1941 – 1943
Orwell worked incredibly hard at the BBC. He wrote 105 English-language newsletters for India, and for occupied Malaya and Indonesia. He also wrote the originals for 115 newsletters for translation into Indian languages. We know some were heard in Japanese-occupied territories. A nun in Malaya, Sister Margaret, described to a WRAC officer, Barbara Rigby, how she and the Sisters risked their lives to listen in and walked many miles to give others the news. The nuns, she said, had been cheered by Orwell: ‘we used to bless that good man’. Orwell’s idea of propaganda was to broadcast educational and cultural programmes. Long before the Open University he organised courses based on Calcutta and Bombay University syllabuses on literature, science, medicine, agriculture and psychology, engaging speakers of outstanding distinction as varied as T.S. Eliot* and Joseph Needham. He arranged programmes on The Koran and Das Kapital, on music and poetry. There was a curious programme in which five distinguished writers, including E.M. Forster completed, independently, a story that Orwell had begun. And he made dramatic adaptations.
How effective was all this? Orwell thought he had wasted his time and listener research was not encouraging. Two documents might suggest otherwise. On 20 November 1945, Balraj Sahni* wrote to Orwell from Bombay sympathising on Eileen’s death. Balraj and his wife, Damyanti, had worked with Orwell in a series on the mechanics of presenting drama, Let’s Act It Ourselves. Balraj Sahni wrote, ‘We saw little of you two but you endeared yourselves to us greatly, through your work and your sincerity.’ They were working in the Indian People’s Theatre, ‘work which doesn’t bring us money but a lot of happiness’. They had had nearly fifty new plays written which they had performed to audiences totalling more than a million people. Damyanti died very young in 1947. Balraj became a very famous film actor. Orwell also presented a series of Indian plays in abbreviated format such as the Sanscrit Mrocchakatika (‘The Little Clay Cart’). When this was presented in London forty years later it was described as ‘a first’.
Secondly, on 7 August 1943, the Director of the Indian Services, Rushbrook-Williams* wrote this in his confidential annual report on Orwell (reproduced by kind permission of the BBC Written Archives Centre): ‘He has a great facility in writing and a literary flair which makes his work distinguished… He supports uncomplainingly a considerable burden of poor health. This never affects his work, but occasionally strains his nerves. I have the highest opinion of his moral, as well as of his intellectual capacity. He is transparently honest, incapable of subterfuge, and, in early days, would have either been canonised – or burnt at the stake! Either fate he would have sustained with stoical courage. An unusual colleague – but a mind, and a spirit, of real and distinguished worth.’ His achievement was no less than to provide an inspiration for the Third Programme (now Radio 3) (see 19.9.46, n.3).
In the midst of this, Orwell’s mother, Ida, died on 19 March 1943 of bronchitis complicated by emphysema. Orwell was at her bedside, but, as Gordon Bowker points out, it failed to stop her son smoking his pungent roll-up cigarettes (p. 297).
This is an abstract from the sole surviving copy of a memorandum establishing the BBC Eastern Services Committee. It was written by R.A. Rendall, Director of the Empire Service at the time, and is the copy sent to R.W. Brock of the India Section of the Ministry of Information (situated in the University of London’s Senate House, which would be the model for the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four).
16 October 1941
[no address: BBC internal memo]
I think you are aware that in our endeavour to integrate and expand the Eastern Services of the B.B.C., we have decided to constitute an Eastern Services Committee, which will hold regular fortnightly sessions. On this Committee, which will be an internal organism of the Corporation, the India Office and the Ministry of Information will be represented…. The Committee will be presided over by Professor Rushbrook Williams,* our recently appointed Eastern Services Director….
It is intended to hold the first meeting of the Committee at 2.30 p.m. in Room 101 at 55 Portland Place on Wednesday, October 22nd.
[XIII, 870, pp. 57–8]
An agenda was enclosed. Orwell was not invited to the first meeting (though his superior, Zulfaqar Ali Bokhari* attended). 55 Portland Place was a block of flats close to Broadcasting House which the Indian Section used until it moved to 200 Oxford Street. When it was returned to the BBC it was completely refashioned and the surviving plans do not show the layout of rooms at the time the BBC used them, so Room 101 cannot be identified. It was probably on the ground floor. It was certainly not in Broadcasting House itself. Orwell is known to have attended at least twelve meetings and on 14 October 1942 was listed as convenor of a sub-committee to explore the possibilities of organising drama and poetry competitions in India. By this time the BBC had moved to 200 Oxford Street and the meeting was held in Room 314.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four O’Brien tells Orwell that the thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world (p. 296). The understandable impression is that this is something like drowning, death by fire, or impalement, but Orwell is more subtle: for many, and for him, the worst thing in the world is that which is the bureaucrat’s life-blood: attendance at meetings.
