Geneva

When I had lived for 58 years free from the fear that war could
come to my doorstep, the thing occurred. And when the war to end
war had come to a glorious victory, it occurred again, worse than
ever. I have now lived through two "world wars" without missing a
meal or a night's sleep in my bed, though they have come near
enough to shatter my windows, break in my door, and wreck my
grandfather clock, keeping me for nine years of my life subject to
a continual apprehension of a direct hit next time blowing me and
my household to bits.

I cannot pretend that this troubled me much: people build houses
and live on the slopes of Etna and Vesuvius and at the foot of
Stromboli as cheerfully as on Primrose Hill. I was too old to be
conscribed for military service; and the mathematical probabilities
were enormously against a bomb coming my way; for at the worst of
the bombardments only from ten to fifteen inhabitants of these
islands were killed by air raids every day; and a dozen or so out
of fortyfive millions is not very terrifying even when each of us
knows that he or she is as likely as not to be one of the dozen.
The risk of being run over by a motor bus, which townsmen run
daily, is greater.


HOODWINKED HEROISM


It was this improbability which made pre-atomic air raiding futile
as a means of intimidating a nation, and enabled the government of
the raided nation to prevent the news of the damage reaching beyond
its immediate neighborhood. One night early in the resumed war I
saw, from a distance of 30 miles, London burning for three hours.
Next morning I read in the newspapers that a bomb had fallen on the
windowsill of a city office, and been extinguished before it
exploded. Returning to London later on I found that half the
ancient city had been levelled to the ground, leaving only St.
Paul's and a few church towers standing. The wireless news never
went beyond "some damage and a few casualties in Southern England"
when in fact leading cities and seaports had been extensively
wrecked. All threatening news was mentioned only in secret
sessions of parliament, hidden under heavy penalties until after
the victory. In 1941, after the Dunkirk rout, our position was
described by the Prime Minister to the House of Commons in secret
session as so desperate that if the enemy had taken advantage of it
we should have been helplessly defeated; and it is now the fashion
to descant dithyrambically on the steadfast heroism with which the
nation faced this terrible emergency. As a matter of fact the
nation knew nothing about it. Had we been told, the Germans would
have overheard and rushed the threatened invasion they were bluffed
into abandoning. Far from realizing our deadly peril, we were
exulting in the triumph of our Air Force in "the Battle of Britain"
and in an incident in South America in which three British warships
drove one German one into the river Plate. Rather than be interned
with his crew the German captain put to sea again against hopeless
odds; scuttled his ship; and committed suicide. The British
newspapers raved about this for weeks as a naval victory greater
than Salamis, Lepanto, and Trafalgar rolled into one.