GREAT BRITAIN: Pluggers for Peace

The British Institute of Public Opinion, in a sampling of voters’ minds last week, found that three out of four Britons were in favor of continuing the war. One in four either did not know what he wanted or wanted immediate peace. Foreign newsmen estimated that the “peace party” in the House of Commons did not number more than a score of the 615 M.P.s. No attempt was made by the British Government to silence the tongues of would-be peacemakers, and opinions which in other countries in wartime would land a man in jail were freely uttered. But both inside and outside Parliament, Britons learned that peace, like politics, makes strange bedfellows:

>Britain’s individualistic literati carried on a violent, open discussion in the newspapers on peace v. war. Most outspoken and extreme was incorrigible Playwright George Bernard Shaw, who wrote an unsolicited (and unpaid for) letter to the Manchester Guardian which plugged this way for peace:

“What I want from Mr. Chamberlain is complete frankness. . . . What Mr. Chamberlain has got to declare now is whether he is going to bomb Berlin or not. If he does the consequences will go far beyond our maddest intentions and will be quite different from anything either we or Herr Hitler contemplate. If not, the sooner we stop the war and arrange for the tabling of our respective grievances. . . the better. . . . Our Premier’s pledge to Poland was quite explicit. We were to come to her aid ‘with all our resources,’ which meant that when the first German soldier crossed the Polish frontier the Royal Air Force would bomb Berlin.”

Later, would-be Peacemaker Shaw, asked by London’s Daily Worker, Communist organ, whether he favored peace negotiations and an immediate armistice, answered: “I’m in favor of negotiations . . . but a philosopher—or a God—might hold that, as the 1914-1918 war was well worth while because it got rid of the German, Austrian, Turkish and Russian Empires, this one might be worthwhile if it got rid of the British Empire: not a very pleasant process for us. . . . But the sooner the order is given to cease fire and turn up the lights the better.”

> Disagreeing with Playwright Shaw was Biologist Julian Huxley, who chose the London Times as his forum: “We cannot survive as a great power unless we smash Hitlerism; but if we are to prevent the growth of a new Hitlerism later, we must plan some kind of new international order.” Scientist J. B. S. Haldane, who as a rule has fairly fresh ideas, wanted: 1) peace negotiations now; 2) an arrangement for “all peoples to be allowed free elections to determine their own form of government,” a faithful echo of 1919 Wilsonian self-determinism.

> Still at large last week was Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, who has often publicly admired Herr Hitler and his methods. His news organ Action was no more censored than was the Times. All during the crisis that led up to the war Führer Sir Oswald Mosley sounded off against Britain’s “fighting for Poland.” Fortnight ago London bobbies only yawned when Sir Oswald held an outdoor peace meeting in the West End. Last week the British Fürhrer advocated peace by directing his followers to stick up posters reading: “MIND BRITAIN’S OWN BUSINESS.”

>When the war began Britain’s two big parties, Labor and Conservative, called a halt in politics, each party agreeing not to oppose the other in by-elections. If there were a Parliamentary vacancy of a seat formerly held by a Conservative, the Laborites agreed not to put up a candidate and vice versa. Last week, at a by-election in Glasgow, this idyllic state of affairs was impaired when Pacifist Andrew Stewart entered the race independently on a “Stop the War” platform against Laborite Arthur Woodburn, who supported the war. True to their pledge, the Conservatives did not put up a candidate. Result: Candidate Woodburn, 15,645; Candidate Stewart, 1,060. Candidate Stewart’s comment: “The people are quite mod.”

> David Lloyd George, 76-year-old “Welsh wizard” who directed most of Britain’s last war from Whitehall, listened to the Prime Minister’s answer to Führer Hitler, then summoned his Council of Action for Peace to a closed meeting. After a 40-minute speech by Mr. Lloyd George the Council found the Prime Minister’s statement “quite inadequate,” called upon the Government to draw up a fuller statement of Britain’s war aims.

> Ever since Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler signed their non-aggression pact in late August, Communists outside Russia have performed one verbal trapeze act after another. Particularly embarrassed by the Stalin-Hitler handshaking was British Communist Party Secretary Harry Pollitt, a stocky 48-year-old man long known as the British Party’s “ablest propagandist and spokesman.” Although he had long praised the Soviet Union, defended Dictator Stalin’s frequent purges and written powerful pieces against Fascist aggressions, Secretary Pollitt could not see his way to follow the new “party line.”

In late August he wrote a pamphlet How to Win the War. He was primarily responsible for a Sept. 2 manifesto declaring British Communists were ready to join the war against German Fascism. But that pamphlet was later withdrawn, and on Oct. 7 the Party’s Central Committee printed a “correction” of the September manifesto. Britain, France and Poland were blamed equally with Germany for starting an “imperialist war.” Last week Secretary Pollitt lost his job, although not his Party membership.

Meanwhile Willie Gallacher, lone Communist M.P., suddenly dropped his bellicose anti-Hitler baiting and became, along with Shaw, Sir Oswald Mosley, Haldane and Lloyd George, a plugger for peace. By last week London’s Daily Worker had obviously re-established its pipeline to Moscow and instead of wild conjectures about the new Party line, was again dishing out the straight official Comintern dope. It front-paged an editorial about “imperialist statesmen” still “bargaining hard,” continued :

“The ruling class of this country are on the horns of an historical dilemma. The millionaires of Britain are afraid of peace and are afraid of war. . . . They fear the growing strength of the peaceful Soviet Union which remains outside the imperialist war camp.”

Unlike the British, the French Government put up with little peace nonsense, whether from the literati, the Fascists or the Communists. Last month all Communist newsorgans were shut down and the Communist Party, which polled 1,200,000 votes in 1936, was dissolved. Fortnight ago Premier Edouard Daladier officially ended the Parliamentary session, thus also officially ending the period of immunity from arrest of 72 former Communist deputies, 53 of whom had formed a Workers’ and Peasants’ Party. Unfortunately, these deputies had also signed and sent a peace letter to Chamber of Deputies President Edouard Herriot which the French Government suspected of being “defeatist propaganda.”

A great “Red” hunt was ordered and by last week many Communist deputies and other prominent French Communists (plus many obscure ones) had been arrested, indicted or were being hunted. The most prominent ones were still in hiding, however. French Communist Secretary General Maurice Thorez, sent to the front with an engineer regiment, got a 24-hour furlough, took French leave and made a separate peace. Colorful Andre Marty, who once led a French Navy mutiny in the Black Sea and fought with the Spanish Loyalists, was thought to have disappeared to Russia. Deputy Jacques Duclos, an experienced fugitive from justice, could not be found. Also under indictment was onetime Air Minister Marcel Déat, dissident Socialist and prominent French defeatist who last summer wrote a tract called Die for Danzig? This time he was accused of having signed one called Immediate Peace.