To E. Rowan Davies*
16 May 1942
Information Re Burma Campaign
The questions which I think could usefully be asked of the Burma government are: —
i. What number of Burmese voluntarily evacuated themselves along with British troops etc. leaving India, and what proportion of these were officials.
ii. Attitude of Burmese officials when breakdown appeared imminent. Whether there was a marked difference in loyalty between Burmese and Indian officials. To what extent Burmese officials are known to be carrying on under the Japanese occupation.
iii. Behaviour under fire of the Burma regiments and military police. Whether any actual Burmese (not Kachins etc.) were fighting for the British.
iv. What difference appeared between political attitude of the Burmese proper and the Karens, Shans, Chins, Kachins.1
v. What number of the Eurasian community, especially in Rangoon, Moulmein, Mandalay evacuated with the British and how many stayed behind under the Japanese occupation. Whether any who remained behind are known to have changed their allegiance.
vi. Behaviour of the Burmese population under bombing raids. Whether these produced resentment against the Japanese, admiration for Japanese air superiority, or mere panic.
vii. The native Christians, especially Karens.2 Whether interpenetrated to any extent by nationalist movement.
viii. Number of shortwave sets known to have been in Burmese, Indian and Eurasian possession before the invasion.
ix. Detailed information about the Burmese nationalist and leftwing political parties. The main points are:—
a. Numbers and local and social composition of the Thakin party.3
b. Extent to which Buddhist priests predominate.
c. What affiliations exist between the Burmese nationalist parties and the Congress and other Indian parties.
d. Burmese Communists, if any, and what affiliations.
e. Extent of Burmese trade union movement and whether it has affiliations with trade unions in India or Europe.
x. Estimated number of Burmese actually fighting on side of Japanese. Whether people of good standing or mainly dacoits etc. Whether they are reported to have fought courageously.
xi. Extent of Japanese infiltration before the invasion. Whether many Japanese are known to speak local languages,4 especially Burmese, and to what extent they are likely to be dependent on Burmans for monitoring and interpretation generally.
Eric Blair
[XIII, 1174, pp. 327–8; typewritten]
1. In addition to Burmese people, the Burmese nation is composed of many ethnic groups, of which these four are among the most important. There were then more than a million Shans, 1.25 million Karens, half a million Chins, and 200,000 Kachens in a total population of approximately 17 million, many of them being hill peoples. By 1984 the population had doubled.
2. Most Burmese are Buddhist, as are the Karens, but some 175,000 Karens are Christian.
3. The Thakin movement developed among radicals in the Young Men’s Buddhist Association schools (later the National Schools), who resented British rule. Two university students, Aung San and U Nu, who joined the movement after the student strike in 1936, were instrumental in leading Burma to independence. Aung San was among a number of Burmese politicians murdered in July 1947 at the instigation of a former prime minister, U Saw. When Burma became an independent republic, on 4 January 1948, U Nu became prime minister. Aung San’s daughter, Suu Kyi, born shortly before his murder, has led a long fight against the military government of Burma (Myanmar). Her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in 1990 but was not allowed to govern. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
4. Orwell, when serving in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, passed the language examinations in Burmese and in Shaw-Karen.
On 27 June 1942, Picture Post published ‘the first article in an important new series’, ‘Britain’s Silent Revolution’ by J. B. Priestley. The series asked ‘What is happening in Britain? What kind of a country is being shaped by the war?’ At the head of Priestley’s article was this statement in bold type: ‘We are threatened with decay—but the war has saved us. Some of the old are uprooted; some of the new blessings are steadily growing. Here is our great chance to fashion a really healthy society.’ On 4 July, Vernon Bartlett, MP, wrote on ‘The Revolt Against Party Politics’ and on 11 July, a column was run, ‘What They Say About Bartlett and Priestley’. Two letters were printed in response to Priestley’s article, one from the Bishop of Bradford and this from Orwell.
To Picture Post
11 July 1942
I am in agreement with Mr. Priestley as to the general direction in which our society is moving, but do not share his apparent belief that things will inevitably happen fast enough to prevent the old gang getting their claws into us again. Two years ago I would have echoed his optimistic utterances more confidently than I would now. At that time an appalling disaster had brought this country to what looked like the first stage of revolution, and one could be excused for believing that class privilege and economic inequality would quite rapidly disappear under the pressure of danger. Obviously this has failed to happen. But I do agree with Mr. Priestley that the sort of society we knew before 1939 is not likely to return. I don’t share the belief which some people still seem to hold, that ‘this is a capitalist war,’ and that if we win it we shall simply see the British ruling class in power again. What I should like to hear about in Mr. Priestley’s next article is not ‘What?’ but ‘How?’—just how we are to set about getting the truly democratic society we want.
George Orwell, Abbey Road, NW 8.
[XIII, 1269, p. 391; typewritten]
To Alex Comfort*
15 July 1942
10a Mortimer Crescent
London NW 6
Dear Mr Comfort,
The Partisan Review sent me a copy of the letter you had written them, along with some others. I believe they are going to print all the letters, or extracts from them, and my reply. But there was one point I didn’t care to answer in print. You queried my reference to ‘antisemitism’ (by the way I didn’t say antisemitism but Jew-baiting, a very different thing) in the Adelphi. Of course I was thinking of Max Plowman*, who hated Jews, and though he was aware of this tendency in himself and struggled against it, sometimes let it influence his editorship. I had two particular instances in mind. The first was when Macmurray’s book The Clue to History was published in 1938. This was a rather unbalanced book and extremely pro-Jew in tendency. Max was infuriated by this and had the book reviewed by five separate people, including himself and myself, in one issue of the Adelphi. His own review (you could look it up—round about December 1938) was definitely provocative in tone. Later on he got the Adelphi involved in a controversy with some Jew whose name I don’t remember, Cohen I think, about the alleged warmongering activities of the Jews. Having got the Jew hopping mad and said his own say in a very snooty manner, Max suddenly declared the controversy closed, not allowing the Jew to reply. This would be some time in 1939. Since the war Murry has at least once referred with apparent approval to Hitler’s ‘elimination’ of the Jews.
