In Flanders Field: Bloody arithmetic (1959)

From the October 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

In times of war, Generals become very important people; sometimes, as in 1917, much too important for the general interests of the ruling-class. Not only did they decide on questions of strategy in their own sectors, they were able to influence or make decisions on the widest scale. Haig, Foch, Cadorna, Joffre, Nivelie, each had taken part in decisions that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. To some extent the Generals constituted a special sectional interest, running things their way, and able to deceive, ignore, or persuade the politicians. False reports (and Haig’s Staff turned these out in hundreds) would serve to blind the politicians to the appalling errors being committed. Once appointed, Generals became notoriously touchy, resenting criticism and blocking any move by politicians to interfere.

The threat of resignation, with the resulting blows at morale of troops and workers, would frequently serve to bring the politicians into line. Generals were removed, but only after their particular front had begun to resemble a slaughterhouse, and sometimes not even then. Kitchener set an example, closely followed by his one-time protege Haig, of the stiff-lipped, silent autocratic General. Haig was scandalised when Lloyd George discussed west-front strategy with French officers and politicians behind his back; he noted in his diary that the man was not a gentleman, a supremely irrelevant consideration, bearing in mind the tremendous interests at stake. Apart from the prestige of their professional positions, the British west-front butchers, Haig and Robertson, had considerable support from the British ruling-class.

They were able to override Lloyd George, who thought west-front strategy useless and incapable of producing any decisive result. Lloyd George did have part of his way after the battles of 1917, for by then even the adoring Lord Northcliffe had begun to have his doubts. It was becoming obvious that the German Army was not destroyed, and that no important gain had been made. There were important reasons why Haig was not given the sack; reasons of morale, social influence, and because Haig was a good general in the limited sense of organising, defensive measures. Robertson lost his job as Chief of the Imperial General Staff; reserves were withheld from Haig, and a. system of closer co-operation with the French came into being.

The problem of maintaining control over the Generals is still exercising the ingenuity of Governments. Churchill was to be in much closer touch with the Generals than Lloyd George. By 1939, the Generals were tamed; the old-fashioned officer gave way to more technically-minded machine-conscious officers. Closer systems of control prevented any repetition of 1917. Slaughter became a subject of scientific planning. Hitler, Stalin and Churchill were careful to be always on their guard against the Generals. The German Staffs were purged again and again; Stalin relegated Zhukov to obscurity after the war.

The Bloody Arithmetic of Attrition

The first world war introduced a new branch of arithmetic—a branch that even the cavalry generals could appreciate. The equation was a simple one; three million dead British and French soldiers plus two million dead Germans could equal defeat for Germany. Some there were, like Lloyd George, who were astute enough to realise that attrition could be dangerous for Capitalism. Lloyd George, as a popular orator, was more in touch with public opinion than were the supporters of this simple arithmetic. Ceaseless battering had led to the final collapse of Russia, and had led to serious trouble for the French Government.

’’Attrition ” was popular with a large section of the ruling-class because it offered something more than mere military defeat; it offered the destruction of a large part of Germany’s manhood, the exhaustion of her economy, and a Europe free for Britain and France to bustle in.

For popular consumption the argument was modified, the enemy was being defeated even though no significant advance was being made. The enemy’s armies were being destroyed (as indeed they were, but not as fast as Haig and his Staff liked to believe, for even at the height of the Flanders battle the Germans could afford to send troops to defeat Italy). Attrition did work, but in a way unforeseen by its supporters. In March 1918 Germany began her last offensive, and in thirteen weeks suffered 700,000 casualties. Germany, desperate to finish the war before the full weight of America could be brought to bear, destroyed the army that had held the western front for four years.

The Dead Weight of Tradition

Capitalist organizations do not always function in the best interests of the ruling-class as a whole. Conflicting demands during wartime may paralyse strategy, so that nothing is achieved. An example is the Dardanelles campaign; (here was no agreement on how many troops to send, the haggling went on for months. It seems that Britain and France almost sustained defeat, not by Germany, but by their own traditions and methods of warfare that had become irrelevant by 1914. As a result, Germany, while maintaining the defensive in the west, was able to gain considerable victories elsewhere, as for instance in Russia. Rumania and Italy. There were alternatives to attrition, but the opportunities were lost, and if such a complex situation can be summarised at all, they were lost because of the outmoded thinking of the ruling-class, of whom the Generals were a part.

