BUGS BAER ONCE SAID, "All towns outside of New York are Bridgeport." I used to agree with Bugs that once you left New York you were strictly on the horse and buggy circuit. But of late years I've had to modify that. Since then I've discovered New Orleans and San Francisco and a little place called Carrizozo, New Mexico, where I want to go when I die. I want to go there and hang around the drugstore and sneak behind the prescription counter with Art Rolland and have a nip of what he calls Old Granddaddy and then type out his prescriptions for him. I want to eat the Mexican food that Sadie Rolland cooks and play "high-low-jack- and-the- game" with Tom and Belle James and with Art and Madeline Kudner and with our mob from the Oh-Bar-Oh Ranch. I want to talk baseball with a rancher, Big Whit, who takes care of the bar at the Carrizozo Country Club. He's such a baseball fan that he uses a baseball for his brand. I want to sit around arguing with Art Kudner, taking the opposite side of any argument just to draw Art out and listen to him talk. Carrizozo seems a long way off from Berkeley Square where I'm writing this to the accompaniment of a lot of noise. If I could have New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and Carrizozo I'd be willing to let the Indians have the rest of America. I can never be neutral about cities---I like them or I don't like them.
And I like London. A city is as good as the men you know in the city. Girls are pretty much the same in every city and in every country, but men aren't. I've always known grand people in London and perhaps because of that I overrate the city and give it a charm that it actually lacks. I've been in London a dozen times and I feel as much at home in London as I do in New York. I've never been in Westminster Abbey but I know every pub in Fleet Street. I've never visited the Tower but I could get a job on any paper in London. I never saw the changing of the guard at the Palace but I've often sat with Frank Owen, the editor of the Standard, and have heard him argue magnificently with Arthur Christiansen, editor of the Express. I've never gone to Kew in lilac time but I know Bevin and Beaverbrook well. I've never punted on the Thames but I can find my way from the Strand to Berkeley Square on the darkest of blacked-out nights. I know London as a newspaper man knows it and that's the best way to know any city.
I know it as Ed Beattie of the United Press knows it; as Tommy Watson of INS knows it; as Bill Stoneman of the Chicago Daily News knows it; as Chris and Frank Owen and Paul Holt and Hannen Swaffer and Valentine Castlerosse know it---and when you know London like that, why it's only a larger Carizzozo. It's just as friendly. I like London.
When we arrived from France, London was a bit panicky. For years the dreary Conservative party had been telling the people that everything was just dandy. But now Dunkirk had come and gone. Only incredible courage, amazing luck, and unexpected German stupidity had saved the English army from complete annihilation.
We thought the invasion would come any day. It will always be a mystery why Hitler allowed England to catch her breath. If he had followed Dunkirk with an invasion he would now be eating his carrots and beets in the Dorchester or the Savoy. Last July a fight between the German Army, supported by its then magnificent air force, and England would have been a fight between Joe Louis and Joe Doakes. Even the War Office admits that now. But unaccountably Hitler held back. He had all of the British tanks, guns, food supplies, even tobacco, which were left behind. Recently German airmen who were captured were found smoking Players. They had come from the immense stores left in France by the retreating army.
A lot of us think that England won the war at Dunkirk. She lost about 35,000 men. She should have lost 350,000 men. Nothing as bad as Dunkirk ever happened to an army before. I can't say much about it because I wasn't there and I think a man is a fool to write "think" pieces these days. But I have spoken to at least twenty service men who escaped from there and to the captains of both trawlers and motor torpedo boats which helped bring the men back and from them I got a pretty good picture of what hell it must have been.
To begin with the huge army which waited on the beach had virtually no anti-aircraft guns. The German bombers had a real field day. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The army just sat there taking its beating. Eventually the English fighting planes came to drive the bombers off but they didn't come for some time.
When they did come they didn't stay long. Hurricanes and Spitfires carry fuel enough for about an hour and a half of cruising. When they have to dive sharply and zoom upward at full throttle and go through their other tricks that hour and a half becomes about an hour. So they were no great help.
Why the whole force of the Luftwaffe wasn't hurled at those men on the beaches until they were all killed is one of the major mysteries of the war. Why Hitler and Goering who have (from a military standpoint) been so magnificently decisive should have chosen that moment to split a herring or sing "Horst Wessel" or take part in a barn dance no one will probably ever know. A month later it was too late.
The best minds in Fleet Street thought that Hitler would move into Ireland. So did people at the War Office. So many Air Ministry and Admiralty figures told me "off the record" that Ireland was to be next that I began to believe it. It seemed logical. Germany would have as much trouble grabbing Ireland from De Valera as Wallace Beery would have had snatching a peppermint stick from Shirley Temple. I hated to leave London. London was calm now and peaceful and we were beginning to say, "He'll never bomb London." It was just wishful thinking but for the moment we all believed it. Then I found that smart Ed Angley of the Herald Tribune had sent a man to Dublin; Ray Daniels of the New York Times had sent someone over; Chris had hurried a man to Ireland; Bob Low of Liberty Magazine was on his way; so was brilliant Virginia Cowles of the Sunday Times.
It was time I left. I went the next day. I'd never been to Ireland before. My idea of Ireland was Donn Byrne and James Stevens and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and The Dubliners and I Was Walking Down Sackville Street. I spent two weeks in Ireland and didn't find any of the things which I had found in those books.
Vincent Sheean was in Dublin. He had left London a week before, intending to sail for New York on the Washington which was making its famous last trip. But Sheean (who has never been called anything but Jimmy) changed his mind at the last moment. He stayed on in Dublin trying to get an interview with De Valera.
Parenthetically I did get an interview with De Valera. It wasn't very successful. First I found that I'd have to share the interview with Bob Low. I liked Bob but I like to work alone too. But it was the only way to see the head of Ireland, so reluctantly I went along with him. Gallagher, his press attaché, told us just before we went into Dev's office that the interview was strictly "off the record." That was just ducky. I didn't want to meet Dev socially---I wanted to ask him questions---the answers to which I could print. I tried to back out of even meeting him but Gallagher pleaded.
"He's anxious to see you," he said. "He wants to know what it was like in France."
