“MAGINOT DREAM” AND THEN WAR

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28159, 24 December 1956, Page 13

“MAGINOT DREAM” AND THEN WAR

Low’s Impact On That Period Of History

POWERFUL CARTOONS THAT STIRRED THE NATION

["Low's Autobiography” has been published, by Michael Joseph., Ltd. The series of articles of which this is the sixth and last, is published by permission of the “Manchester Guardian.” Copyright is reserved.]

Six months passed in a Maginot dream. Anticlimax and the distance of battle bred the idea that this was a “phony war,” that Hitler would be satisfied with Poland and all would be patched up. The battle of Norway was a sharp reminder that the British, far from being equal to the test of modern war, had not begun to think of it in the right terms.

Retreat, reverse, retreat. After turning out my cartoon for next day (“Only one position will never be evacuated—the position of the Chamberlain Government in Downing Street”) I went to see how Parliament was taking it.

In the peculiar half-light of the H.0.C., fantastic things were going on. Looking down out of my seat in the press gallery people who had been just people now enlarged to historic size, others shrunk to vanishing-point.

“In the name of God . . . GO!” said a monument about ten feet high that a few minutes before had been little Leopold Amery. Chamberlain sat yellow, glazed of eye, the picture of personal tragedy. How different from the immaculate, confident Junior Minister I had seen enter the House in 1922. But now Britain needed not a whistle but a trumpet. Churchill with the music of Demosthenes’ philippics in his back pocket was just right. Superficially a cartoonist’s range in time of war tends to narrow down to the one subject, but of course its ramifications are infinite. The constant reiteration of the points that the enemy was a fool and a blackguard, and that our brave boys would kick his pants, was already old-fashioned and a bore. The anguish which infused the great occasions imposed a pregnant simplicity on their interpretation. “All Behind You, Winston;” “Very Well, Alone;” and “Harvest Moon,” three of my widest-known cartoons of the time, practically drew themselves at white heat. “Thank God For Low” Later the wind changed for me. While the war was active, sensational, and picturesque, I had been flattered and complimented to the point of embarrassment. “Thank God for Low,” had said a London vicar from his pulpit. “Low is one of the three forces that hold us together,” said somebody else, meaning as the two others Churchill and J. B. Priestley, whose Sunday evening broadcasts had the ear of the whole nation. I was not used to being written and talked about as though I were a national hero, and this and what I observed happening to other people filled me with dark suspicion about the fortuitous nature of greatness. When I felt called upon to say that people were eating too much and using too much petrol, not working hard enough and shooting off their mouths too much, it was a different story. The war had changed a lot of things. The face of Humanity. The “Evening Standard.” Me. j With trade unionism strong and well organised, a Labour Government in power with its own majority, and socialism shelved for the reformism of the now universally approved Welfare State, a new phase was opening. The old box of cartoonists’ dummies, fat top-hatted white-spatted “Boss,” downtrodden “Worker,” ragged “Unemployed,” was obsolete. Into the wastebasket. The question was no longer whether to make a better world but how. In that light of the political alignment, Labour against Conservative was as out-of-date as Whig against Tory or Roundhead against Cavalier. “Sick of Make-Believe”

The only contrast that would have made sense and might have produced useful interplay was a Freedom party against an Order party, but that was too much to expect. I grew sick of the make-believe of the old party politics, and bored with the many chaps who were so terribly anxious to go “Left” that they bent in a semi-circle and were coming back on the “Right” without knowing it. “Those damned words Rightism and Leftism!” as old H. G. would say. “In the most vital human concerns there is no Right or Left at all, but just straight forward.” At this point (during the Korean war) my own private affairs came to the boil. Paper shortage had kept, and seemed likely to keep, the British newspapers scant of space indefinitely. The “Evening Standard” could no longer afford the room for full-sized political cartoons, and my past had spoilt me for settling down tamely to a life of making small drawings that gave me no pleasure. Anyway I had been in one place too long. Was I not the young man who once vowed he would never take root? Were there not new facets of life- I grew tired of security. I yearned for another taste of the struggle for existence, the spur of uncertainty, and the sweet taste of surprise. The technical point decided the issue. No more would I work for one paper alone. I would arrange a home base, expand by foreign connexions. and take on “special” jobs abroad ... In this elevated mood I went home and sacked myself from the “Evening Standard.” Letter From Beaverbrook The consequences were interesting. My business friends concluded I had been offered more money. My political friends concluded I must be after more power. Stoopids who had always thought of me as one of rich Beaverbrook’s leg-men assumed that I must

have lost favour and been banished, and they fell away overnight. Beaverbrook from Jamaica: Dec. 9, 1949, Black Friday. My dear Low, Your letter is an unwelcome message. I always look over my letters here before opening them myself, for I have no secretary or typist. Then I select the pleasant-looking lot and read them. The rest are put off until after lunch. Your letter was in the first batch because I expected to hear that you wished me well for Christmas or that you and Mrs Low would visit Jamaica or that you had changed your mind about Churchill. Instead I got the worst letter first. That’s the way life has treated me far too often. Your decision is a disaster. It is unnecessary and • inadvisable. That’s what I think of it . . . Don’t forget your old friend, Yours ever, BEAVERBROOK. Green fields a’nd pastures new. Tc start with, a new association with my old friend Percy Cudlipp seemed to hold agreeably difficult possibilities. Percy, who was now editor of the “Daily Herald.” the mouthpiece of industrial and political Labour, thought the same, and this newspaper became my new headquarters. My experience with the “Daily Herald” reminded me of some things I had forgotten about newspaper and public receptivity. It was generally assumed that by virtue of my new “frame” I would be a Labour party cartoonist, and when I made no difference whatever in the independence of my viewpoint there was a touch of asperity among some critics in the outside world. On the “Daily Herald” If I had supposed that the average of political interest might not have declined on the Left as much as on the Right. I was soon disillusioned. In the “Daily Herald” the Entertainment-versus-Instruction battle was in full swing, too, only more so. For this reason, perhaps, however congenial I found my colleagues and however much I began to enjoy drawing again in the roomier space, my association with the “Daily Herald” readers was destined to be short. For another, I could evoke no enthusiasm for even mild fun at the expense of trade union leaders and their policies. When, for instance I repeatedly drew the Trades Union Congress as an honest but simple-minded draught horse (“the T.U.C. Horse”) a dispute arose as to whether I was deriding draught horses or the T.U.C. So we parted. Sitting in my club with some friends discussing the change in Fleet Street, one of them brought in a copy of the “Manchester Guardian” with a completely new make-up of its front page. “They’ll be running cartoons next,” he said. I chuckled inwardly, saying to myself: “Boy. you don’t know it, but how right you are.” (Concluded)