56
PARTISAN REVIEW
us by Hitler and the unrest he has caused. These perhaps are our leading
optimists, convinced that the destruction of Hitlerism will give us all the
answers to the problems which confronted us when Hitler was merely a
tub-thumper among twelve million or so unemployed in one of those
unfortunate foreign countries. Having exported our sins, we now see new
hope in the prospect of a final liquidation.
You will have the fragments of news, day by day as they happen, from
professional observers. My purpose is to provide a framework of refer–
ence, a general perspective. I must try to give you some broad indication
of our national situation. There is of course a widespread patriotism.
Widows are contributing their mites, and men are volunteering their
services. We are a people accustomed to war and we have our traditions.
I can give you an imposing picture of England united against the enemy
of civilization; I can also give you another picture of official muddles, of
complaints and grumbles and scandals. Both pictures are true of any
nation at war, and for that reason they have little exact value. Official
England-politicians, industrialists, 'big shots' of every kind-is undoubt–
edly united and firm. The common man is more cautious and less given
to high-falutin' sentiments. He certainly does not enjoy the prospect of
going to fight, he is puzzled about Russia and our refusal to act against
Russian aggression, and he is inclined to regard Poland as dead and
buried. The Poles have not captured popular sentiment in the role of
another 'gallant little Belgium'; our principal motivation is a hatred of
Hitler as the arch-unsettler of political tranquillity. Popularly we fight to
'destroy Hitlerism,' and nobody knows or seems to care what we propose
to do with Europe afterwards. Without passion, we drift into the war as a
fatality, a kind of Act of God, to which we see no alternative. There is no
popular anti-war movement; nor was there likely to be, because--as I
wrote last time--we have a 'Right' Government recruiting us with 'Left'
(i.e. anti,fascist) slogans.
All this is sharpened in our more articulate sections. The Socialists,
in a fine muddle of misguggled idealisms, regard Poland as an outraged
democracy, but feel that Russia has outwitted Hitler (without considering
that Stalin may intend to disrupt the
whole
of Western Europe). The
more alert 'Right' observers, who had hoped to push Hitler eastwards, do
not fail to see that Stalin has reversed the process; and they are accord–
ingly less enthusiastic about a war to destroy what had
been-faute de
mieux-a
buffer against Soviet penetration. Our leftist intellectuals are
drumming for a true and moral crusade on model lines, with the hope of
provoking a German revolution before we are compelled to surrender too
many of our domestic liberties. At a higher altitude, Federal Union and
the Peace Pledge Union aim to make peace negotiations immediately prac–
ticable on terms that would eliminate future wars. And finally I must
record a hope, uttered by a Cabinet Minister, for the restoration-oh,
shades of 1918!-of the Hohenzollerns. With that in view, it is perhaps
fortunate that we did not 'hang the Kaiser.' ..•
