Book the Fifth
How Edward Albert Tewler was Overtaken by a Storm of War and Destruction and what he Said and Did in it

Chapter 1
Catspaws

THE unpleasant buzzing of disturbing ideas and untoward events that Edward Albert had kept at a distance for the first ten years of his contentment in Morningside Prospect crept nearer to him by such imperceptible degrees that it is almost impossible to mark any definite date for the end of his agreeable stagnation. Take Morningside Prospect throughout the week of years that preceded the actual onset of the Great Warfare. What touch of foreboding wrinkled the smooth reflection it presented to the world? What catspaws warned it of the gathering hurricane?

The World War of 1914–18 had not struck the Tewler imagination as bringing with it a new ordering of life for mankind. It was, from the Tewler point of view, a fight like a dog-fight for the upper hand among things called Powers, essentially the same in their nature. They rose and they fell, like football clubs. It was just another chapter of the old history. The academic Tewlers who taught history throughout the world knew nothing, and almost passionately wanted to know nothing, of the space-time process that continually puts a fresh face on life and continually sweeps away the working appearances of the past. Their mental equipment could not handle such ideas. So how could they be expected to transmit them?

There was not a country in the world where what passed for the teaching of history was more than a training in national conceit and xenophobia, and Edward Albert, according to his rank and scale, participated in the prevalent mental perversity. He was ready at any time to assert that the scenery of England, the wild flowers of England, the skilled labour of England (when not disturbed by foreign agitators) the horsemanship and seamanship of England, the gentry of England, the agriculture of England, the politics of England, the graciousness and wisdom of her Royal Family, the beauty of the Englishwomen, their incurable healthiness of mind and body, were not to be surpassed, not even to be disputed by any other people. For that he “stood up”, and all Morningside Prospect, all England, from Sir Adrian von Stahlheim down to the dirtiest child coughing its life out in the dirtiest slum of East London “stood up.” And all over the world, with the simple substitution of whatever name the local, community happened to possess, Homo Tewler was of the same persuasion.

But the various British and French and American varieties of the species were now more cock-a-hoop and contented, because they had won the great war, than was Homo Tewler var. Teutonicus, who was suffering acutely in his pride and material conditions through having lost it. He was gradually persuading himself that he had never lost the war, but had been cheated in some complicated way out of his victory, and he was screwing himself up, through his schoolmasters, professors, politicians, industrialists, romantic pederasts and out-of-work professional soldiers, to the idea of a return match with the great Powers that would restore and realise his dream of world ascendency. Homo Tewler Gallicus was uncomfortably aware of this state of mind beyond the frontier, but Anglicanus and Americanus thought this awareness uncharitable. . . .

One might go on thus describing the Tewler mentality in terms of that masterpiece of Tewler thought, published in 1871, The Fight In Dame Europa’s School. To that period stuff, to the same old nationalist mythology, the schoolmasters of each successive generation put back their prey. . . .

Yet certain things did appear dimly beneath the surface of these traditional appearances, as being novel and challenging even to Edward Albert. A wave of ill-conceived and ill — organised expressions1 of popular discontent that disturbed the tranquil resumption of power and property by the larger salesmanship and die old authorities in the Period of Reconstruction, would have passed without any but the most incidental remarks by the contemporary historian in the general sauve qui peut (and then grab a bit more) of the influential classes, if it had not been for the complete collapse of the established social order throughout the vast areas of Russia. There had been social upthrusts in the past, the Commune in Paris, and talk of socialism in England, but no normally educated English child was ever allowed to know anything about these things. “‘Oo are these Bolsheviks?” Edward Albert had asked old Mr Blake in the middle Doober days, when the decision of Russia to go out of the Great War was shocking the minds of Power-politics-fans ‘throughout the world.

“Thieves and bloody murderers,” said old Mr Blake. And then and subsequently he confided to Edward Albert the horror of this Sovietic Russia that had come upon the world. These Bolsheviks were hate and evil incarnate; they put Satan in the shade; they delighted in bloodshed, lust and the repudiation of their just debts. They shared their women in common and drove out their children to grow up like wild animal in the woods. They had massacred millions of people; every day they had a massacre before breakfast. This man Lenin was conducting frightful orgies in the Kremlin, and his wife was prancing about covered with the Crown jewels and any others she could lay hands on. Nobody in Russia had had anything to eat for months. The rouble went down and down. Mr Blake had bought roubles when there was reason to suppose they would recover, and had they recovered? And he had had a bit in Lena Goldfields. No good crying over spilt milk.

The streets of Moscow, he explained, were littered with dead —“murdered people like you and me.” You had to pick your way among them. Everywhere the Churches had been turned into anti-God Museums. Everywhere aristocrats and respectable people were being treated with incredible brutality and bestiality. Mr Blake seemed to have sources of information of his own, and he gave Edward Albert the most circumstantial and revolting details with an indignant gusto. “Take, for instance, something I heard the other day. . . . ”

“You’d wonder how they can bring themselves to do it,” said Edward Albert, not doubting in the least. Old Mr Blake offered no explanation.

