A Collection of Essays

by George Orwell

  53. D. R. Margesson (1890-1965), Conservative M.P. for Rugby 1924-42. Government Chief Whip 1931-40; doggedly loyal to each Prime Minister he served, backing Chamberlain until his downfall from the Premiership in May 1940. Under Churchill he continued as Joint Government Whip and after six months was appointed Secretary of State for War. He was created Viscount Margesson in 1942 after Churchill had relieved him of office in the spring of that year.

  25 October

  The other night examined the crowds sheltering in Chancery Lane, Oxford Circus and Baker Street stations. Not all Jews, but I think, a higher proportion of Jews than one would normally see in a crowd of this size. What is bad about Jews is that they are not only conspicuous, but go out of their way to make themselves so. A fearful Jewish woman, a regular comic-paper cartoon of a Jewess, fought her way off the train at Oxford Circus, landing blows on anyone who stood in her way. It took me back to old days on the Paris Metro.

  Surprised to find that D., who is distinctly Left in his views, is inclined to share the current feeling against the Jews. He says that the Jews in business circles are turning pro-Hitler, or preparing to do so. This sounds almost incredible, but according to D. they will always admire anyone who kicks them. What I do feel is that any Jew, i.e. European Jew, would prefer Hitler's kind of social system to ours, if it were not that he happens to persecute them. Ditto with almost any Central European, e.g. the refugees. They make use of England as a sanctuary, but they cannot help feeling the profoundest contempt for it. You can see this in their eyes, even when they don't say it outright. The fact is that the insular outlook and the continental outlook are completely incompatible.

  According to F., it is quite true that foreigners are more frightened than English people during the raids. It is not their war, and therefore they have nothing to sustain them. I think this might also account for the fact -- I am virtually sure it is a fact, though one mustn't mention it -- that working-class people are more frightened than middle-class.

  The same feeling of despair over impending events in France, Africa, Syria, Spain -- the sense of foreseeing what must happen and being powerless to prevent it, and feeling with absolute certainty that a British government cannot act in such a way as to get its blow in first.

  Air raids much milder the last few days.

  16 November

  I never thought I should live to grow blase about the sound of gunfire, but so I have.

  23 November

  The day before yesterday lunching with H.P., editor of -----. H.P. rather pessimistic about the war. Thinks there is no answer to the New Order, i.e. this government is incapable of framing any answer, and people here and in America could easily be brought to accept it. I queried whether people would not for certain see any peace offer along these lines as a trap. H.P.: "Hell's bells, I could dress it up so that they'd think it was the greatest victory in the history of the world. I could make them eat it." That is true, of course. All depends on the form in which it is put to people. So long as our own newspapers don't do the dirty they will be quite indifferent to appeals from Europe. H.P., however, is certain that ----- and Co. are working for a sell-out. It appears that though ----- is not submitted for censorship, all papers are now warned not to publish interpretations of the government's policy towards Spain. A few weeks back Duff Cooper had the press correspondents up and assured them "on his word of honour" that "things were going very well indeed in Spain". (The most one can say is that Duff Cooper's word of honour is worth more than Hoare's.)

  H.P. says that when France collapsed there was a Cabinet meeting to decide whether to continue the war or whether to seek terms. The vote was actually 50-50 except for one casting vote, and according to H.P. this was Chamberlain's. If true, I wonder whether this will ever be made public. It was poor old Chamberlain's last public act, as one might say, poor old man.

  Characteristic wartime sound, in winter: the musical tinkle of raindrops on your tin hat.

  28 November

  Lunching yesterday with C.54 editor of France. . . . . To my surprise he was in good spirits and had no grievances. I would have expected a French refugee to be grumbling endlessly about the food, etc. However, C. knows England well and has lived here before.

  54. Pierre Comert, French journalist and ex-diplomat, who came to England after the armistice in 1940.

  He says there is much more resistance both in occupied and unoccupied France than people here realize. The press is playing it down, no doubt because of our continued relations with Vichy. He says that at the time of the French collapse no European looked on it as conceivable that England would go on fighting, and generally speaking Americans did not either. He is evidently somewhat of an anglophile and considers the monarchy a great advantage to England. According to him it has been a main factor in preventing the establishment of Fascism here. . . . . It is a fact that, on the whole, anti-Fascist opinion in England was pro-Edward; but C. is evidently repeating what was current on the continent.

  C. was head of the press department during Laval's Government. Laval said to him in 1935 that England was now "only an appearance" and Italy was a really strong country, so that France must break with England and go in with Italy. On returning from signing the Franco-Russian pact he said that Stalin was the most powerful man in Europe. On the whole Laval's prophecies seem to have been falsified, clever though he is.

  Completely conflicting accounts, from eye witnesses, about the damage to Coventry. It seems impossible to learn the truth about bombing at a distance. When we have a quiet night here, I find that many people are faintly uneasy, because feeling certain that they are getting it badly in the industrial towns. What every one feels at the back of his mind is that we are now hardened to it and the morale elsewhere is less reliable.

