organization ; and if we made up our mind to it we could proceed quite calmly to this second part of the plan.
“And what, then, is the second part of the plan?” I asked. “Simply”, he said, “to deport, imprison, or shoot every German policeman in England.
“Then”, he went on, “the struggle begins and grows. Say what you like, the world would be in the melting-pot again. Canada would be back in the fray once more—what, in such circumstances, could hold her back? The spectacle of such a gallant last-minute fight would grip the world; I think we should hear no more of a revolution in India. And what of the United States? Goebbels has already been foolish enough to show the beginnings of an anti-American Press campaign, and to talk mysteriously of the combined might of the British and German navies. America must see that this is her last chance as well as ours. And so is it Italy’s, and Turkey’s, and Scandinavia’s. Since the overthrow of Stalin there is no chance of a new German-Russian alliance. Once overcome the initial difficulties, and the rest would be easy.”
Mallory always grew excited as he pictured the pieces of a jigsaw world thus neatly falling into place again. But it was not the mechanics of anti-Nazism that excited him, it was the passion and faith that must first lie behind it. He did not want another war about a map; he wanted to uncover again the underlying moral pattern of human society, which no tyranny could permanently disperse. Ways and means, he thought, lay always at the disposal of a resolute will; and there was an inner rottenness in Hitlerism which would cause its swollen bulk to begin to disintegrate as soon as it was met, at any point, with a determined resistance. The immediate problem was not military or political; as he put it: “If God grants us the courage to raise the sword He will teach us how to wield it.”
Mallory looked eagerly around the group—composed of some of the unconverted whose loyalty and discretion were unquestioned but whose determination and courage were not.By this time, as I knew, he had formed the nucleus of his movement—a score of men of various callings who were all now busily at work, as he was, preaching the gospel of national self-help. He called them merely Patriots; he formed no party and collected no funds. One of his theories was that of the Fascist Party-State inverted; at the ultimate crisis, he believed, a nation could save itself only by the spontaneous functioning of its natural parts. Given an army and a police force, a civil administration and a labour movement still intact, whose leaders believed in the national cause and could communicate their faith to the rank and file, then, he said, the merest word from some central rallying point would be enough to start the struggle with every chance of success. There were historical instances of this, which Mallory was fond of citing—the Risorgimento, Primo de Rivera in Spain, or (a perverted example) the rise of Hitler himself—and in each of these the inner conviction of the patriots, and not their strategical situation, was the deciding factor. It was morally impossible, according to Mallory, for the largest imaginable foreign force to hold down an unwilling and determined Britain.
Against this theory someone instanced the apparent powerlessness of the Czechs, who, of all Hitler’s victims, had the reputation of professing the fiercest patriotism. There were the Poles, too, who had preserved their proud national spirit for centuries, without ever succeeding in building a durable State. There were the Finns, who fought the hardest in defence of their freedom, but gave way in the end; and there were the Austrians and the Danes, whose cultural achievements on the fringe of Germania had shown what a purified Teutonism could become, but who had been conquered in a day. The methods of the Gestapo seemed unchallengeable.
“Only because they have never been challenged,” replied
“And what, then, is the second part of the plan?” I asked. “Simply”, he said, “to deport, imprison, or shoot every German policeman in England.
“Then”, he went on, “the struggle begins and grows. Say what you like, the world would be in the melting-pot again. Canada would be back in the fray once more—what, in such circumstances, could hold her back? The spectacle of such a gallant last-minute fight would grip the world; I think we should hear no more of a revolution in India. And what of the United States? Goebbels has already been foolish enough to show the beginnings of an anti-American Press campaign, and to talk mysteriously of the combined might of the British and German navies. America must see that this is her last chance as well as ours. And so is it Italy’s, and Turkey’s, and Scandinavia’s. Since the overthrow of Stalin there is no chance of a new German-Russian alliance. Once overcome the initial difficulties, and the rest would be easy.”
Mallory always grew excited as he pictured the pieces of a jigsaw world thus neatly falling into place again. But it was not the mechanics of anti-Nazism that excited him, it was the passion and faith that must first lie behind it. He did not want another war about a map; he wanted to uncover again the underlying moral pattern of human society, which no tyranny could permanently disperse. Ways and means, he thought, lay always at the disposal of a resolute will; and there was an inner rottenness in Hitlerism which would cause its swollen bulk to begin to disintegrate as soon as it was met, at any point, with a determined resistance. The immediate problem was not military or political; as he put it: “If God grants us the courage to raise the sword He will teach us how to wield it.”
Mallory looked eagerly around the group—composed of some of the unconverted whose loyalty and discretion were unquestioned but whose determination and courage were not.By this time, as I knew, he had formed the nucleus of his movement—a score of men of various callings who were all now busily at work, as he was, preaching the gospel of national self-help. He called them merely Patriots; he formed no party and collected no funds. One of his theories was that of the Fascist Party-State inverted; at the ultimate crisis, he believed, a nation could save itself only by the spontaneous functioning of its natural parts. Given an army and a police force, a civil administration and a labour movement still intact, whose leaders believed in the national cause and could communicate their faith to the rank and file, then, he said, the merest word from some central rallying point would be enough to start the struggle with every chance of success. There were historical instances of this, which Mallory was fond of citing—the Risorgimento, Primo de Rivera in Spain, or (a perverted example) the rise of Hitler himself—and in each of these the inner conviction of the patriots, and not their strategical situation, was the deciding factor. It was morally impossible, according to Mallory, for the largest imaginable foreign force to hold down an unwilling and determined Britain.
Against this theory someone instanced the apparent powerlessness of the Czechs, who, of all Hitler’s victims, had the reputation of professing the fiercest patriotism. There were the Poles, too, who had preserved their proud national spirit for centuries, without ever succeeding in building a durable State. There were the Finns, who fought the hardest in defence of their freedom, but gave way in the end; and there were the Austrians and the Danes, whose cultural achievements on the fringe of Germania had shown what a purified Teutonism could become, but who had been conquered in a day. The methods of the Gestapo seemed unchallengeable.
“Only because they have never been challenged,” replied
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