It is not my
primary job to discuss the details of contemporary politics, but this week there is
something that cries out to be said. Since, it seems, nobody else will do so, I want to
protest against the mean and cowardly attitude adopted by the British press towards the
recent rising in Warsaw.
As soon as the news of the rising broke, the News Chronicle
and kindred papers adopted a markedly disapproving attitude. One was left with the general
impression that the Poles deserved to have their bottoms smacked for doing what all the
Allied wirelesses had been urging them to do for years past, and that they would not be
given and did not deserve to be given any help from outside. A few papers tentatively
suggested that arms and supplies might be dropped by the Anglo-Americans, a thousand miles
away: no one, so far as I know, suggested that this might be done by the Russians, perhaps
twenty miles away. The New Statesman, in its issue of 18 August, even went so far
as to doubt whether appreciable help could be given from the air in such circumstances.
All or nearly all the papers of the Left were full of blame for the émigré London
Government which had prematurely ordered its followers to rise when the Red
army was at the gates. This line of thought is adequately set forth in a letter to last
weeks Tribune from Mr G. Barraclough. He makes the following specific
charges:
1. The Warsaw rising was not a spontaneous popular
rising, but was begun on orders from the soi-disant Polish Government
in London.
2. The order to rise was given without consultation with
either the British or Soviet Governments, and no attempt was made to
co-ordinate the rising with Allied action.
3. The Polish resistance movement is no more united round
the London Government than the Greek resistance movement is united round King George of
the Hellenes. (This is further emphasized by frequent use of the words émigré,
soi-disant, etc., applied to the London Government.)
4. The London Government precipitated the rising in order to be
in possession of Warsaw when the Russians arrived, because in that case the
bargaining position of the émigré Government would be improved. The London
Government, we are told, is ready to betray the Polish peoples cause to
bolster up its own tenure of precarious office, with much more to the same effect.
No shadow of proof is offered for any of these charges, though 1
and 2 are of a kind that could be verified and may well be true. My own guess is
that 2 is true and 1 partly true. The third charge makes nonsense of the first two. If the
London Government is not accepted by the mass of the people in Warsaw, why should they
raise a desperate insurrection on its orders? By blaming Sosnkowski and the rest for the
rising, you are automatically assuming that it is to them that the Polish people looks for
guidance. This obvious contradiction has been repeated in paper after paper, without, so
far as I know, a single person having the honesty to point it out. As for the use of such
expressions as émigré, it is simply a rhetorical trick. If the London Poles are
émigrés, so are the Polish National Committee of Liberation, besides the
free Governments of all the occupied countries. Why does one become an
émigré by emigrating to London and not by emigrating to Moscow?
Charge No. 4 is morally on a par with the Osservatore
Romanos suggestion that the Russians held up their attack on Warsaw in order to
get as many Polish resisters as possible killed off. It is the unproved and unprovable
assertion of a mere propagandist who has no wish to establish the truth, but is simply out
to do as much dirt on his opponent as possible. And all that I have read about this matter
in the press except for some very obscure papers and some remarks in Tribune,
the Economist and the Evening Standard is on the same level as Mr
Barracloughs letter.
Now, I know nothing of Polish affairs, and even if I had the
power to do so I would not intervene in the struggle between the London Polish Government
and the Moscow National Committee of Liberation. What I am concerned with is the attitude
of the British intelligentsia, who cannot raise between them one single voice to question
what they believe to be Russian policy, no matter what turn it takes, and in this case
have had the unheard-of meanness to hint that our bombers ought not to be sent to the aid of our comrades fighting in Warsaw. The enormous majority of
left-wingers who swallow the policy put out by the News Chronicle, etc., know no
more about Poland than I do. All they know is that the Russians object to the London
Government and have set up a rival organization, and so far as they are concerned that
settles the matter. If tomorrow Stalin
were to drop the Committee of Liberation and recognize the London Government, the whole
British intelligentsia would flock after him like a troop of parrots. Their attitude
towards Russian foreign policy is not Is this policy right or wrong? but
This is Russian policy: how can we make it appear right? And this attitude is
defended, if at all, solely on grounds of power.
The Russians are powerful in eastern Europe, we are not:
therefore we must not oppose them. This involves the principle, of its nature alien to Socialism, that you must not
protest against an evil which you cannot prevent.
I cannot discuss here why it is that the British intelligentsia,
with few exceptions, have developed a nationalistic loyalty towards the U.S.S.R. and are
dishonestly uncritical of its policies. In any case, I have discussed it elsewhere. But I
would like to close with two considerations which are worth thinking over.
First of all, a message to English left-wing journalists and
intellectuals generally: Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be
paid for. Dont imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking
propagandist of the Soviet régime, or any other régime, and then suddenly return to
mental decency. Once a whore, always a whore.
Secondly, a wider consideration. Nothing is more important in the
world today than Anglo-Russian friendship and co-operation, and that will not be attained
without plain speaking. The best way to come to an agreement with a foreign nation is
not to refrain from criticizing its policies, even to the extent of leaving your own
people in the dark about them. At present, so slavish is the attitude of nearly the whole
British press that ordinary people have very little idea of what is happening, and may
well be committed to policies which they will repudiate in five years time. In
a shadowy sort of way we have been told that the Russian peace terms are a super-Versailles, with partition
of Germany, astronomical reparations, and forced labour on a huge scale. These proposals
go practically uncriticized, while in much of the left-wing press hack writers are
even hired to extol them. The result is that the average man has no notion of the enormity
of what is proposed. I dont know whether, when the time comes, the Russians will
really want to put such terms into operation. My guess is that they wont. But what I
do know is that if any such thing were done, the British and probably the American public
would never support it when the passion of war had died down. Any flagrantly unjust peace
settlement will simply have the result, as it did last time, of making the British people
unreasonably sympathetic with the victims. Anglo-Russian friendship depends upon there
being a policy which both countries can agree upon, and this is impossible without free
discussion and genuine criticism now. There can be no
real alliance on the basis of Stalin is always right. The first step towards a
real alliance is the dropping of illusions.
Finally, a word to the people who will write me letters about
this. May I once again draw attention to the title of this column and remind everyone that
the Editors of Tribune are not necessarily in agreement with all that l say, but
are putting into practice their belief in freedom of speech?
(This column was written some days before the appearance of Vernon Bartletts
article in the News Chronicle of 29 August, which gives at any rate a hint of
disagreement with the policy prevailing throughout the press.) [Authors note.]