A new Waterloo was always just round the corner, and if the Waterloo turned into slaughter-house warfare, there was always the argument for attrition to fall back on. They were full of arguments, those Generals, Haig had another one in his magazine; he had waged the Flanders campaign in order to prevent the Germans from falling on the French. He also waged it because the French had offered their support! And what of the chief participants, the poor bloody soldiers? They were always ready for another effort, another crawl across ground covered by machine-gun fire and under continuous bombardment. The British troops set an example of devotion to duty unequalled in those days; apparently British workers were well-drilled and well impregnated with their ideologies, of which there was a fairly wide choice, all leading to the conclusion that one must tight for one's country, whatever the cost.

The New Passchendaels

The overthrow of one set of myths doesn't matter very much to Capitalism, for there are plenty of brainy people ready to provide variations of the theme “fight and die.” New ideologies are continually being manufactured, and there will always be one or two to suit the needs of the time. The bitterness aroused by 1917 did not make workers into Socialists, but it did give rise to numerous peace movements (in one of which “Go to it” Herbie Morrison was prominent). These movements withered away when Capitalism was once more torn apart by war. With a new appeal, workers could be called out to fight again. Cassino, Stalingrad and Hiroshima mocked the 1918 politicians’ boasts “war to end wars.” The second world war also gave rise to its peace movements, but rather different. The New Pacifists would apparently be prepared to fight if H-bombs were excluded and war consisted of battles like Passchendael, Stalingrad or Cassino.

Breaking the Circle

There is a way out; humanity do not have to tear each other apart; the circle can be broken. What has been said here about ideologies does not mean that there is no end to Capitalism and its wars. A new society can be brought into being. This new society has already taken rough shape in the minds of some of us. Disgust and disillusionment take a slow but steady toll of Capitalist ideas —an example of this is the decline of “white feather” incidents! People in the last war were far less ready to condemn those who stayed at home.

Unfortunately there has been far more apathy and disillusionment than determination to put things right. People are disgusted with politics, including even the Socialist Party in their condemnation. Perhaps in a way there is here a terrible indictment of Capitalism; men and women have lost their faith in a world fit for humans, taking refuge in the acquisition of cars, brass-plates and the material flotsam of a mass-rubbish-producing society. Change is possible; we can reject Capitalism with its Passchendaels, Stalingrads and Hiroshimas. People can act in their own interests, instead of in the barren, blood-smeared interests of ruling groups. The way out does not lie along the road of pacifism or ban-the-bomb (a futile movement if ever there was one). The way lies along the path of Socialist understanding.

F. R. Ivimey.

An Unusual Friendship. by Franz Mehring (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

 The victory of Marx’s career was not only due to the man’s enormous power. According to all human probability, he would have succumbed sooner or later, if he had not found in Engels a friend, of whose self-sacrificing fidelity we have had no accurate picture until the publication of the correspondence of the two men.

No other such spectacle is afforded in all recorded history. Couples of friends, of historical importance, are found throughout history, and German history has its examples also. Frequently their lifework is so closely interwoven that it is difficult to decide which accomplishment belongs to each one of them. But always there has been a persistent remnant of individual obstinacy or stubbornness, or perhaps only an instinctive reluctance to surrender one’s own personality, which, in the words of the poet, “is the highest blessing of the children of men.” After all, Luther saw in Melanchton only a chicken-livered scholar, while Melanchton regarded Luther as a coarse peasant. And in the correspondence of Goethe and Schiller, anyone with sound senses can discern the secret lack of attunement between the great Privy councillor and the small Court councillor. There is no trace of this ultimate human weakness in the friendship of Marx and Engels: the more their thoughts and labors become interwoven, the more each one of them remained a full man, complete in himself.

Their exteriors were quite different. Engels, a blond Teuton of tall stature, of English manners, as an observer once said of him, always well dressed, with a bearing that was rigid with the training not only of the barracks, but also of the counting-house. With six clerks, he said, he would organize a branch of the administration a thousand times more simple and efficient than with sixty government councillors, who cannot even write legibly and get your books all balled up, so that the Devil himself can make nothing of them. A member of the Manchester Stock Exchange, perfectly respectable in the business dealings and the amusements of the English bourgeoisie, its fox-hunts and its Christmas parties, he was yet a tireless mental worker and fighter, who, in a little house on the outskirts of the city held his treasure concealed, his little Irish girl, in whose arms he would refresh himself whenever he tired of the human turmoil in the world without.

