Comrade Haldane Is Too Busy to Go on Holiday

by Gavan Tredoux

  Communism involves both theory and practice. And one joins the Communist Party both on intellectual and emotional grounds. The intellectual conviction by itself would rarely lead to practice, and one would be left in the Limbo of chronic sympathizers. The emotion alone might lead one to anarchism, window-breaking, or drink. But emotions are the least objective of things, and a true account of them must necessarily be autobiographical.

  However to be autobiographical is not to be egotistic. To admit that one has emotions is not to own oneself their slave. I am no Augustine or Rousseau, and most of my emotional life is, so far as I can see, irrelevant to my politics, though a psychologist might think differently. Further I am well aware that in different people the drive towards Communism may come from profoundly different emotions. My own case is certainly not typical. It may be instructive.

  CHAPTER I.

  Autobiographical. Youth.

  I was born in 1892 in a house in North Oxford with a rental of £60 per year. My father was demonstrator in Physiology at Oxford University. Later he became a Gas Referee, with a salary of over £1000 per year, and finally inherited capital from several sources.

  I went to a very good day school at Oxford between the ages of 5 and 12. When 12 years old I won a scholarship at Eton. This college was originally founded by King Henry VI for poor scholars. My annual bills there were seldom much under £100 per year, while “oppidans”, that is to say non-scholars, cost 4 or 5 times as much. Our pious founder’s gifts to catholicism and the poor have been pinched by protestantism and the rich.

  From an intellectual point of view the education available at Eton in 1905-1911 was good. It was possible to escape being educated at all, and any oppidan who made the attempt to learn was liable to bullying which in some cases left him a nervous wreck for life.

  On the other hand a colleger could learn a good deal, and I did. When I left at 18 I could read Latin, Greek, French and German. I had won a mathematical scholarship at Oxford. I knew enough chemistry to take part in research work, enough biology to do unaided research, and I had a fair knowledge of history and contemporary politics. I knew about the Provisions of Oxford and the League of Schnalkalde. I knew the name of the Hungarian Prime Minister and the relations between the German Reichstag and Bundesrath. I have forgotten them all since. On the other hand I knew no economics. I had been forced to read parts of John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, and found them dull and unintelligible. And I knew practically no psychology or technology. Nevertheless I do not conceal my debt to T.C. Porter, M.D. Hill, and C.H.K. Marten,2 who taught me chemistry, biology, and history, respectively, nor to Hollway-Calthrop,3 the bursar, who treated me as a human being.

  From other points of view my education was not so good. There was a very great deal of homosexuality, occasionally reaching the point of sodomy. In College, and in some of the houses, a fair number of the liaisons between two boys did no great harm to the character of either. But where there was much disparity of age the younger boy was not always a free agent. The Eton Society, or “Pop” included the most distinguished and popular athletes. The shapely youths who were alleged to assuage the desires of this august body, often in return for presents, were known as “Pop bitches”. Some of them have since risen to positions of high distinction and trust.

  I did not participate in these activities, in fact my sexual life was confined to a very occasional kiss on the rare occasions during holidays when I was left alone with an attractive girl. It was a long time before I could associate with women as equals. I am convinced that the segregation of the sexes of the English ruling class at puberty has a bad effect on our whole social life.

  I was not brought up as a member of any religion, however I took part in the customary religious ritual of my school. On week days we had twenty minutes in chapel in the morning and ten of prayers in the evening. On Sundays the two chapel services occupied two hours. I developed a mild liking for the Anglican ritual and a complete immunity to religion. It is open to question whether boys should be so drastically immunized against what is, after all, one of the great motive powers in history. On the whole I think the answer is “yes”, but I am by no means certain. As a member of the guard of honour on such occasions as the funeral of Edward VII and the Coronation of George VI, I was also immunized against ceremonies of this type. But this is a personal immunity. As long as they go on, I have no objection to other people watching them. After all they pay for them.