So Bob and I went in and met the tall, homely, sad-eyed man and within five minutes his charm had completely captivated us. If Dev had a beard he'd look like Raymond Massey, who looks like Abraham Lincoln. He was anxious to hear about the German tanks and about the German parachutists---but he was talking "off the record." You get to respect that "off the record" tag. You can violate it only once in our business. It gets around if you do.
When we left Low asked me what I thought of Dev.
"How the hell can I tell anything about him !" I stormed. "You never let him get a word in edgewise."
But to get back to Jimmy Sheean. Jimmy was once one of the best foreign correspondents in the world. Then he started to write books. He wrote Personal History and that was a hunk of writing. That was something for all of us to shoot at. I think that only Webb Miller (I Found No Peace) equaled it, and as far as the business of being a foreign correspondent went Webb Miller started where the rest of us left off.
Now Jimmy Sheean divides his time between reporting for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA) and writing books and plays. In Dublin he had a suite of rooms at the Shelbourne Hotel that you could have held a skeet shoot in. If you stood at one end of his living room on a clear day you could just see the other end of the room with the naked eye. But Jimmy had spent his honeymoon in this suite and so although he was alone this time he took it again. Low and I were also living at the Shelbourne so we could keep an eye on each other and we spent an evening with Jimmy.
Jimmy had been away from London for a week and he was anxious for news. The Irish papers were strictly censored and not much news crept into their moribund columns. I mentioned casually that the biggest news of the week was Knickerbocker's great beat on the seizure of the French fleet at Oran.
"He licked the world by four hours," I told Jimmy. "He got a great cable from Barry Faris and another from Joe Connolly. That's the biggest beat of the war."
"Where did he get the story?" Jimmy asked tersely.
"He was at a dinner party," I explained, "when Brendon Bracken came in and spilled it."
Brendon Bracken is Winston Churchill's Parliamentary Secretary.
"I was at that dinner party," Jimmy exploded. "I left it early and came here the next day. But Brendon didn't say we could use the story. I assumed that it was off the record. So I left the party and went home."
"But Duff Cooper was there, James," I reminded him softly. "Knick went to work on Duff after you left. Knick said that if the American press didn't hurry and give the English version of the seizure the German radio would have a garbled version ready for American consumption. Knick worked hard on Duff and persuaded him to release the story. And then Knick ran like hell to the censor with Duff's okay and got it through before anyone in England knew about it."
Jimmy got up, his face white. He poured a drink deliberately. He drank it. He sat down again.
"I had that story just as Knick had it," he said tensely, "but any time I get a story at a dinner party I figure it is off the record."
"When people ask Knick or you or me to dinner, Jimmy boy, they are on notice. They know how we make our living. They have no right to impose any implied 'off the record' edict on us."
Jimmy said thoughtfully, "I'm mad. Not at Knick. I'm mad at myself. Damn it all, I used to be a good reporter. What's happened to me?"
"You're not hungry any more, Jimmy," I said. "You've got to be hungry to be a good reporter.
Knick is hungry. Me? I'm starving. But you aren't hungry. You aren't hungry to see your by-line over an exclusive story. You don't get the same kick out of licking the rest of us that we all get out of licking each other. You've written too many books."
"You're right," Jimmy sighed. "My God, you're so right. I keep thinking of stories in terms of a book."
"Well, that's all right. You make more money than the rest of us put together. You have an easy life and you're pretty much your own boss. Most of the boys envy you, Jimmy."
"Do you?" he asked.
"Not me. I'm a reporter. You're a writer. I don't get any kick out of writing. I do out of covering a "story."
We talked back and forth about it and Jimmy was still mad when Bob Low and I left. He was mad at himself. I hope he doesn't change his mental attitude and become what he once was---one of the best of all reporters. Competition is tough enough as it is.
I think that there is more good, accurate, honest reporting going on in England today than ever before in the history of our craft. To begin with the boys work under tough conditions. Most of them have to work at night. Then because we have no cabs in London at night they have to walk home. Walking a mile at three in the morning through black London streets with bombs falling and with shrapnel falling all over is not like having a waltz with Hedy Lamarr.
But they bear up magnificently. You laugh a little when you think of the men who made great reputations out of the last war and how little they had to endure to earn those reputations. To us one man has emerged from this war as the master of them all---Bill Stoneman of the Chicago Daily News. There is a newspaperman. The fact that he writes well is not important. Writing is just putting one word down after another as Damon Runyon once so aptly put it. But he runs his bureau efficiently. Of course he has a great staff with a brilliant girl, Helen Kirkpatrick, working for him. Bob Casey who was the head man in France for the Chicago News came over to help out afterwards. But in London we all think that Stoneman is the best of us all. I hope that the Chicago News bosses never discover his amazing honesty, integrity and ability. If they ever do they'll make an editor out of him and one of the greatest reporters who ever lived will be dead. I might add that this opinion of Stoneman is shared by every correspondent in London---and no one is jealous of him.
But to get back to Ireland. I wrote a story about Ireland for Collier's. I have a great-grandfather buried in County Donegal. I am sure if he read my story he turned over in his grave so many times that they now call him Revolving Reynolds.
IT WAS BACK in 1922 when the Black and Tans finally turned their hated backs upon the shores of Ireland. The last boatload of them was just leaving when a stalwart Dubliner made a remark that has come to be part of the saga of the Emerald Isle.
"Thank the Lord they've gone," he said lustily. "Now, praise be, we can fight in peace."
Today Ireland is very unhappy at the thought of someone infringing upon her traditional heritage of fighting peacefully within her own borders and with no outsiders participating. Ireland is in the tragic position of being a likely battleground for two foreign nations---one nation that she hates and another to which she is indifferent. Ireland, beyond stoutly declaring her neutrality and streamlining her small army as well as she could, is solving the whole problem by blandly ignoring it.
"It is like this," a member of the Dail said to me earnestly. "If either of them invades us, by the living Lord we'll fight and kick them right out. If Germany invades us, why, we might allow England to help us kick them out. If England invades us, well, we've been fighting England for seven hundred years and know how to handle her."
I heard this in homes in Dublin and in pubs in Cork and in small village inns in Tipperary. I heard it in the eight- hundred-year-old palace of an earl, and in country clubs in County Wicklow, and again I heard it in Galway on the west coast. No matter what tall, anxious-looking De Valera says; no matter what the dour-looking William Cosgrave, leader of the Opposition, says; no matter what William Norton, leader of the Labor party, or what gentle, scholarly old President Douglas Hyde, say---that is the opinion of the people of Ireland and it is one thing on which they are absolutely united. Ireland is committed to neutrality and, by God, Ireland will stay neutral if it has to fight everyone in Europe to maintain its status. I heard this a thousand times in two weeks from the people of Ireland and I heard it whispered to me by Government officials talking "off the record."
