I WALKED into the Ritz in Barcelona (past a block of flats demolished by a bomb) to find the lobby thronged with soldiers and girls in cheap dresses who had come for the Sunday afternoon Tea Dance. I was pushing my way through the crowd looking for a telephone box when I heard a voice say “Hello,” and looked around to find a young Spaniard, Ignacio Lombarte, whom I hadn’t seen since I was in Madrid nearly a year before.
He looked older than when I had last seen him; he had been wounded at Teruel and come to Barcelona on a few days’ leave. “It’s good to see you again,” he said. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
Now ‘enjoyment’ was the last word I would have associated with Spain that February 1938. Franco’s troops were driving towards the sea and the morale of Catalonia was almost at a breaking-point. During the last few days I had found little besides starvation, terror and misery. At the Hotel Majestic the waiters scraped the food plates for scraps to take home to their families, and in the country people bartered soap, coal, and clothes with the peasants for enough to keep them alive. I talked with a girl who was elated to have exchanged a bag of coal for two pounds of chocolate.
But even worse than hunger were the air-raids. On a three-day drive along the coast to Valencia and back I had passed hundreds of refugees fleeing from their homes to more secure spots in the interior. Scarcely a town had escaped. All along the way there were ghastly ruins; and even in the desolation there was no relief, for every few hours the countryside resounded with the wail of sirens as more bombers appeared from their bases in Majorca. The inability to hit back and the rumour that Italy and Germany were increasing their supply of planes to Spain had filled many people with despair.
I heard my friend, Ignacio Lombarte, repeating his question, “Are you enjoying yourself?” and I nodded, not knowing what to say, and told him I had come for only a week and was returning to London in the morning. “You have other things to do?” he asked. Then, without waiting for a reply, “I understand. Soon new things will be happening. We are only the first.”
I thought of his words, “We are only the first,” when I reached London, for the stage hands were already setting the scene for the second phase of the European drama. You could read the cues in your morning papers, for in that month of February Hitler took control of the German Army, Herr von Ribbentrop became the Foreign Minister, Anthony Eden resigned from the British Cabinet, and Mussolini introduced the goose-step (passo Romano) into the Italian Army. Finally, the set was ready and Herr von Schüssnig, the Austrian Chancellor, was summoned to Berchtesgaden.
The world waited fearfully and a month later the curtain rose. Hitler’s planes circled over Vienna and his troops poured across the Austrian frontier. In London, the tension rose to a higher pitch than at any time since the Great War. Silent crowds gathered in Downing Street to watch the Cabinet Ministers leaving their hastily summoned meeting, while newsboys cried out to a cold, grey world: “Germany on the march again.”
The fear of immediate war hung in the air like poison gas. Worried speculations ran the gamut from saloons to fashionable London drawing-rooms. There was a general rush of volunteers to ambulance services and air-raid precaution organizations, and hundreds of young business men signed up with the Territorial Army. Everywhere there was a cry for more arms.
The tension, however, was like a high-voltage wire. Mr. Chamberlain succeeded in turning down the current by declaring with renewed (and inexplicable) confidence that there was little likelihood of a conflict in which England would be involved; The Times ran leading articles emphasizing the enthusiasm with which thousands of Viennese welcomed the Nazi régime; and the Archbishop of Canterbury rose in the House of Lords to say that Hitler should be thanked for preserving Austria from a civil war.
“Why all the gloom?” cried Lord Beaverbrook, and the catchword stuck. “Why all the gloom?” echoed the public, and settled back in its comfortable illusion of peace.
This complacency was difficult to understand. Great Britain’s prestige was lower than at any time since Napoleon. Her ships were bombed and her ultimata ignored; her Government was excoriated and her people pronounced effete. The aggressor nations had pulled off one successful coup after another. During the past three years, Mussolini had conquered Abyssinia, Hitler had occupied the Rhineland and absorbed Austria, Japan had seized the Yangtse threatening vast sums of British capital, and in Spain General Franco, with the aid of the dictator powers, was on the verge of establishing a régime which showed every indication of affiliating itself with the Rome-Berlin Axis. Although only nineteen years before the peace of Versailles was signed, and, under the Covenant of the League of Nations, the world seemed to be approaching a genuine international understanding, Europe was now split into irreconcilable camps. The air was charged with the drone of aircraft while a militant spirit more fierce and ruthless than ever before was trampling half the continent.
To understand British policy at that time, however, it must be emphasized that the Government did not accept the situation at its face value. Chamberlain was banking on the following beliefs: first, that although the procedure might be a lengthy one, it would be possible to detach Italy from the Rome-Berlin Axis; second, that although General Franco was sympathetic to Italy and Germany, he would eventually be forced to London for a loan; and, third, that although Germany might wish to dominate Central Europe, she had no fundamental quarrel with England.