  Our education as regards social duties was most interesting. It was assumed that we would be rich, and there was no suggestion that it was wrong to live on an unearned income. But a good member of the ruling class, we were told, would spend several evenings a week doing “social work” among the poor, for example organising boys’ clubs in the London slums.

  Exercise took the form of that contradiction in terms, compulsory games. It was however possible to take long solitary rows in a light skiff in summer, and on the whole athletics were less of a tyranny than in most English “public” schools. I was utterly bored by all games, and did extremely badly at them.

  I was a rebel against the normal modes of behaviour, and probably a nuisance, not, I think, from any set purpose, but because I simply was not interested in events such as house-matches, which aroused the keenest emotions in my contemporaries. At any rate the senior boys in College did not like me. On one occasion I was caned by them every night for a week, at least once on the soles of my feet. English people who believe that the tortures which occur in German concentration camps are impossible in England are apt to forget that such events are by no means unknown among the ruling class.

  The most valuable part of my normal education was carried out by my father in the holidays. He was occupied with physiological questions connected with mining and diving. I think I was four years old when he first took me underground. I was certainly very frightened. However by the time I was ten years old I was at home in a tin mine. At 12 I went down in a submarine and at 13 in a diving dress, which incidentally leaked badly. Somewhat later I went down a coalmine which had recently exploded. I have described the experience elsewhere.

  After going through it I did not find the Western Front in 1915 particularly alarming. I was also mildly vivisected from time to time.

  At 13 years I began to do calculations for my father, and at 17 I read my first paper to the Physiological Society. Ever since then I have been engaged in scientific research.

  At the age of 18 I went as a scholar to New College, Oxford, where I was much happier than at Eton. In my first year I nominally studied mathematics, but actually did part of the final honours course in zoology. In my second and third year I took the course in Literae Humaniones [sic], or “Greats”. This curious course, mainly concerned with ancient history and ancient philosophy, provided an opportunity for weighing evidence and writing essays. The subjects studied had little relation to modern life, so thought on them was free. The successful Greats Man, with his high capacity for abstraction, makes an excellent civil servant, prepared to report as unemotionally on the massacre of millions of African natives as on the constitution of the Channel Islands.

  I had the great privilege of writing essays which were criticized by Mr. H.W. B. Joseph. He did his best to teach me not to use a given word (e.g. “idea”, “feel”, or “good”) with two entirely different meanings in the same paragraph. This has often laid me open to the charge of pedantry. Pedantry, as I have remarked elsewhere, is the term which, in controversy, we apply to the accuracy of our opponents.

  At the same time, with A. D. Sprunt (killed in 1915) I discovered the first case of linkage in vertebrates, a phenomenon which enables maps to be made showing the positions of genes in chromosomes. During the first year of the war my sister (now Mrs. Naomi Mitchison) looked after the mice and obtained the results which conclusively proved our points. Twenty years later I discovered the first cases of linkage in man.

  I rowed in the college second boat, finding, rathe
r to my surprise, that voluntary sport was enjoyable. I took part in innumerable college societies, but was not profoundly interested in politics. I was a liberal with leanings further left. I was considerably influenced by my contemporary Herron (killed in 1915) who was a syndicalist. He had a clear mind, and a real passion for justice which would have taken him a long way. Beyond joining the University Liberal Club and taking part in debates I was inactive politically.

  But I was a member of the University Cooperative Society (this too died in the war) and even served behind its counter on occasion. My only serious political gesture was, I think, in May 1913. Oxford was then served by horse trams, which could readily be overtaken by a runner, but went definitely quicker than most people can walk. Neither the drivers nor the conductors earned so much as £1 per week. Wishing to remedy this state of affairs, they struck. Their places were taken by blacklegs. On the first three evenings of the strike trams were stopped and the horses taken out. The police made baton charges, and finally order was restored. I was unable to participate in these riots, I think because I was in training for a race. On the fourth evening the streets were quiet. I walked up and down Cornmarket Street chanting the Athanasian creed and the hymeneal psalm “Eructavit cor meum” in a loud but unmelodious voice. A large crowd collected. The police ineffectively pushed pious old ladies into the gutter. The trams failed to penetrate the crowd and their horses were detached and wandered off in an aimless manner.

