498
PARTISAN REVIEW
Socialism is almost certain to mean a drop in the standard of living
during the first few years, perhaps this is just as well. But of course
the changes in our food and clothes have no meaning unless there is a
structural change as well. For many of the same processes occurred
during the last war as are occurring now. Then too food was short and
money plentiful, agriculture revived, women in vast numbers moved into
industry, trade union membership swelled, government interference with
private life increased, and the class system was shaken up because of the
need for great numbers of officers. But there had been no real shift of
power and in 1919 we went back to "normal" with startling speed. I
cannot believe that the same thing will happen this time, but I cannot
say either that I see concrete evidence that it won't happen. At present
the only insurance against it seems to me to lie in what one might call
the mechanics of the situation. Old-style capitalism can't win the war,
and the events of the past three years suggest that we can't develop a
native version of Fascism. Therefore, now as two years ago, one can
predict the future in the form of an "either- or": either we introduce
Socialism, or · we lose the war. The strange, perhaps disquieting fact is
that it was as easy to make this prophecy in 1940 as it is now, and yet
the essential situation has barely altered. We have been two years on the
burning deck and somehow the magazine never explodes.
There are now many American soldiers in the streets. They wear
on their faces a look of settled discontent. I don't know how far this
may be the normal expression of the American countenance, as against
the English countenance, which is mild, vague and rather worried. In
the Home Guard we have orders to be punctilious about saluting the
officers, which I'm afraid I don't do and which they don't seem to expect.
I believe some of the provincial towns have been almost taken over by
the American troops. There is already a lot of jealousy, and sooner or
later something will have to be done about the differences in pay. An
American private gets five times as much as an English one, which has
its effect on the girls. Also, working-class girls probably find it rather
thrilling to hear the accent they are so used to in the movies emerging
from a living face. I don't think the foreign troops here can complain
about the way the women have treated them. The Poles have already
done their bit towards solving our birth-rate problem.
Yours ever
GEORGE ORWELL
London, England
August 29, 1942
