence of snobbishness and class-uneasiness that would have been unthinkable ten years ago. I speak from experience here as I serve in a mixed residential area where factory-workers and quite rich men march in the ranks together. In general the political outlook of the men is old-fashioned patriotism mixed up with ill-defined but genuine hatred of the Nazis. Jews are numerous in the London units. In general, I think the danger of the Home Guard being turned into a reactionary middle-class militia still exists, but that this is not now likely to happen.
A Collection of Essays Page 15