  The strike was successful, and as the trams could no longer yield a profit, they were replaced by motor omnibuses, which were capable both of higher speed and higher wages. I was subsequently martyred by the proctor to the extent of two guineas. This was, I suppose, the first case for over three centuries when a man was punished in Oxford for publicly professing the principles of the Church of England.

  I was a member of the University Officers’ training corps, and in 1914, joined the signallers, intending to learn radiotelegraphy. But I did not get very far. On the night of June 1914, I was sleeping on the heather at Hartford Bridge Flats, near Camberley, when, about 1 a.m. an Austrian commercial traveller named Sobotka arrived on a motor bicycle attempting to interest us in various new radio devices, and also announcing the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and the probability of a war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. We had been highly educated. Some of us had vivid imaginations. But we had not envisaged the possibility that the Angel of Death should arrive on a motor cycle, announcing not only the death of many of us signallers, but the death of the culture into which we had been born.

  On August 4th, 1914, the announcement that I had been awarded a first class in Literae Humaniones [sic] was somewhat overshadowed by other events. I had intended to take a six weeks’ holiday walking on the continent of Europe. Since that date I have never taken a holiday of more than three weeks. On August 12th I received a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Black Watch. Given my opinions, I was right to join. I was not mistaken in fighting for the various causes which figured among the allied war aims. I was mistaken in thinking that these aims could be realised under capitalism. At the time of writing the various things for which we fought are being handed back to Germany on a plate. I went to France in January 1915. In February I became bombing officer to the 1st battalion of the Black Watch (42nd foot). I was a singularly inefficient platoon commander, because I could never remember the names of all the corporals, let alone all the privates, under my command. However I probably made up for this by my efficiency in patrolling between the lines at night.

  In March I became the first trench mortar officer of the 1st (Guards) brigade. April was one of the happiest months of my life. So long as any battalion of the brigade was in the line I remained within a mile of it, always in the sector between Neuve Chapelle and Festubert. I did not take my boots off for three weeks on end, and became fairly lousy. I believe that my battery of 13 small and very mobile muzzle-loading mortars was rather efficient. For example on one occasion a volley of eight bombs onto a suspected machine-gun position provoked a reply in which I counted over 100 shells.

  I lived a curious life with Lance-Sergeant Evans of the 1st Cold-stream Guards, and a dozen or so men. We had no particular discipline or regular hours, and sometimes I only got one meal in the day. We had a little workshop, where we put the fuzes into our bombs and did minor repairs. I am possibly the only man who ever made smoking compulsory in a bomb factory. In this case I did so on psychological grounds, as I thought it important that we should have absolute confidence in one another and in our weapons. We had no accidents and few casualties. From this truly enviable life I was suddenly recalled to Hazebrouck about May 1st, 1915. The Germans had attacked with chlorine north of Ypres. My father had been sent out to tackle the menace. I met him at Hazebrouck, and we started trying respirators of various kinds in a room in the college there in which chlorine was liberated. The concentration was not sufficient to cause fatal injury to the lungs in less than 2 minutes or so. But it made one cough very much sooner. About half a dozen of us went in, trying a different type of respirator; and another would take his place when he had inhaled enough gas to incapacitate him for a few hours, or in one case, for several days.

