Winston’s War

It was after the ceremony had finished and they had marched stiffly behind the King back into the nearby Old Home Office Building that the conversation was resumed. They were drinking tea, warming themselves, relaxing after the parade. The King in particular seemed to find these official occasions a trial.

‘It went well?’ he asked. The words came at the stumble and in the form of a question. There had been no speech to make, nothing more to do than be a figurehead and set down a wreath of poppies, but still the King-Emperor needed reassurance.

‘Quite splendidly, sir,’ his Prime Minister replied.

‘Thank you, Mr Chamberlain.’ He was relaxing, feeling more at ease once he was inside and beyond the public gaze. And among friends. Halifax was his great companion and Chamberlain, too, had grown close. It had been exactly eighteen months since George had been crowned and had asked Chamberlain to assume the highest political office in the land; it had come to seem as if their destinies would be forever intertwined. That was why the King had invited his Prime Minister onto the floodlit balcony of Buckingham Palace immediately on his return from Munich. Some had said the gesture was unwise, even foolish, that it involved the Crown too deeply in politics and too closely with the fate of one Prime Minister, but the King had insisted. Appeasement was the right policy, it was the moral policy, the policy not only of God but also of his wife. He felt no need to compromise.

Around the room other men of matters were gathered, their voices low, respectful, except for one that was raised a shade too loudly, making his point vociferously, not in the manner of a gentle English stream but like a cascade of water running across the carpet. But then Leslie Hore-Belisha was scarcely – well, it wasn’t his fault, really, that he hadn’t been brought up in the manner of an English gentleman.

Words such as Berlin and Vienna reached out across the room, and the King stiffened within his uniform. ‘What is to be done about them, Prime Minister?’ he asked softly.

Chamberlain followed his gaze. ‘Ah, you mean the Jews, sir.’

‘What can we do? We’ve already given asylum to thousands. Now it threatens to turn into a flood.’

‘Halifax and I were just discussing the matter.’

‘I read the newspaper reports with distress, of course, but so often it seems as if these people don’t help themselves. Look at Palestine. We offer them seventy-five thousand places over the next five years, yet hordes of them try to pour in as illegal immigrants and cause chaos.’

‘Of course, sir, Palestine can’t be the answer. Too small. And too many Arabs. I’m afraid we were a little rash all those years ago to suggest that it might become a Jewish homeland.’

‘Wandering tribes, eh?’

‘The Foreign Secretary and I have been giving some consideration as to whether other parts of the Empire might be brought in to help.’

‘Other parts?’

‘Africa, perhaps. Tanganyika, sir,’ Halifax intervened, glad of an opportunity to participate. His height made it difficult to converse with the two considerably smaller men. He bent delicately, like a crane attempting to feed. ‘And perhaps British Guiana. It might be possible to make large tracts of virgin forest available for Jewish refugees to settle.’

‘At their expense, of course,’ Chamberlain added.

‘Wouldn’t it be possible simply to insist that they remain in their countries of origin? Prevent them from leaving in the first place?’ the King persisted. ‘After all, it’s not just the Jews from Germany trying to invade Palestine but those from places like Poland and Romania. There must be millions of them there. Surely it would be better for everyone if they simply stayed.’

‘Quite so,’ Chamberlain agreed. ‘But Herr Hitler isn’t helping, not with his latest nonsense.’

‘Damnable man, disrupts everything. But all this fuss. The press always sensationalize and exaggerate these things, don’t you think?’

‘Perhaps. My lieutenants are already pursuing the matter, phoning a few friendly editors, making sure they don’t … well, overdo it. Perhaps it will be better by tomorrow.’

‘And if any of them decides not to co-operate, you have our full permission to tell them that we won’t have it. Won’t have it, do you hear?’ The teacup rattled dangerously. ‘If those editors ever expect to come and kneel before me at the palace, they’d better mind their …’ – the King had intended to say ‘p’s and ‘q’s but the effect of authority was entirely spoiled by a thunderous stutter.

‘Distraction, that’s what we need, sir. The Foreign Secretary and I were just discussing it. We thought it might be helpful to give them something else to write about, sir. With your permission, I’d like to announce that Edward and I will be going to Rome to visit Signor Mussolini early next year. He’s been difficult, I know, invading Abyssinia and sending troops to Spain. But at Munich he was so helpful, so solid. If we show him the hand of friendship, I think we might get him to lean on Herr Hitler a little. Help tie up some of the loose ends of the peace.’

