Still the band came on, lustily playing “Hearts of Oak”, and then the officer in charge of the mounted police made a grave mistake. Instead of falling back behind the strong reserve of foot police, which was now emerging from the region of the Admiralty Arch, he gave a sharp order, and drawing his long truncheon cantered forward with his men. They fell on the unfortunate bandsmen, who, hampered with their instruments, could put up no resistance and fell beneath the truncheon strokes as if pole-axed. Then the mass of the marchers behind lost their temper. They surged forward, grabbing at the truncheons and the feet of the mounted men, who became isolated and surrounded by the dense crowd. Two men disappeared from their horses, and at those points a hoarse and furious clamour arose above the general confusion, as the mob stamped and struck at something on the ground. The riderless horses reared and broke a way out through the crowd. One of them galloped round the square, skating and slipping on the smooth surface, and disappeared up St. Martin’s Lane, where the crowd was relatively thin and fell back quickly as the frightened animal came towards it. The rest of the mounted police gradually fought their way out through the furious crowd down into Whitehall, where they were received into the ranks of a large body of police on foot which had now assembled to bar the way.
The crowd had tasted blood and was not to be held back. The numbers of the marchers were swollen by onlookers who found themselves infected by the mob-spirit. I saw a man near me forcing his way through the spectators, his face suffused with fury. He was cursing incoherently at the “blue bastards”; “Let me through: I’ll get ’em!” he kept shouting. The bottleneck at the top of Whitehall became a confused mass of fighting men, but the police were in sufficient numbers this time, and had the advantage of organization. Their truncheons rose and fell mercilessly: one could hear from the steps of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields the sickening sound of the impact. But there was neither time nor room for quarter. At last the crowd began to give way, and those who had been bold to shout in the rear suddenly broke into hurried retreat as they saw the fighting zone approaching them. Similarly, as the leaders, engaged in fierce hand-to-hand fighting, noticed the pressure yield behind them, they felt that they were being abandoned and fell back in their turn to find supporters. The immediate battle was over, and I, who had been so far infected with the deadly spirit of the affair as to watch fascinated with my heart beating violently, now felt the chill of panic in the atmosphere and turned with those who stood beside me in hasty retreat. I had enough sense to leave the main streets for the by-ways running up to Covent Garden, and so escaped the headlong rout which swept up the Strand, with the mounted police, furious at the fate of their comrades, doing savage execution on the rearmost.
What I had seen was bad enough, but there was worse happening elsewhere in London. There was careful generalship behind the apparently disorderly outbreaks of the League, and the fight in Whitehall with its threat to the seat of Government was only a feint to distract the attention of the authorities. Simultaneously there were two savage outbursts against Jewry, one in Whitechapel and the other in Golders Green. In the East End armed gangs of roughs attacked the Jewish traders. Shop after shop was broken up and looted while their wretched owners were beaten, stripped naked and maltreated in various hideous ways. In Golders Green there was an organized assault on a social centre which had been started by Jewish philanthropists for the benefit of refugees during the war. After the place had been set on fire the affair developed into a manhunt, with scared old men and women as the quarry. My wife, who was out shopping in Hampstead, saw with bewilderment and horror a pasty-faced middle-aged Jew running full tilt down the main street with a hue and cry of Greyshirts tearing after him.
That same day Berlin, the hidden hand behind all this disorder, sent its first direct orders to Naker, and he obeyed. At midnight I was sitting by my wireless trying to collect European reactions to the doings of the day, when I suddenly heard Hamburg announcing an “important bulletin”. It was addressed to “the people of Greater Germany” and it was as follows:
“The British Government is meeting with certain difficulties in controlling Jewish-organized anarchy which has occurred in every part of the country, and it has appealed for help to the Führer and Chancellor, in accordance with the obligations assumed under Article VI of the Treaty of St. James’s. Adolf Hitler, whose mission, now as ever, is the maintenance of peace and good order, has decided therefore to dispatch a limited number of picked units of the Special Police to England to help in the work of restoring order to that country.”