Marx, on the other hand, short, thick-set, with flashing eyes and a lion’s mane of ebon hue, betraying his Semitic origin; of careless exterior, a father whose family cares alone would be sufficient to keep him away from the social life of the great city; so intensely devoted to consuming intellectual labor that he has hardly the time to gulp down a hasty dinner and uses up his bodily strength to all hours of the night; a tireless thinker, to whom thought is a supreme pleasure; in this respect a genuine successor of Kant, of Fichte, and particularly of Hegel, whose sentence he loved to repeat: “Even the most criminal thought of a scoundrel is more sublime and more magnificent than the miracles of the celestial sphere,” but differing from them in that his thoughts inexorably drive him to action: he was unpractical in small matters but very practical in large matters; far too helpless to arrange a petty household, but incomparably capable in the business of recruiting and leading an army that was to revolutionize the world.

If it is true that “the style is the man,” we must also note their differences as writers. Each in his way was a master of language, a linguistic genius, with a mastery of many foreign languages and even of individual dialects. In this field Engels was even more remarkable than Marx, but whenever writing in his mother-tongue, even in his letters and of course in his writings, he exercises a most austere care to keep the language free from all foreign admixture of word and phrase, without falling, however, into the vagaries of the patriotic linguistic purists. He wrote with ease and lucidity, always in a style so pellucid that you looked right down to the bottom of the current of his animated speech.

Marx’s style was at once more careless and more difficult. In his youthful letters there is still apparent, as in those of Heine, a condition of struggle with the language, and in the letters of his later years, particularly after his settlement in England, he began to make use of a picturesque jargon of German, English and French, all mixed up. In his published writings, also, there is an over-liberal use of foreign words, and there is no lack of Gallicisms and Anglicisms, yet he is so distinctly a master of the German language that he cannot be translated without serious loss. Once when Engels had read a chapter by Marx in a French translation, even after Marx had revised the translation, it seemed to Engels that the vigor and sap and life had disappeared. Goethe once wrote to Frau von Stein: “In metaphors I am ready to stand comparison with the proverbs of Sancho Panza.” Marx could well bear comparison with the greatest of the world’s adepts in figures of speech, with Lessing, Goethe, Hegel, so full of life and vigor is his language.

He had fully absorbed Lessing’s statement that a perfect representation requires a fusion of image and conception, as closely joined as man and woman, and the university pedants have gotten square with him for this, from Father Wilhelm Roscher down to the youngest fledgling of a Privatdozent, by accusing him of being incapable of making himself understood except in an extremely vague way, “patched up with a liberal use of figurative language.” Marx never exhausted the questions which he attacked beyond the point of enabling the reader to begin a fruitful train of thought; his speech is like the dancing of the waves over the purple depths of the sea.

Engels always saw in Marx a superior spirit; he never wished to play anything but second fiddle by his side. Yet he never was a mere interpreter and assistant, but always a collaborator of independent activity, a kindred spirit, though not of equal size. In the early days of their friendship, Engels played, in one important field, rather the role of a giver than of a receiver, and twenty years later Marx wrote to him: “You know that all ideas come to me too late, and that, in the second place, I always follow in your tracks.” With his somewhat light equipment, Engels was able to move about more freely, and even though his glance was sharp enough to distinguish the decisive features of a question or of a situation, it did not penetrate far enough to review at once all the conditions and corollaries with which even the scantiest decision is often burdened. For a man of action this defect is even an advantage, and Marx never made a political decision without first calling upon Engels for advice, and Engels was usually able to hit the nail on the head.

Accordingly, the advice which Marx asked from Engels was not as satisfactory in questions of theory as in questions of politics. In theory Marx was usually the better of the two. And he was absolutely inattentive to such advice as Engels would often give him, in order to impel him to terminate his labors on his great scientific masterpiece: “Be a little less severe on yourself in the matter of your own productions; they are far too good for the public. The main thing is to have it finished and to get it out; the defects that you still see, the asses will never discover.” It was a characteristic bit of Engels advice, and it was just as characteristic of Marx to ignore it.