‘A little more of your personal diplomacy. Mr Chamberlain? Another diplomatic triumph?’

‘With the help of the Foreign Secretary, sir.’ Chamberlain shuffled. He wasn’t very good at playing the unassuming hero, least of all would anyone be convinced that he owed anything to the Foreign Office. He ran his own foreign policy, and so blatantly that the last Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, had felt forced to resign earlier that year.

‘And Ciano’s an excellent Foreign Minister, isn’t he, Edward?’ Halifax bowed in approval. ‘Not like that strange man Wibbentrop. You know, when he came to the Palace to present his credentials, he gave me one of those ridiculous straight-arm salutes and shouted “Heil Hitler”. Think of it. It was all I could do to stop myself returning the salute and shouting “Heil George”!’

They shared their amusement and drank their tea, while from outside came the muffled sounds of the last of the old soldiers marching past the Cenotaph and fading into the shadows. A final bark of instruction from an NCO and they were gone, taking their memories with them.

‘It’s no good shouting at the Germans,’ Chamberlain continued, ‘they simply shout back. So we think Herr Hitler needs a little encouragement, and the Italians could play a vital role in making sure he remains reasonable.’

‘Sound man, is he, Mussolini?’

‘A necessary man, at least.’

‘And the Italians have always been so much more sophisticated than Hitler’s type of German. Discussing diplomacy with Herr Hitler and his henchmen is like casting pearls before the swine. But the Italians – their art, their culture, their great history – that must make a difference.’

‘They’ve had a great empire.’

‘They understand the advantages of compromise.’

‘And so long as he doesn’t want to rebuild the entire Roman empire …’

‘Then let us toast him, this great Italian.’ The King raised his teacup, pinky on alert. ‘To Signor Mussolini.’

‘And to Italian culture.’

(The Times, Saturday 19 November 1938)

MICKEY MOUSE REPRIEVED

EXEMPT FROM ITALIAN BAN

From our own Correspondent.

ROME, November 18

The productions of Mr Walt Disney are to be exempted from a general decree of the Ministry of Popular Culture that everything of foreign inspiration is to disappear from juvenile periodicals in Italy by the end of the year.

The decree was prompted by the feeling that an excellent opportunity of inculcating Fascist ideals in the youthful Italian mind was being neglected by allowing pure fancy to run riot in the pictures and ‘comic strips’ of the coloured juvenile weeklies which are as common in Italy as in any other country. Publishers and editors were accordingly informed that these periodicals must in future be used to exalt the military and heroic virtues of the Italian race. The foreign stuff was to go.

But an exception has now been made in favour of Mr Walt Disney on account of the acknowledged artistic merit of his work…

Mac had just come out of the Odeon cinema in Notting Hill Gate. A Noël Coward comedy. He’d laughed and rocked until the tears poured down his face, the first time he’d laughed in ever so long. And he’d not cried since the camps. Good to forget your troubles, to have things touch you. He had stayed on to watch it all over again, hiding for a while in the toilets, dodging the beam of the usherette’s torch that swept like a searchlight across the rows of seats, happy to be lost in a world of make-believe. Anyway, it was warmer here than in his small flat. He was economizing, saving on coal, uncertain of what might lie ahead. He might laugh, but still he couldn’t trust. And he was beginning to feel the insidious dampness of an English autumn seeping into his bones, even though it was as warm as any summer’s day in the camp. He must be getting old.