I sat motionless as the unctuous voice of the German announcer repeated his tidings, and during those seconds there flooded in upon me a full realization of the fate that had come upon us. The Treaty had been a shock and a portent, but the imagination had shrunk from envisaging its consequences. The rioting and the Government crisis had strained our nerves and demanded our attention, but it had been a day-to-day anxiety and had left little time to look ahead. Now I saw that these things were but as the chill wind that blows before the tempest, which at last had burst upon us. I will not say that at that time I foresaw all the horror and humiliation which was to come, but for one moment of vision I felt like a man standing on a hilltop and watching the shadow of a cloud sweeping across the land towards him. The last light of liberty was blotted out, and before me I could see nothing but darkness and terror. So I sat, and then the firelight and the familiar room came back to me, and I went to tell my wife the news.
It is said that the first Germans arrived at dawn, by air. How many there were of them has never been disclosed. They were not unduly conspicuous; one never saw them cantering on horseback along the principal streets, or standing, hand on holster, in the neighbourhood of the great railway stations. Yet anyone who had business with the C.I.D. or was concerned with the organizing of public assemblies would be sure to observe them standing in the background, taking notes; and public figures, in politics or industry, were apt to be politely questioned by them. But the surprising thing was that, beginning almost with the day of their arrival, the rioting lost its force, became sporadic, and at last gave way to an unnatural calm. It would not be right to say that the Greyshirt movement collapsed, but it became respectable. It marched now, but did not fight. When it beat up Jews and Socialists it did so with nice selectiveness, and calculated method. The Lord Mayor of London reviewed it. It formed a guard of honour for Professor Döppelganger, the great German authority on Henry VI, Part I, when he visited Stratford on the Birthday. It became almost as respectable as the British Legion.
Where, then, was Patrick Rosse? Was his passionate struggle over? A few parades, a little organized and cold-blooded cruelty—were these the marks of a Britain reborn? It is sad to admit it, but Rosse’s doubts on these points were, for the time being, swiftly set at rest. Herr Meyer, joined now by a number of equally insistent Parteigenossen, firmly but gently took Rosse in hand. They waved cheque-books, and at the same time made suggestions. They took him to the Savoy, where many long dreams for the future might quiver in a golden haze of champagne—and many concessions might be granted for the immediate present. Rosse regained his self-respect in these surroundings, among the uniforms and pretty women; it was possible there to believe of Germany everything that Herr Meyer said; and political ideals, if they lost in precision, glowed splendidly in the distance. But the day of reckoning was coming, in his own heart, and Patrick Rosse knew it.
There were many other Meyers at work. On the day the German police arrived the B.B.C. lost its familiar voice, and gained a new one. The first news bulletin of the day consisted of a fulsome and rhetorical document extolling the new measure as an act of German friendship. There was no direct criticism of the British police—only a suggestion that they were at the moment overworked, and that the Germans were to act as temporary reinforcements—but citizens were urged to extend the hand of friendship towards the newcomers and to obey them implicitly. Thus, it was added, they would display the true spirit of or
der and discipline which was inherent in the British people but had been obscured by the “recent and unfortunate occurrences”. The whole document, which was read in a non-committal monotone by an obviously unregenerate announcer, resembled a “pi-jaw” delivered to an unruly set of children by a schoolmaster who knew his own weakness. I do not know who had compiled it, but it was the voice of all that was left of the British Government.
The newspapers also had come under an iron hand. Comment on the measure was conspicuously absent. My message of the previous evening to New Zealand had just escaped the news censorship, but when I arrived at the office of the cable company that afternoon I found it was in full force. There was no ineffectual Foreign Office clerk to deal with this time. I was ushered straight into the presence of a genial and competent-looking Dr. Schultz, late, I was told, of the German passport control. He spoke a fluent if Teutonic English and firmly took charge of my copy, regretting the necessity with the appropriate and entirely ersatz charm. Would I be so kind as to wait while he read it?
