Joey Jacobson's War

by Peter J. Usher

  Americans imagine they are doing great deeds in this war. They have no front line men with but a few individual exceptions and their behind the lines workers – factories etc are so much bull – yes I repeat – but a drop in the bucket.

  For my money the US has gone down so many pegs that it is not even funny – talk yes – action – no and their stock is dropping everywhere in the world. The Americans that fought and died for ideals – that toiled and laboured to overcome difficulties is a long way away. Let the world burn we will make hay boys and they still imagine that they are the arsenals of democracy – we want men with guts the kind that are gathered here – not talkers and bullshooters or dodgers or cowards – they have all those kind everywhere – but every country in the world including Germany has shown some men that at least are not afraid to die – wake up America or be blown up. (JJL 1 November 1941)

  A week later he wrote home:

  The past month has been really tremendous for me. Firstly because I flew more often and on more first class jobs than I did during August and September. But despite my flying duties I did something else which is still more important and which indirectly is the real reason for my flying – I started prying into some fundamental problems which beset our society.

  I felt that I had a pretty good idea of how and why the world runs or doesn’t run from the top-side – which was my side – based on what I saw, learnt, and heard from college, camp, wealthy and influen[tial] friends as well as nobodies and working people.

  Having a pal who is a socialist or shall we now use the previously improper word “communist” we did considerable talking and arguing. The trouble was that we both had identical views on most subjects. The only hitch was I did not have any solution – he did – that was not good enough for me – I started reading. First I read “Let My People Go” as I told you – Now I am on “The Socialist Sixth of the World” by the Dean of Canterbury. The effects of those books are rather startling or what might be considered startling. I consider it natural. For they have set me going and trying to get a complete picture of why things are as they are and what changes are desirable and practical as well as possible. It’s a stupendous task and requires time, study and work – the only real time I get is when Dave and Roger go on leave.

  Now the reason I write about this is as follows. I cannot possibly write down the thoughts, views and ideas that I have in letters. I can though tell you some of the things I do and let you draw your own conclusions. In order to keep pace with my development I drop you a little personal “letter” more in the nature of a bombshell – labeled “I am changing” – watch out.

  I don’t mean changing fundamentally or even superficially. But when you start delving into social problems with an open mind, some practical experience, reasonable intelligence, and plenty of guts – a change is bound to occur – both ways – so I start wading thru the Bible and Lenin and Marx and that gang as well as the Toronto Sat Nite, New York Tribune, London Times, etc. as well as by continuing to pay close attention to all whom I meet, I might come out of the mad jumble with some fairly sound ideas and understanding of what can be done in general to set things right and what I in particular am qualified and able to do in particular.

  But I have not changed into a flaming red hot fanatic or idealist – nor a discouraged cynic. I change yes but you have to change or sink and get moldy. I get the same kick out of going into this as I do out of anything else – but it is only fair for me to let you know what is going on in my bean so that when I come home – rush down to the office – tell Hayman that the profit system is morally and scientifically cockeyed and to make Miss Paton etc. full partners at once or be strung on the nearest desk – you will not say “My God – the boy [has] gone bugs.” Rather you either say “get the hell out until you get some brains” or perhaps “well maybe this guy knows what he is talking about – let’s hear what he has to say.”

  Anyway I am not marking time anymore which was what was worrying me at the time I started writing you. I still don’t know where I am going but I realize what I have to have to go anywhere at all. Our letters have more or less transcended the immediate jobs at hand as we more or less took stock to see what assets were on hand and how far they would go – at present I am trying to accumulate some valuable stock – “knowledge”. … (JJL 6 November 1941)

  While on leave in London, Joe recorded that he “went into a seemingly conservative bookshop asked for a book on Lenin and got a ½ hour lecture on communism from the red hot kid who ran the joint.” He expanded on the incident to his family:

  I was in the booksellers area yesterday whilst buying some theatre tickets. I wanted … Paine’s “Rights of Man” and perhaps dig up something by Marx or Engels and see what they had to say. The books in the window were all innocuous looking affairs – so I asked the owner – an accented lad of twenty-one if he perhaps had something in connection with Russia – that’s the last word I spoke – his eyes lit up – into the shop he sailed and within five minutes he had enough communistic literature before me to keep me reading day and night for a life time. Not only that – half of the stuff was banned as treasonable stuff about six months ago – Russia’s entry into the war sure boomed these babies trade – but I didn’t just run into a left wing bookshop – this guy told me that he was so radical that the Communist Party in Britain wanted to kick him out for being a radical sort of Red – … if you can picture anything like that – I was starting to have a bit of fun with him but like most socially minded party men he started handing down his stump speeches – in a loud voice for all in the neighbourhood to hear. Needless to say I beat a hasty retreat after giving him a thorough going over for not being in the army – of course he was practically blind in both eyes but I figured that we could do with a little more action and a lot less talking for the present. (JJL 13 November 1941)

  He went on to assert that

  The whirlwind days of the early part of the war seem almost over – the need for “escape and entertainment” is temporarily past. The people have had a respite and have been able to get their bearings – the war has been pretty accurately figured out by most people – they now know exactly where they stand – what they have been able to do – what they still have to do.

