67. Sir Stafford Cripps flew to India on 22 March in an attempt to arrange a compromise settlement with the Indian Congress Party, the party of Indian independence, to ensure Indian cooperation during the war and allow for a very gradual transition to independence when it was over. Nehru and the Congress Party would accept nothing less than complete independence and, as Cripps was not authorized to offer this, the talks broke down on 10 April and he returned to England.
68. For broadcasting to India on the B.B.C. Eastern Service.
Rumours of all descriptions flying round. Many people appear to suspect that Russia and Germany will conclude a separate peace this year. From studying the German and Russian wireless I have long come to the conclusion that the reports of Russian victories are largely phony, though, of course, the campaign has not gone according to the German plan. I think the Russians have merely won the kind of victory that we did in the Battle of Britain -- i.e. staving off defeat for the time being but deciding nothing. I don't believe in a separate peace unless Russia is definitely knocked out, because I don't see how either Russia or Germany can agree to relinquish the Ukraine. On the other hand some people think (I had this, e.g. from Abrams, a Baltic Russian of strong Stalinist sympathies though probably not a C.P. member) that if the Russians could get the Germans off their soil they would make a sort of undeclared peace and thereafter only keep up a sham fight. Rumours about Beaverbrook's departure:69
69. On the pretext of physical illness Lord Beaverbrook: had resigned from his post as Minister for War Production and left the Government. The real political reasons behind this move are still matters of speculation.
a. Cripps insisted on this as a condition of entering the government.
b. Beaverbrook was got rid of because he is known to be in contact with Goering with a view to a compromise peace.
c. The army insisted on Beaverbrook's removal because he was sending all the aeroplanes etc. to Russia instead of to Libya and the Far East.
I have now been in the B.B.C. about 6 months. Shall remain in it if the political changes I foresee come off, otherwise probably not. Its atmosphere is something halfway between a girls' school and a lunatic asylum, and all we are doing at present is useless, or slightly worse than useless. Our radio strategy is even more hopeless than our military strategy. Nevertheless one rapidly becomes propaganda-minded and develops a cunning one did not previously have. E.g. I am regularly alleging in all my newsletters that the Japanese are plotting to attack Russia. I don't believe this to be so, but the calculation is:
If the Japanese do attack Russia, we can say "I told you so".
If the Russians attack first, we can, having built up the picture of a Japanese plot beforehand, pretend that it was the Japanese who started it.
If no war breaks out after all, we can claim that it is because the Japanese are too frightened of Russia.
All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth. I don't think this matters so long as one knows what one is doing, and why. . .
On 11 March 1942 I started the rumour that beer is to be rationed, and told it to 3 different people. I shall be interested to see at what date this rumour comes back to me. (30 May 1942. Never came back. So this casts no light on the way in which rumours come into being.)
Talked for a little while the other day to "William Hickey",70 just back from the U.S.A. He says morale there is appalling. Production is not getting under way and anti-British feeling of all kinds is rampant, also anti-Russian feeling stimulated by the Catholics.
70. 'William Hickey", a social diary which has appeared in the Daily Express for the last thirty-five years, edited by various people. At this time it was edited by its originator, Tom Driberg, a leftwing politician who later became a Labour M.P.
15 March
Short air-raid alert about 11.30 this morning. No bombs or guns. The first time in 10 months that I had heard this sound. Inwardly rather frightened, and everyone else evidently the same, though studiously taking no notice and indeed not referring to the fact of there being a raid on until the All Clear had sounded.
22 March
Empson71 tells me that there is a strict ban by the Foreign Office on any suggestion that Japan is going to attack the U.S.S.R. So this subject is being studiously avoided in the Far East broadcasts while being pushed all the time in the India broadcasts. They haven't yet got onto the fact that we are saying this, we haven't been warned and don't officially know about the ban, and are making the best of our opportunity while it lasts. The same chaos everywhere on the propaganda front. E.g. Horizon was nearly stopped from getting its extra paper to print copies for export on the strength of my article on Kipling (all well at the last moment because Harold Nicolson and Duff Cooper intervened), at the same time as the B.B.C. asked me to write a "Feature" based on the article.
71. William Empson (1906- ), the poet and critic. At this time working in the Eastern Service of the B.B.C. broadcasting to China.
German propaganda is inconsistent in quite a different way -- i.e. deliberately so, with an utter unscrupulousness in offering everything to everybody, freedom for India and a colonial empire for Spain, emancipation to the Kaffirs and stricter race laws to the Boers, etc. etc. All quite sound from a propaganda point of view in my opinion, seeing how politically ignorant the majority of people are, how uninterested in anything outside their immediate affairs, and how little impressed by inconsistency. A few weeks back the N.B.B.S.72 was actually attacking the Workers' Challenge Station,73 warning people not to listen to it as it was "financed from Moscow".
