Look here, I do think somebody ought to do something to throttle that Haw-Haw creature. I don't mind his having said that half Oxford was in flames, and that the soldiers had to be protected by pickets from the unwelcome attentions of the Women Students. That gave us much harmless pleasure. And I don't mind his pointing out that even the War hasn't stopped unemployment. It's true, and you can't expect him to mention that the same thing is happening in Germany, in spite of the fact that guns are their staple manufacture. It's all part of the world-problem — production having got ahead of distribution — and if everybody stopped fighting tomorrow we should all still have to cope with it. And I don't blame him for saying that our Evacuation hasn't turned out as well as it might, because all our own papers have said it ad nauseam. After all, it's not our fault that Hitler let us down — if only he'd started throwing things when he said he would, everything would have worked out as planned. Our big mistake was to suppose that that man could ever speak the truth, even by accident. And the interesting thing is that quite a lot of people are finding out now how much better their children are doing in those evacuated areas where they're only getting about 1½ hours' teaching a day, in small classes of about a dozen, than they did working a full day in classes of 40 or so. One working woman told me it had given her quite a new outlook on education. And so it should — because those children are getting what only wealthy people can afford as a rule — individual attention from a private tutor. And it just shows that when the war's over we shall just have to overhaul the whole thing, and have more teachers and smaller classes, no matter what it costs; and now that some of these parents have discovered what proper education means, it's up to them to badger the government until they get it. And we shall all of us have to learn to treat the teaching profession decently, and not as a bunch of comic pariahs, or we shan't be able to get enough teachers for the new era in educaiton.
What was I saying about Haw-Haw? Oh, yes! I really cannot stand the creature saying that we called Langsdorf a coward for running into Montevideo. We never dreamed of saying anything of the sort. We went out of our way to throw bouquets. I'm damned if anybody shall call us bad winners — that's worse than being bad losers.
19.12.39
I couldn't finish last night, because I had to go out. Today's papers don't show the 'Graf Spee' business in an awfully good light. Yesterday's first editions took it for granted the captain had gone down with his ship, and I must say the picture today of him and his men grinning all over their faces isn't quite what one expects. Somehow, it's a shock that Nazi cynicism could get as far as their Navy. One isn't surprised when S.S. men are brutal, or when the New Army behave like fiends in Poland, or German airmen bomb open towns, or even when submarines torpedo without warning — they're a new-fangled sort of ship, and one more less excuses them — but one had a feeling that battleships were somehow or other all right. It's funny how the papers feel it. They don't so much point out that Nelson would have turned a deaf ear and blind eye to inglorious instructions from home; they point to the tradition of the 'Scharnhorst' and the 'Gneisenau,' and the say that old Admiral von Spee would have turned in his grave. It's the thought that this vulgar little madman can stretch his hand over half the world and force a decent sea-captain to do a dishonourable action that makes one sick. That's really what we're fighting about — the utter submission of the individual conscience to an ugly system in the hands of one unscrupulous gangster.
Well, bless the Finns! They are a bright spot, and no mistake. I'm not surprised. The only Finnish child I ever taught in my school-teaching days was a miracle of competent independence. At eight years old she organished her form; at tehn, she would lead the school crocodile from Swiss Cottage to the Old Vic, while I meekly followed in her wake; at eleven, she got up and ran an athletic competition for the Junior School, and now she is manager of a big and successful store. You can't keep a nation like that down. But what it must be like, fighting in that dreadful cold place in the pitch dark, one simply can't imagine. You'd think the Russians would be used to snow, but apparently they sent the wrong sort of Russians — the southern kind. Isn't that a War-Office all over? They're all alike. I suppose, if ever we had to conduct a campaign at the North Pole, we should send troops from Bombay! Anyway, I never thought communism had much to do with common sense, judging bby the bright undergraduates who go in for it. Never did they succeed in arriving in time for a coaching, or arranging a meeting without at least three mistakes in the hour and place. An entertaining consequence of the war, by the way, is that the membership of the Communist Society at Shrewsbury has gone down by precisely the same number that the membership of the Student Christian Movement has gone up. There is a pleasing neatness about it.
Well, my dear, I must stop twaddling and go and finish my shopping. Christmas must go on, Hitler or no Hitler. I go back home tomorrow.
With the best of good wishes,
Yours affectionately,
LETITIA MARTIN
Telegram from the above to the above, 20.12.39, handed in at Selfridge's, 4.48p.m.
Take back anything harsh I said about poor Langsdorf sorry I spoke — Martin
12. Colonel Marchbanks to Lord Peter Wimsey (transmitted by a devious route to a destination unknown).
BELLONA CLUB,
W.
23.12.39.
My dear boy,
I must try to send you a line for the New Year, though God knows when you'll get it. Still, better late than never. I ought to have put it in hand for Christmas, but the confounded season creeps up on one in such a dashed stealthy manner that it's here before one realises it. Not but what I ought to realise it, as my wife and I have been working hard to get up entertainments for the Camp never our little place in the country — about all that's left in the way of military service for an old war-horse like me. However, with three grandsons doing their bit, we can't complain. It's a fairly high proportion as things go nowadays. Some of the young fellows — and the older ones too — are grumbling pretty heavily because the W.O. doesn't seem to have any use for their services. See here, I said to them the other day, I'm older than you, and I've served in two major wars, not counting the Burmese business when I was only a lad, and you can take it from me, the best thing you can do is to stand by and wait till you're wanted. They're not going to want you in a hurry, except for replacement of casualties. How many of our fellows do you want slaughtered, I said, so that you can put up a couple of pips? Robert Fentiman said this wasn't what he called a war — more like a ruddy sit-down strike. I said, I suppose what you want is another Passchendaele, but we're not having any this time, thank-you, we know what it's like. Nor is the German High Command, not unless that fellow Hitler starts sending out his personal order to scuttel the army. If you've forgotten, I said, and I haven't, what a frontal attack in impossible weather on a strong position looks like, go and see what's happenening to those poor dashed Russian blighters driven up like sheep against the Mannerheim line. Fentiman said, anyhow, the Finns were showing up how a war should be fought. Good luck to them, I said, so they are, and Stalin's showing us how it ought not to be fought, and why should we follow his example? What we've got in hand, I said, is siege warfare, and it's got to be fought in the proper manner. There's no sense in trying to fight the last war but one.