The reason why I don’t care to print anything about this is because Max was a very old friend of mine and was very good to me, and his wife might hear about [it] and feel hurt if I actually name names. In my reply in the Partisan Review I put in a note to the effect that I was answering this privately, but I daresay they’ll omit both this and your query,1 as I have explained the circumstances to Dwight Macdonald.*
Yours truly
George Orwell
[XIII, 1282, pp. 405–6 (including
Comfort’s response); typewritten]
Alex Comfort replied on 16 July 1942:
Dear Mr. Orwell
Thank you very much for writing to me. I didn’t know about Max in this connection, and you were entirely right. I shouldn’t really have replied to you where the Adelphi was concerned, as I have only known it since the war: I rather took it that you meant that Jew baiting in it was a recent thing—a feature which had cropped up during the period you were reporting on. (I suppose Max’s foible was of pretty long standing).
I thought some of the things you said should have been far more fully answered, but doubted if P.R. would have room for more than a squib-retort. I honestly don’t think that the last lot of us are any more constructively pro-Fascist than our predecessors, but from the people I encounter, I would say they were nearer to Russian nihilism than any contemporary line of thought.
However, I often want to remonstrate with Peace News, not for being Fascist, but for trying, as you say, to get away with both ends of the same argument. I have written a commination to J.M. Murry but he did not print it. He needs another beginning ‘cursed is the man who imagines one can assume opposite viewpoints and say that whichever turns out to be true, his main contention is right.’
I’d like an opportunity of congratulating you over that Horizon article on Donald McGill°. It was the best example of an analysis I think I ever read.
I’ll be writing to the editor of P.R. and explain that I entirely agree with you, on seeing the references. I didn’t want to put you on the spot over a personal question like that, and I apologize for my ignorance.
All good wishes and many thanks
Alex Comfort
I’d like to have started an argument over that review of yours,2 but the Adelphi hadn’t room to unleash me. Anyhow, thank you for doing it. It made me revise several ideas.
1. Partisan Review omitted all reference to this topic.
2. For Orwell’s review of Comfort’s novel, No Such Liberty, see XIII, 855, pp. 389–44.
To Routledge & Sons Ltd.
23 July 1942
The BBC
Broadcasting House
London W 1
Dear Sir,
My attention has just been drawn to a book published by you entitled Victory or Vested Interests, in which you have included a lecture of mine delivered last year for the Fabian Society. I submitted this lecture to you in type-written form, and, I believe, corrected the proofs. I now find that you have been through it and made the most unwarrantable alterations about which I was not even consulted—a fact which I should never even have discovered if I had not bought a copy of the book, as you did not even send me one. I am communicating with my literary agents to see what remedy I have against this treatment, but meanwhile, I should be glad to have an explanation from you. I shall be obliged by an early answer.1
Yours truly,
Geo. Orwell
[XIII, 1319, p. 424; typewritten]
1. T. Murray Ragg, the Managing Director, replied on 24 July explaining that they had made no alterations and had delivered copies as instructed by the Fabian Society. He suggested that someone at the Society had made the alterations. (For a full account see XIII, 884, pp. 66–7.)
On 8 August 1942, Captain Basil Liddell Hart wrote to Orwell expressing surprise that someone of his penetration had been misled by Philippe Barrès’s Charles de Gaulle, which Orwell had reviewed in the Observer on 2 August (XIII, 1346, pp. 443–4), in so far as it discussed the evolution of mechanised warfare and the use of armoured divisions. He sent Orwell six pages of notes to show that it was not de Gaulle who had devised modern methods of tank warfare, which the Germans, rather than the French or British, had adopted, but a British officer, Colonel J. F. C. Fuller (1878–1966; CB, DSO) in 1927. (Fuller was identified by the security service as ‘the military strongman willing to take part in, if not preside over, a British Vichy’.) Two years later, the British War Office had issued ‘the first official manual on mechanized warfare … embodying the new conception’. This included the organisation and methods that were to become the foundation of Panzer attacks. General de Gaulle’s book, Vers L’Armée de Métier (1934), had only ten of its 122 pages devoted to tactics, in the English translation. This, said Liddell Hart, was hardly surprising, since de Gaulle’s ‘first personal experience with tanks was not until three years later, in 1937’. Niall Ferguson in his The War of the World (2006) discusses the considerable influence Liddell Hart had on tank and aircraft strategy – alas, ‘it was hugely influential not in Britain but in Germany’, especially on Heinz Guderian, commander of the 19th German Army Corps (pp. 386–7).
To B. H. Liddell Hart*
12 August 1942
10a Mortimer Crescent
NW 6
Dear Captain Liddell Hart,
Many thanks for your letter. I am sorry I accepted too readily the legend of the Germans having taken their tank theories from de Gaulle. The Observer had to compress my review of Barrès’s book by cutting out a passage from de Gaulle’s memorandum of early in 1940. I hadn’t seen this memorandum till seeing it in Barrès’s book, and it certainly did seem to me to foretell what happened a few months later with considerable prescience. The story of ‘the man the Germans learned from’ had already been built up elsewhere, and I had already more or less accepted it, not, of course, being much versed in military literature. I had read many of your own writings but didn’t realise that the Germans had drawn on them to that extent. And I was more ready to accept de Gaulle as a revolutionary innovator because of the obviously old-fashioned nature of the French army as a whole. I was in French Morocco from the autumn of 1938 to the spring of 1939, and with war obviously imminent I naturally observed the French colonial army as closely as I could, even to the point of getting hold of some of their infantry textbooks. I was struck by the antiquated nature of everything, though I know very little of military matters. I could if you wish write to the Observer and say that I was mistaken and had transferred some of your thunder to de Gaulle, but from a political point of view I don’t like writing de Gaulle down. It was a misfortune that we didn’t succeed in getting a leftwing politician of standing out of France, but since de Gaulle is the only figure we have at present to represent the Free French we must make the best of him.