When finally he left the cinema, he began walking up the hill in Ladbroke Grove towards the church that stood guard at the top. It was a clear night, bright moon, autumn breezes tugging the last of the leaves from the trees. Hard times to come. Barely a light to be seen, but for the moon that hung above St John’s, casting long shadows all around, stretching out, pursuing him, like his memories. He buried his hands in his thin overcoat, counting the few pennies of change in his pocket for comfort, and hurried on. He had a coat, and boots, money in his pocket, a bed to sleep on and coal in his scuttle, if he needed it. Why, he’d even treated himself to a chocolate ice at the cinema. A life of ease. But not at ease, never at ease. As he pushed on up the hill he found he was growing breathless – perhaps the unaccustomed laughter had been too much for him – and when he reached the purple-dark outlines of the church he sat down on the edge of a leaning gravestone to catch his wind. His breath was beginning to condense, like mists of ice powder that he remembered would settle round your beard and freeze your lips together, tearing the flesh if you tried to eat, if you had anything to eat. Then you could feel your eyeballs beginning to turn to frost so that they would not close, and your brain began to freeze so hard that you wondered if this was going to be the last moon you would ever see, but you knew that the ground was already too hard for them to bury you, so they would leave you under a thin scattering of rocks, for the foxes.

But this was England! Such things never happened here. The English wouldn’t allow it. Mr Chamberlain had promised. An Englishman’s promise. We could sleep soundly in our beds, burn our coal, enjoy our little luxuries of chocolate ice and cake, safe in the knowledge that we didn’t need to worry and that when we died of very old age they would bury us deep and the tears wouldn’t freeze even before they hit the ground. That’s how it would be, in England, at least. The Empire would insist on it.

He sat, desperately wanting the world to stand still, but even as he watched, the moon moved on. Dry leaves were caught by the gentle wind and scuttled in waves around his ankles, like the sound of sea breaking on shingle. As it had broken that day on the beach in Solovetsky.

Suddenly the tears were flowing again. He felt weak, and shamed by it, glad there was no one on the street to see him. But why did the opinion of others matter? His was a life alone, cut off from emotion, a life rebuilt only for himself – and why not, when there was no one else there for him? Not after little Moniek had gone. For half his time on this earth his only god had been survival. What happened in the rest of the world and to the rest of the world was for him a matter of complete inconsequence. Another man’s rations, his blanket, his work detail, sometimes even another man’s name, had on more than one occasion been the difference between death and tomorrow. It had all grown to be so simple, a world in which he would gladly exchange a man’s life for an hour of sunshine.

Yet now tears fell, uncontrollably. Tears for the life he had lost. And the lives that he knew would now be lost. The lives of those who had stared at him with those gaunt, awful eyes from the frames of the Pathé News film he had just seen, the fear in their faces made bright by the burning of the synagogues around them. He knew those faces, for he could see himself in every one. He wept, hoping the tears might douse the flames.

‘Another brandy, McCrieff.’ The proposal was placed with all the subtlety of a German ultimatum to a minor Middle-European enclave.

‘That’s most obliging of you. Just a wee one, if you insist, Sir Joseph. It’s been a splendid dinner.’

‘The first of many, we hope.’ Horace Wilson reappeared from behind the glow of his cigar.

‘That would indeed be pleasant. My club – the Caledonian – next time, if I may insist?’ An edge of uncertainty had slipped into the Scotsman’s voice – wouldn’t these great men find the Caledonian too gruesomely provincial for their tastes? He was uncertain of the tastes of fashionable Westminster; he felt the need to strengthen his hand. ‘Their kitchens may lack a little subtlety, of course, but the cellars are filled with some particularly fine single malts that I think might tempt you. Not that I’ve got anything against the French, you understand,’ he reassured them, draining his balloon, wishing alcohol hadn’t dulled his wits, ‘but I know where my loyalties lie.’

‘You fish, McCrieff?’

‘I could tie a fly before I could fasten my own shoelaces.’

‘Then I think we should arrange for you to join the Prime Minister and me when we next come up to the Dee. Probably at Easter. You could spare a day, could you?’

‘I’d be honoured, Sir Joseph, truly. But I’m aware that you’re all such busy men, I’d hate to think I might become a distraction.’

‘Ah, distractions, McCrieff, distractions. Life is so full of distractions. Wars, revolutions, scandal, strikes, floods – not to mention being forced to follow on behind the Australians. There are so many distractions in politics, so many things that are thrust upon you. Ah, but then there are the distractions you create.’

The Smoking Room of the Reform Club creaked with ancient red leather and history. It was a club created a century before for the singular purpose of celebrating emancipation. One Man, One Vote – or rather, one property, one vote, a twist of the rudder designed to steer a course between the distractions of revolution and repression that were bringing chaos to the rest of Europe.

