Siren Years : A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937-1945 (9781551996783)

by Ritchie, Charles

  14 November 1939.

  When she appeared at the door of my flat I was taken aback to see how smart, how almost beautiful, she looked. In two minutes she had the valet and myself moving sofas and chairs and changing the look of the flat. Tonight the Irish maid said to me, “It is better this way – before it looked too much like a bachelor’s flat – a real bachelor’s flat I mean, sir.”

  29 December 1939.

  She and I went into the sitting-room and drew back the curtains and saw Arlington Street covered with snow and the beautiful sun in the sky. I ate toast and spoonfuls of honey and blissfully drank the unpleasant, cold coffee. Then we went out. She wore a fur cap that covered her ears and that checked blue coat I am not sure of and fur-lined boots that made her stumble. She clung to my arm. I was seized with irritation at this woman stumbling along beside me, clinging to me. Then when I looked into her bright, gay face, with her dark, witty eyes and her pink cheeks I felt proud, amused, happy, and loving. We went into St. James’s Park. The canal was frozen over – the sea-gulls were sitting perfectly immovable on the ice like birds made of white china. We walked all the way to the end of the canal and back. We passed a lot of Canadian soldiers who stared at her. “People are looking at me,” she said, “it must be my fur cap.”

  1 I was acting as liaison officer between Canada House and the Foreign Office.

  1 My mother was in England on one of her annual visits from Canada. While in London she took a flat in the same house in Tregunter Road in which I had a room.

  2 The Canadian Government was supplied with a selection of telegrams exchanged between the Foreign Office and British diplomatic posts abroad.

  1 The widow of Lord Oxford and Asquith, who had been Prime Minister 1908–16. She was a formidable personality in London political and social life.

  1 The country house in Sussex of the Earl of Bessborough. He had been Governor General of Canada from 1931 to 1935. Moyra was his daughter.

  2 Sir Samuel Hoare, who had been forced to resign as Foreign Secretary over the Hoare-Laval Pact in December 1935, had been brought back into the government the following June, and was now Home Secretary.

  1 Travel-writer and aesthete, author of several books including The Road to Oxiana, killed at sea during the war.

  1 The 5th Baron Redesdale, father of the six Mitford sisters, Nancy, Pamela, Diana (married Sir Oswald Mosley), Unity Valkyrie, Jessica, Deborah (Duchess of Devonshire).

  1 He was, in fact, killed in the war.

  1 Viscount Halifax had been British Foreign Secretary since Eden resigned in 1938. He became Ambassador to the United States in 1941 until 1946.

  1 J. R. Colville had been Assistant Private Secretary to Neville Chamberlain since the outbreak of war, and was to hold the same post under Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee when they were Prime Ministers.

  2 I was leaving my room in Tregunter Road and had taken a furnished flat in Arlington Street.

  1940

  13 February 1940.

  The man in the room next to Miriam at Claridge’s sleeps with his mother in the same bed. The maids do not like it.

  Dined with Victor Cazalet. His overbearing flouncings nonplus me. The party was for Lord and Lady Baldwin.1 He seems less gaga than I had expected and said in tones of evident sincerity, “The loneliness of living in the country is past belief.” There were a lot of Members of Parliament there. The more I talk to M.P.s the more the House of Commons sounds like a private school in which everyone has his rating. “So-and-so is a swat,” another “a good sort,” another “a teacher’s pet.”

  13 March 1940.

  Mr. Massey wanted me to include in my dispatch something to contradict the illusion that England is a class-ridden society. Why illusion? He says that the majority of Civil Servants did not go to the public schools. This may be true of the obscurer clerks, and is obviously not true of the men at the top. Lunched with John Tweedsmuir.2 He does not agree that England will be much changed after the war. “People who hunt six days a week will only hunt four days and when things pick up again they will hunt six days a week again.”

