Notebook
Some ingenious apologists have thought up n new excuse for Britain having forcibly returned so many Russians to certain death in the Soviet Union after the war. According to them, the nation, and its rulers, had been demoralised and brutalised by six Years of total war. Moral sensibilities, it is argued, were understandably much more blunted then than now, since people had Just gone through all the miseries and squalors of protracted conflict, So it is unfair, they argue, to be too hard on those responsible for this cold-blooded British atrocity, since such censoriousness is to apply the civilised standards of today, aPpropriate to a time of protracted peace, to circumstances which were inevitably far less compassionate. It cannot be stated too emphatically that this is a wholly unjustified Piece of special pleading, since Churchill and Eden, who initiated the shameful policy of compulsory repatriation, had been exceptionally well insulated from the squalors and miseries of war, living lives cocooned by all the civilised comforts and conveniences of supreme command. As their memoirs make clear, these wartime Years, for them, were marvellously exciting, Uplifting and happy. And as for the Foreign Office officials who enthusiastically implemented the shameful policy, they had suffered nothing more brutalising than the effects of rationing on the cuisine at the Travellers Club.
But even those, near the bottom of the ladder, who had experienced some of the uglier Sides of war, were very far from being demoralised or brutalised, as I was reminded last week when attending a reunion of my old regiment, known as Phantom. Orinking.with one of my brother officers, Whom I had not seen for over thirty years, we reminisced about an incident which neither of us has ever forgotten. It took Place in the closing months of the war, as our unit was advancing into Germany, just at the time when 'anti-Hun' passions were at their height because of the liberated concentration camp revelations. My comradein-arms and I, both still in our late teens, stopped at a farmhouse and politely asked for some shell eggs — as they were then called to differentiate them from the powdered variety — for which we offered to pay With hard currency, i.e. cigarettes. Instead °f prudently conceding what, in the circumstances, was a very modest request, the fat Rhineland farmer truculently refused, even going so far as to shake his fist in our faces. Greatly provoked we angrily pushed him aside, forced our way into the house, and seized the entire content of his bursting
larder — hams, sausages, etc. Not content with this, we proceeded to try to round up some chickens from the farmyard. This operation, however, proved rather less successful and we ended up taking pot shots at the squawking birds, to the accompaniment of indignant screams from the farmer's wife, who accused us of destroying her best laying hens. Scarcely, you might think, a particularly memorable atrocity against the background of Buchenwald and Belsen. But the point is that it 'seemed to us terrible at the time. No sooner had we made off with our loot — leaving the mutilated chickens behind — than we were assailed by awful guilt. Reminiscing about this incident last week, we were both struck by how much more idealistic, naive and scrupulous we were then than we are now. What seemed to us then at the climax of the war, a shocking example of rude and licentious soldiery, for which we were deeply ashamed, now appears, after thirty years of peace, as almost comically mild and harmless, incomparably less brutal and violent than what happens every afternoon on football terraces up and down the country. No, that particular excuse about Britain having been demoralised by war in 1945 simply will not wash. The repatriation outrage was a rever sion to the mood of the 'thirties, an anticipation of the mood of the 'sixties and 'seventies. Far from telling us something about the brutalising corruptions of a long war, it tells us about the instantly brutalising corruptions of peace.
Another wartime comrade, at last week's Phantom reunion was Michael Oakeshott, the famous political philosopher, whom I met in Holland when he was the
first unit adjutant and I a newly-joined young subaltern fresh from Cambridge, and full of undergraduate arrogance. Such was Oakeshott's modesty and reticence that he never let on that he was also from Cambridge where he had been a famous pre-war don, author of what was already a classic work. Having no idea who or what he was, I used to lecture him ceaselessly in the mess, while he sat back giggling encouragement to my wildest flights of intellectual absurdity. We even shared a tent together for a while, which gave me even more opportunities to air my views, far into the night, still in total ignorance of his true identity. Not until I returned to Cambridge after the war, and attended my first lecture, did the penny drop. For there at the podium stood the self-same Oakeshott, with a crammed audience hanging on his every word. He was a marvellous lecturer, attracting students from all over the world, and I have never ceased to regret not having taken advantage of all those invaluable opportunities in Holland for private tuition.
If Mrs Thatcher does not win the next election it will certainly not be for lack of
academic advice. Scarcely a month goes by without some new group of dons forming themselves into an intellectual ginger group to keep her on the right, not to say the Right lines. Admittedly, it is a bit of a stage army, since the same names seem to appear in most of the groups —Maurice Cowling, John Casey, from Cambridge, Elie Kedourie, Shirley Letwin, and Kenneth Minogue from the LSE, and so on. One of these groups, however, is about to give birth to a substantial book, masterfully edited by Cowl
ing, which will appear in the summet under the Cassell imprint, including essays by , John Biffen and John Peyton as well as most of the leading right-wing publicists and academics. Reportedly the tone of parts of the book is so true-blue that some members of the group — Shirley Lctwin and Kenneth Minogue — have felt compelled to withdraw. My own contribution is about the importance of the law and order theme. But it rather looks as if Mrs Thatcher does not need my prompting to ride this horse for all that it.is worth. I am sure that she is right to do so, since the Labour Party can never really compete on this particular front. Socialists may be against crime, but their belief that it is the system which causes it cannot fail to sap their will to do anything effective about it. Nor can they stop,themselves suspecting that the police are, a slightly dubious body — not wholly to be trusted to be on the side of the angels. For the Tories, who really do believe in the sinfulness of man, law and order is a natural theme, just as equality is a natural Labour theme. Freedom? More arguable. Mrs Thatcher seems to think that she is on to a winner there, too. But my piece in the forthcoming book tells her not to be .too sure about it.
Peregrine Worsthorne
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