No, I didn’t write Bless ’Em All.1 I am not in the army because I am not physically fit (Class IV!) but I have been in the Home Guard from the beginning and could write a rather similar booklet about that. I don’t know who the author is except that he is an Australian. The book has had a fairly large sale, 15–20,000 copies, and has probably done a lot of good.
I should like to meet you some time when you are in London. I never get out of London as I am working in the BBC. I expect Humphrey Slater is a mutual friend of ours.
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
[XIII, 1379, pp. 471–2; typewritten]
1. Liddell Hart asked Orwell whether he had written Bless ’Em All because he so admired the book that he had ‘distributed quite a number of copies … in quarters where I thought it might do some good’. The full title of the book, published pseudonymously by Boomerang, is Bless ’Em All: An Analysis of the British Army, Its Morale, Efficiency and Leadership, Written from Inside Knowledge (1942). ‘Boomerang’ was Alan W. Wood, an Australian who had worked on Beaverbook newspapers before the war and who, according to Fredric Warburg, ‘died far too young’. It sold 37,625 copies in the first fifteen months.
To Tom Wintringham*
17 August 1942
Dear Wintringham,
I am in general agreement with the document you sent me,1 and so are most of the people I know, but I think that from the point of view of [a] propaganda approach it is all wrong. In effect, it demands two separate things which the average reader will get mixed up, first, the setting up of a committee, and secondly, the programme which that committee is to use as a basis for discussion. I should start by putting forward boldly and above all with an eye to intelligibility a programme for India coupled with the statement that this is what the Indian political leaders would accept. I would not start with any talk about setting up committees; in the first place because it depresses people merely to hear about committees, and in any case because the procedure you suggest would take months to carry through, and would probably lead to an inconclusive announcement. I should head my leaflet or whatever it is RELEASE NEHRU—REOPEN NEGOTIATIONS and then set forth the plan for India in six simple clauses, viz:
1). India to be declared independent immediately.
2). An interim national government from the leading political parties on a proportional basis.
3). India to enter into full alliance with the United Nations.
4). The leading political parties to co-operate in the war effort to their utmost capacity.
5). The existing administration to be disturbed as little as possible during the war period.
6). Some kind of trade agreement allowing for a reasonable safe-guarding of British interests.
Those are the six points. They should be accompanied by an authoritative statement from the Congress Party that they are willing to accept those terms—as they would be—and that if granted these terms they would cooperate in crushing the pro-Japanese faction. Point 6 should carry with it a rider to the effect that the British and Indian Governments will jointly guarantee the pensions of British officials in India. In this way at small cost one could neutralise a not unimportant source of opposition in this country.
All I have said could be got on to a leaflet of a page or two pages, and I think might get a hearing. It is most important to make this matter simple and arresting as it has been so horribly misrepresented in the press and the big public is thoroughly bored by India and only half aware of its strategic significance. Ditto with America.
Yours,
[No name/position]
[XIII, 1391, pp. 479–80; typewritten]
1. Tom Wintringham had sent Orwell a copy of the press release issued by the Common Wealth National Committee on 15 August 1942. This was issued over the names of J.B. Priestley (Chairman), Richard Acland (Vice-Chairman; see 24.11.38, n. 4), and Tom Wintringham* (Vice-Chairman). The stature of the novelist, playwright, and commentator, J. B. Priestley (1894–1984) was considerable at this time and was further enhanced by his inspiring broadcasts, especially after Dunkirk. He was seen by many as akin to Churchill in his dogged determination; even in the darkest days he was sure the war would end in Britain’s favour. He also argued forcefully for a better Britain when peace came.
To Leonard Moore*
4 September 1942
10a Mortimer Crescent
NW 6
Dear Mr Moore,
Many thanks for the cheque for £10–17–1, and the accounts. I return the latter.
I am unfortunately far too busy to write anything except casual journalism. Besides being in the BBC I am in the Home Guard, and between the two I don’t have many evenings to myself. However, during 1940–1941 I kept a diary, and when I had been keeping it some time it struck me that it might be publishable some time, though I felt it would be more likely to be of interest after a lapse of 5 or 10 years. But events have moved so fast that it might as well be 10 years since 1940 now, and I am not sure the thing is not worth trying on a few publishers. A friend who had also kept a diary had some idea of making a book out of the two, but this idea fell through.1 At present my diary is being typed, but when that is done, in about 10 days, we might see what we can do with it. Gollancz did hear about [it] and said he would like to see it, but I am not certain whether people are not rather fed up with war diaries. I should think the best place for publishing a thing of this kind would be America, if one could connect with an American publisher and then get the Ms through the censorship. My books have never sold well in the USA, but I think I may have built myself up a small public there via the ‘London Letters’ I have done from time to time during the last 18 months in the Partisan Review. The editor told me some New York publisher said he thought the ‘London Letters’ might be worth reprinting in pamphlet form, and if so the diary might have a chance. It is about 25,000 or 30,000 words, an awkward length, and I shouldn’t expect such a book to have more than a small sale, but I should think some publisher might think it worth risking a few pounds on.
I hope business is good. Everyone seems to be reading, when they can get hold of books.