  Everyone is stunned by the Finnish surrender. The Foreign Office only a week ago had no idea of Finland suing for peace with German connivance. The Foreign Office has had more disagreeable surprises in the last twelve months than ever before in its history. The dictatorship countries move suddenly, boldly, and secretly. We carry on our fumblings in an irritating half-light of partial censorship.

  17 March 1940.

  She has gone. There is nothing to show that she has been here except the toothbrush glass of faded violets and some talcum powder on top of the dressing-table – that and my own feeling that other people do not exist, have no solidity or meaning, that they are figures cut out of illustrated papers, photographs of people. I am alone in the flat. I wonder whether I could sit through a dinner at the club. No – I do not think so. The sight of those pink-faced, silver-haired, old boys and those well-kept young men drinking their claret and eating their jugged hare would be too much. The whole settled order of daylight comfort and daytime wisdom has become insufferable. I am beyond any consolation to be derived from the cosiest and most sympathetic friend. My heart hurts – I should like to have it removed and taken away on a silver salver.

  3 April 1940.

  The housekeeper in these flats is like the enchanted woman in the fairy tale. Every time she opens her mouth toads drop out. As she does not seem to dislike me particularly I think this must be simply “her way.” Today she came in to arrange my chestnut branches in a vase. “Very pretty they are, but it was naughty of you to pick them. Why it is a whole branch taken off.” “Well Mrs. Haines,” I said, “I need them to brighten up my life.” “You need brightening up,” she cried with a raucous laugh. Whether she meant that I was a particularly dull dog or whether this was a sarcastic reference to my life of immorality I cannot quite make out. To any complaint she always has an answer ready. A lifetime of dealing with complaining lodgers has taught her the technique of always keeping on the offensive. For instance, one day I said that my room was rather stuffy. “It is because you keep the electric fire on. It is not ’ealthy.” The price of the fire is included in the rent so that every time I burn it they lose money. I gained this arrangement after long-drawn-out fencing with Mrs. Haines. The other flat dwellers pay for electricity by the hour.

  4 April 1940.

  Dined with Jock Colville who is in the Prime Minister’s Office. He sees everything that is going on in home and international affairs, but tells one nothing, and the questions that one is too much of a gentleman to ask hang heavily over the conversation.

  8 April 1940.

  Went to the House of Commons to the last day of the great debate on the conduct of the war. There they sat on the front bench – the three of them – Chamberlain, Simon,1 and Hoare, the old-fashioned, solid, upper-middle-class Englishmen, methodical, respectable, immovable men who cannot be hurried or bullied, shrewd in short-term bargaining or political manipulation, but with no understanding of this age – of its despair, its violence, and its gropings, blinkered in solid comfort, shut off from poverty and risk. Their confidence comes from their certainties. They are the old England. When Chamberlain goes, that goes and it will not return.

  Lloyd George attacked the Prime Minister – that old poseur, that mischievous mixture of statesman and minor prophet and tricky Welsh politician. But what an orator! His speech made me think of King Lear’s ranting – shot through with gleams of vision. He and Churchill are the only orators in the House. As for Chamberlain, he has authority when he speaks and a sense of the weight of words and an admirable precision. He has at least a standard of speaking.

  13 May 1940.

  The war has begun all over again in these last few days with the invasion of Holland and Belgium. Events have the same air of unreality that we experienced in the first week in September after the declaration of war. One has the dazed feeling of being dragged in the wake of a runaway
destiny. On we go bumping along at a terrific rate with the dust of passing events in our eyes. We are trying to clutch at some meaning in the landscape that rushes past us but it is no good. We are too close to what is happening. This closeness to history puts everything out of focus.

  War itself is not unnatural, only the modern weapons of war are unnatural. The weapons dominate us. The pilot is the tool of his plane, the gunner of his gun. That is what makes modern war a new predicament. We are caught in the same trap as the Germans, and we are closer to them than to any neutrals and having got into this mess we long to drag in everyone else. The Germans know the same joys and sorrows that we do. They are the mad dogs who have bitten us and infected us with their madness.