I sat in some apprehension, for I had not minced matters, foolishly hoping that I would be able to get one last uncontrolled message through to my paper. Presently he looked up: “It seems you do not like the Germans, Mr. Fenton?” he remarked with a bland smile. I told him that I had no personal animosity, and that my message was intended entirely as an objective commentary on the situation. “Quite so,” he replied, “but I am afraid that our friends in New Zealand might accidentally get a wrong impression from your words. If you please, you will keep your message to the facts, as the British Government has announced them. Perhaps you will revise it now? Here is a pencil.”
He handed me back my copy, and I spent some minutes in a dead silence cutting it. He examined what I had left closely. “Splendid,” he said, “and such a message is the better journalism, no?” I murmured something non-committal and turned to go. “One moment, if you please, Mr. Fenton,” he said. “In future we will have the names and addresses of correspondents. It is more convenient so. Where do you live, please?” With misgivings I told him. “Thank you very much,” were his parting words. “You will tell us if you change your home. I hope your English Mr. Billings, who is my opposite in Berlin, is received in a spirit so helpful. Good-bye, Mr. Fenton, and if you please more conservative messages in the future. Also be advised that journalists at present will send no private messages to their editors.”
Fleet Street was simmering with suppressed fury. Representatives of the German authorities were ensconced in all newspaper offices with full credentials and virtual control of the news. Editors were warned that attempts to evade the censorship would result in confiscation of an issue or even the suspension of a newspaper. Journalists are always the best rumour-mongers, and the mere fact of the censorship had charged the air with electricity. The wildest stories were flying about, and, when the known facts were so fantastic, it was not difficult to believe the wildest. One report, which no one seemed to doubt, left me with an unpleasant sensation at the pit of my stomach. It was to the effect that a large mental hospital in North London had been inspected by the Germans for possible future use as a place of “protective custody”.
Retribution had indeed been cruelly swift. The “new Europe” was Germany’s, not ours. Within a month of the fatal treaty the great British Empire lay inert and inoperative, from the City of London, whence all financial confidence had flown, to the most distant of the outposts. In the Colonies authority was shaken, and isolated British officials feared for their lives. India, outside the neighbourhood of garrison towns, was given over to communal violence, and the tribes swooped down unresisted from the North-West Frontier. The Union of South Africa, through a coup d’état, became a republic, and formed its own independent alliance with Germany. My own New Zealand, with Canada and Australia, remained formally linked, as monarchies owning a common King, but they began to look to America as their protector.
And in the heart of the Empire the canker was at work—high German officers at the War Office and the Admiralty, Nazi “experts” in all the industries, and certain of Himmler’s policemen (not at first, perhaps, very many) who installed themselves in all the key points, and pored long over the records in Scotland Yard.
Chapter Four
STRANGE NUPTIALS
IT was early in May that the German Embassy took over Bush House. “Bosche House” the Londoners called it; and stopped to stare every time they passed. No such portentous diplomatic establishment had been known before.
I don’t remember how many rooms there were in that great skyscraper, but every one of them was occupied by Nazis enjoying full diplomatic immunity. Armed S.S. men in the vestibule paced up and down in front of a huge indicator which gave directions for reaching the Ambassador’s Suite, the offices of the Military Mission, the Publicity Bureau, the Passport Control, the Sports Alliance headquarters, the Cultural Institute, and a number of other sections marked only by mysterious letters and figures. There was a constant stream of people going in and out; and Aldwych assumed as weighty and official an atmosphere as Whitehall. “Any more for the Seat of Government?” facetious bus conductors would sometimes ask at the stop at the bottom of Kingsway.
In the first week a giant housewarming party was given. It was no mere affair of the Diplomatic Circle; everyone of note in London life was invited. What is more, a large proportion went, explaining to their friends that they did so out of curiosity.