  There is absolutely no diversion of opinion where they stand, what and why they are fighting for. Every Englishman knows only too well from actual experience or at least from actual facts what they are fighting. Then everyone knows where they stand – they stood up to the Germans, they took the Jerries’ measure – they found they were wanting only in equipment and they know they have the resources to supply their needs – So good common sense has resulted in most people kicking up a stink about the quality of their leaders – they have more than enough resources to defeat the Germans that is with the U.S. and Russia on our side – well says the old hard-headed coal digger – we got the coal, you got me to dig it – why am not I digging it – I don’t know whether or not they have been suppressing in your papers the criticism that has been going on over here – if they have they should not because it is not a sign of weakness but of extraordinary strength – the people want to give their all – they are only able to give their three-quarters – they want to know why and are trying to find out who is slipping up so they can give their all – It is as simple as that – I have never yet heard anybody ever even mention the word “defeat” – Few mention the end of the war – But when anybody consciously or unconsciously – in the services or out of the services thinks or talks about their position or hopes or chances after the war – it is always assuming England to be the victor – that is a crucial point upon which we have it over the Germans – a calm, quiet, tenacious confidence and faith that have, shall and always will win the war.

  But all that does not enable us to sit back and merely let things unfold – that is a tendency that always has to be checked especially in the English. Nor does it mean that the best men for the purpose are running the show and making t
he most of what they have – which is what they have to do to win – I think that if about three-quarters of the higher ups in every conceivable branch were taken for a nice quiet ride – whilst their places were taken by alert, bright hard-hitting young Canucks, or Aussies etc. – things would really happen for the good – and seeing that anything for the good means saving the lives of young fellows don’t let yourself get soft about making the ride a first class one. Of course this sounds seditious and radical but it is plain horse sense – Canada is probably doing more in this war in proportion to her population than England – But Canada just ain’t got no say about what should be done – if about 2/3 of the RAF are Dominion men – it’s about time a few young Canucks and Aussies and New Zealanders etc. got right up on top in the Air Ministry and started running the show – Mr. Censor I am just a hefty young Canuck that thinks Canadians possess a lot of qualities that died in Britain with the Battle of Trafalgar – nothing like putting the Mother Country on her mettle and the so-called “colonies” are the ones to do it. (JJL 13 November 1941)

  Flying was frequently cancelled in November due to rain. 106 Squadron conducted only one small raid during the rest of the month. Joe had plenty of time on his hands to indulge his reading program, and for combing newspaper reports on industrial and military production in the United States for whatever salvation this might provide to Britain’s war effort. After the intensity of his previous week’s leave, Joe looked inward.

  Reading political economy can see where I missed the boat at school & wasted my time – never really got the main point – have plenty of work ahead to get to the fundamentals of present evils …

  (JJD 19 November 1941)

  Starting to realize … how much studying I have to do to make up for what I didn’t do if I want to fit myself for any useful task after the war – my war or athletic record will not be of any use if I do not have the ability & knowledge to go with it – neither will my personality without character & knowledge. (JJD 20 November 1941)

  Spent the evening quietly reading – the tide has started to turn as I can stop home, read, think & take notes & start to learn again – of course my thinking now is more honest & thorough which makes me realize how thoroughly I wasted my time at school – it goes further than that – 90% waste their time at school – partly due to the poor teaching curriculum & attitude & understanding of education. (JJD 21 November 1941)

  Three weeks earlier, after his reunion with Monty, he had begun to fill a notebook with reflections on his reading material. He started with Let My People Go by Cedric Belfrage, and proceeded the next week to The Socialist Sixth of the World by Hewlett Johnson. Two weeks later he began to read Stephen Swingler’s Outline of Political Thought since the French Revolution. The first was a “mighty book” in Joe’s view, and while the other two informed him, Let My People Go inspired him. Each was published by the Left Book Club in its familiar red hardcover edition, the authors being either socialists or communists (although Joe ended his November reading with The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam).

  Let My People Go was a political tract in the form of a novel. Its protagonists, one a rural preacher, the other a Marxist organizer, came to unite in the fight against poverty, racism, and the oppression of labour in the coal-mining towns of rural Kentucky. Their struggle unfolds as a debate between the Christian social gospel and communism, but the idiom of the debate is particularly American – progressive and populist rather than strictly Marxist. Both were committed to challenging corporate power, from the standpoint of republican virtue, the ideals of Abraham Lincoln and the example of Jesus, and a sturdy faith in family, community, and craft, in an era when the pursuit of happiness rested more on solidarity than consumption. The underlying premise is that if only people can be given the right message, they will be enlightened and emboldened to act. They would come to see that science and the machine age had brought untold possibilities of universal well-being, but the profit system was holding back production and creating inequality.