  1 December

  That bastard Chiappe is cold meat. Everyone delighted, as when Balbo died. This war is at any rate killing off a few Fascists.

  8 December

  Broadcasting the night before last. . . . . Met there a Pole who has only recently escaped from Poland by some underground route he would not disclose. . . . . He said that in the siege of Warsaw 95 per cent of the houses were damaged and about 25 per cent demolished. All services, electricity, water, etc. broke down, and towards the end people had no defence whatever against the aeroplanes and, what was worse, the artillery. He described people rushing out to cut bits off a horse killed by shell-fire, then being driven back by fresh shells, then rushing out again. When Warsaw was completely cut off, the people were upheld by the belief that the English were coming to help them, rumours all the while of an English army in Danzig, etc. etc. . . . . .

  During the bad period of the bombing, when everyone was semi-insane, not so much from the bombing itself as from broken sleep, interrupted telephone calls, the difficulty of communications, etc. etc. I found that scraps of nonsense poetry were constantly coming into my mind. They never got beyond a line or two and the tendency stopped when the bombing slacked off, but examples were:

  An old Rumanian peasant

  Who lived at Mornington Crescent

  and

  And the key doesn't fit and the bell doesn't ring,

  But we all stand up for God save the King

  and

  When the Borough Surveyor has gone to roost

  On his rod, his pole or his perch.

  29 December

  From a newspaper account of a raid (not ironical): "Bombs were falling like manna."

  2 January 1941

  The rightwing reaction is now in full swing, and Margesson's entry into the Cabinet is no doubt a deliberate cash-in on Wavell's victory in Egypt. Comically enough, a review of Wavell's life of Allenby which I wrote some months ago was printed in Horizon55 just at the time when the news of Sidi Barrani came through. I said in the review that, as Wavell held so important a command, the chief interest of the book was the light that it threw on his own intellect, and left it to be inferred that I didn't think much of this. So the laugh
was on me -- though, God knows, I am glad enough to have been wrong.

  55. Horizon (1940-50), a magazine of literature and art, edited by Cyril Connolly. Orwell's review of Allenby: a Study in Greatness by General Sir Archibald Wavell appeared in Horizon, December 1940.

  The word "blitz" now used everywhere to mean any kind of attack on anything. Cf. "strafe" in the last war. "Blitz" is not yet used as a verb, a development I am expecting.

  22 January

  ----- is convinced, perhaps rightly, that the danger of the People's Convention racket is much under-estimated and that one must fight back and not ignore it. He says that thousands of simple-minded people are taken in by the appealing programme of the People's Convention and do not realize that it is a defeatist manoeuvre intended to help Hitler. He quoted a letter from the Dean of Canterbury56 who said "I want you to understand that I am wholeheartedly for winning the war, and that I believe Winston Churchill to be the only possible leader for us till the war is over" (or words to that effect), and nevertheless supported the People's Convention. It appears that there are thousands like this.

  56. The Very Rev. Hewlett Johnson (1874-1966), Dean of Canterbury 1931-63. Publications include The Socialist Sixth of the World, Soviet Strength and Christians and Communism. He became known as "The Red Dean" for his pro-Russian sympathies.

  Apropos of what ----- says, it is at any rate a fact that the People's Convention crew have raised a lot of money from somewhere. Their posters are everywhere, also a lot of new ones from the Daily Worker. The space has not been paid for, but even so the printing, etc. would cost a good deal. Yesterday I ripped down a number of these posters, the first time I have even done such a thing. Cf. in the summer when I chalked up "Sack Chamberlain" etc. and in Barcelona, after the suppression of the P.O.U.M., when I chalked up "Visca P.O.U.M." At any normal time it is against my instincts to write on a wall or to interfere with what anyone else has written.

  The onion shortage has made everyone intensely sensitive to the smell of onions. A quarter of an onion shredded into a stew seems exceedingly strong. E. the other day knew as soon as I kissed her that I had eaten onions some 6 hours earlier.

  An instance of the sort of racketeering that goes on when any article whose price is not controlled becomes scarce -- the price of alarm clocks. The cheapest now obtainable are 15s. -- these the sort of rubbishy German-made clocks which used to sell for 3s. 6d. The little tin French ones which used to be 5s. are now 18s. 6d., and all others at corresponding prices.

  The Daily Express has used "blitz" as a verb.

  This morning's news -- the defences of Tobruk pierced, and the Daily Worker suppressed. Only very doubtfully pleased about the latter.

  26 January

  Allocation of space in this week's New Statesman:

  Fall of Tobruk (with 20,000 prisoners) -- 2 lines.

  Suppression of the Daily Worker and the Week57 -- 108 lines.

