A House Divided

Southland Times, Issue 23610, 10 September 1938, Page 13

A House Divided

With brother against brother and sister against sister, British aristocracy is openly split on the great beliefs of this agecommunism, fascism, democracy.

By

M. H. HALTON

LONDON. AT a meeting of the “Friends of Franco” in London recently, at which Dean Inge was a speaker, there were young girls who cried “Arriba Espana” (“Arise, Spain,” an insurgent patriotic phrase), and “Down with the Jews.” At a meeting of the Friends of Spain the same night, a sister of those girls led the singing of the International, the official communist anthem. *

On the same night that Unity Mitford, Lord Redesdale’s daugh-

ter, was leading a fascist parade in the east end of London, her brother-in-law, Esmond Romilly, was speaking nearby at a workers’ meeting. Unity Mitford is a Hitler-worshipper and spends most of her time in Germany. Her sister is married to a communist who has fought for the Government of Spain. She now lives among the workers in a London slum and refuses to mention her family’s name.

Famous families of the British aristocracy are divided against themselves—father against son, brother against brother, sister against sister—by loud harsh clash of the two dominant ideas of our times.

I know these people—some of them are my friends—and Iliave seen at close quarters how Europe’s conflicting ideologies have broken up aristocratic English families and left a legacy of bitterness behind.

Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford, Hitler’s closest woman friend, is one of the most beautiful women I ever saw. She is one of the six beautiful daughters of David Bertram Ogilvy-Freeman-Mitford, second Baron Redesdale of Redesdale. She is 24 years old, and has always felt an affinity for Germany. Three years ago she was studying in Munich. Hitler saw her at a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg and was so struck by her Nordic beauty that he asked to be presented to her. Since then she has spent most of her time in Germany and has applied for German citizenship. She looks exactly like one’s ideas of the Norse Valkyries for whom she is named. She is tall. She walks like a winged victory. And to my surprise, she had little to say. I expected a raving school girl who had not outgrown adolescence and who would gush about Hitler having “saved Germany from Bolshevism.” I found her cool, cautious and self-contained, not seeking publicity and chary of giving information. I have heard a member of her family call her “a silly exhibitionist,” and

worse; but I found a woman who meant business, a woman who was devoting her life to a cause. “Suppose England and Germany go to war,” I said, “where would your sympathies lie?” “I admit that would be a difficult position,” slv. said, but would add nothing more. She admits proudly that she sent an open letter to Der Stuermer, the notorious Jew-baiting paper, praising it for its war of extermination against the Jews. But she would not tell anything for publication about Adolf Hitler, whom she thinks is the greatest statesman that ever lived. Swastika Flags Her eldest sister, Diana, the hon. Mrs Brian Guinness, is . even more beautiful than Unity, and a close friend of Sir Oswald Mosley, British fascist leader. Her beautiful house in Belgrave Square, London, where I have interviewed her, is full of swastika flags and portraits of Hitler; and she too is often in the company of the German dictator. “Hitler is restoring the aristocratic principle to mankind,” this exotic lady .told 'me. In the same family there are two other sisters who are far from fascist, and one of them, Decca, is married to a young communist aristocrat who has fought with the International Brigade against fascism in Spain. His name is Esmond Romilly. The Romillys and the Mitfords are cousins, nephews, and nieces of Winston Churchill. The two Romilly boys Esmond and Gyles, aged 20 and 22, bear one of the oldest names in England. A few years ago they were going to Wellington, one of the most famous public schools. became communists. They ran away from school and founded a brilliant little paper called “Out of Bounds.” They entered the working class movement. “Every member of the British upper classes knows how rotten their system is,” they said, “but few dare to break away.” When the civil war broke out in Spain they were among the first to offer their ardent young lives to the cause of the Spanish people. They were part of the little band of men who saved Madrid in the desperate days of November 1936. Their proud mother, sister-in-law of Winston Churchill, talking defiantly to me in front of company which was hostile to everything her sons stand for, described what happened on the day her sons reached Madrid.

“They went to General Kleber,” she said. “ ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Kleber. ‘We have come to help to save Madrid,’ said Esmond, and he pointed to the other Englishmen who had come with him. ‘Well,’ replied Kleber, ‘first of all you must march through the city singing. Throw out you chests! Pan-

ache! That is what we need. Panache, audacity!’ They did, and they inspired the people, and audacity saved Madrid.” Young Esmond Romilly, then only 18, was in love with his cousin, Decca, lovely young sister of the same Unity Mitford who was heiling Hitler in the streets of Munich and renouncing her right to the name of Englishwoman. Forbidden by her family to have anything to do with Esmond, she ran away to France to meet him. Esmond got permission to leave the front and met her in the south of France. The romance was splashed across the front pages, questions were asked in Parliament, the authorities actually tried to stop the marriage. .But the marriage took place in spite of all opposition. Romilly left his bride to go back to Spain. He fought with the Basque troops in their last stand against Franco. When defeat came, he escaped to France and returned with, his wife to England. He wrote a stirring book, “Boadilla.” Today those two handsome and talented young aristocrats, with their baby daughter, live the life of

fin ordinary worker’s family in the London east end district of Rotherhithe.

Unity and Diana believe that Hitlei is saving the world. Decca believes that only socialism can save the world.. An ancient aristocratic house is divided against itself. I was talking to Gyles Romilly, not long back from Spain. On his last day of fighting he was in a platoon with 11 other Englishmen. Seven of them were killed. “It looks as if you fought for nothing,” I said, “with the Italians and Germans now at the gates of Barcelona.” He offered to bet me £B, all the money he had in the world, that the war was not lost, that Franco would never get to the sea between Barcelona and Madrid.