  15 May 1940.

  They tell us that the greatest battle in history is beginning. London is sultry with the rumour of it. The possibility of defeat appears in whispers and averted glances.

  18 May 1940.

  I cannot believe that the French are as demoralized as I hear they are. If they have gone to pieces, we have not been beaten yet, and we will have to go on fighting. We know the history of conquered races, the eternal resentment and the eventual revolt. Better to let this generation go through hell and beat the buggers.

  22 May 1940.

  Last night I wrote a speech for Mr. Massey to deliver to Canada on the general theme of “the darkest hour before the dawn,” “British spirit is unbreakable,” “the nightmare of horror and destruction that hangs heavy in the air in these lovely days of English spring.” Mr. Massey delivered it. It was a great success, I believe. Writing these speeches gives me an outlet for my feelings. Hume Wrong says I shall develop into a jelly-bellied flag flapper. Before the war I used to say that I could not understand how any man of conscience could write propaganda, and in my mind I was always critical of my father for the recruiting speeches he made in the first war and he, unlike me, was trying to go to the war himself.

  Bad reports on French morale, which is said to be undermined by subterranean communism and fifth column activities. Poor old Franckenstein, the Austrian Ambassador, came to see me today. He wants now to get out to Canada. He is usually so suave and mannered but today he looked shattered. He is partly Jewish and he knows that if the Germans come he will be shot at once. N. says, “Well, he has had a pretty good time all his life. Now he is old – why shouldn’t he be knocked on the head? Look at all the chaps who are being killed in France.”

  A Canadian RAF pilot came back on leave. He seemed a dull young man, but he and the rest of them are our only hope. All I could do was try to talk to him normally, as he must find it awkward to be treated with the reverence he deserves.

  19 May 1940.

  When Haines, the valet who works in all these service flats, came to see me this morning he was in a state of high excitement. “The news this morning is awful. We have got the men and the spirit, but we have not got the planes. Somebody is responsible for this.”

  Michal Vyvyan said today at lunch, “How absurd to blame a liberal social democracy for not being organized to deal with war. It is like blaming a fine flower garden for not moving at sixty miles per hour.”

  Meanwhile two French journalists who attended a lunch in Lord Athlone’s1 honour the other day returned in a state bordering on nervous hysteria. They found all the Blimps at the luncheon discussing sports for the British troops behind the lines. “Men must have some rugger and cricket. Keep them fit,” etc.

  Refugees are beginning to arrive from the Continent – tough-looking Norwegian seamen with shocks of coarse blond hair, dressed in blue serge suits, lunching at Garland’s Hotel – Dutch peasant girls in native costume like coloured photographs in the Geographical Magazine – walking down Cockspur Street carrying their worldly possessions tied up in bundles. A group of Dutch soldiers in the street in German-looking uniforms gives one a turn. (Shall we see German soldiers in London streets?)

  My brother Roley1 has cabled asking me to do my best to get him a commission in the British Army to get him over here quicker than he could with the Canadians. Why should he be hurled into that hell in France? Why can’t he wait until his turn comes to come over with the Canadians? It is not his England. It would be more appropriate if I went, as I have always been so bloody English.

  I cannot get out of my mind my cousin Jack Grant’s face when I saw him the other day. He came over from Canada to join the RAF and has been with them in France since October and now in the Battle of Britain. Earlier he was beginning to have a good-natured, gross look. Now he is pale with fatigue and thin. His eyes look blazing blue and he has two clearly-defined and quite new lines at the corners of his mouth.

  This office is being invaded by women of the aristocracy wanting to send their children overseas. Lady S. who came in today is typical of the old-fashioned kind. She was most anxious not to do anything which might divert English currency from this country. But they are all looking to Canada now. We are to provide them with men and ammunition, take their children, intern their fifth column, etc.

  29 May 1940.

  I could hear the guns plainly tonight as I sat writing in the club library – I suppose at the mouth of the Thames. Natalie Hogg says that last weekend she sat in the garden at her place in Kent and could hear the gunfire from France all afternoon long.