Coming to Ireland after the nightmare and death of France and after the tension and horrible feeling of dreaded anticipation in London was like emerging from a dark, dank swamp into the brilliant light of the sun. You heard far less war talk in Dublin I am sure, than you do in New York. There were no blackouts and no soldiers on the streets. Prices were the same as they had always been and there was a heaping plate of golden butter on the breakfast table alongside a filled sugar bowl--two things that the eyes of this correspondent had not seen for many a long day.
There is a war going on but, praise be, it is no war
of Ireland's. It is a war between England and Germany and the Devil take them both. That is the well-known ostrich defense used so ineffectively by Holland and Belgium, the two neutral twins who still don't know what hit them. If you stick your head in the sand these days the obvious thing is sure to happen. But Ireland shrugs her shoulders, looks at tomorrow's entries, and doesn't believe it.
I visited Glendalough, which is the vale between the two lakes in Wicklow. It has been a Sunday-afternoon picnicking ground for Dubliners for two hundred years. I was looking for likely places where the German parachutists might land. Glendalough is the place where in the year 504 Saint Kevin built his seven churches and then retired to a cave overlooking the lake. One night the fair Kathleen, in love with the fire of his eloquence, came to tell him of her love but the holy Kevin pushed her away, and down into the dark blue waters of the lake she went, never to come up again. Then Kevin in remorse decreed that never again would anyone drown in the lake and to this day none has.
There were probably two thousand laughing people from Dublin there, and they were telling the story of Kevin to solemn-eyed children, and they were having tea at the lovely inn on the shores of the lake, and to them the legend of 504 was far closer than the nightmare that has come to life in 1940. This is, true: there in fact is the very cave and the ruins of the churches that the good saint built. Parachutists? Fifth columnists? Get on with ye, now.
For two weeks I looked in vain for just one man who was afraid of the potential invasion by the Germans. I never found him. I walked into the bar of the Royal Hibernian Hotel, and forty men were deep in form charts, figuring out possible winners at Phoenix Park. I ordered a Scotch and began talking to the bartender. The bartender winked at a man standing next to me and said to him, "This fellow is here for the invasion." "Never mind the invasion," the man said. "We'll take care of those blighters if they ever come here and mind that."
I went to the Elm Park Country Club just outside of Dublin. Here the fairly well off businessmen of Dublin meet each day to play golf and each night to drink and talk. The lawyers, the merchants, the newspaper editors, the automobile salesmen---it is a perfect cross section of substantial Dublin.
I knew them all and they laughed a little bit at me but tempered their laughter by taking me into their circle. Reggie Knight, prominent Dublin businessman, says, "Now what a pity we haven't a few little parachutists for you to play with tonight. But here's Michail Buckley from Cork. Men from Cork never open their mouths for fear that by mistake they'll order a round of drinks. And Jack Arigho, who played wing three-quarter on three Irish Rugby teams that beat England; and Norman McBratnea and Con Foley and Paddy Duffy and Larry O'Neill, and now, lads, there'll be no closing hour tonight."
Someone asked me about the German tanks and how they operate. I told him. He laughed and said, "Some of our lads with rifles could pick their eyes out."
"But this is not a war between men, but men and machines," I said desperately. "The parachutists land with machine guns and carry hand grenades in their belts and flame throwers that shoot a flame a hundred yards."
"Come now," venerable Lawrence O'Neill said soothingly. "Have a wee spot and forget your machines. Did you know that I went to school with James Joyce?"
Enemy planes over Ireland? Ridiculous---and what if they did come over? Ireland had planes.
Holland had planes and so did Belgium and so did France. How many planes did Ireland have? Well a dozen or so and fine little things they were. Oh, but you wanted to scream at these happy, lovable, charming people and tell them to wake up, destruction might be just around the corner. But they'd slap you on the back and Jack Arigho would go to the piano and play "The Minstrel Boy," and sing it in his high, sweet voice, and Pat O'Loughlin would make another speech of welcome in Gaelic which not a man in the room would understand, for only three per cent of the people of Eire know the mother tongue, more knew it until it became compulsory to learn and then, of course, none would study it any more.
If the civilian population of Eire laughs at the thought of invasion the military does not. In many ways the terrain of Ireland will be an ally if the invasion comes. There are only two real airports in Ireland. It is true that the plains of Meath and Kildare and of Tipperary would provide ideal landing places for enemy planes, but it is equally true that these meadows and moors are cupped or surrounded by high hills. Most of the coast is rocky, but there are several wide beaches not unlike the beaches on which the parachutists and troop-carrying planes landed in Holland. There is Portmarnock, near Dublin, which gleams whitely with what looks to be firm, hard sand. Kingsford-Smith once took off from here on a flight to America. So did Jim Mollison. But military authorities who, incidentally, cannot be quoted by name, say that the sand is soft in spots and that even the infallible Reed's Nautical Almanac cannot tell how high the unpredictable tides will come and how much sand will be firm on any given date. Incidentally, precautions have been taken to protect all of Ireland's beaches.
Ireland has a few potential naval bases well worth the attention of any invader. Germany would love to hold Cobh and Berehaven on the south coast; Lough Swilly on the north-west coast and Killary Harbor, which is in Galway. Also Bantry Bay in Cork and Dunlaoghaire in County Dublin. This would give her a Gibraltar to keep a conquered England in order.
It wasn't until the third week in July that Irish ports were mined against invasion. Then Sean Lemass, Minister of Supplies, speaking for the Government, said that the coast was being mined and that the Government was gravely concerned about the possibility of invasion. Dublin only yawned.
None except military authorities, who won't tell, know just how large the Irish army is. In July, 1940, it was roughly 20,000 men. Today, augmented by a local defense force, it probably numbers 80,000 men, but the latter are not trained soldiers. Under the command of Major General McKenna, it is organized to fight the kind of defensive war that may develop. Colonel Costello and Major General Hugo McNeill, who learned his soldiering at the military school at Fort Leavenworth, have organized the army into brigades, not divisions. A brigade---perhaps a thousand men---will have everything that a division has except man strength. It will have light artillery, heavy artillery---what there is of it---tanks---what there are of them---and, of course, infantry. It is a compact, fast-moving unit which knows well the terrain where it is stationed.
