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PARTISAN REVIEW
efforts, but they might play an important part at a time when a government
of the Petain type was contemplating surrender. There is some reason to
think that Hitler does not want Mosley's organisation to grow too strong.
Lord Haw-Haw, the most effective of the English-language German broad·
casters, has been identified with fair certainty as Joyce, a member of the
split-off Fascist party and a very bitter personal enemy of Mosley.
You ask also about the intellectual life of England, the various cur·
rents of thought in the literary world, etc. I think the dominating factors
are these:
(a) The complete destruction, owing to the Russo-German pact, of
the leftwing "anti-fascist" orthodoxy of the past five years.
(b) The fact that physically fit people under 35 are mostly in the
army, or expect soon to be so.
(c) The increase in book-consumption owing to the boredom of war,
together with the unwillingness of publishers to risk money on unknown
writers.
(d) The bombing (of which more presently-but I should say here
that it is less terrifying and more of a nuisance than you perhaps imagine).
The Russo-German pact not only brought the Stalinists and near·
Stalinists into the pro-Hitler position, but it also put an end to the game
of "I told you so" which the leftwing writers had been so profitably play·
ing for five years past. "Anti-fascism" as interpreted by the
News-Chron·
icle,
the
New Statesman
and the Left Book Club had depended on the
belief-! think it was also half-consciously a hope-that no British govern·
ment would ever stand up to Hitler. When the Chamberlain government
finally went to war it took the wind out of the leftwingers' sails by putting
into effect the policy which they themselves had been demanding. In the
few days before war was declared it was extremely amusing to watch the
behaviour of orthodox Popular Front-ers, who were exclaiming dolefully
"It's going to be another Munich," although in fact it had been obvious
for months past that war was inevitable. These people were in reality
hoping
for another Munich, which would allow them to continue with their
Cassandra role without having to face the facts of modern war. I was
recently in very severe trouble for saying in print that those who were
most "anti-Fascist" during the period 1935-9 were most defeatist now.
Nevertheless I believe that this is broadly true, and not only of the Stalin·
ists. It is a fact that as soon as war began all the fire went out of orthodox
"anti-Fascism." All the stuff about Fascist atrocities, denunciations of
Chamberlain, etc., which it had been completely impossible to get away
from in any highbrow magazine in peace-time, suddenly came to an end,
and far more fuss has been made among the leftwing intelligentsia about
the internment of G;)rman refugees than about anything done by the enemy.
During the Spanish civil war the leftwing intellectuals felt that this
Wll!
"their" war and that they were influencing events in it to some extent. In
so far as they expected the war against Germany to happen they imagined
that it would be a sort of enlarged version of the war in Spain, a leftwing