  57. A Communist newsletter for private subscribers, edited by Claud Cockburn.

  . . . . . All thinking people uneasy about the lull at this end of the war, feeling sure that some new devilry is being prepared. But popular optimism is probably growing again and the cessation of raids for even a few days has its dangers. Listening-in the other day to somebody else's telephone conversation, as one is always doing nowadays owing to the crossing of wires, I heard two women talking to the effect of "it won't be long now", etc. etc. The next morning, going into Mrs J.'s shop, I happened to remark that the war would probably last 3 years. Mrs J. amazed and horrified. "Oh, you don't think so! Oh, it couldn't! Why, we've properly got them on the run now. We've got Bardia, and from there we can march on into Italy, and that's the way into Germany, isn't it?" Mrs J. is, I should say, an exceptionally sharp, level-headed woman. Nevertheless she is unaware that Africa is on the other side of the Mediterranean.

  7 February

  There is now more and more division of opinion -- the question is implicit from the start but people have only recently become aware of it -- as to whether we are fighting the Nazis or the German people. This is bound up with the question of whether England should declare her war aims, or, indeed, have any war aims. All of what one might call respectable opinion is against giving the war any meaning whatever ("Our job is to beat the Boche -- that's the only war aim worth talking about"), and this is probably bound to become official policy as well. Vansittart's58 "hate Germany" pamphlet is said to be selling like hot cakes.

  58. Robert Vansittart (1881-1957), Kt. 1929, created Baron Vansittart of Denham 1941, diplomat and writer, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 1930-38, chief diplomatic adviser to the Foreign Secretary 1938-41. Well known before and during the early part of the war for his outspoken criticism of Germany and the Germans. The pamphlet referred to here was Black Record: Germans Past and Present, 1941.

  No definite news from France. It is obvious that Petain will give in about taking Laval into the Cabinet. Then there will be a fresh to-do about the passage of troops through unoccupied France, bases in Africa, etc., another "firm stand", and then more giving in. All depends on the time factor, i.e. whether the Germans can obtain a footing in Africa before the Italian armies there finally collapse. Perhaps next the guns will be turned against Spain, and we shall be told that Franco is making a "firm stand" and that that shows how right the British Government were to take a conciliatory attitude towards Spain, until Franco gives in and attacks Gibraltar or allows the German armies to cross his territory. Or perhaps Laval, when in power, will for a short time resist the more extreme German demands, and then Laval will suddenly turn from a villain into a patriot who is making a "firm stand", like Petain now. The thing that British Conservatives will not understand is that the forces of the Right have no strength in them and exist only to be knocked down.

  12 February

  Arthur Koestler is being called up this week and will be drafted into the Pioneers, other sections of the forces being barred to him, as a German. What appalling stupidity, when you have a youngish gifted man who speaks I do not know how many languages and really knows something about Europe, especially the European political movements, to be unable to make any use of him except for shovelling bricks.

  Appalled today by the havoc all round St Paul's, which I had not seen before. St Paul's, barely chipped, standing out like a rock. It struck me for the first time that it is a pity the cross on top of the dome is such an ornate one. It should be a plain cross, sticking up like the hilt of a sword.

  Curiously enough, there don't seem to have been any repercussions to speak of about that old fool Ironside59 taking the title of "Lord Ironside of Archangel". It really was an atrocious piece of impudence, a thing to protest against whatever one's opinion of the Russian regime.

  59. Field Marshal Lord Ironside (1880-1959), Chief of the Imperial General Staff 1939-40, Head of the Home Defence Forces 1940. In 1918 Ironside was Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces against the Bolsheviks at Archangel which led him to choose "of Archangel" as the title of his peerage.

  1 March

  The B.s, who only came up to London a few weeks ago and have seen nothing of the blitz, say that they find Londoners very much changed, everyone very hysterical, talking in much louder tones, etc. etc. If this is so, it is something that happens gradually and that one does not notice while in the middle of it, as with the growth of a child. The only change I have definitely noticed since the air raids began is that people are much more ready to speak to strangers in the street. . . . . The Tube stations don't now stink to any extent, the new metal bunks are quite good, and the people one sees there are reasonably well found as to bedding and seem contented and normal in all ways -- but this is just what disquiets me. What is one to think of people who go on living this sub-human life night after night for months, including periods of a week or more when no aeroplane has come near London?. . . . It is appalling to see children still in all the Tube stations, taking it all for granted and having great fun riding rou
nd and round the Inner Circle. A little while back D.J. was coming to London from Cheltenham, and in the train was a young woman with her two children who had been evacutated to somewhere in the West Country and whom she was now bringing back. As the train neared London an air raid began and the woman spent the rest of the journey in tears. What had decided her to come back was the fact that at that time there had been no raid on London for a week or more, and so she had concluded that "it was all right now". What is one to think of the mentality of such people?

  3 March

  Last night with G. to see the shelter in the crypt under Greenwich church. The usual wooden and sacking bunks, dirty (no doubt also lousy when it gets warmer), ill-lighted and smelly, but not on this particular night very crowded. The crypt is simply a system of narrow passages running between vaults on which are the names of the families buried in them, the most recent being about 1800. . . . . G. and the others insisted that I had not seen it at its worst, because on nights when it is crowded (about 250 people) the stench is said to be almost insupportable. I stuck to it, however, though none of the others would agree with me, that it is far worse for children to be playing about among vaults full of corpses than that they should have to put up with a certain amount of living human smell.

  4 March