These brigades are strategically placed, each one being responsible for a limited amount of territory. If any belligerent forces land, the brigades will theoretically be on the spot within a very short space of time. The important roads have been mined and there is no doubt that the Irish army will put up a sturdy and wholehearted defense.
If they come by air, using planes as a main attacking unit, the brigades will not be quite so effective. But military strategists still insist that no army can win a war from the air. They saw Germany conquer France through its planes, which were undoubtedly the deciding factor, but they still don't believe it. Military experts still insist that wars are won by infantry, ignoring the evidence that might be given by Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France.
Once a group of bombers and dive bombers thoroughly strafe a section of country there is little opposition left. Then the parachutists by the hundred can descend in peace and quiet. This is not a military theory out of an antiquated army textbook, this is something I have seen happen myself. This is warfare of 1940.
If Germany decides to invade Ireland, she will probably do it by air. First her attacking planes would clear the ground; then a thousand parachutists would land; then the troop planes, each carrying forty men, would come down. Within an hour Germany could land three thousand well-equipped soldiers on any Irish airport. She will drop baby tanks from planes as the Russians did when they went into Rumania.
There are six small counties in the northeast of Ireland. This is the part of Ireland that still serves and belongs to England. There are English troops in Ulster. If the Germans strike and the Irish fight back, which, of course, they will, these English troops will automatically become allies of Eire. Ireland, without losing face and without taking one step backward from her announced policy of neutrality, will then allow England to come in to help repel the invaders. These are good soldiers, many of them veterans of Dunkirk. They are well-equipped with light tanks and armored trucks which could bring them along Ireland's fine roads to Dublin within two hours. They have planes there to protect the roads against the dive bombers and there are other planes waiting at Liverpool, only eighteen minutes away by air from Dublin. If Dev, as all of Ireland calls the unassuming, troubled Prime Minister, in the name of the people gives them the word, they won't linger. And it is possible that one of the major engagements of the war will then be fought on Irish soil.
The man in the pub doesn't see the picture that way at all. Neither does the man at the races or the squire getting ready for the next horse show. The 1940 war is very far away to him. Rather would he talk of the time in 1014 when the Dalcassians of County Clare drove the Danes out of Ireland. Rather would he talk of Michael Collins and of how back in 1920 when there was a price of 40,000 pounds on his head he would walk gaily along O'Connell Street every day, rubbing elbows with the Black and Tans.
These things are real to him.
To understand the Irish one must study them at long range. You cannot get to know them by living with them. You will get to know that they are lovable and honest and gay and very brave, but this is not understanding. They profess no love for the English but the huge, gilded statue of Queen Victoria, which is in front of Parliament, is still one of the show sights of Dublin. Eire is almost wholly Catholic, but today Douglas Hyde, the President of Ireland, is a Protestant. Ireland is intensely democratic but is very proud of its fine Royal Hibernian Hotel in Dublin. Ireland says, "We want nothing to do with England," and yet 95 per cent of her exports go to England. Ask an Irishman as I did to explain these paradoxes and he'll shake his head and smile. "Don't try to understand us," he'll say. "Hell, we don't even understand ourselves."
I'd had enough of Ireland. I went back to London. Then all of a sudden it was September 7th and the war really started. It's been going on ever since. Do you want to know about how things are in London? Things are like this...
THIS IS A VERY UNIMPORTANT CHAPTER which might well be omitted. It's just a chapter of random thoughts and gossip. The rules of rhetoric demand, if I remember rightly, unity, coherence, emphasis. All three are lacking in this chapter but perhaps the anecdotes and trivial incidents which you are now going to have the doubtful pleasure of reading may add up to something. They may serve to give a quick glimpse of what London is like today. When the war is over those of us. who survive will be able to sit down and write quiet objective and undoubtedly boring books on what happened to London during her Gethsemane. But the agony is going on now---at this very minute bombs are dropping within a block of Berkeley Square where I live. What follows is gossip and stray bits of news about London today.
There is an office building on Bond Street just off Piccadilly. The doorman wears a uniform but it isn't a very resplendent uniform. The doorman at the Radio City Music Hall would shudder at its drabness and its shabbiness. The doorman too, looked very shopworn. He was about sixty and had a scraggly moustache. The only reason I noticed him at all was because of a rather peculiar incident. There was a general going in just ahead of me and when he saw the doorman he stopped, saluted briskly and then went into the building. I stopped to see what it was all about. Soon a couple of those glamour boys in their R.A.F. uniforms passed the building and they saluted very respectfully. Within ten minutes a dozen officers had gone by and each had saluted the old doorman. He returned their salutes carelessly, almost patronizingly. Then I noticed something I hadn't seen before. On the left breast of his uniform there was a small deep purple ribbon and on it lay a tiny, bronze cross---the Victoria Cross.
Since 1856 only 1,102V.C.'s have been awarded. The last two were awarded this month. So highly do the English think of a V.C. wearer that the ranking officers salute him even though he is a shabby doorman in a shabby uniform working in front of a shabby office building.
Maybe there is a moral in this. I don't know. But it is the kind of thing that could only happen in London. There is not a man or woman in England who isn't confident that the country will win the war. I have seen recent New York newspapers and the answer to this confidence is expressed by them in the thought, "The English are either very brave or very stupid." I think they are very brave.
God was very good to the English. He made each one of them half a fool. An Englishman is fool enough to believe that one Englishman can lick a dozen Germans. The R.A.F. kids aren't boastful, but each one is foolish enough to believe that he and his Spitfire can lick a dozen Messerschmitts. Women and old men in the villages have built street barricades and they are foolish enough to think that they can defend their villages in case of invasion. The fact that each Englishman is half a fool gives him a tremendous psychological advantage over any German who is no fool at all, but instead is a reasoning methodical being who knows the rules and abides by them.