72. New British Broadcasting Station, broadcasting propaganda in English from Germany.
73. Another station broadcasting propaganda in English from Germany.
The Communists in Mexico are again chasing Victor Serge74 and other Trotskyist refugees who got there from France, urging their expulsion etc. etc. Just the same tactics as in Spain. Horribly depressed to see these ancient intrigues coming up again, not so much because they are morally disgusting as from this reflection: for twenty years the Comintern had used these methods and the Comintern has always and everywhere been defeated by the Fascists; therefore, we, being tied to them by a species of alliance, shall be defeated with them.
74. Victor Serge (1890-1947), Russian by parentage, French by adoption, one of the most literary of the Russian revolutionaries, was deported to Siberia in 1933 as a Trotskyist. After his release he was Paris correspondent for P.O.U.M. during the Spanish War. In 1941 he settled in Mexico where he died impoverished.
Suspicion that Russia intends making a separate peace now seems widespread. Of the two, it would be easier for Russia to surrender the Ukraine, both on geographical and psychological grounds, but they obviously couldn't give up the Caucasus oilfields without a fight. One possible development is a secret agreement between Hitler and Stalin, Hitler to keep what Russian territory he has overrun, or parts of it, but thereafter to make no further attacks but to direct his offensive southward towards the oilfields of Iraq and Iran, Russia and Germany keeping up a sham war meanwhile. It appears to me that a separate peace is distinctly likelier if we do make a continental invasion this year, because if we succeed in embarrassing the Germans and drawing off a great part of their army, Russia is immediately in a much better position both to win back the occupied territories, and to bargain. I nevertheless think that we ought to invade Europe if the shipping will run to it. The one thing that might prevent this kind of filthy doublecrossing is a firm alliance between ourselves and the U.S.S.R., with war aims declared in detail. Impossible while this government rules us, and probably also while Stalin remains in power: at least only possible if we could get a different kind of government and then find some way of speaking over Stalin's head to the Russian people.
The same feeling as one had during the Battle of France -- that there is no news. This arises principally from endless newspaper reading. In connexion with my newsletters I now read four or five morning newspapers every day and seve
ral editions of the evening ones, besides the daily monitoring report. The amount of new matter in each piece of print one reads is so small that one gets a general impression that nothing is happening. Besides, when things are going badly one can foresee everything. The only event that has surprised me for weeks past was Cripps's mission to India.
27 March
News of the terms Cripps took to India supposed to be bursting tomorrow. Meanwhile only rumours, all plausible but completely incompatible with one another. The best-supported -- that India is to be offered a treaty similar to the Egyptian one. K. S. Shelvankar,75 who is our fairly embittered enemy, considers this would be accepted if Indians were given the ministries of Defence, Finance and Internal Affairs. All the Indians here, after a week or two of gloom, much more optimistic, seeming to have smelt out somehow (perhaps by studying long faces in the India Office) that the terms are not so bad after all.
75. K. S. Shelvankar, Indian writer and journalist, in England during the war as a correspondent for Indian newspapers.
Terrific debate in the House over the "affaire" Daily Mirror.76 A. Bevan reading numerous extracts from Morrison's own articles in the D.M., written since war started, to the amusement of Conservatives who are anti-D.M. but can never resist the spectacle of two Socialists slamming one another. Cassandra77 announces he is resigning to join the army. Prophesy he will be back in journalism within 3 months. But where shall we all be within 3 months anyway?
76. The Dally Mirror, a popular, leftist, daily newspaper had been called to order by Churchill for taking what he called a defeatist line i.e. critical of the Government's handling of the war. After a famous debate in the House the affair fizzled out.
77. Pseudonym of William Connor (1909-67), Kt. 1966, well-known radical journalist who wrote a personal column in the Dally Mirror.
Government candidate defeated (very small majority) in the Grantham by-election. The first time since the war started that this has happened, I think.
Surprise call-out of our company of Home Guard a week or two back. It took 41/2 hours to assemble the company and dish out ammunition, and would have taken another hour to get them into their battle positions. This mainly due to the bottleneck caused by refusing to distribute ammunition but making each man come to H.Q. and be issued with it there. Sent a memo on this to Dr Tom Jones, who has forwarded it direct to Sir Jas. Grigg.78 In my own unit I could not get such a memo even as far as the Company Commander -- or at least, could not get it attended to.
78. Sir James Grigg, K.C.B. (1890-1964), Permanent Under-Secretary of State for War 1939-42; Secretary of State for War 1942-5.
Crocuses now full out. One seems to catch glimpses of them dimly through a haze of war news.
Abusive letter from H. G. Wells, who addresses me as 'you shit', among other things.
The Vatican is exchanging diplomatic representatives with Tokyo. The Vatican now has diplomatic relations with all the Axis powers and -- I think -- with none of the Allies. A bad sign and yet in a sense a good one, in that this last step means that they have now definitely decided that the Axis and not we stands for the more reactionary policy.