Working on these hypotheses, Chamberlain had not been idle. Although Great Britain still recognized the Government of Republican Spain, she had sent permanent representatives to Burgos. Although she had demanded that Italy withdraw her troops from Nationalist territory, she had overlooked Mussolini’s refusal to do so, and hurriedly signed an Anglo-Italian agreement declaring her willingness to recognize Abyssinia. Although Germany had forcibly occupied Austria and shocked the world by her brutal treatment of the Jewish minority, England had warned the Czechoslovakians that they must be careful to treat the German minority with every consideration.
Mr. Churchill had little faith in the success of these moves and pled desperately for more vigorous efforts at rearmament, pointing out that the situation had no parallel in history. The Empire had been menaced four times in four successive centuries; by Philip II of Spain, by Louis XIV, by Napoleon and by the German Kaiser. On all these occasions England had emerged victorious through the predominance of her sea power. This predominance enabled her to protect her island from invasion and at the same time send money and arms abroad and to form allied leagues against her enemies. Even when Napoleon dominated half of Europe and declared sanctions against England, boycotting her goods from all the ports beneath his control, Britain’s command of the seas enabled her to develop an enormous smuggling trade, and to form four successive coalitions against him until he met defeat, first at Trafalgar, finally at Waterloo. In the World War, once again it was British sea power, with its steady, persistent blockade, that finally crushed the German people.
But now England could no longer depend exclusively on her naval strength. When Blériot flew the Channel in 1909, the end of her impregnability was in sight, for the sea that had hitherto served as her guardian showed signs of transforming her into one of the most vulnerable nations of Europe. Her harbours and factories were open targets, and on these harbours and factories her existence depended. Although she possessed the most powerful navy in the world, her General Staff was faced with the prospect of fighting on three fronts at once; in the Far East, in the Mediterranean, and in the North Sea. Even if the danger in the Orient were eliminated, her strategic position remained far graver than in 1914, for at that time the Mediterranean was blocked off, Spain was neutral, and Portugal and Italy her allies.
To fight, Britain needed more ships, arms and aircraft than ever before. The House of Commons undoubtedly agreed on this point, but who said Britain would have to fight? On every side one heard the phrase: “Hitler doesn’t want a war.” It was uttered with the same complacent conviction that one used to say: “The French have the finest army in the world.” Some people claimed that Hitler’s interest lay in the East—Russia was his real goal; others that he was only blowing the trumpet to recover his African colonies. Whatever the argument, a second war with Great Britain was unthinkable, and outsiders began to wonder if England would pass quietly away in a deep slumber.
I was in the House of Commons on March 24th, two weeks after the annexation of Austria, when Churchill made a dramatic and moving appeal. As I looked down from the Gallery, on the sea of black coats and white faces, he seemed only one man among many; but when he spoke his words rang through the House with terrible finality. He stood addressing the Speaker, his shoulders slightly bent, his head thrust forward, and a hand in his waistcoat pocket.
“For five years I have talked to the House on these matters—not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet. Look back over the last five years. It is true that great mistakes were made in the years immediately after the War. But at Locarno we laid the foundation from which a great forward movement could have been made. Look back upon the last five years—since, that is to say, Germany began to rearm in earnest and openly to seek revenge. If we study the history of Rome and Carthage, we can understand what happened and why. It is not difficult to form an intelligent view about the three Punic Wars; but if mortal catastrophe should overtake the British Nation and the British Empire, historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory—gone with the wind!
Now the victors are the vanquished, and those who threw down their arms in the field and sued for an armistice are striding on to world mastery. That is the position—that is the terrible transformation that has taken place bit by bit. I rejoice to hear from the Prime Minister that a further supreme effort is to be made to place us in a position of security. Now is the time at last to rouse the nation. Perhaps it is the last time it can be roused with a chance of preventing war, or with a chance of coming through to victory should our efforts to prevent war fail. We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world; for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilization.”
When Mr. Churchill sat down there was a deep silence for a moment: then the show was over. The House broke into a hubbub of noise; members rattled their papers and shuffled their way to the lobby. Harold Balfour (now Under-Secretary of State for Air) came up to the Ladies’ Gallery to take me to tea. I was talking with Sheila Birkenhead, and when we asked him what he thought of the speech, he replied, lightly: “Oh, the usual Churchillian fillibuster; he likes to rattle the sabre and he does it jolly well, but you always have to take it with a grain of salt.”
A grain of salt, while the German armies were beginning their march across Europe …