London Letter
Dear Editors:
London, England
Jan. 1, 1942
At this moment nothing is happening politically in England, and
since we probably have ahead of us a long exhausting war in which morale
will
be
all-important, I want to use most of this letter in discussing certain
currents of thought which are moving to and fro just under the surface.
Some of the tendencies I mention may seem to matter very little at present,
but they do I think tell one something about possible future developments.
1. Whom Are We Fighting Against?
This question, which obviously had to be answered sooner or later,
began to agitate the big public some time in 1941, following on Vansit–
tart's pamphlets and the starting of a German daily paper for the refugees
(Die Zeitung,
mildly Left, circulation about 60,000) . Vansittart's thesis
is
that the Germans are
all
wicked, and not merely the Nazis. I don't need
to tell you how gleefully the blimps have seized upon this as a way of
escaping from the notion that we are fighting against Fascism. But of late
the "only good German is a dead one" line has taken the rather sinister
form of a fresh drive against the refugees. The Austrian monarchists have
fallen foul of the German leftwingers, whom they accuse of being pan–
Germans in disguise, and this delights the blimps, who are always trying
to manreuvre their two enemies, Germany and Socialism, into the same
place. The point has now been reached where anyone who describes him–
self as "anti-Fascist" is suspected of being pro-German. But the question
is
much complicated by the fact that the blimps have a certain amount of
right on their side. Vansittart, badly though he writes, is an able man
with more backgl'ound than most of his opponents, and he has insisted on
two facts which the pinks have done their best to obscure. One is that
much of the Nazi philosophy is not new but is merely a continuation of
pan-Germanism, and the other is that Britain cannot have a European
policy without having an army. The pinks cannot admit that the German
masses are behind Hitler any more than the blimps can admit that their
class must be levered out of control if we are to win the war. The contro–
versy has raged for four months or more in the correspondence columns
of several papers, and one paper in particular is obviously keeping it
going as a way of baiting the refugees and the "reds" generally. No one,
however, airs any racial theories about Germany, which is a great advance
on the war propaganda of 1914-18.
Ordinary working people do not seem either to hate the Germans or
to
distinguish between Germans and Nazis. Here and there there was
violent anti-German feeling at the time of the bad air-raids, but it has
'Worn
off. The term "Hun" has not caught on with the working classes this
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