The Englishman is also foolish in this respect: he thinks that his personal liberty is the most important thing in the world. In New York if a cop orders us gruffly to move on, sheeplike we obey him. Here the Englishman will want to know why. If the cop has a good reason, well and good. This is reflected in the English newspapers which now I guess, are the only comparatively free newspapers in the world. Of course we have never had freedom of the press in America so we don't know much about it. Always our newspapers have been dominated by advertisers. No publisher will deny that. Here the editor of a paper means something. He actually writes almost as he pleases.
Last September the papers were full of vitriolic criticism of Duff Cooper. Duff had formed a sort of private Gestapo which went around questioning private citizens.
The papers really went to work on it. Here the editors write their own editorials. Percy Cudlipp, editor of the Daily Herald, blasted Duff's undercover men out of existence with a phrase. He called them Cooper's Snoopers. The others took up the cry.
Duff Cooper took and paid for big advertisements in the London papers defending his stand. The papers in which his advertisements appeared attacked him the hardest. Frank Owen, editor of the Evening Standard, told his political writer Michael Foot to go to work on Duff. Michael Foot is to England what Heywood Broun was to America. Every time I read anything that Michael writes I get sick with envy and jealousy. Duff made a speech in the House attacking the "yellow press" for its criticism of his ministry.
Michael Foot wrote in the Standard: "Mr. Duff Cooper has no luck. He will discover this morning that his most vigorous opponent is The Times, whose vulgar and intrusive methods of inquiring into the more sordid aspects of human behaviour and whose strident methods of presenting news are so much deplored in Fleet Street and elsewhere."
Arthur Christiansen, editor of the Daily Express, coined two phrases which swept the country. He demanded that this be a People's War and that there be a People's army; that is, that all workers and ordinary civilians be armed and trained. Each day he screams against the brass hats in the Cabinet, the Army and the Navy. There won't be any Pétainism in this Cabinet with these editors keeping an eye on things. You see, in France the papers never criticized, never told the truth. No paper in France published the news of the fall of Paris until five days after the city fell. Things like that can't happen here.
Here's another thing the English have on the Germans and on us. They have a great sense of humor. If we want to criticize someone in public office we work up a terrific hate against him and use an ax for a weapon. The Englishman laughs him off.
The Home Guard offers many examples of the English sense of humor. There are one million seven hundred thousand men in the Home Guard now, most of them middle-aged or older. They are paid one and six (thirty cents) for standing watch. I was with a bunch of them the other night. The paymaster came around to give them their money. The first man in line was a rather dignified gentleman, about sixty. The paymaster handed him his one and six and said: "Now, sign here and then sign this paper and here's the third one."
"We have to sign in triplicate?" the man inquired politely. "Well now, that is interesting. I happen to be president of a bank. Every day I sign receipts for ten, twenty and sometimes fifty thousand pounds. And I never sign more than once. But then I suppose you know your business better than I do."
(P.S. A week later the Home Guard only had to sign one receipt.)
The soldiers have the greatest sense of humor of them all. Right after the hell of Dunkirk two old buddies who hadn't seen each other since the war began met in a pub. You'll remember that Wednesday was the worst day of all at Dunkirk.
One of the lads said to the other: " 'Ow was that Wednesday at Dunkirk?"
"'Ow was it?" the other exploded. "Bloody awful. Rained the whole bloody day."
Sense of humor? I spent the last week end in the country and on Saturday night went to the local village pub. There is a regiment of soldiers stationed near and several of them were in the pub. They were celebrating the return of one of them. He had been in the military jail for ten days. It seemed that he had always longed to go to sea and here he was, as he said, "in the blarsted army in the country." So one day without even a leave of absence he walked to the nearest port and signed on a merchant ship as a sailor. Just told them he'd been discharged from the army. He took a five-day cruise with the ship and found that he didn't like the sea at all, so he returned to his regiment. He was promptly court-martialed.
"The Colonel, he asks me, 'And 'ow did ye like the sea?"' he explained. "So I says, 'Colonel, forgive the expression but the sea is no bloody good. I was seasick all the time.' "
The Colonel laughed and gave him ten days in jail. In the German or Italian army the man would have been shot for desertion.
The pub is the real birthplace of wit in England.
I walked into a small pub in London where I'd been several times before and noticed there was a new barmaid in charge. I got talking to the proprietor and asked him why it was he changed barmaids so frequently.
"It's like this," he said earnestly, "if the barmaids don't like me, then I fire 'em, see? And if the barmaids do like me, why, my old lady fires 'em."
I've spent a lot of time with the young fighting pilots at an airport near the Channel. They all wear life preservers when they fight over the Channel. Actually they are life jackets. They are rather plump in front and the boys call them their "Mae Wests." This started off as R.A.F. slang. But the higher-ups heard the expression and began using it. While I was at this airdrome an official notice from the Air Ministry was put on the bulletin board.
It began: "It has come to my attention that some pilots forget to put on their Mae Wests before taking off. In future remember never to take off without wearing your Mae West." It was signed by an Air Marshal.
One of the pilots of a Spitfire was reprimanded while I was there. The day before his plane had been hit in a fight over the Channel. He bailed out and floated in the Channel for three hours. Not a single ship spied him. Finally as darkness was falling an English destroyer passed close to him. He shouted frantically but no one on the destroyer heard him. Finally in desperation he took out his revolver (modern cartridges don't get water-soaked) and fired six shots at the bridge of the destroyer. The ship swung round, thinking a submarine was firing at it and saw the kid in the water. They lowered a boat and hauled him aboard. The captain was spluttering with rage.
"Those shots missed me by a foot," he roared. "I'm going to complain about this."
He did so. The kid's commanding officer reprimanded him officially in these well-chosen words: "Young man," he said sharply, "the Admiralty complains that you shot at a captain of a destroyer. In future do not waste your ammunition on captains in His Majesty's Service. That is all."
The incident was forgotten.
The other night German bombers came over the west coast dropping pamphlets giving the text of Hitler's last speech; a speech, incidentally, which was printed in every newspaper in England. In one enterprising village the pamphlets were collected and then auctioned off. The proceeds went to buy tobacco for the soldiers. How can you beat a people who use laughter as a weapon as the English do?
Who ever started that myth about the English having no sense of humor? The newspaper boys here display placards. The day the Italian ship Colleoni was sunk by the Sydney the newsboys outside my apartment had a placard reading "Wops lose Boat Race." Today there has been terrific fighting over the Channel. About noon the newsboy in the Strand (the newsboy is about sixty) had a placard announcing the results in football language. His placard read: "Only about 39 shot down. Extra period being played." I returned three hours later and under that he had written: "After extra period score now 69 to 8."
