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PARTISAN REVIEW
"As far as I can see, no therapy short of complete military defeat
has any chance of re-establishing the common stability of literature and
of the man in the street. One can imagine the greater the adversity the
greater the sudden realization of a stream of imaginative work, and the
greater the sudden katharsis of poetry, from the isolated interpretation of
war as calamity to the realization of the imaginative and actual tragedy
of Man. When we have access again to the literature of the war years in
France, Poland and Czechoslovakia, I am confident that that is what we
shall find." (From a letter to
Horizon.)
I pass over the money-sheltered ignorance capable of believing that
literary life is still going on in, for instance, Poland, and remark merely
that statements like this justify me in saying that our English pacifists are
tending towards active pro-Fascism. But I don't particularly object to
that. What I object to is the intellectual cowardice of people who are
objectively and to some extent emotionally pro-Fascist, but who don't
care to say so and take refuge behind the formula "I am just as anti–
Fascist as anyone, but-." The result of this is that so-called peace propa·
ganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propa·
ganda. Like war propaganda, it concentrates on putting forward a "case,"
obscuring the opponent's point of view and avoiding awkward questions.
The line normally followed is "Those who fight against Fascism go
Fascist themselves." In order to evade the quite obvious objections that
can be raised to this, the following propaganda-tricks are used:
1.
The Fascising processes occurring in Britain as a result of war
are systematically exaggerated.
2. The actual record of Fascism, especially its pre-war history, is
ignored or pooh-poohed as
1
'propaganda." Discussion of what the world
would actually be like if the Axis dominated it is evaded.
3. Those who want to struggle against Fascism are accused of being
wholehearted defenders of capitalist "democracy." The fact that the rich
everywhere tend to be pro-Fascist and the working class are nearly always
anti-Fascist is hushed-up.
4. It is tacitly pretended that the war is only between Britain and
Germany. Mention of Russia and China, and their fate if Fascism is per·
mitted to win, is avoided. (You won't find one word about Russia or
China in the three letters you sent to me.)
Now as to one or two points of fact which I must deal with if your
correspondents' letters are to be printed in full.
My
past and present.
Mr. Woodcock tries to discredit me by saying
that (a) I once served in the Indian Imperial Police, (b) I have written
articles for the
Adelphi
and was mixed up with the Trotskyists in Spain,
and (c) that I am at the BBC "conducting British propaganda to fox the
Indian masses." With regard to (a), it is quite true that I served five years
in the Indian Police. It is also true that I gave up that job, partly because
it didn't suit me but mainly because I would not any longer be a servant
of imperialism. I am against imperialism because I know something about
it from the inside. The whole history of this is to be found in my writings,
including a novel which
I'
think I can claim was a kind of prophecy of
