If Hitler Comes Read Online Free Page A

Britain”.
    Cabinet Ministers contributed nobly to the atmosphere of anti-crisis. Ribbentrop, wise man, had flown back early to Berlin, upon which they felt capable of assuming an attitude of dignified and assured insouciance. They lit complacent cigarettes on the steps of Number Ten, and the Prime Minister, within earshot of a gossip writer, remarked to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he had decided to make a start with pruning his roses. Sir John Naker threw some crumbs to the pelicans in St. James’s Park, dined informally at a popular restaurant, and then went to see the film version of Merrie England . All interviews were refused; and not even the Dominions High Commissioners were seen. “The policy of His Majesty’s Government,” it was officially explained, “of which the agreement with Germany forms a part, can be elaborated only in Parliament, but the Prime Minister will broadcast a statement to the nation at eight o’clock to-night.”
    The broadcast stands on record as one of history’s most celebrated manifestations of unconscious hypocrisy. Everyone wanted to believe it, so it passed. But as soon as that tired but pathetically hopeful voice died on the ether England began talking again, and went on talking far into the night. All had their hopes—the privileged that they would keep their privileges in a world that had become far too restive, the workers that they would catch up with the cost of living, the unemployed that they would find jobs again. Perhaps in a stable balanced Europe all wishes would be fulfilled.
    The Greyshirts also had their hopes. They marched down the Mile End Road, and beat up quite a number of Jews before order could be restored by the police.
    I was up early next day to read the papers. The Government had a good Press, in the sense that no-one suggested that they might have taken a different course. Each journal in its own way put the best face it could on what had happened. There was nothing anywhere that was constructive, that indicated or commended a policy for the future.
    The news columns were more revealing. Dispatches from Germany showed that the crowds in Berlin, in marked contrast to those in London, had spent a Sunday of triumphant rejoicing, culminating with a speech from the Führer in the Sport Palace. That speech was gone over in London with a toothcomb, but, though it contained many expressions of goodwill towards the British Empire, there was no clear indication of what he hoped to do with it in the future. The best indication was perhaps provided by the news that, while he was yet speaking (and anticipating somewhat the terms of the treaty), an unspecified number of troops had set sail from Hamburg, under convoy, to take possession of the former German colonies in Africa.
    The interpretative message that I put together that morning was necessarily ill informed, but not more so than anyone else’s, and I felt that in a discreet way I had warned my startled readers to expect the worst. Usual sources of information had now completely broken down, and the busy London scene through which I walked to the cable office had suddenly become as remote as that of a strange city. Yet the red buses and the taxis were the same, like the people hurrying up familiar office stairs. It was as though some firm to which one had devoted one’s working life had quietly gone bankrupt , but was still being carried on as a going concern by a shadowy Official Receiver.
    However, it was not long before I came up against the first signs of inner change. As I was about to hand in my painstaking cablegram the clerk, polite and friendly, said: “Ah, Mr. Fenton, we have a nice little office fixed up for Mr. Johnson already. Smart work, eh? Perhaps you will step along.”
    In a moment I was standing before a nervous young man who, seated at a trestle table, looked as surprised to be there as I was to find him. The clerk announced me, and withdrew.
    “Well, Mr. Fenton,” said this