AMERICAN OBSERVER

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4232, 17 January 1940, Page 12

AMERICAN OBSERVER

IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLISH PEOPLE IN WARTIME. A STUDY AND A TRIBUTE. Particularly interesting at the present time are the impressions of Mr Oswald Garrison Villard, an impartial American observer, published in the London Daily Telegraph and Morning Post on December 2nd. Mr Villard is a distinguished American writer and editor, who recently arrived in London after a four weeks’ visit to Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Mr Villard, who is a grandson of William Lloyd Garrison and was born in Germany, speaks German fluently. He had exceptional opportunities during his visit for studying life and assessing opinion in the Reich under war conditions. , Mr Villard was at one time editor of the New York Evening Post, and also editor and part proprietor of the New York Nation. He is a Radical Liberal in politics and has been a strong supporter of world peace. To come back to the fresh, clean air of England after breathing the foul atmosphere of Germany, so poisoned . by its murderous Government's malignity, hate and vituperation —not only against England and every other nation that blocks its way, but also against so many of its own citizens — is to enter a new, a wholesome, a free world; is to experience an exaltation of the spirit. Here men can smile even under the strain of a terrible war. Here they look you straight in the eyes with nothing to conceal or apologise for. Here they talk to you about their hopes, their fears, their aspirations, their desires, without looking behind them to see if they are being overheard. Here they criticise their Government, if they so wish, and close no doors for fear of a Gestapo. Here they have a still free, if not unfettered, press; and here they tell you that, much as they hate the war and all that pertains to it, this is a job to be done as best it may.

No cant, no self-laudation, no selfpity, no whining. Just a manly, straightforward, clear-eyed facing the future with the same magnificent, cool courage, the same astounding determination that amazed me at the outbreak of the struggle. I have not found a man or a woman enthusiastic for the war —no more than in Germany; and, thank heaven, I have found none who have professed admiration for it as war. I have encountered many who hate the whole institution, dread the outcome of it all, and feel that the blunders of their own Governments in the past have helped to bring it on. But I have met none who did not admit the complete.

the essential justice of the Allied cause, whether they believed ■ in war methods or* not. The serious dissensions of 1914 are nowhere in evidence; it is as nearly a united front as it could possibly be, granting the existence of conscientious objection to war, and that united front, without heroics or selfadulation, is still calmly saying that this war must be won if Europe is to be saved, if it is to be a place of habitation of free men. There has been no referendum of the British people on this war, as I wish there might always be in every country, but if there had been there can be no doubt whatever of the size of the majority there would have been.

In Berlin I was eagerly asked what was the spirit of the British people, and nothing I told them impressed my hearers more than the story of the quiet young man who sat next to me on the top of a bus just before I left for Germany. I had asked him the rank of an officer near us, apologising for my ignorance by saying that I was an American. He said: “You have come to London at an unhappy time. It is too bad that you should see it now.” I explained that it was not a new city to me, but that I was deeply grieved that war had come to it again. Very quietly and simply he replied: “Well, it had to come. You see, I am a young man. I shall probably have to go and may not come back. But there is no use going on in this way. I don’t want to live in a Europe like the one we have lived in for the last five years. How can a young man like myself build a home and found a family if he’s told every six months he must be ready to go to war?” That, I assured people in Germany, is just the spirit in which England went into the war. Those are the words used to me by porters, taxi cab drivers, waiters indeed, all the workers I have had time and opportunity to meet. My chambermaid says cheerfully. “We’ll have to go on till we get rid of that man.”