Yours sincerely
Eric Blair
[XIV, 1443, p. 5; typewritten]
1. The friend was Inez Holden.* The joint publication was not realised.
To Mulk Raj Anand*
7 October 1942
Dear Mulk,
I am sending back your script on War and Peace because I wish you would rewrite the later part, roughly speaking from page 4 onwards in order to deal more with the sociological aspect of War and Peace. I think it is quite true that Tolstoy marked the beginning of a new attitude towards the novel, but that in itself is not big enough to justify the title ‘Books That Changed the World’. What I wanted was a talk on War and Peace as exemplifying the new attitude towards war. If not the first, it is certainly one of the first books that tried to describe war realistically and many modern currents of thought, probably including pacifism, derive from it to some extent. I do not of course want pacifist propaganda, but I think we might make valuable use of a comparison between Tolstoy’s description of the battle of Oesterlitz1 and for instance Tennyson’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’.
Gollancz has expressed interest in your idea for a book about India.2 He says it would have to be done quickly, which however would be quite easy by the method we were projecting of doing it. He wants you, or failing you, me to go and see him today week, October 14th, at 11 a.m. at his office. Do you think you could see me between now and then so that we can draw up a synopsis of the book?
Yours sincerely,
George Orwell
[XIV, 1550, pp. 85–6; typewritten]
1. Austerlitz, where Napoleon gained a brilliant victory over the Austrians and Russians in 1805. Tolstoy’s account is given in Book 3, chapters 14–19. The letter illuminates Orwell’s attitude to his idea for broadcasting to India: far more educational and cultural than crudely propagandist.
2. In a letter to Orwell of 11 October 1942 (which discussed factual aspects of the broadcast), Anand added a postscript to say that he would telephone on Monday (presumably the next day) to discuss the book. He said that the only real basis for a symposium was a constructive plan for the defence of India. That might bring together different points of view and ‘reveal the idiocy of reaction more strongly’. There is nothing else on file about this proposed book.
Laurence Brander* to L. F. Rushbrook Williams*
8 October 1942, with copy to Orwell
Saturday Weekly News Letter
In conversation with Mr. Eric Blair this morning, I discovered that he writes our Saturday Weekly News Letter which is read by some Indians. The audience in India supposes that the reader is the composer, and the present audience is small. As you know, the universal demand amongst our Indian audience is for well-known Englishmen. If, therefore, it could be arranged that this News Letter be no longer anonymous, but the known work of ‘George Orwell’ and read by him1 instead of largely being ignored as at present, it would be looked forward to with the very greatest interest, as few names stand so high with our Indian audience at present as that of George Orwell.
[XIV, 1557, p. 89; typewritten]
1. This was agreed. Orwell read his Newsletters from No. 48, 21 November 1942.
To the Editor of The Times
12 October 1942
10A Mortimer Crescent
NW 6
Sir,
May I be allowed to offer one or two reflections on the British Government’s decision to retaliate against German prisoners, which seems so far to have aroused extraordinarily little protest?1
By chaining up German prisoners in response to similar action by the Germans, we descend, at any rate in the eyes of the ordinary observer, to the level of our enemies. It is unquestionable when one thinks of the history of the past ten years, that there is a deep moral difference between democracy and Fascism, but if we go on the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth we simply cause that difference to be forgotten. Moreover, in the matter of ruthlessness we are unlikely to compete successfully with our enemies. As the Italian radio has just proclaimed, the Fascist principle is two eyes for an eye and a whole set of teeth for one tooth. At some point or another public opinion in England will flinch from the implications of this statement, and it is not very difficult to foresee what will happen. As a result of our action the Germans will chain up more British prisoners, we shall have to follow suit by chaining up more Axis prisoners, and so it will continue till logically all the prisoners on either side will be in chains. In practice, of course, we shall become disgusted with the process first, and we shall announce that the chaining up will now cease, leaving, almost certainly, more British than Axis prisoners in fetters. We shall thus have acted both barbarously and weakly, damaging our own good name without succeeding in terrorising the enemy.
It seems to me that the civilised answer to the German action would be something like this: ‘You proclaim that you are putting thousands of British prisoners in chains because some half-dozen Germans or thereabouts were temporarily tied up during the Dieppe raid. This is disgusting hypocrisy, in the first place because of your own record during the past ten years, in the second place because troops who have taken prisoners have got to secure them somehow until they can get them to a place of safety, and to tie men’s hands in such circumstances is totally different from chaining up a helpless prisoner who is already in an internment camp. At this moment, we cannot stop you mal-treating° our prisoners, though we shall probably remember it at the peace settlement, but don’t fear that we shall retaliate in kind. You are Nazis, we are civilised men. This latest act of yours simply demonstrates the difference.’
At this moment this may not seem a very satisfying reply, but I suggest that to anyone who looks back in three months’ time, it will seem better than what we are doing at present and it is the duty of those who can keep their heads to protest before the inherently silly process of retaliation against the helpless is carried any further.
Yours truly,
George Orwell
[XIV, 1563, pp. 97–8; typewritten]
1. In his War-time Diary for 11 October 1942, Orwell recorded that following the unsuccessful raid on Dieppe, the Canadians had ‘chained up a number of German prisoners equal to the number of British prisoners chained up in Germany’. (See Diaries, p. 367.) The letter was not published.