Someone mentioned the pacifist students at Oxford who have been called decadent cowards for saying they refuse to fight for King and country. “Cowards?” smiled Romilly. “Do you know what they say in Madrid? They say: ‘English pacifists make firstclass machine-gunners’.” The Dockland Slums

Once recently I was spending a day in London’s dockland slums with Gyles and Esmond Romilly and Esmond’s wife, Decca. A drunken sailor lurched down Grandy street, singing a bawdy song. Two miserable old women fought over a gaudy trinket in a market stall. A young preacher patted the head of a dirty child and walked on oblivious to the stares from open doorways. Two young men threw empty tin cans at a Jewish peddler. A starved-looking, wild-eyed communist shouted about the European crisis, thus shamefully wasting his time. Old men and women, young men and girls, came laughing, singing cursing and brawling out of a dirty pub. A young fop with a red suit and padded shoulders swanked down the street and girls looked at him with admiring eyes. “I do not see why you live in the slums just because you are a communist,” I said to Gyles Romilly. “You are wasting your time, are you not? I

mean, class solidarity and all that is very fine, I suppose, but why agitate among people who are too crushed and desperate to think?” He turned on me. “I live down here,” he said, “because here I am at home and among my fellow men. I live here because my whole soul revolted at the artificiality, the stupidity, the snobbery

and the viciousness of the class I was born into.” We stopped in front of the communist orator. Romilly introduced him to me. He was a seaman, agitating between ships. “Call me Bill,” he said. “You do not seem to have a very big audience,” I observed. Bill laughed bitterly. “You are right,” he said. “Anybody who thinks he can start a revolution in the slums of London is crazy.” “You mean the people are too apathetic and beaten down?” I asked. “That is it,” said Bill. “I do not believe it!” cried Gyles. “They are wonderful people. Give them leadership, that is all they need!” “Comrade,” said Bill sadly, “maybe they used to be wonderful, but they ain’t now.” “Can’t Be Bothered” We walked for miles through that awful, never-ending wilderness of dockland slums, the dreariest place in the world, I think, except for the incredibly brave, gay people who filled the streets.

“Listen,” said Bill, drawing me aside, “there will never be much communism or fascism in the London slums, or among the masses of workers anywhere in England.” Gyles and Esmond Romilly do not believe this. Communism is growing among the. educated classes of Britain, fascism is growing among the owning classes, but the masses just cannot be bothered. Then and there, in Grundy street, Poplar, we stopped a man who was leading a horse and a coal-cart. Then and there I asked him if he was interested in the world struggle between fascism and democracy or between fascism and communism. I mentioned China.

“Listen, mister,” said the man wearily, “even if I did think the Chinese workers are being beaten down by Japanese warlords, could I help it? I work 12 hours a day to get me a living.”

“What about Spain?” asked Gyles. “I know that the Spanish workers are up against it,” said the coal man, “and my heart bleeds for them. But I’ve got troubles o’ me own.”

Two young men saluted Gyles. One was a Scots-Canadian named MacDougall. He had fought with Gyles in Spain, then gone to the MackenziePapineau battalion. Proudly he showed me his lieutenant papers in the Spanish republican army. Further along we saw two men in the street throw empty tin cans at a Jew. “There are districts in this part of London where fascism is much stronger than communism,” said Romilly. “That is why Mosley’s down here so often. You know, the Jewish ‘sweatshops’.” “Are there Jewish sweatshops? “England is full of sweatshops and certainly the Jews own some of them. They are small clothing manufacturers. In the same streets you can find Gentile sweatshops too, but around here there are more Jews. There is a good deal of anti-Semitism which the fascists exploit.” I felt hopeless and depressed in these streets. There . are miles and miles of utter dreariness. Not squalor, exactly, but dreariness utter and complete. Miles of narrow dirty streets lined by dingy houses two or three stories high and teeming with human beings who have lived there in poverty all their lives. These vast slums and half-slums of London contain innumerable people who have seldom, if ever, heard birds sing or seen a green field. The young communist aristocrats made their way back to the homes they had chosen for themselves and I back to the rich facade of London’s west end. “You are wasting your lives,” I said. They laughed at me. Their ages are 22, 20, and 18. They think the world can be saved.

I thought of another British aristocrat now called a renegade by other members of his caste. He is another of the brilliant Churchill clan. His name is Victor Alexander Spencer, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Viscount Churchill of Wychwood, and once a page of honour to King George V. He took the British medical unit to Spain and has seen service on every front. When Franco’s great final assault started he took command of a company of infantry. Today he is missing. He fought without a scratch through the Great War, and now he has poured away his generous life in front of Lerida for a people he thought oppressed.

Divided Families

When I last saw him he said: “I am not a renegade to the British aristocracy. I am fighting for democracy in the English tradition. It is the British aristocracy itself that is renegade to itself.”

“Does the British aristocracy really want Franco to win?” I asked.

“Most of them obviously do,” hie said. “They prefer fascism, which safeguards dividends, to democracy; even to their own Empire.”

Houses divided ... I know a father who has cursed his daughter and a mother who never speaks to her son and a husband and wife who are divorced because of political beliefs. You have a famous Tory aristocrat like the Duchess of Atholl saying that Franco represents the forces of antiChrist in the world and another like Sir Henry Page Croft saying, that Franco is “a gallant Christian gentleman.” You have a Mitford girl who marches through the slums of London with her fist clenched in the communist salute and another Mitford girl who salutes Adolf Hitler as a Siegfried sans peur et sans reproche. And in aristocratic salons there are moments when politesse suddenly dies and gives way to harsh, bitter outbursts sharp as swords . . . Perhaps Eden is right when he says the world has gone back to the unforgiving days of the religious wars.