There was a nightmarish touch about the event. One’s taxi moved slowly along the Strand, which was decorated for the occasion with Venetian masts bearing Swastikas and Union Jacks. The enormous Embassy was floodlit, and one surged into it beneath a gilt statue of Hitler, the Colossus of the modern world. Inside one was hustled from room to room, where a system of loudspeakers relayed Wagner and guttural greetings from across the North Sea. And all the while one kept meeting one’s old English friends, and the familiar faces of the leaders of English life—faces known at Ascot, the Stock Exchange, and Church House, Westminster. People glanced at one another as contemporaries might be expected to do in the novel surroundings of the Day of Doom.
I found myself trapped in a corner with a broad-shouldered, keen-eyed Nazi Press official, a man named von Holtz, whom I knew and rather liked.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Mr. Fenton?” he asked. “It is splendid, is it not?”
I said I could understand that he thought it splendid, but added that I found it rather close.
“Come with me,” he said. “I badly want to talk to you. I can take you on to the roof.”
We escaped into a comparatively deserted corridor, and were soon climbing in the lift. Outside on the roof there was a pleasant breeze, just strong enough to give a slight motion to the folds of the huge Swastika flag. We leaned on the parapet, watching the lights of London and looking down the processional Strand to where Nelson stood on his column.
Von Holtz was the best kind of Nazi. It was an unpromising best, but he was not without ideals, reticences, and a dim respect for the world beyond Hitler’s. He was old enough, and fortunate enough, to have inherited some traditions from the vanished Germany.
To-night he was happy, and could not stop talking of the grand “marriage feast” below. To him it was the symbol of a wonderful new alliance, by which the technique and spirit of British imperialism were to be forged by German Kultur into a weapon which was to rule the world, down to the last native in his hovel. It was a grotesque idea, but it was one which those Englishmen who were prepared to compromise with evil were beginning to formulate for themselves, if in rather different terms.
So von Holtz wanted to know particularly about some of the people who were at the reception. “Of course, we have them all fully card-indexed,” he said, “but I would like to confirm some preliminary impressions.” He whipped out a neatly multigraphed list of acceptances, carefully classified under such heads as “Society”, “Universities”, “Art and Literature”. “Tell me,” he said, “is this
a good cross-section of the high officials of the Civil Service? And here, under Church, is it important that there is no representative of the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion?” It appeared that every hundredth man in Burke’s Landed Gentry not otherwise accounted for had been sent an invitation, and that but a small proportion of these people had come. (“Probably, they’re too poor,” I suggested, but he was not happy about the squires.) The pro-Nuremberg trade unions were fully represented, the economists had come in full force, and the City of London, von Holtz said, was “sound”. But why were there so few novelists and painters, and why, please, had both H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw, of whom so much had been expected, failed to turn up?
The list I found amusing, but it was a bore to take it too seriously. “Some people don’t like parties,” I said, and, though he thought this was frivolous, he reluctantly put his list away.
“At any rate,” he said, smiling but very earnest, “you will agree that, apart from the Führer’s coming visit, this is the most important event of the London Season? This, and the Nordic Games at Wembley.”
I laughed. “I had not thought of it that way,” I said, “I had not thought of a London Season. Why, there is no Court now, and many of the old rich and decorative people have gone abroad or are staying in the country. I don’t think we can talk about a Season this year.”
“Not, of course, in the old narrow sense,” he replied, “but why should not London become a brilliant centre of art and intellect, directed to the service of the people and the State? There will be the German season at Covent Garden, and all the other forms of cultural exchange. A new vitality, a new sense of purpose will be given to your intellectual activities, and in this regeneration the present leaders of your cultural and even your social life have an undoubted part to play.” Sublime in his racial conceit, he gazed over the twinkling West End. There was a note of wistfulness in his voice, and I rather wondered if he was looking for Mayfair and an invitation from a duchess. “London,” he cried, “why should she not become the Vienna of the West?”
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