LONDON LETTER
159
a real knowledge of England could put them right. But the various strains
of defeatist feeling are there, and at some time they may grow. In some
of what I have said above I may have seemed to mention people and fac·
tions too insignificant to be worth noticing, but in this bloodstained harle–
quinade in which we are living one never knows what obscure individual
or half-lunatic theory may not become important. I do seem to notice a
tendency in intellectuals, especially the younger ones, to come to terms
with Fasc'ism, and it is a thing to keep one's eye on. The quisling intellec–
tual is a phenomenon of the last two years. Previously we all used to
assume that Fascism was so self-evidently horrible that no thinking person
would have anything to do with it, and also that the Fascists always wiped
out the intelligentsia when they had the opportunity. Neither assumption
was true, as we can see from what happened in France. Both Vichy and
the Germans have found it quite easy to keep a facade of "French culture"
in
existence. Plenty of intellectuals were ready to go over, and the Ger–
mans were quite ready to make use of them, even when they were
"decadent." At this moment Drieu de Ia Rochelle is editing the
Nouvelle
Revue Francaise,
Pound is bellowing against the Jews on the Rome radio,
and Celine is a valued exhibit in Paris, or at least his books are. All of
these would come under the heading of kulturbolschewismus, but they are
also useful cards to play against the intelligentsia in Britain and the U.S.A.
If
the Germans got to England, similar things would happen, and I think
I could make out at least a preliminary list of the people who would
o over.
Not much news here. All is very quiet on the literary front. The
aper shortage seems to be favouring the appearance of very short books,
hich may be all to the good and may possibly bring back the "long-short
ory," a form which has never had a fair deal in England. I wrongly told
ou in an earlier letter that Dylan Thomas was in the army. He is physi–
lly unfit am} is doing jobs for the B.B.C. and the M.O.I. So is nearly
erybody that used to be a writer, and most of us rapidly going native.
The food situation is much as before. We had our puddings on
ristmas day, but they were a little paler than usual. The tobacco situa-
"on has righted itself, but matches are very short. They are watering the
r again, the third time since re-armament. The blackout is gradually
laxing in the absence of air-raids. There are still people sleeping in the
ube stations, but only a handful at each station. The basements of
emolished houses have been bricked up and turned into water tanks for
in case of fire. They look just like Roman baths and give the ruins an
ven more Pompeian look than they had before. The stopping of the air
aids has had some queer results. During the worst of the blitz they set in
d huge schemes for levelling waste pieces of ground to make play–
ounds, using bomb debris as a subsoil. All these have had to stop in
e middle, no more bomb debris being available.
All the best. Yours ever
GEORGE ORWELL