The newspapers Edward Albert glanced over and the talk he heard about “these here Bolshies” during the two decades of later Georgian decadence, did little to attenuate the shock of those early impressions. When he blended his mind with the general unanimities of Morningside Prospect, he found a practical agreement that for the rest of the world outside the Soviet sphere, the less one thought about Russia the better, the “Bolshies” were thorough rascals and also blind fanatics, they were incredibly incompetent and a menace to the whole world; Stalin was just another Tsar, he was certain to be assassinated and he would found a new dynasty; private enterprise would be restored because you cannot do without it. Communism did not matter; it was spreading insidiously; it stirred up a lot of discontent among the working classes, and it ought to be put down with a firm hand. It was the hidden hand of Communism that caused labour unrest that kept wages and prices, rates and taxes, mounting and mounting, to the serious disadvantage of decent independent people who had retired and wanted to keep retired.

So round and round they went, perpetually evading the realisation that there was something in the stars and in the wicked hearts of men that would not endure Morningside Prospect for very much longer, whatever else ensued,

Mr Pildington of Johore was disposed to take a serious view of Communist activities in the East. These frightful ideas were spreading in India and China and even in Japan.

“They nibble and they nibble at our prestige. It’s no laughing matter.”

“These ideers,” said Edward Albert gloomily.

“Let’s hope it will last our time,” said Mr Pildington and turned to pleasanter topics, . . .

So the first transient intimations of social revolution appeared and vanished in Edward Albert’s mind; the sense of something out of order and something impending. But it was not simply the Bolshie menace alone. There was the whisper of something unsatisfactory and inadequate in the control of public affairs. In the great days of Gladstone and Disraeli, political life had been pompous and respected. Gentlemen in top hats and frock coats, used parliamentary language, obeyed the division bell, and passed through the division lobbies, and no Briton doubted that the Mother of Parliaments was the ultimate legislative and administrative machine. Then as the century unfolded, the new journalism, the unruly Irish, the appearance of a Labour Party (in all sorts of hats), votes for women and women members of Parliament, the accumulating effects of elementary education, robbed the legislature, step by step, of its male and gentlemanly prestige.

This new Parliament was by no means as agreeable to the larger Tewlers, the salesmen, the great interests and profit-making enterprises, as the old. Parliament was passing out of the hands of an essentially conservative oligarchy into those of an incoherently progressive democracy, and the oligarchy, through its press lords and its social and business influences, was developing a spirit of resistance to Parliamentary institutions, to the taxation and control of enterprise and the ever — increasing expenditure upon public services. Everywhere in the pseudo-democratic countries the process followed parallel lines. The newly enfranchised masses, awakening to the power of the vote, were reappropriating the goods of the community bit by bit to a collective use, and everywhere among the employers and wealthy, the spirit of resistance sought expression. Everywhere, in the Scandinavian countries, in blue-swastika Finland, in America after the socialisations of the New Deal in France, in Spain before Franco, there were Quislings seeking a saviour from this awakening democracy and not knowing to whom to turn.

“Parliament is played out,” said this gathering counter. revolution. “Democracy is played out.”

Mr Copper of Caxton felt the need of some resistance to these unending concessions to labour demands. “What this country needs,” said Mr Copper, “is leadership, firmer leadership. We want a middle-class party led by a Man.” Mr Stannish of Tintern was inclined to agree with Mr Copper, but Mr Droop of London Pride, who was suspected of religious unsoundness, was disposed to be critical not of the idea but of the leader towards whom their thoughts were turning. He exhibited newspaper pictures and invited his neighbours to look at them.

“He’s herring-jawed, and I like teeth that meet,” said Mr Droop. “Why does he dress up in this sort of tights he wears? His shape ain’t English. It isn’t even decent, He seems to attach too much importance to his behind. Look at that one. It’s a sort of hind bosom he’s got. And why does he imitate them Dagos? Can’t he think anything out for himself? Anything fresh? Fine outlook for us to have a leader without an original idea in his head! Ask him what we are to do, and he’ll go round asking, What would Musso do? If we want a strong Englishman, let’s have a strong English Englishman with a mind of his own, and not that sort of flibberty-gibbet. Flibberty-gibbet, I call him. Something that sways about and dangles. For good old England? No, thank you.”

“Well, anyhow, we’ve got to be quit of this Parliament nonsense,” said Mr Copper, “and all this criticising of everybody and doing nothing, while the Bolshies and Jews run away with everything we’ve got.”

“Jews?” said Edward Albert, questioning himself.

It is interesting to note that our specimen Englishman for the first thirty years of his life was practically unaware of contemporary Jews. He thought they were a disagreeable lot of people in the Bible whom even God had had to give up at last, and that had been the end of them. We lived in the New Dispensation. He went to school with Jews and half-Jews and quarter-Jews and never perceived any distinctive difference between them and his other school-fellows. He thought Circumcision was something religious, and enquired no further into the matter. Was Buffin Burleybank a Jew? Was Jim Whittaker? Was Evangeline B............