‘But don’t you know, McCrieff, I’ve always regarded the greatest distraction in political life as being women. Don’t you agree, Horace?’

‘Women? Certainly. Did for Charles Stewart Parnell. Damn nearly did for Lloyd George, too. Should’ve done for him, if you ask my opinion.’

‘Might even do for this Government, if we let ’em.’

McCrieff’s brow puckered; he’d lost the thread. He readjusted his position in his armchair by the fire, sitting well back, listening to the leather creak, trying to convey to the others the illusion that he was entirely comfortable inside the maze of high politics. But women? Had Chamberlain got himself into difficulties on account of – no, ridiculous thought. Not Chamberlain, of all people. More likely the Archbishop than the Undertaker. Chamberlain just wasn’t the type. So where did women come into it?

‘Forgive me, gentlemen, but I’m not sure I entirely follow your –’

Ball cut him off ruthlessly. ‘What do you think of your local MP, McCrieff? The Duchess?’

McCrieff retreated from Ball’s stare and gazed into the fire. Their invitation had been so unexpected, so urgent in tone – was this what it was about? The Duchess of Atholl? And if so, which way did loyalty lean? Towards her? Or away? No matter how hard he stared he could find no answer in the fire, yet some edge in Ball’s tone told him that his answer mattered. He would have to tread with considerably more caution than he had dined. ‘As you are well aware, gentlemen, I am what I think it’s fair to describe as an influential member of the Kinross and West Perthshire constituency association. I also wish to become a Member of Parliament myself. I’m not sure it would be wise for me to go round criticizing those who I’d like to become my colleagues.’

‘You’d sit with Socialists?’

‘Of course not.’

‘But you’d sit with the Duchess? Support her causes?’

‘Well, she has a fair few of those, to be sure. Not all of them to my taste.’

‘Nor to the taste of others, McCrieff. Including the Prime Minister.’

‘Strange, so strange the causes she adopts,’ Wilson added. ‘Once heard her make a speech about female circumcision amongst the Kikuyu in Africa. Took up hours of parliamentary time on it, refused to give way. Quite extraordinary performance.’ He was shaking his head but not taking his eyes for a moment off McCrieff. ‘Not, of course, that as a civil servant I have any views on these matters, but personally and entirely privately …’

They were interrupted when a claret-coated club steward produced fresh drinks and fussed around the fire, stoking it back to life and propelling a curl of coal smoke into the room. McCrieff was glad of the opportunity to think. He was a laird, a Scottish farmer, not a fool. He had been invited to dine by two men who knew he had considerable influence in a constituency where the MP was one of the most troublesome members on the Government back benches. He’d guessed they wanted to talk about considerably more than fishing. He swirled the caramel liquor in his glass, where it formed a little whirlpool of alcohol. Suddenly it had all become mixed with intrigue. There was a danger he might get sucked down.

‘Yes, speaking personally, McCrieff,’ Ball picked up the conversation, ‘privately, just between the three of us – how do you feel about the Duchess?’

The revived firelight was reflecting from Ball’s circular spectacles. His eyes had become two blazing orbs, making it seem as though a soul-consuming fire were burning inside. This was a dangerous man.

‘Gentlemen,’ McCrieff began slowly, stepping out carefully as though walking barefoot through a field of broken glass, ‘one of you is the most powerful man in the party, the other the most significant man in Government next to the Prime Minister himself. And I am a man of some political ambition.’ He paused, holding in his hands both opportunity and extinction. Time to choose. ‘How would you like me to feel about the Duchess?’

The lights burned unusually late on the top floor of the Express building in Fleet Street. It was well past the dining hour. A group of five journalists, all men, mostly young, had already been closeted in the boardroom for three nights that week, and another night beckoned. The work was tiring and the banter with which they had begun had long since passed into a bleak determination to finish the job. They had been provided with all the tools – sheaves of writing paper, envelopes, twenty-seven separate lists of addresses. The lists had arrived by courier marked for the attention of the deputy editor, who had removed the covering letter and any trace of their origins.

They wrote. Some used typewriters, the others wrote by hand. A total of more than five hundred letters, many purportedly from ex-servicemen, intended for opinion-formers within the twenty-seven constituencies. As the week had passed, any sense of restraint had dimmed, their language had grown ever more colourful, the metaphors more alarming.