1 April
Greatly depressed by the apparent failure of the Cripps mission. Most of the Indians seem down in the mouth about it too. Even the ones who hate England want a solution, I think. I believe, however, that in spite of the "take it or leave it" with which our government started off, the terms will actually be modified, perhaps in response to pressure at this end. Some think that the Russians are behind the plan and that this accounts for Cripps's confidence in putting forward something so apparently uninviting. Since they are not in the war against Japan the Russians cannot have any official attitude about the Indian affair, but may serve out a directive to their followers, from whom it will get round to other pro-Russians. But then not many Indians are reliably pro-Russian. No sign yet from the English Communist Party, whose behaviour might give a clue to the Russian attitude. It is on this kind of guesswork that we have to frame our propaganda, no clear or useful directive ever being handed out from above.
Connolly yesterday wanted to quote a passage from Homage to Catalonia in his broadcast. I opened the book and came on these sentences:
One of the most horrible features of war is that all war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. . . . It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.
Here I am in the B.B.C. less than 5 years after writing that. I suppose sooner or later we all write our own epitaphs.
3 April
Cripps's decision to stay an extra week in India is taken as a good omen. Otherwise not much to be hopeful about. Gandhi is deliberately making trouble, sending telegrams of condolence to Bose's79 family on the report of his death, then telegrams of congratulation when it turned out that the report was untrue. Also urging Indians not to adopt the scorched earth policy if India is invaded. Impossible to be quite sure what his game is. Those who are anti-Gandhi allege that he has the worst kind of (Indian) capitalist interests behind him, and it is a fact that he usually seems to be staying at the mansion of some kind of millionaire or other. This is not necessarily incompatible with his alleged saintliness. His pacifism may be genuine, however. In the bad period of 1940 he also urged non-resistance in England, should England be invaded. I do not know whether Gandhi or Buchman is the nearest equivalent to Rasputin in our time.
79. Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945), Indian nationalist leader and leftwing member of Congress. He was so violently anti-British that when the Japanese attacked the Americans he offered his services to Japan, organized an Indian Revolutionary Army and led a military campaign against India. His death remains mysterious and unconfirmed.
Anand80 says the morale among the exiled Indians here is very low. They are still inclined to think that Japan has no evil designs on India and are all taking of a separate peace with Japan. So much for their declarations of loyalty towards Russia and China. I said to him that the basic fact about nearly all Indian intellectuals is that they don't expect independence, can't imagine it and at heart don't want it. They want to be permanently in opposition, suffering a painless martyrdom, and are foolish enough to imagine that they could play the same schoolboy games with Japan or Germany as they can with Britain. Somewhat to my surprise he agreed. He says that "opposition mentality" is general among them, especially among the Communists, and that Krishna Menon81 is "longing for the moment when negotiations will break down". At the same moment as they are coolly talking of betraying China by making a separate peace, they are shouting that the Chinese troops in Burma are not getting proper air support. I remarked that this was childish. A.: "You cannot overestimate their childishness, George. It is fathomless." The question is how far the Indians here reflect the viewpoint of intellectuals in India. They are further from the danger and have probably, like the rest of us, been infected by the peaceful atmosphere of the last 10 months, but on the other hand nearly all who remain here long become tinged with a western Socialist outlook, so that the Indian intellectuals proper are probably far worse. A. himself has not got these vices. He is genuinely anti-Fascist, and has done violence to his feelings, and probably to his reputation, by backing Britain up because he recognizes that Britain is objectively on the anti-Fascist side.
80. Mutk Raj Anand.
81. V. K. Krishna Menon (1879- ), Indian statesman, lawyer, author and journalist. At this time he was living in England and was active in leftwing English politics. He was also the spokesman of the Indian Congress Party in England during the period of the struggle to achieve independence. In 1947 when India had been granted independence he
was appointed High Commissioner for India. Represented India at U.N.O. 1952-62.
6 April
Yesterday had a look at the bit of the by-pass road which is being built between Uxbridge & Denham. Amazed at the enormous scale of the undertaking. West of Uxbridge is the valley of the Colne, and over this the road runs on a viaduct of brick and concrete pillars, the viaduct being I suppose 1/4 mile long. After that it runs on a raised embankment. Each of these pillars is 20 feet high or thereabouts, about 15 feet by 10 feet thick, and there are two of them every fifteen yards or so. I should say each pillar would use 40,000 bricks, exclusive of foundations, and exclusive of the concrete runway above, which must use up tons of steel and concrete for every yard of road. Stupendous quantities of steel (for reinforcing) lying about, also huge slabs of granite. Building this viaduct alone must be a job comparable, in the amount of labour it uses up, to building a good-sized warship. And the by-pass is very unlikely to be of any use till after the war, even if finished by that time. Meanwhile there is a labour shortage everywhere. Apparently the people who sell bricks are all-powerful. (Cf. the useless surface shelters, which even when they were being put up were pronounced to be useless by everyone who knew anything about building, and the unnecessary repairs to uninhabited private houses which are going on all over London.) Evidently when a scandal passes a certain magnitude it becomes invisible.
A Collection of Essays Page 52
