Vol. 9 No. 4 1942 - page 276

276
PARTISAN REVIEW
stand but which must have the object of bringing himself into power. I
wouldn't give Churchill many more months of power, but whether he will
be replaced by Cripps, Beaverbrook or somebody like Sir John Anderson
is still uncertain.
The reason why nearly everyone who was anti-Nazi supported
Churchill from the collapse of France onwards was that there was nobody
else--i.e., nobody who was already well enough known to be able to step
into power and who at the same time could be trusted not to surrender. It
is idle to say that in 1940 we ought to have set up a Socialist government;
the mass basis for such a thing probably existed, but not the leadership.
The Labour party had no guts, the pinks were defeatist, the Communists
effectively pro-Nazi, and in any case there did not exist on the Left one
single man of really nation-wide reputation. In the months that followed
what was wanted was chiefly obstinacy, of which Churchill had plenty.
Now, however, the situation has·altered. The strategic situation is probably
far better than it was in 1940, but the mass of the people don't think so,
they are disgusted by defeats some of which they realise were unnecessary,
and they have been gradually disillusioned by perceiving that in spite of
Churchill's speeches the old gang stays in power and nothing really alters.
For the first time since Churchill came to power the government has begun
losing by-elections. Of the five most recent it has lost three, and in the
two which it didn't lose one opposition candidate was anti-war (I.L.P.)
and the other was regarded as a defeatist. In all these elections the polls
were extremely low, in one case reaching the depth-record of 24 per cent
of the electorate. (Most wartime polls have been low, but one has to write
off something for the considerable shift of population. ) There is a most
obvious loss of the faith in the old parties, and there is a new factor in the
presence of Cripps, who enjoys at any rate for the moment a considerable
personal reputation. Just at .the moment when things were going very
badly he came back from Russia in a blaze of undeserved glory. People
had by this time forgotten the circumstances in which the .Russo-German
war broke out and credited Cripps with having "got Russia in on our
side." He was, however, cashing in on his earlier political history and on
having never sold out his political opinions. There is good reason to
think that at that moment, with no party machine under his control, he
did not realise how commanding his personal position was. Had he ap·
pealed directly to the public, through the channels open to him, he could
probably then and there have forced a more radical policy on the govern·
ment, particularly in the direction of a generous settlement with India.
Instead he made the mistake of emering the government and the almost
equally bad one of going to India with an offer which was certain to
be
turned down. I can't put in print the little I know about the inner history
of the Cripps-Nehru negotiations, and in any case the story is too complex
to be written about in a letter of this length. The important thing is to
what extent this failure has discredited Cripps. The people most interested
in ditching the negotiations were the pro-Japanese faction in the Indian
Congress party, and the British rightwing Tories. Halifax's speech made
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