It is clear from the above that Engels was better fitted for a journalistic career than Marx; “a real walking encyclopedia” — so Marx once described him to a mutual friend, “capable of work at any hour of the day or night, drunk or sober, swift with his pen and alert as the devil.” It seems that both, after the cessation of the Neue Rheinische Revue, in the autumn of 1850, had still in mind the issuing of another journal in common, to be printed in London; at least, in December 1853, Marx wrote to Engels: “If we — you and I — had started our business as English correspondents in time, you would not now be condemned to office-work in Manchester, nor I to my debts.” Engels’ choice of a position of clerk in his father’s firm, in preference to the prospects of this “business,” was probably due to his consideration for the hopeless situation of Marx, and to a hope of better times in the future, and certainly not with the object of devoting himself permanently to the “damned business.” In the spring of 1854, Engels again considered the desirability of returning to London for literary work, but this was the last time; it must have been about this time that he made up his mind to assume the cursed burden for good, not merely in order to be of assistance to his friend, but in order thus to preserve the party’s best mental asset. Only with this motivation could Engels make the great sacrifice, and Marx accept; both the offer and the acceptance required a great spirit.

And before Engels became a partner in the firm some years later, he cannot exactly be said to have trod a path of roses, but from the first day of his stay at Manchester he aided Marx and never ceased aiding him. An unending stream of one-pound, five-pound, ten-pound, later even hundred-pound notes began to flow toward London. Engels never lost his patience, even though it was often sorely tried by Marx and his wife, who had no over-great supply of domestic wisdom. He forgot the amount of a note and appeared unpleasantly surprised to learn of it when the note fell due. Slight also was his concern when, on the occasion of another general clean-up of the domestic economy, Mrs. Marx, through misplaced considerateness, concealed a large item and began paying it off by stinting with her household money, thus starting the old trouble over again, with the best of all intentions; on this occasion Engels allowed his friend the rather pharasaical amusement of bewailing the “idiocy of women,” who manifestly are “in constant need of guardianship,” and contented himself with the gentle admonition: See it doesn’t happen again.

But Engels did not alone slave away for his friend in office and exchange all day long, but he also gave to him most of his evening leisure hours, in fact, a great part of the night. Although the original reason for this added labor was the necessity of preparing an English version of Marx’s articles for the “New York Tribune,” until Marx should be able to use the language well enough for literary purposes, the laborious cooperation continued for many years after the original reason had been overcome.

But all this seems a slight sacrifice as compared with the greatest service Engels rendered his friend, namely, his renunciation of his independent accomplishments as a thinker and investigator, which, in view of his incomparable energy and his rich talents, would have produced valuable results. A correct notion of this sacrifice can also be obtained from the correspondence of the two men, even if we note only the studies in linguistic and military science, which were carried on by Engels partly owing to an “old predilection” and partly with a view to the practical needs of the struggle for proletarian emancipation. For, much as he hated all “autodidacticism” — ”it’s all damn nonsense,” he contemptuously said — and thorough as were his methods of scientific work, he was yet as little a mere closet-scholar as Marx, and every new piece of knowledge was doubly precious in his eyes, if it might aid at once in lightening the chains of the proletariat.

He therefore undertook the study of the Slavic languages because of the “consideration” that in the next great clash of national interests, “at least one of us” should be acquainted with the language, history, literature, social institutions of those nations with whom there was some likelihood of immediate conflict. Oriental troubles led him to the oriental languages; he steered clear of Arabic, with its 4,000 roots; but “Persian is a veritable child’s play of a language”; he would be through with it in three weeks. Then came the turn of the Germanic languages:

  “I am now buried in Ulfilas: I simply had to get rid of this damned Gothic: I have been so long carrying it on in a rather desultory manner. I am surprised to find that I know much more than I expected. I need one more book, and then I’ll be absolutely done with it in two weeks. And then for Old Norse and Old Saxon, with which I have long been on terms of half-acquaintance. As yet I have absolutely no paraphernalia, not even a lexicon: nothing but the Gothic text and old Grimm, but the old fellow is really a brick.”

In the sixties, when the Schleswig-Holstein question came up, Engels undertook “some Frisian-English-Jutian-Scandinavian philology and archaeology,” and when the Irish question blazed up, “some Celto-Irish,” and so on. In the General Council of the International his comprehensive linguistic accomplishments were of great value to him; “Engels can stammer in twenty languages,” was said of him, because in moments of excitement he displayed a slight lisp.