  Hewlett Johnson, the Dean of Canterbury and one of Britain’s senior clerics, was an unabashed admirer of Soviet communism, and his book was a plea for Anglo-Russian friendship. Joe seems to have been most interested in Johnson’s self-described path from his bourgeois background to his evolving critique of the socio-economic order in Britain, and his melding of science and Christianity into a program for achieving full human development through brotherhood, internationalism, material advance, and collective security under communism. Much of the book describes the economic and social achievements of the Soviet Union, but if Joe read those chapters he did not take notes on them.

  Swingler’s book was a Marxist introduction to political philosophy, illustrated by the evolution of politics from its eighteenth-century bourgeois traditions through the development of working-class and social-democratic politics to “scientific socialism” and the Russian Revolution. Both the language and the argument would have been familiar to any theoretical Marxist in the late 1930s. Joe took copious notes.

  Joe’s point-form notes consisted for the most part of short extracts, rather than commentaries, as one might expect to find in the notebook of a first-year student rather than a candidate for an advanced degree. This was fitting enough, for Joe had just embarked on a self-taught course in philosophy, politics, and economics. His notes give the impression of one eager to understand the bible, religion, science, Marxism, political economy, the American Constitution, and the shape of the world to come. He was trying to focus the idealism he had been expressing in his diaries ever since he arrived at Manning Depot in Toronto the previous summer. No one had ever characterized Joe as an intellectual, but he was trying diligently to make sense of the events unfolding around him. He was, under the circumstances, an autodidact without formal instruction. In July he had believed that Britain needed to rid itself of the wrong people in high places to achieve victory and democracy. Now he was coming to the view that the economic system itself must be changed. Perhaps the idea that socialism was not simply a utopian vision but a scientific project appealed to him.

  What prompted the left turn in Joe’s politics? He seems always to have been motivated by a sense of fairness and egalitarianism, notwithstanding his privileged background and his personal ambitions. He had absorbed these values from his family, and they were honed by his experience in Britain. His friendship with Davies, a Welsh coal miner’s son with communist views, and his exploration of the Charing Cross Road bookshops, channelled his indignation. The Soviet Union’s recovery and ferocious resistance in the battle against Germany had sparked widespread sympathy and admiration in Britain. Joe knew he had made his way through university as an athlete and fraternity brother, not as a student. He had not really started to think about the wider world until he was in Preston. Now, two years later, and perhaps because he knew his own existence was at risk, his outlook on life took a more serious turn. Although he had begun some notes on politics – both world and Canadian – in September or October, those tentative thoughts had not yet been informed by his new reading program.

  There was, intriguingly, one thread of public debate that Joe never mentioned. Pacifism still had its advocates, and although their views were certainly marginalized, they were not entirely suppressed. The Anglican Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, had provoked a debate about night bombing in the Times in April 1941, and a similar debate was played out in the pages of the Telegraph the next month. By October, a small group of church leaders, members of Parliament, and public intellectuals had organized the Campaign Against Night Bombing, which presented a petition to Parliament at the end of October. Ironically, the campaign rested on the implicit assumption that Bomber Command’s nightly attacks were successful, and that great numbers of German civilians were actually dying as a result of them.

  It seems unlikely that Joe would have been unaware of the campaign, or at least its announced aims, given his interest in public affairs. Nothing in his background would have disposed him toward its
particular strain of Christian pacifism, and nothing in his experience since arriving in England had generated any sympathy for its position. He had dismissed pacifism months before, in the current circumstances “we all have to pull together – all have to safeguard our rights & liberties.” However much Joe was concerned about the effectiveness of the night bombing offensive, and even its priorities, he had no doubt whatever about the legitimacy of its objectives or of the need for night bombing to achieve them.

  In early December, Joe got a forty-eight-hour pass to visit Monty. He returned to find several packages and letters in the mail, including what he characterized as a “great effort” of his father’s. He responded immediately:

  It is remarkable how much alike Monty and I feel, act and think, how much influence one has upon the other. We both feel the same thrill and zest for life and people, for ideas and action for romance and adventure. We feel that your ideas, ideals and zest is pretty much the same as ours. You might yet find yourself an honorary member of the famous Pony Club and an active participant in at least some of its adventures and battles one of these days.

  At present we are at the cross roads – we know that the armistice will only end the first battle – the second one is a good deal tougher, complicated, involved and everything else. We have both phases fairly well in perspective – at least we feel we have. We realize the main issues that will be fought out during the next battle – the class struggle – the social war – the fight to reconstruct physically, mentally and morally. We know some of the qualifications necessary. We are trying to analyze ourselves to see where we measure up – where we fall down – where we must develop. We have confidence in our minds, our bodies, in our balance and in our hearts – we might be called cocky – we are in a quiet modest way at times – we are not know it alls – quite the reverse – we feel how little we do know in relation to what there is to know and learn and do – our abilities are different but we both aim at the same end – something better – we both have at least some conception of what a job it is to lead people, what obstacles have to be faced what equipment is required.