  The Canadians here are becoming disillusioned about the English. Mike Pearson says, “Never have I been so glad to be a Canadian as in these last days – at least we are not responsible for this mess.” Patterson of the CPR says, “If I ever have to go through another war let it not be with the English – their slowness drives me mad.” Even the loyal Mr. Massey (more in sorrow than in anger) admits the flaws. But so do the English themselves. Lord Davies1 said today, “Things must go better now – after all we have made every bloody mistake that can be made so that we shall be reduced to doing something right in the end.” What makes one fear for the result of this war is not merely Nazi military success but the fact that they have faith in their rulers and we have not – or should not have. Yet we may win in the end because inertia rolling at last into action will be heavy with reserves of strength and wealth, whereas the German will keyed to this tremendous tempo must crack unless it has respite. Perhaps it is nearer cracking than we dream of. To me it is a sheer impossibility that Nazi power, if it triumphed in this war, could live for more than fifteen years. Because it cannot rest. It has no principle of growth in it and so must always be moving on until it meets an immovable object against which it is dashed to pieces. May the British Empire be that immovable object.

  2 June 1940.

  Went with Mike Pearson to Dover. There we really had the feeling of being in an extension of the actual war zone. Destroyers were coming in and out of the harbour, going to Dunkirk to embark the remains of the British Expeditionary Force and the French Army of the North.2 As we walked along the pier we saw one of the destroyers returning, its stern had been blown clean off by a bomb. It was limping home with flags still flying. We went alongside two more destroyers, one English and one French. They began landing French soldiers who were herded into a troop train by a thin young officer in riding breeches. Looking down on the decks of the British destroyer we could see a bearded sailor lying asleep beside his gun. On the French destroyer the sailors were clustered in a chattering group – one was showing the others a postcard of a nude woman and they were gossiping and laughing. Soon a tug drew up alongside and began to debouch German prisoners. They were pallid and grimy and looked as if they had been kept underground for a year, the result I suppose of being packed together under the hatches while they were being bombed by their own people from the air. They came shambling out on to the deck in the sunshine and began running up the companion-way as if they had the devil behind them. There they formed into a file waiting to be taken away in buses. I remember the German prisoners-of-war at Calais, when I was a boy after the last war, carrying slop-pails around the British camps. They had shaven heads. These men had long hair w
hich fell over their eyes as they stumbled along the gangplank. Some were aviators, and these had an air of arrogance. The privates ran and huddled like sheep. Prisoners without their guns and helmets have the look of having suffered an amputation, as if they were deprived of a vital limb or had been castrated. Then came the German wounded. They were swung from the decks of the ship by a crane. None of them moved or cried out but lay in waxen immobility as if they were already dead. While the procession of prisoners and wounded moved by, the Tommies who were guarding the pier remained silent. Anyone who spoke spoke in lowered tones. Out in the harbour a mist hung over the smooth sea and dozens of craft lay there at anchor after coming and going to Dunkirk time after time. About the cliffs the eternal gulls circled. Two little girls were shrilly calling to each other from their bicycles as they rode in and out of the small gardens in front of a row of houses at the foot of the great bluff of cliff behind the docks. These docks, and in fact the whole of Dover, are now within range of German shell-fire from Boulogne. But the life of the town is going on just the same. We could see the groups of old ladies coming out of church after eleven o’clock service and standing for a minute to chat in the sun. In the field of buttercups outside the town some little boys were rolling about wrestling – they each wore their little cardboard gas-mask case.

  From Dover they can see Boulogne at night burning across the Channel and hear the bombs as they fall. Why the Germans do not bomb the small inner harbour at Dover, so crowded with shipping, one cannot guess. The naval officer who took us around, a lean individual with a sardonic, leathery face, indicated the cliffs of Dover with a wave of the hand, “They may come over here,” he said, “but if they do, not one will get out alive.”