Another epithet of his was that of the “General,” which he earned by his still more assiduous devotion to the military sciences. Here also he was satisfying an “old predilection” at the same time he was preparing for the practical needs of the revolutionary policy. Engels was counting on “the enormous importance which the parti militaire would attain in the next commotion.” The experiences with the officers who had joined the revolution in the years of rebellion had not been very satisfactory, and Engels declared that the military rabble has an incredibly dirty caste spirit. “They hate each other worse than poison, envy each other like schoolboys at the slightest mark of distinction, but they show a united front against all civilians.” Engels wanted to arrive at a point at which his theoretical remarks might have some weight and might not merely expose his ignorance.

He had hardly gotten established in Manchester when he began to “plug up military science.” He began with the “simplest and most rudimentary things, such as are asked in an ensign’s or lieutenant’s examination, and are therefore assumed by all authors as already known.” He studied everything about army administration, down to the most technical details: elementary tactics, Vauban’s system of fortification, and all other systems, including the modern system of detached forts, bridge construction and field works, fighting tools, down to the varying construction of carriages for field guns, the ravitaillement of hospitals, and other matters; finally he passed on to the general history of war, in which connection he paid particular attention to the English authority Napier, the French Jomini, and the German Clausewitz.

Far removed from any shallow attacks on the moral folly of warfare, Engels sought rather to recognize its historic justification, by which effort he more than once aroused the violent rage of declamatory democracy. Byron once poured the vials of his scorching rage over the two generals who, at the Battle of Waterloo, in the character of champions of feudal Europe, inflected a deathblow on the heir of the Revolution; it was an interesting accident that made Engels, in his letters to Marx, outline historic portraits both of Wellington and Blucher, which in their small compass, are so complete and so distinct, that they hardly need to be altered in a single respect to make them fully acceptable to the present state of advancement of military science.

In a third field, too, in which Engels also labored much and with pleasure, namely, in that of the natural sciences, he was not to have the opportunity, during the decades in which he accepted the bondage of commerce in order to afford free rein to the scientific investigations of another man — to put the finishing touches to his own labors.

And this was really a tragic lot. But Engels never wailed about it, for sentimentality was as foreign to his nature as to his friend’s. He always held it to be the great good fortune of his life, to have stood by Marx’s side for forty years, even at the price of being overshadowed by Marx’s gigantic form. Nor did he consider it to be a belated form of satisfaction to be permitted, after the death of his friend, to be the first man of the international workers’ movement, to play the first violin, as it were, undisputed, in this movement; on the contrary, he considered this to be an honor that was too great for his merits.

As each of the two men was completely absorbed in the common cause, and each made an equally great sacrifice to it, although not an identical sacrifice, without any disagreeable reservation of objection or of boast, their friendship became an alliance which has no parallel in human history.

 (Franz Mehring in “The Class Struggle,” May, 1919)

By The Way. (1920)

The By The Way column from the June 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is an interesting study to the detached observer to look around and see how the “props” of England’s greatness and the capitalist politicians work up their various stunts, incidentally, of course, contradicting one another time after time.

During the war we were all urged to join in our masters’ quarrel and wage “the war to end war,” with the promise that when this had been terminated the “world would be safe for democracy.” How safe it has become will be easily perceived even by those who have only one eye.

Speaking a short time ago at Portsmouth, Major-General Seely told his hearers what a glorious thing is capitalist society, how under its aegis the inventive genius of man had developed, and what the future held in store for those who remained in this beautiful world of capitalism. He said—

  . . . if the world was plunged into a world war in the years to come, it was quite certain that the whole of civilisation would be involved in the terrible destruction of life which modern science had rendered possible. It would not be eight million men killed, but far more than that, for great portions of their civilization—men, women, and children—would be wiped out of existence in the first few weeks of the war.—”Daily News,” March 9th, 1920.

After this all the stories of the “red” peril and atrocity-mongering campaigners leave us cold. The only way to end war and make the world safe for the people is to wage the class war for the abolition of classes and the private ownership of the means of life. On which side do you stand ? Are you a supporter of capitalism and all the horrors which it stands for, or are you with the ever-growing band of toilers who seek the world for the workers ? Think it over!

#    #    #    #

Coming to a more recent date one finds a report that Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, speaking at the annual meeting of the Union Jack Club, said that we had been told we went into the war to end war.

If one might pause here for a moment it will be easy to recall that six years ago the politician, parson, press, and militarist all joined in the theme of Belgium and the Scrap of Paper. Then it was a case of “our” plighted word and righteous indignation at Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality.