The Bolshies are regicides. Is that what you want? I would hazard the conjecture that the Germans, the most efficient fighting machine on this earth, would go through the rag-bag of Reds like a hot knife through butter. Take care you are not standing in the way when it happens!

It was the season for mud and muck, it was inevitable that some of it should spread out and stick. And so they toiled, disturbed by nothing more than the chiming of the clock, the drumming of typewriter keys, the scratching of nibs, the occasional flooding of a handkerchief – one of them had been dragged from his sick bed despite the protestations of his wife. Death and misery were much on his mind.

If you vote for the Duchess there will be war, and your sons will all be killed, like mine were in the last war, butchered by German steel. Can you bear that on your conscience?

There were alternative strategies in use. One of his colleagues preferred to inspire by adulation:

Mr Neville Chamberlain is a saint. He has saved us. There is war in China, in Abyssinia, in Spain. Hundreds of thousands have already died. If Britain goes to war, that will surely be our fate. Yet even though the Prime Minister is an elderly man he has thrown himself into his duties, flying three times to Germany though he had never before flown, hurled himself into the breach, unsparing of his time, uncaring of his health and safety. His one ambition has been PEACE. Peace for this time, peace for all time. He is surely amongst the great men of all time. That is why I will do anything to support him. I trust you will, too, by letting your MP know [underlined twice, in squiggly waves] of the strength of feeling of the ordinary people in this country.

He signed it Mrs Ada Boscombe.

It was ten minutes or more after the clock had marked nine when the doors of the lift opened. Two butlers emerged, dressed in tails and stiff wing collars, bearing substantial silver trays. On one was heaped a steaming tangle of brick-red lobsters, all claws and alarmed eyes, accompanied by a large dish of clear molten butter and surrounded by a plentiful garnish of sliced cucumber and tomato. The other tray bore three bottles of chilled Pol Roger champagne and five crystal glasses.

‘With the compliments of ‘is Lordship,’ the first butler informed them, placing his tray on the sideboard, producing knives, forks and linen napkins like a magician from deep pockets inside his jacket. ‘And ‘e says to make sure you bring the silver trays back.’

They had come, in unprecedented numbers. Every seat was occupied, every corner crowded. The Duchess had remarked on the numbers, and on the fact that many of the faces seemed unfamiliar to her, but her agent assured her that apart from a handful of journalists they were all paid-up members of the association. ‘The times are very political, Your Grace,’ he had explained. What he declined to tell her, and what she was never to know, was how many of those fresh faces had had their membership dues paid in the last few days by William McCrieff. As McCrieff had put it to him, many ordinary voters in the constituency had been galvanized by the events of recent weeks and he had persuaded them to join, urged on by great issues such as war and peace – and, the agent suspected, by an extra pound in their pockets for their trouble in attending a political meeting, not to mention the promise of free hospitality afterwards. Even if many of those gathered together had been members for no more than six days and some for no longer than six hours, there was nothing in the rules to prevent such a show of interest and enthusiasm. In any event it was bound to be a meeting of exceptional significance for it had been convened to decide whom they should choose as a candidate to fight the next election. And the agent, like so many members loyal to the causes of appeasement and a comfortable life, found the Duchess about as comfortable as an ice storm in August. She was always lecturing, hectoring. Not like McCrieff. His methods were different. A quiet word, a dram or two, and the business was done. A good party man, was McCrieff, unlike the Duchess. She not only had her own opinions – so many of them – but insisted on sharing them. A grave fault in a politician, the agent reckoned, perhaps a mortal one. Anyway, the chairman had just called the meeting to order; they were soon to find out.

They had been to see George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman at the Old Vic – a splendid performance, she’d thought, with Valerie Tudor and Anthony Quayle, but he found it a preposterous play, like most of the stuff the old man produced. All those Left-wing ideas tangled up in his bloody beard, which were then scraped off like yesterday’s lunch. He thought Quayle’s role as Tanner had been absurd, and played in the same manner – all this guff about woman being the pursuer and man the pursued. But Anna Maria had warmed to it, said it was splendid and up-to-date, seemed to enjoy wrapping herself in theatrical fantasy. So he indulged her, and for once bit his tongue.