There are no holidays in England any more, no one wants a holiday. Even the Cabinet Ministers work. Yesterday I wanted to see Lord Beaverbrook. He asked me if I could meet him at one-thirty at his home. That is one-thirty A.M. When I arrived Beaverbrook was eating a steak.
"Have you had dinner?" he asked.
"I nearly always have dinner before one-thirty in the morning," I told him, with what I hoped was fine sarcasm.
"That must be nice," he said thoughtfully. "I seldom get around to it until about this time."
He's a very tough little man. We sat and talked for a couple of hours. What about? Damon Runyon. The Beaver is a great admirer and pal of Damon's. Beaverbrook is a combination of Knudsen and La Guardia.
I've been down in the Channel villages when they've been bombed. In France people used to freeze with terror or apathetically wait for the worst. The English either get mad as hell or annoyed. The other day I was caught on the outskirts of a little place when they came over. There was a woman with a dog close by. She had her shopping bag with her. She asked me to hold the dog.
"I can't understand Jackie," she said apologetically. "He trembles so when the bombs fall. And he tries to run away."
The bombs fell. There was no shelter so we stood there. Finally she said with great annoyance, "I had so much marketing to do today. Now I shall never get it done."
They went away and the little old lady and her dog went on into the village to do the marketing.
Gossip is very important in our lives here. There is no theater; the moving picture houses all close at seven. There is no night life as we knew it two months ago or as New York knows it today. Anecdotes about Winston Churchill continue to be our pet diversion., I met Christiansen in Fleet Street today and he told me a lovely story about Winston. (We all refer to him as Winston just as Washington correspondents refer to Roosevelt as F.D.R.)
In the cloakroom of the House yesterday a Member of Parliament buttonholed Churchill. "Winston," he said, "it is time we struck back. Every night they come over killing women and children. All our bombers do is to attack military objectives. It would be a great pleasure to a lot of us if you would order the R.A.F. really to lay Berlin low."
Churchill nodded sympathetically. "I know how you feel," he said. "It would indeed be gratifying to know that the people of Berlin had to live as our people live. It would be nice to stop bombing only military targets to give the people of Germany who follow the leadership of that inhuman monster a taste of what we are getting. Yes, it would be a great pleasure but---" he added sadly, "business before pleasure."
The R.A.F. pilots react to the news that German bombers are overhead with the same sparkling enthusiasm and wide-eyed radiance which would animate a chorus girl who has been offered a secondhand bunch of orchids. The other day I was at an airdrome. The boys had just come in after a really tough fight over the Channel. They did the same thing that we all do after a day's work at the office---they headed for the nearest bar. In this case it happened to be their own mess, right at the airdrome. Pink gin is the navy drink; scotch and soda is the army drink; beer is the R.A.F. drink. After all, these boys who are winning the war in the air only make fourteen dollars a week. So we drank beer together at the mess and had some laughs together and then the mess steward, a dignified old gent who looked like a fugitive from a haunted house, came in to announce dolefully: "Gentlemen, hos-tile aircraft in vicinity." The kids who had been out over the Channel all morning laughed.
"Give us another round, William," the squadron leader yelled happily.
The old steward looked very unhappy. He went out and got another round of beer.
"Beer, beer. Always it's beer, and hos-tile aircraft in the vicinity. The Commanding Officer told me to report it." He kept grumbling as he served the beer.
"It's a wonder we're not all murdered in our beds," I told him.
"These young gentlemen, beggin' their pardon, wouldn't care if we were," William said, looking at the pilots reproachfully. "An' the place full of hostile aircraft."
We heard the familiar sound of the German bombers. You could tell they were very high. The. pilots lounged around drinking their beer. If they were needed a phone would ring and they'd be in their Spitfires in two minutes. They knew that twelve of their pals were outside, alongside their airplanes. Why weren't they called? The Jerries overhead were reconnaissance planes perhaps. Anyhow, every Commanding Officer within a hundred miles knew they were here. Maybe they were running into an antiaircraft barrage ten miles back. The command knew what it was doing. Meanwhile there was beer.
Finally William came back. "The air alarm is finished, gentlemen. The hos-tile aircraft have gone. I have been asked by the Commanding Officer to tell you."
"William, you take care of the beer, we'll take care of the hos-tile aircraft," the squadron leader said.
One might expect such a reaction from fighting men but when you get it from civilians it somehow startles you. I was at a movie the other night and I might add that it was Rebecca. The film had only been running about fifteen minutes and the sinister Mrs. Danvers had just made her appearance when the sirens sounded. The picture stopped abruptly and the stage was lighted. The house manager walked to the center of the stage and said: "Enemy aircraft are in the vicinity. Those who wish to leave may get return tickets at the door. There is an air raid shelter in the cellar but this is a good strong building and I really think you'll be as well off where you are."
The man next to me got up hurriedly. He was with his wife and boy. He said to his wife with resignation, "After all I'm an air warden. I suppose I'd better go. I'll be back soon, honey."
She said: "How annoying. just when the film was getting exciting. But, dear, I'll remember and tell you everything that happens."
That night I heard the German radio expert report that London had been panicked by the German bombers. I got a cable from New York saying: "Reports here that London in flames." There was damage in London all right; there will be further damage, but I don't think that London will be ruined or that London will be panicked. They never panicked Jack Dempsey, did they? Sure, they hit him and hurt him and London will be hit and hurt. In fact it is being hit and hurt today. But what of it? These people know they are in a war and know they've got to take a beating before they've won it. They know that lots of them are going to be killed. Every time the bombers come over they shake the debris out of their eyes, go to the nearest pub, have half a pint of bitter and say: 'Ow many did we get today?"
You never get used to bombing. I never met a man yet who has. During the past six months I've been under plenty of German bombers who were dropping those Hitler Croquettes and I never got my hair mussed. But I get scared every time. So does everybody else.
I started getting scared at Montmédy when that was the front. Then it seemed as if everywhere I went was the front and always it was being bombed. I was scared at Tours and at Bordeaux and coming across the Channel and I've been scared in London a hundred times. I've been scared in a dozen Channel villages. It seems as if I attract bombers.