However, to return to the concluding portion of the Field-Marshal’s observations, let me remind all of you who have been enlisted or deemed to have been enlisted that our warrior bold says—

  I hope you men, to whatever branch of the service you belong, will do all you can to keep fit and ready for the time that is coming. Except in August 1914, our country and our Empire have never wanted you more. We are living in ticklish and dangerous times, and our command on sea, on land, and in the air is being challenged in various parts of the world. I hope you will carry this—warning if you like—away with you from a very old soldier who knows what he is talking about.”—”Daily News",  May 19th, 1920.

Perhaps it is fortunate that the remarks made above were in the present tense and not the past, but still they are interesting to those who have been or have been deemed to have been, in which case, from my observations, they will say, “No thanks, old bean.”

#    #    #    #

Ministerial answers to questions in the House of Commons are full of interest to those whose outlook is larger than that of those who regularly peruse the columns of the noonday “Star.” Quite recently a number of questions were asked concerning Poland, and whether the Allies were giving the Poles “moral or material support,” either in “money or munitions.” To which Mr. Bonar Law replied : The answer is in the negative so far as concerns His Majesty’s Government.

Some days later the same gentleman, in answer to a further question on the subject, admitted that in October last the British Government offered to supply a certain quantity of surplus stores, part of which was now being shipped. Apart from that no assistance had been or was being given to the Polish Government.

 Mr. Barnes asked whether the position was not now different, having regard to the declarations of the Prime Minister made more recently than October last. 

Mr. Bonar Law : Yes ; but as a matter of fact the bargain was made and the material was actually given to the Polish Government. It is their property, and to have gone back upon it would have been to break our bond.” — “Daily News,” May 18th, 10.20.

Evidently the right honourable gentleman has more regard for “our bond” than his conflicting replies, which savour of equivocation.

#    #    #    #

The following remark, made by one who is supposed to be a disciple of the lowly Nazarene, is, I think, worth recording—

  I feel that the presence of children from a late enemy country would make it more difficult to bring people back to the charitable and Christian frame of mind which one desires should mark the arrival of peace. — Rector of Bexhill. — “Daily News,” May 12th, 1920.

Evidently this Holy Joe has forgotten his master’s injunction when he said, “Feed my lambs.”

#    #    #    #

Some of the labour leaders, who have been designated by the supporters of capitalism of the “sane” variety inasmuch as they approximate unto them, have had a rather rough time during the May-Day festivities. It is somewhat unfortunate that they were shouted down. But the fact that the rank and file are at last keeping their optics on these gentry is all to the good.

According to that organ of light and learning, the “Weekly Dispatch” (2.5.1920) we gather that “Mr. J. Sexton, M.P., was continually interrupted, epithets such as ‘Liar,’ ‘Traitor,’ being shouted.”

Again we read that ” Mr. J. Clynes had a stormy reception at Manchester, being booed and hissed and told to sit down. . . When he turned to general labour topics the audience broke into ‘ Tell me the old, old story ‘ and it was some minutes before he could proceed.”

The Scout

"I am going to have breakfast in bed" (1957)

Book Review from the December 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

One day in November at the Royal Albert Hall 1,250,000 poppy petals were dropped from the roof at a ceremony attended by the Queen.

"One for every British serviceman killed in action from August, 1914 till today,” says the Sunday paper.

Twelve years have passed since the end of World War II. This allows fair time for Generals and “Statesmen” to retire to the safe security of their generous pensions, and eventually “die in bed,” as Sassoon wrote in the first lot.

Those holding top-jobs then, can now blow the gaff, give the game away, always providing, of course, that it exonerates them and incriminates the others.

Despite the shocking straits to which inflation is supposed to have reduced the rich, there are still a few with 25s., 35s. or 45s. to chuck away on some bag of tripe purporting to reveal war time secrets.

This makes it quite a tasty racket, especially if you’ve nothing much else to do except fish salmon or grow cacti.

More than one ex-general has turned to tales out of the War Cabinet school, for a little bit of extra.

Actually, they’ve really nothing much to say. It may have taken a little longer, but the pattern of recrimination after the Second approximates to those of the First.

Then it was Lloyd George sacking Douglas Haig, this time Churchill doing Wavell. (Threatening “to have him shot”). After Churchill himself had saturated the market with whitewash, there was a chance for smaller fry to lick up a crumb or two.

Lord Alanbrooke and Sir John Kennedy (Director of Military Operations 1940-43) are among those for whom the pen is now meatier than the sword.