To R. R. Desai*
3 March 1943
The Indian Government have cabled asking us to do something in Gujerati about the Beveridge report so we shall have to use your Gujerati period on Monday next for this. They evidently want to have the whole story, i.e. what the scheme proposes and also the history of the Parliamentary Debate. I need not tell you that the censorship would not allow through any comment, i.e. any comment on our part which amounted to a criticism of the Government for watering the Beveridge scheme down. On the other hand, the debate on the subject with the arguments brought forward for and against the report could be given, objectively. I should suggest simply setting out the provisions of the report, not going into too much detail, but emphasizing the more important clauses, especially family allowances, then mention the debate and then explain how much of the report the Government actually proposes to adopt. You can say, with safety, that whatever else goes out, family allowances on some scale or another are certain to be adopted. And it would be worth adding that this itself is an important advance and likely to raise the British birth-rate.1 However, they evidently want an objective report on the Beveridge scheme rather than a propaganda statement. You can use the whole of your period on Beveridge or use about ten minutes and reserve about three minutes for the headline news of the week, just as you wish. I hope you will let us have your script in good time. We have already cabled our people in India that we’re going to deal with Beveridge this week.
Yours
Eric Blair
Talks Producer Indian Section.
P.S. If I could have this particular script on Saturday [6th] I shall be much obliged.
[XV, 1923, p. 10; typewritten]
1. Orwell was proved right. Later, when the Labour Government of 1999 increased child benefits, the Institute of Fiscal Studies report, Does Welfare Reform Affect Fertility?, estimated that badly educated mothers had an additional 45,000 children in the year after the reforms were introduced (Daily Telegraph, 22 December 2008).
To Penguin Books
8 March 1943
10a Mortimer Crescent
NW 6
Dear Sir,
With reference to your letter dated 5.3.43. I am not absolutely certain without looking up my contracts how I stand about the rights in my books, but I am almost certain that if the publisher has issued no cheap edition two years after publication, the rights revert to me. I can verify this, but in any case neither of my publishers is likely to make trouble about the republication of books which appeared some time ago. The books of mine which might be worth reprinting are (I give date of publication with each):—
Burmese Days (1934–1935).
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Coming Up for Air (1939)
Inside the Whale (1940).
I should say Burmese Days was much the most hopeful. It was first published by Harper’s in the USA, then a year later in a slightly bowdlerised edition by Gollancz. The English edition sold 3000 to 4000, the American about 1000.1 I think it deserves reprinting, and it has a certain topicality owing to the campaign in Burma. Gollancz’s stock of it has come to an end and it is totally out of print, but I possess a copy of the American edition. Inside the Whale is also totally out of print, the stocks of it having been blitzed, but I have a proof copy. It didn’t sell much but got a certain notoriety owing to parts of it being reprinted in magazines. Homage to Catalonia I think ought [to] be reprinted some time, but I don’t know whether the present is quite the moment. It is about the Spanish civil war, and people probably don’t want that dragged up now. On the other hand if Spain comes into the war I suppose it would be for a while possible to sell anything which seemed informative about Spanish internal affairs, if one could get it through the press in time.
I shall be happy to give you any further information you want.
Yours faithfully
George Orwell
[XV, 1942, pp. 18–19; typewritten]
1. In the light of Orwell’s later bitterness over the way Gollancz had ‘garbled’ Burmese Days (see II, p. 310), his comment that it was ‘slightly bowdlerised’ is surprising. The US edition sold better than Orwell remembered. It was, in fact, reprinted. The first printing was of 2,000 copies. A Penguin edition was published in May 1944.
To Dwight Macdonald*
26 May 1943
10a Mortimer Crescent
NW 6
Dear Macdonald,
Many thanks for your letter (dated April 13 and arrived yesterday!) and cheque. I enclose a list of 15 people who° I should think would be possible subscribers to P[artisan] R[review].1 Some of them I know are acquainted with the paper, and some may possibly be subscribers, but not to my knowledge. I am circularising all of them, telling them you can accept foreign subscriptions, and offering to lend copies so that they can have a look at it. Forster was interested when I showed him a copy some time back, so I am pretty certain he would subscribe if you prodded him, also Myers and Rees.
I am glad the last letter was a success and I will send another as soon as possible. As you see by the above address I didn’t get the job I was trying for (in North Africa) and am still at the BBC. I enjoy very much doing these letters for PR, it is a tremendous relief every now and then to write what one really thinks about the current situation, and if I have occasionally shown signs of wanting to stop it is because I keep fearing that your readers will get tired of always hearing about affairs in England from the same person. My point of view isn’t the only one and as you will have seen from the various letters from Alex Comfort* etc. there are some pretty vigorous opponents of it.2 But within my own framework I have tried to be truthful and I am very happy to go on with the arrangement so long as you are.
We have shortly coming out a book made up from the broadcasts sent out to India by my department.3 I think some copies will be sent to the USA, and I will try to get a copy to PR. Of course all books of broadcasts are crashingly dull, but it might interest you to see some specimens of British propaganda to India.
I will send off my next letter probably in about a fortnight. In that case it should reach you before the end of July unless the mail service comes unstuck again.
All the best.
Geo. Orwell
[XV, 2098A, p. xxiv; typewritten]
1. For the list of names, see XV, pp. xxiv–xxv.
2. In his ‘London Letter’, 1 January 1942 (XIII, 913, pp. 107–14), Orwell attacked Comfort* and others. (See its n. 4 and ‘Pacifism and War: A Controversy’, XIII, 1270, pp. 392–400.)
