“But now I am bien vieille — pity me, for it is the only tragedy, as you will discover, my dear. Now I am bien vieille, and none of that young man’s absurd prognostications were anything like so undecorated as the truth. Really I did not expect this. It is a little much. I attribute it entirely to poor Muriel’s unappreciated virtue.
“Imagine me listening to the opinions, confessions, and simple aspirations of your friend Rosalind. It seems to me the most improbable occupation for my declining years. Except when I am immobilised and kept in bed (which, I have a feeling, will happen more often in the next few months), I do little else. Your friend Rosalind appears to think that I am a sympathetic listener. I have pointed out the opposite, but she laughs indulgently and feels it is just my little way.
“I have never been an admirer of my own sex. Listening to this young woman, I reflect on such interesting themes as why men are so obtuse as to be taken in. Feminine delicacy? Refinement? Frailty? Fineness of feeling? I reflect also on poor Muriel and poor Joan. I have to grant them certain estimable but slightly unlovable qualities: should one, under the eye of eternity, really prefer them to this companion of mine? To which of them does one give the prize for womanhood? I have never been a confidante of your Roy, but I admit I should like his answer to that question.
“I have met very few people, even very few women, who are as singularly unmoral as this young woman. I have known many whose interest in morality was slightly detached: but this one scarcely seems to have heard of such a subject. I must admit that I find it engaging when she assumes the same of me. It has not taken her long to regard herself and me as sisters.
“By the way, it also did not take her long to become unimpressed by the battlements and other noble accessories. Including my poor Hugh. She rapidly recognised that she could reduce him to a state of gibbering admiration. They both get a good deal of innocent pleasure from their weekly bridge with the new vicar and his wife. I suspect they are happier because my less enthusiastic eye is removed. Possibly I am becoming slightly maudlin about the ironies of time; but I do feel it is unfitting that nowadays Hugh should be reduced to this one high event each week. He fidgets intolerably each Thursday evening, as we wait for the vicar and his wife. No one could call the vicar a deep thinker, and he has large red ears.”
All through that winter and spring, I was attending committees, preparing notes for the minister, reading memoranda, talking to Francis Getliffe and his scientific friends; for decisions were being taken about the bombing campaign, and we were all ranged for or against. In fact, all the people I knew best were dead against. My minister was one of the chief opponents in the government; through Francis, I had met nearly all the younger scientists, and they were as usual positive, definite, and scathing. They had learned a good deal about the effect of bombing, from the German raids; they worked out what would be the results, if we persisted in the plan or bombing at night. I read the most thorough of these “appreciations”. I could not follow the statistical arguments, but the conclusions were given as proved beyond reasonable doubt: we should destroy a great many houses, but do no other serious damage; the number of German civilians killed would be relatively small; our losses in aircrew would be a large proportion of all engaged; in terms of material effect, the campaign could have no military significance at all. The minister shook his head; he had seen too many follies; he was a sensible man, but he did not believe in the victory of sense; and he knew that too many in power had a passionate, almost mystical faith in bombing. They were going to bomb, come what may; and naturally human instruments arose who could fit in. Against the scientific arguments, the advocates of bombing fell back on morale. There was something the scientists could not speak about nor measure. The others said, as though with inner knowledge, that the enemy would break under the campaign.
I went to a committee where Francis Getliffe made one of the last attempts to put the scientific case. Like most of his colleagues, Francis had left the invention of weapons and, as the war went on, took to something like the politics of scientific war. He was direct, ruthless, and master of his job; he had great military sense; he had never found any circumstances which gave him more scope, and he became powerful in a very short time. But now he was risking his influence in this war. Opponents of bombing were not in fashion. Bombing was the orthodoxy of the day. As I observed it, it occurred to me that you can get men to accept any orthodoxy, religious, political, even this technical one, the last and oddest of the English orthodoxies; the men who stood outside were very rare, and would always be so.
But Francis’ integrity was absolute. He was pliable enough to bend over little things; this was a very big thing. Someone ought to oppose it to the end; he was the obvious person; he took it on himself to do it.
He was much the same that afternoon as he used to be at college meetings — courteous, formal, clear, unshakably firm. He was high-strung among those solid steady official men, but his confidence had increased, and he was more certain of his case than they were. He was impatient of less clever men: his voice had no give in it. But he was very skilful at using his technical mastery.
He was setting out to prove the uneconomic bargain if we threw our resources into bombing. The amount of industrial effort invested in bombers was about twice what those same bombers would destroy. Bombing crews were first-class troops, said Francis Getliffe. Their training was very long, their physical and mental standard higher than any other body of troops. For every member of an aircrew killed, we might hope to kill three or four civilians. “That’s not business,” said Getliffe. “It’s not war. It doesn’t begin to make sense.” He described what was then known of the German radar defences. Most of us round that table were ignorant of technical things. He made the principles of the German ground control limpidly clear. He analysed other factors in the probable rate of loss.
It was a convincing exposition. He was putting forward a purely military case. He was passionately engrossed in the war. He was out to win at any cost. He would not have minded bombing Germans, if it helped us to win. He would not have minded losing any number of aircrews, if we gained an advantage from their loss.
For me, his words struck cold. Roy would be back in this country by August. He would be flying in operations before the new year.
I had to fend off the chill. Someone had just admitted that their defences were a “pretty bit of work”. I listened to the fierce argument in the smoky air; I was in attendance on the minister, and could not take part myself. The minister did his best, but his own stock was going down. As was inevitable, Francis Getliffe lost: he could not even get a few equipments diverted to the submarine war.
We went away together to have a drink.
“I’m on the way out,” said Francis Getliffe grimly. “This is the best test of judgment there’s ever been. Anyone who believes in this bloody nonsense will believe anything.”
From that day, the department in which I worked had to accept the decision. We did other things: but about a fifth of our time was spent on the bombing campaign. I found it irksome.
All that spring I was imprisoned in work, living in committee rooms, under the artificial light. I saw less still of my friends. I had an occasional lunch with Joan, and letters came from Boscastle. When I dined with Lady Muriel, she pronounced that the course of the pregnancy was satisfactory.