I only mention all this to explain that when I tell of the way London has reacted to the bombing we have nightly I'm not talking academically. I am an expert in the business of being scared. It isn't the career I might have picked for myself but there it is. Sure, people in London get scared---if they didn't they'd be half-wits. But once the bombing is over they don't carry a hangover. The French did. But here in London once the noise of the thing is out of your ears you shake your head and it's "business as usual." I'm talking about people I know. I'm not talking about heroes. I never met a hero outside of Hollywood anyhow. I'm talking about the man in the subway. Here he's the man in the pub or the girl on her way home from work or the Fleet Street reporter or the waiter who brings you your tea in the morning.
As a matter of fact the West End crowd (that corresponds to a New York, Monte Carlo, Colony, Stork Club, "21" crowd) reacts the same way. The other night we had an air raid just after dinner. I was at the Savoy Hotel. The dining room was crowded.' Everyone was happy, contented, and this feeling was reflected in the playing of the band. The band was just playing along, not going to town really. The band was playing the song "Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones." The harsh shrill note of the siren cut through the music and for a moment everyone who was dancing faltered and hesitated. Bombs fell close enough to rattle the glasses. Then the band really went to work. When it came to the last line "'Cause he's Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones" everyone in the place was singing it, shouting it, yelling it. You couldn't hear the sirens or the guns or the bombs now. No one went downstairs to the air raid shelter. The band repeated the song and the staid brigadier generals; Guards officers in their plaids and their wives with them; Navy captains loaded with their four stripes of gold braid---everyone laughed and sang the song and everyone shouted the last line "'Cause he's Franklin D. Roosevelt Jones."
There's still magic in that name to a lot of us.
A bit fed up with London, I drove to Kent to spend the week end with a man and his wife. It was lovely and charming there and life was going on quite normally. On Monday morning when the husband and I were leaving the wife had a request to make.
"Listen, darling," she said to her husband, "when you come down next week end please bring me some gunpowder."
"Whatever for?" he asked.
"Well," she said in a matter-of-fact tone, "our bridge club in the village meets every Tuesday but now we make those Molotov Cocktails---you know, the ones we will blow up the tanks with. I have plenty of bottles and I have tar and petrol but I have no gunpowder. I don't see why you can't get me some gunpowder. Sarah's husband gets her all she needs. And last week old Lady Ethel brought enough for thirty cocktails."
"All right, darling," he kissed her good-bye. "I'll bring some gunpowder if I have to steal it."
AT EACH END OF THE AIRDROME, there was a large tent. This was one of the airdromes nearest to the Channel and there was a squadron of Spitfires here at this end and a squadron of Hurricanes at the other end. A squadron consists of twelve planes, and the twelve pilots were sitting in the tent listening to a portable radio.
It was just six in the morning and it was the kind of morning when you feel good to be alive.
Each squadron had a crew of twenty-four to look after it. The crew was playing football, the kind of football we call soccer. They had taken two chairs from the tent and that made one goal. They needed something for the other goal, and one of them suggested using two Spitfires. It was probably the first time in history that Spitfires were used as goal posts.
The squadron leader had plenty of ribbons on his breast. He had downed eighteen German planes. But he was quite young, of course. He took me aside and said: "I want you to meet the new kid who joined us yesterday. A nice kid. See if you can spot his accent. He hasn't been up with us yet. Today will be his first show."
He called the pilot over and introduced me to him. I spotted his accent all right. We hadn't spoken a dozen words when the telephone in the tent rang. It rang once, twice, three times. That meant get ready to take off. It had a loud ring and the ground crew stopped kicking the ball around. The squadron leader answered the phone. He listened for a moment and then said: "Twelve or more heading for convoy off Dover. Yes, sir." I looked at my watch. It was exactly 6:05.
The squadron leader said gaily to the pilots: "A scramble." And all of them ran to their planes. The R.A.F. has a language all its own. A scramble is a fight. All he said to his men was, "A scramble."
Each pilot climbed into his Spitfire and put his helmet on. They didn't look like kids any more now. The helmet covers everything but the eyes and the nose. In the helmet are earphones and there is a white aluminum disc that hits your mouth and you talk into that. When you are up in a Spitfire you can talk to any member of your squadron. Mostly, of course, you listen. You listen to your leader, who is the boss of the show.
The squadron leader, whose first name was Cecil (we are not allowed to give the full names of the men in the service), took off. The others followed him. As the last plane got off the ground I looked at my watch. It was 6:09. They fly in sections of three.
The first flight led by the squadron leader is called the Red Flight. The second is called the Yellow Flight. The third, the Blue Flight. The fourth, the Green Flight. If the squadron leader in front wants to give a quick order he just calls into his white aluminum disc: "Yellow Section sharp right-hand vertical climb."
The Spitfires circled once to gain height and then went up to 10,000 feet. This wasted perhaps four minutes but it was important. The twelve German planes might turn out to be more, perhaps thirty Messerschmitts and Heinkels, and, in a scramble, altitude can be an excellent weapon working in your favor. Then the Spitfires headed for the convoy.
Down at the other end of the airdrome the Hurricanes started to roar. Twelve of them rose and went on to join in the fight. Ours was only one of a dozen airdromes in the vicinity. I could imagine the same thing happening at each one of them. The Hurricanes were now circling. After a while you get so you can tell one plane from another. In the air the Spitfire looks like a thin, straight needle. The Hurricane is humpbacked. They shot off in the wake of the Spitfires.
The time passed very slowly. They would certainly be back within an hour and a half because the fighters carry gas for only that length of time. It was just seven when the Spitfires appeared. I watched them and there was something uneven about the formation. Then I realized that one of them was missing. They landed and taxied up to the tent.
It is routine that when a squadron returns, the squadron leader gives a report to an intelligence officer of what has happened. Then each pilot reports. In that way a pretty good idea of the damage done to the enemy can be obtained.
The squadron leader said: "We met them about halfway over the Channel at 14,000 feet. There were about twenty Heinkels and at least twenty-one 109's and 110's. We came out of the sun and got fairly close. I sent a four-second burst at a Heinkel. It dove toward the sea, smoke pouring out from it. A 110 got on my tail, and I banked away and into a cloud. I angeled up another thousand, keeping my flight together. Ran into two Heinkels. At 100 yards I sent a three-second burst at one of them. He went to pieces and crashed into the sea. I followed the other Heinkel, which had turned. He dove and I followed, sending two bursts. He was badly hurt and I followed him all the way down. At 500 feet he burst into flames. I followed and saw him dive into the sea. I collected the squadron. There were no enemy aircraft in sight. We came home."