Underneath, I know, the currents of the spirit run fast. Under that mask of calm self-control that has set the Englishman apart for centuries, feelings are deep and deeply stirred. Underneath the emotions of these men and women lies the passion for justice—and the passion for justice, I believe, is stronger in this country than in any other. My great fear for England is lest the war weaken that passion, lest the zeal for individual liberty, which has been England’s greatest contribution to the progress of the race, be weakened and even destroyed by the war and the war spirit. For war means, as everyone here knows to-day, the extension of controls, the putting on of checks and reins, the infringement of liberty, which it is sought to justify on the ground that one must fight fire with fire, that to defeat a ruthless dictator one must be as ruthless as the dictator himself. Fortunately, it is the finest English tradition that criticism is still heard in the British Parliament. The very impatience with war restrictions, the widespread disapproval of phases of the evacuation and of the compulsory billeting, the vigorous opposition to Mr Keynes’ scheme for a forced levy on wages for saying, the great desire to keep Parliament in session—all these are signs of health; signs that the finest thing in British life, its jealousy of its rights and privileges, is still intact. I have every hope that this vigilant guarding of the rights of the Englishman will continue, for they are the rights of man. Never was there a period in the world’s history when it was more necessary to stress those rights and to preserve them in the face of those who declare that the individual has no rights whatever that the State is bound to respect: that he lives only to be ready to die in prison or concentration camp or on the battlefield, as the dictator may decide. ’ i

Give up those rights, even “for the duration,” and more than half of England’s case against Hitler falls to the ground. It is a battle not merely for a new and a federal world, but for the re-establishment of the equality of individuals without regard to race or creed or colour, without regard to whether they belong to minorities or majorities. It is a sign of wisdom and of health that, in this emergency, debate as to what shall be the ideals and aims beyond the actual winning of the war goes on apace. This is the time to plan ahead, not when the war passions have risen to great heights and the losses and sacrifices may have become immeasurable, as between 1914 . and 1918. It is worthy of the best tradition of English statesmanship to have an Opposition leader declare in the House of Commons, contrary to the precedent of the last year, that “first of all the peace settlement must be made by the co-operation of the victors, the vanquished and the neutrals alike.” It is leadership in the best English manner to have the Labour Party say that it must not be a dictated peace or one between one or two Powers; that the concept of absolute sovereignty should be abandoned and that there should be recognition of an international authority with the power to enforce its decisions. Of course there are clashes of opinion; of course there are disagreements; of course there will be views of every varying shade, but. that, again, is the magnificent English tradition. One has only to look across the Channel to Germany—where no man dare venture an opinion as to what the peace should be; where I heard no single man discuss the terms of a just settlement or what the Europe of the future should be—to understand the difference between slaves and free men, to know why it is that two systems for the government of men are in death grapple to-day. Good-bye London! I shall take back to America an unforgettable picture of black-outs and sandbags, of trenches scarring the beautiful parks, and of balloons on guard, as exquisite when beneath blue skies as jewels in a raja’s raiment. The majesty of London at night in a darkness unparalleled since the days of Shakespeare will always live with me, for then the mystery of the greatest of capitals is at its height. Men and women may sit behind drawn curtains fearing perhaps to go about; the city broods over them in awe-inspiring beauty. Look down upon it from a height and it is all the world dotted by will-o’-the-wisp lights that betray a bus, a car. Destroy this city? Well may the Germans pause, for this that looms so

sombre and so vast is not England’s alone. This is the heritage of all who say that men shall be free. For him who lays violent hands upon it there will be forgiveness never. Good-bye London! I take back to America something finer still —the unforgettable picture of the men and women who bring this city’s streets to life. By day and by night I shall see the puzzled, adventurous faces of children being evacuated into—for them —the unknown, with their British mothers shedding but scant, decorous tears. I shall behold, whenever I please, the faces of British youth in uniform; handsome, clear eyed, cheery—wholesome, wholesome, wholesome. Too fine to lose; too fine to die! I shall recall the women, young and old, in uniform; a tyim, handsome girl of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force; a constable as neat, as spick and span, as any guardsman before St. James’ Palace; an air warden in brown, for all the world a sergeant major in skirts; a man in khaki kilt dancihg with a girl in khaki trousers. There will come to me across the Atlantic the men drilling bare-kneed in barracks; long queues before the naval reserve boats in the Thames; troops marching across country; lorries full of men, tanks, guns, men—always fine, splendid men. But, more than that, as long as I live there will be with me the quiet faces of those without uniforms, without titles, the plain people who carry on; who have nothing—yet, if they have sons, everything—to lose; who must pay and pay and pay. For these are England—the England that must be Inade free of wars, free of fear, free of injustice. For them, after the war, must be built the England that is to come, better and finer than ever before. Good-bye England! I go unafraid. For justice, humanity and the right are standing on your right hand. And to them victory will come in time.