LONDON LETTER
497
their way into the ranks.
It
has never been possible to get a big influx
from the Labour Party, however; the most willing recruits have always
been the people whose political ideal wouid be Churchill. The chief edu–
cative force within the movement has been the training school which was
started by Tom Wintringham, Hugh Slater and others, especially in the
first few months, before they were taken over by the War Office. Their
teaching was purely military, but with its insistence on guerilla methods
it
had revolutionary implications
wh~ch
were perfectly well grasped by
many of the men who listened to it. The Communist party from the first
forbade its members to join the Home Guard and conducted a vicious cam–
paign of libel against Wintringham and Co. During recent months the
military call-up has almost stripped the Home Guard of men between 20
and 40, but at the same time there has been an influx of working-class boys
of about 17. Most of them are quite unpolitical in outlook and when
asked their reason for joining say that they want to get some military
training against the time when they are called up, three years hence. This
reflects the fact that many English people can now hardly imagine a time
when there will be no war. There is also a fair number of foreigners in
the Home Guard. In the panic period last year they were rigidly excluded.
One of my own first jobs was to go round pacifying would-be members
who had been rejected because they were not of British extraction on both
sides. Oae man had been turned down because one of his parents was a
foreigner and had not been naturalised till 1902. Now these ideas have
been dropped and the London units contain Russians, Czechs, Poles,
Indians, Negroes and Americans ; no Germans or Italians, however. I will
not swear that the prevailing outlook in the Home Guard is more "left''
than it was a year ago. It reflects the general outlook of the country,
which for a year past has turned this way and that like a door on its
binges. But the political discussions that one hears in canteens and guard–
rooms are much more intelligent than they were, and the social shake-up
among men of all classes who have now been forced into close intimacy
for a considerable time has done a lot of good.
Up to a point one can foresee the future of the Home Guard. Even
should it become clear that no invasion is likely it will not be disbanded
before the end of the war, and probably not then. It wll play an important
part if there is any attempt at a Petain peace, or in any internal fighting
after the war. It already exerts a slight political influence on the regular
army, and would exert more under active service conditions. It first came
into being precisely because England is a conservative country where the
law-abidingness of ordinary people can be relied upon, but once in being
it introduces a political factor which has never existed here before. Some·
where near a million British working men now have rifles in their bed–
rooms and don't in the least wish to give them up. The
possibili~ies
con–
tained in that fact hardly need pointing out.
I see that I have written a lot more than I intended. I began this letter