3. Talking to India, edited by Orwell, published 18 November 1943 (XV, 2359, pp. 320–1).
To Alex Comfort*
Sunday [11?] July 1943
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Comfort,
Very many thanks for sending me the copy of New Road. I am afraid I was rather rude to you in our Tribune set-to,1 but you yourself weren’t altogether polite to certain people. I was only making a political and perhaps moral reply, and as a piece of verse your contribution was immensely better, a thing most of the people who spoke to me about it hadn’t noticed. I think no one noticed that your stanzas had the same rhyme going right the way through. There is no respect for virtuosity nowadays. You ought to write something longer in that genre, something like the ‘Vision of Judgement’.2 I believe there could be a public for that kind of thing again nowadays.
As to New Road. I am much impressed by the quantity and the general level of the verse you have got together. I should think half the writers were not known to me before. Apropos of Aragon3 and others, I have thought over what you said about the reviving effect of defeat upon literature and also upon national life. I think you may well be right, but it seems to me that such a revival is only against something, ie. against foreign oppression, and can’t lead beyond a certain point unless that oppression is ultimately to be broken, which must be by military means. I suppose however one might accept defeat in a mystical belief that it will ultimately break down of its own accord. The really wicked thing seems to me to wish for a ‘negotiated’ peace, which means back to 1939 or even 1914. I have written a long article on this for Horizon apropos of Fielden’s book on India, but I am not certain Connolly will print it.4
I am going to try to get Forster to talk about New Road, together with the latest number of New Writing, in one of his monthly book talks to India. If he doesn’t do it this month he might next.5 There is no sales value there, but it extends your publicity a little and by talking about these things on the air in wartime one has the feeling that one is keeping a tiny lamp alight somewhere. You ought to try to get a few copies of the book to India. There is a small public for such things among people like Ahmed Ali6 and they are starved for books at present. We have broadcast quite a lot of contemporary verse to India, and they are now doing it to China with a commentary in Chinese. We also have some of our broadcasts printed as pamphlets in India and sold for a few annas, a thing that could be useful but is terribly hard to organise in the face of official inertia and obstruction. I saw you had a poem by Tambimuttu. If you are bringing out other numbers, you ought to get some of the other Indians to write for you. There are several quite talented ones and they are very embittered because they think people snub them and won’t print their stuff. It is tremendously important from several points of view to try to promote decent cultural relations between Europe and Asia. Nine tenths of what one does in this direction is simply wasted labour, but now and again a pamphlet or a broadcast or something gets to the person it is intended for, and this does more good than fifty speeches by politicians. William Empson7 has worn himself out for two years trying to get them to broadcast intelligent stuff to China, and I think has succeeded to some small extent. It was thinking of people like him that made me rather angry about what you said of the BBC, though God knows I have the best means of judging what a mixture of whoreshop and lunatic asylum it is for the most part.
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
[XV, 2185, pp. 168–9; typewritten]
1. See Orwell’s verse-letter, ‘As One Non-Combatant to Another (A Letter to “Obadiah Hornbrooke”)’, XV, 2138, pp. 142–5 (and Comfort’s initial verse-letter, pp. 138–141).
2. When George III died, Robert Southey, the poet laureate, wrote a conventional elegy, Vision of Judgement (1821). To this, Byron wrote a devastating rejoinder, The Vision of Judgement. Its satire was so biting that John Murray refused to take the risk of publishing it, and when Leigh Hunt, editor of The Liberal, printed it in 1822, he was fined £100.
3. Louis Aragon came to the fore after the collapse of France, through his patriotic poems – Le Crève-coeur (1941) and Les Yeux d’Elsa (1942) among them. (See also 9.4.46 to Philip Rahv. n. 3.)
4. Lionel Fielden (1896–1974), after serving in World War I (including Gallipoli) and working for the League of Nations and the High Commission for Refugees in Greece and the Levant, joined the BBC in 1927. He served as a staff officer in Italy in 1943 and was Director of Public Relations for the Allied Control Commission in Italy, 1944–45. Orwell contributed a long review article to Horizon, September 1943 (XV, 2257, pp. 209–16), on Fielden’s ‘ironical attack on British imperialism in India’, Beggar My Neighbour. Fielden responded with ‘Toothpaste in Bloomsbury’ (XV, 2258, pp. 216–21).
5. Orwell was as good as his word and Forster discussed New Road on 7 August 1943.
6. Ahmed Ali (1908– ), author and academic, was at this time the BBC’s Listener and Research Director in India.
7. William Empson (1906–84; Kt., 1979), poet and critic. He had been Professor of English Literature in Tokyo and Peking before the war and after at Sheffield University (1953–71). He achieved scholarly recognition with Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930). His Times obituary described him as ‘the most famously over-sophisticated man of his time’ who ‘revolutionized our ways of reading a poem’. On 28 August, Ivor Brown, on behalf of the Observer, wrote to Orwell saying he had heard he was leaving the BBC and he wondered whether he would like to go to Algiers and Sicily, ‘accredited’ by the War Office, though not as ‘a regular war correspondent’. It might mean writing for other newspapers as well as the Observer, in order to share costs, ‘but primarily you would be The Observer man’.
On 28 August, Ivor Brown, on behalf of the Observer, wrote to Orwell saying he had heard he was leaving the BBC and he wondered whether he would like to go to Algiers and Sicily, ‘accredited’ by the War Office, though not as ‘a regular war correspondent’. It might mean writing for other newspapers as well as the Observer, in order to share costs, ‘but primarily you would be The Observer man’.