"Is that all?" the intelligence officer asked.
"Yes," the squadron leader nodded. "Except that Isaacs failed to return. He got separated from the squadron. I don't know how."
"I saw him." The pilot who spoke was a lad named Douglas---he was very tall and very slim and he had a baby face. "I saw him with two 110's on his tail. By the time I got to him they had got him. He went down. Had no chance to bail out."
One by one they told their stories. When they had finished, the intelligence officer studied notes he had made. "I make it seven confirmed enemy casualties and four unconfirmed," he said.
The pilot must actually see a plane crash into the sea or to the ground before it can be listed officially. He must pledge his word of honor that he has seen it. When you see a story saying that twenty German planes were downed the chances are that another eight or nine suffered the same fate.
The squadron leader said to me: "You didn't get a chance to talk to the new kid, did you? He put up a great show today."
The new kid was looking at his Spitfire. There was a hole in the fuselage you could stick your fist through.
"You put up a great show," the squadron leader said to him. "When did you get hit?"
"Just when I was on the tail of an Me. 110," he said ruefully. "I felt a little jar and then all my controls went haywire. I sent one burst at the Me. but didn't get him. Even my sights were acting funny. But it was fun while it lasted."
The kid turned to me and grinned.
"Seven weeks ago today I was in Laredo, Texas. I've been dreaming about doing this since the war started. I went to Ontario, enlisted and within three days was on a boat."
"They looked at his log book and found he had 1,800 hours," the squadron leader said. "That's why they hustled him over so quickly. He only needed a week's training to get accustomed to the way a Spitfire handles."
"It's a beautiful airplane," the pilot said. "I never saw anything handle quite so sweet."
The boy's name is Art Donahue and because he is an American I hope the censor will relax his rule about the use of names. Laredo, Texas, might like to know what Art Donahue is doing. Right now there are about thirty Americans in the R.A.F.
A single Spitfire landed and taxied up to the tent. A pilot climbed out, came up and saluted the squadron leader.
"I was told to report to you, sir," he said.
"Righto; meet the boys and have some tea," the squadron leader said.
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Everyone was thinking of Isaacs but no one said anything about it. Now the squadron was a squadron again.
Outside, the mechanics were working on Donahue's Spitfire. They worked incredibly quickly. It would be ready in an hour, they said.
Young Douglas said rather shyly, "Would you like me to show you how a Spitfire works?"
He was like a child wanting to show off a new toy. We walked over to his Spitfire and he told me to climb in. I did. Douglas began to explain things and his face was lighted with animation.
I sat there and handled the controls. The glass in the windshield is nearly three inches thick and it is bulletproof. At the top of the windshield there was a mirror for all the world like the mirror in your automobile.
"That's a big help," Douglas grinned. "Maybe you notice that none of us wear collars or ties. We spend half our time turning our necks to see what's in back of us and after a scramble we usually have stiff necks. The mirror tells us if an airplane is directly on our tail."
"What do you do then?"
"Pray," Douglas laughed. "Pray and get the hell away from him."
The stick on a Spitfire is a very small wheel about five inches across. There is a small button on the wheel. When you are flying you hold the wheel in your right hand. You hold the throttle with your left hand. When you sight an enemy airplane you try to get your back to the sun. Then you go after him. You keep peering through the sight. The sight appears to be nothing but a heavy, oblong piece of glass. But once you focus on it you see a red circle in the glass and two lines that cross. When the enemy plane is within the circle and when it is covered by the two crossed lines you merely press the button with your thumb.
"Don't do it, though," Douglas said quickly, as he saw my hand go for the wheel. "The safety catch isn't on."
When you press the button eight guns bark. The guns are in the wings. Because they are flush with the wings you don't see the guns. Douglas said he liked to shoot at 200 yards. There are twenty-four little clocklike instruments on the dashboard of a Spitfire. Douglas explained them one by one. He really knew what they meant. He even explained a whole gadget which is strictly a "hush hush" instrument. Anything new and secret is labeled "Hush hush." In the R.A.F. the boys have orders to destroy secret gadgets in case of a forced landing in enemy territory. All I can say about this one is that it is a link with headquarters. "This wireless is pretty wonderful," Douglas said. "We can talk to one another and listen to one another. This morning for instance we didn't sight the Jerries until we were about ten miles over the Channel. Then the squadron leader saw them and he yelled to, us, 'Tallyho! Tallyho there they are.'
He laughed.
"We all got more or less separated when the scramble began. I was after a Heinkel when one of the lads called to me: 'You'd better look behind you; better look behind.' I did and saw a Me. coming at me. I did a sharp vertical climb and got away. Then I saw the lad who'd warned me and damned if there weren't two of them on his tail. I yelled back, 'So had you; so had you."'
"Did he look behind?" I asked.
"That was Isaacs," he said simply.
I started to get out of the cockpit. It is quite a job to get out of a Spitfire. I asked Douglas how it was possible to bail out.
"I found a swell trick to bail out," he laughed. "I was in real trouble three days ago. Luckily I was way up, but my ship was on fire. I couldn't get out of the darn thing. So I unfastened my belt, turned the airplane over on its back and just fell out. That Channel water is damned cold, too, let me tell you."
"Who picked you up?"
"One of those little motor torpedo boats. They can certainly step. They go about forty-five miles an hour. You know the squadron leader? He's a grand chap with a great sense of humor. He had the nerve to tell me I bailed out just to get a new uniform."
"That's doing it the hard way," I suggested.
We went back into the tent. It was almost ten. At ten this squadron would be through. Then they'd fly inland a few miles and have an eight-hour rest.
But at fifteen minutes to ten the phone rang once, twice, three times. The squadron leader said, "Yes, yes; that's all right; we don't mind. Twelve off Folkestone. Righto."
The motors roared into action. The pilots ran to the planes. I gave Douglas a boost onto the wing and then he climbed into the cockpit.
"Good luck, kid," I shouted.
"I might need it," he yelled back, grinning.
I guess he needed more luck than I had to give him. Fifteen minutes later the boy was dead.