Kennedy, in his book The Business of War, 25s. (was ever a book better named?), reveals what took place at the week-end parties at Chequers, the P.M.’s country residence from which the War was actually run.

If his tale is to be believed, the dining and wining
 was usually accompanied by sundry angry outbursts by Churchill denouncing and upbraiding the daft generals in charge of the British Armies.

His chagrin at Wavell's inability to deal with Rommel did not prevent him, it seems, from doing justice to the liquor. “Churchill continuously called for more champagne” (while the men in the Western Desert were drinking their shaving water). “He remarked that it was very good stuff—he said he had thought of giving up cigars until the Germans were out of Cyrenaica—but changed his mind a few days later. Why should he give up cigars or snuff for any German.” (Evening Standard, November 4th, 1957.)

On May 26th the Prime Minister sent Wavell a stream of telegrams urging “active measures,” read headlong attacks.

“Victory in Crete is essential,” “Hurl reinforcements into Crete.” “What about a stroke in the Western Desert,” etc.

According to this General, the Prime Minister was in the habit of telephoning junior officers at M.I.5, or some other secret war department and enquiring, behind the back of those in charge, how things were going. It was somewhat after the manner in which the late Mr. A. W. Gamage used to snoop on his staff at his store.

“At the evening at Chequers,” Kennedy says “After dinner Churchill walked up and down.”

“My plan for winning the war is this,” he said a little later, “One thousand tons of bombs a night on Germany—we are only averaging 50 now—and 20,000 tanks or so ready to land all along the coasts of Europe.”

“At about 3 a.m. Churchill announced that it was time for bed, and coming up to me, he said, “I am going to have breakfast in bed—I advise you to do the same.”

“I certainly came out of this evening very badly,” says General Kennedy.

Eventually Churchill did sack Wavell and placed Auchinleck in charge.

When the tumult and the shouting dies, a little bit of the truth comes out. We are afforded a glimpse of what went on behind the scenes, through the cracks.

That great military strategist Churchill, like his Russian counterpart the self-appointed military genius Stalin (not to mention Zhukov) has been debunked by the generals. The same thing went on in Germany with Hitler and his generals. Churchill’s empty threats to have Wavell shot were obviously inspired by German practice and Nazi usage. Churchill was the more fortunate because generals who know that they are to be shot as political scapegoats, try to blow Fuhrers up with bombs.

Even appreciating attempts by wartime generals to do a Mark Antony on Winston Ceasar Churchill, our knowledge of the intrigues of the First World War, and the events in the enemy camp during the Second bear out the substance of the case.

While Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt were sacking generals in their blind fumblings to find a winner, like an old lady doing football pools with a darning needle, thousands of ordinary working folk were enduring the unspeakable horrors of modern war.

What are the qualifications for these “great men” except cold calculation, tireless loquacity, and a supreme egotism based on endless contempt for those who produce the wealth they so wantonly squander.

Like Napolean, who is supposed to have exclaimed as his heavily loaded Guardsmen sank into the icy Beresina, “Look how these toads struggle for their miserable lives,” he rates the working man at his own evaluation.

The spectacle of this phrase-monger, with his old brandy and choice cigars, at a time when his own experts declared that the war time ration of those doing the work had reached the limit; uttering wild statements at his dinner parties at Chequers, like his—

“My plan is to drop 1,000 tons of bombs a night on Germany.”

“I am going to have breakfast in bed.” Sixteen years later, when it has now got to the stage where some “Leader-Genius” or the other can exterminate an entire community by pressing a button, there are still far too many working people supporting poppy dropping and Remembrance days. Although they may have the very best motives, they unwittingly support Capitalist-Nationalism and the system which keeps them in Poverty and Peril, while generals denounce and expose politicians in past wars but not future ones.

Small comfort to the widow, great consolation to those children whose father happened to be one of the pawns (they call them “the prices”) that we paid a penny or two for a paper poppy, or stood still for two minutes on Sunday, when most of us are off work, so that the guv'nor doesn't lose the time.

The folly is to continue, after all this, one and a quarter million dead, plus all the illness, disease, and aftermath of war to go on supporting capitalism whether Churchill’s, Eisenhower’s or Khruschev’s.

In the world Socialist society people will not kill each other—they will help each other.

Until that day the sacrifice of those killed in wars will be futile.

Horatio.