To Ivor Brown*
31 August 1943
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
Dear Mr Brown,
Many thanks for your letter. I would, of course, like very greatly to go to North Africa for you if it can be arranged. If it can, however, I wonder if it would be possible to have some idea of the date. I have not put in my formal resignation to the BBC but have informed my immediate chiefs that I intend to leave them, and when resigning formally I am supposed to give 2 months’ notice. This however would not be insisted on so long as I could give at any rate a few weeks’ notice. Meanwhile I have arranged to go on my annual holiday (for a fortnight) at the end of this week. Of course I would throw this up if the opportunity of going to North Africa occurred immediately, but otherwise I am not anxious to miss my holiday as I have not had one for 14 months and am rather in need of one. So I should be greatly obliged if you could give me some idea of when this scheme is likely to materialise, supposing that it does so.
Yours sincerely
Geo. Orwell
[XV, 2255, p. 208; typewritten]
To L. F. Rushbrook Williams*
24 September 1943
Dear Mr Rushbrooke-Williams,1
In confirmation of what I said to you earlier in private, I want to tender my resignation from the BBC, and should be much obliged if you would forward this to the proper quarter.
I believe that in speaking to you I made my reasons clear, but I should like to put them on paper lest there should be any mistake. I am not leaving because of any disagreement with BBC policy and still less on account of any kind of grievance. On the contrary I feel that throughout my association with the BBC I have been treated with the greatest generosity and allowed very great latitude. On no occasion have I been compelled to say on the air anything that I would not have said as a private individual. And I should like to take this opportunity of thanking you personally for the very understanding and generous attitude you have always shown towards my work.
I am tendering my resignation because for some time past I have been conscious that I was wasting my own time and the public money on doing work that produces no result. I believe that in the present political situation the broadcasting of British propaganda to India is an almost hopeless task. Whether these broadcasts should be continued at all is for others to judge, but I myself prefer not to spend my time on them when I could be occupying myself with journalism which does produce some measurable effect. I feel that by going back to my normal work of writing and journalism I could be more useful than I am at present.
I do not know how much notice of resignation I am supposed to give.2 The Observer have again raised the project of my going to North Africa. This has to be approved by the War Office and may well fall through again, but I mention it in case I should have to leave at shorter notice than would otherwise be the case. I will in any case see to it that the programmes are arranged for some time ahead.
Yours sincerely
Eric Blair
[XV, 2283, pp. 250–1; typewritten]
1. Rushbrook Williams signed his name over this misspelling of his name, without hyphen and ‘e’; both errors were Orwell’s.
2. On 29 September, Sir Guy Williams, Overseas Services Establishment Officer, wrote to Orwell, accepting his resignation ‘with much regret’. Whilst recognising that he should normally work his two months’ notice, Sir Guy wrote: ‘if, as you say, you may have to leave at shorter notice, the Corporation would be prepared to allow you to do so’; Orwell’s resignation would take effect from 24 November 1943 ‘unless you inform me that you wish to leave at an earlier date’. On 7 October 1943, Brown wrote to Orwell saying he had heard he would be free at the end of November and he would be glad if he could come over to see him at The Observer to discuss the amount of reviewing and other writing he could do for that paper. He mentioned also that he much appreciated Orwell’s review ‘of Laski’ (of Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time), 10 October 1943 (XV, 2309, pp. 270–2).
To S. Moos
16 November 1943
10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6
I hope you will forgive my long delay in commenting on and returning the enclosed manuscript, but I have been in poor health in recent weeks, and I am also very busy, as you can perhaps imagine.
I find what you say very interesting, but I have two criticisms of a general nature to make. The first is that I think you are concerned with ‘what’ a little too much to the exclusion of ‘how’. It is comparatively easy to see the evils of modern industrialised society, and it is only one more step beyond that to see the inadequacy of the solutions put forward by Socialists etc. The real trouble begins when one wants to communicate these ideas to a large enough number of people to make some actual change in the trend of society. We certainly have to decide what kind of world we want, but I suggest that the greatest problem before intellectuals now is the conquest of power. You speak of forming a ‘new elite’ (which I think there probably must be, though I am inclined to shrink from the idea). But how to start forming that elite, how one can do such things inside the powerful modern state which is controlled by people whose interest is to prevent any such thing—that is another question. If you have seen anything of the innumerable attempts during the past 20 years to start new political parties, you will know what I mean.
Secondly, I think you overestimate the danger of a ‘Brave New World’— i.e. a completely materialistic vulgar civilisation based on hedonism. I would say that the danger of that kind of thing is past, and that we are in danger of quite a different kind of world, the centralised slave state, ruled over by a small clique who are in effect a new ruling class, though they might be adoptive rather than hereditary. Such a state would not be hedonistic, on the contrary its dynamic would come from some kind of rabid nationalism and leader-worship kept going by literally continuous war, and its average standard of living would probably be low. I don’t expect to see mass unemployment again, except through temporary maladjustments; I believe that we are in much greater danger of forced labour and actual slavery. And at present I see no safeguard against this except (a) the war-weariness and distaste for authoritarianism which may follow the present war, and (b) the survival of democratic values among the intelligentsia.
I don’t know whether these cursory comments are much use to you. They might be worth thinking over. I should say that Faber’s or somebody like that might publish your Ms as a pamphlet—at any rate it would be worth trying. But I would brush up the English a bit (rather involved and foreign-sounding in places) and get the Ms retyped before submitting it.
Once again, please forgive the delay.
Yours sincerely,
Geo. Orwell
[XV, 2356, pp. 308–9]