  By May 8th we had a crude respirator which was at least of a certain value against chlorine. I was sent, so far as I can remember, to report as gas officer to the first division. Had I done so, I should probably have come safely through the war (and my chest would have been covered with medals). However on the morning of May 9th the Division had moved its headquarters forward. The whole Division was concentrated in a small area within a mile or two of the front line. The great spring offensive had begun. On my way up I encountered Micky Scotland, our platoon bard, who composed, among other things, a rude song about the sergeant of another platoon, which we used to sing on the march, and of which the refrain was

  “Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh Harrison

  Put me in the guardroom if you can.”4

  Micky had been hit in one foot, and was dancing with joy on the other. He had married on the day before mobilization, and was thoroughly delighted at the prospect, which had sometimes seemed to him rather remote, of seeing his wife again. Harrison was killed an hour or so later, so he never put Micky in the guardroom.

  I discovered that the Black Watch was due to go over the top in the course of the afternoon. With more zeal than discretion I determined to join them, and if possible to command my old platoon. I began to run. But fortunately the moderate dose of chlorine which I had inhaled prevented me from expanding my lungs. The best that I could achieve was a moderate trot worthy of an old gentleman with chronic bronchitis. The bombardment began when I was well behind our reserve line. The enemy replied with a barrage of high explosive shells from his howitzers. The noise furnished (though I did not so verbalize it at the time) an excellent example of the transformation of quantity into quality. In the other battles in which I have taken part before or since, one heard the reports of individual guns, the bursts of individual shells, and their screams as they tore their way through the air.

  Imagine the loudest bang you have ever heard, say a clap of thunder from a house struck in your immediate neighbourhood. Now imagine this prolonged indefinitely, a solid bang without intermission. And behind this, like the drone of a bagpipes behind the individual notes, a sound as of devil-driven tramcars taking a sharp corner.

  Lesser bombardments had frightened me. This entirely novel sound intoxicated me. I ran forward through the monstrous black bursts of smoke and fountains of earth and bricks where the German shells were exploding . . . .

  I woke up, and began to scrape the earth off me. I noticed blood on my face and hands, and pains in various places. I realised that I had been hit. This struck me as funny, an automatic psychological defence reaction of considerable value. I ran on to a house and took stock. I was wounded in the right arm and left side, but my face was only scraped. I climbed up to the first floor and watched the battle through a looph
ole in a largely ruined and heavily sandbagged house. The enemy’s front line trench seemed to boil like a pot under our bombardment. It was hard to believe that any Germans were left alive in it.

  Then our barrage lifted and the Black Watch went forward. Sometimes a whole line would lie down suddenly. It was difficult to realize that they were not obeying some order, that in fact all of them had been wounded and most of them killed. I saw one man, and one only, turn back. As he neared our trench a shell burst very close to him, and he fell. So great has been the influence of the various religions on my mind, that I cannot help attributing what is probably an undue importance to a man’s last act. “Suffer us not, in our last hour, through any pains of death, to fall away from thee” I found myself quoting from the Anglican burial service.

  In spite of very heavy losses, a fraction, perhaps nearly half, of our men got into the enemy trench. I believed that I had witnessed a victory. But very few indeed of those who got across either returned or were captured. Half an hour later the shelling died down, and I walked along our reserve trench, full of Coldstreamers, to a road which I knew led back to casualty clearing stations. I was in a curious mental condition, and I seem to remember remarking to an uncomprehending guardsman “The real is the rational,” a saying of Hegel’s which appeared to me to be refuted by the existing circumstances.

  All the ambulances were full, and I walked back for two or three miles. At Le Touret I met the Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward VIII) in a high-powered car with a staff officer acting as his bear-leader. He offered me a lift to Army headquarters, where I gave a very misleading account of the battle. The unfortunate prince was, I believe, sufficiently intelligent to realise the hopeless anomaly of his position, and I think he honestly tried to get killed. But the authorities reserved him for a less honourable fate.

  Somehow I found myself in a hospital in Bethune. The wound in my side was trivial. A splinter had gone through my haversack, bumping me considerably, but only penetrating just under the skin, where it still is. The wound in my arm was deeper. It was probed and roughly disinfected with hydrogen peroxide, which was momentarily painful. Then I was put in a bed in a ward full of wounded officers, some in great pain, others delirious. An occasional shell-burst penetrated their groans, but I slept.