George Orwell: A Life in Letters (38 page)

ii. Attitude of Burmese officials when breakdown appeared imminent. Whether there was a marked difference in loyalty between Burmese and Indian officials. To what extent Burmese officials are known to be carrying on under the Japanese occupation.

iii. Behaviour under fire of the Burma regiments and military police. Whether any actual Burmese (not Kachins etc.) were fighting for the British.

iv. What difference appeared between political attitude of the Burmese proper and the Karens, Shans, Chins, Kachins.
¹

v. What number of the Eurasian community, especially in Rangoon, Moulmein, Mandalay evacuated with the British and how many stayed behind under the Japanese occupation. Whether any who remained behind are known to have changed their allegiance.

vi. Behaviour of the Burmese population under bombing raids. Whether these produced resentment against the Japanese, admiration for Japanese air superiority, or mere panic.

vii. The native Christians, especially Karens.
²
Whether interpenetrated to any extent by nationalist movement.

viii. Number of shortwave sets known to have been in Burmese, Indian and Eurasian possession before the invasion.

ix. Detailed information about the Burmese nationalist and leftwing political parties. The main points are:—

a. Numbers and local and social composition of the Thakin party.
³

b. Extent to which Buddhist priests predominate.

c. What affiliations exist between the Burmese nationalist parties and the Congress and other Indian parties.

d. Burmese Communists, if any, and what affiliations.

e. Extent of Burmese trade union movement and whether it has affiliations with trade unions in India or Europe.

x. Estimated number of Burmese actually fighting on side of Japanese. Whether people of good standing or mainly dacoits etc. Whether they are reported to have fought courageously.

xi. Extent of Japanese infiltration before the invasion. Whether many Japanese are known to speak local languages,
⁴
especially Burmese, and to what extent they are likely to be dependent on Burmans for monitoring and interpretation generally.

Eric Blair

[XIII, 1174, pp. 327–8; typewritten]

1
.
In addition to Burmese people, the Burmese nation is composed of many ethnic groups, of which these four are among the most important. There were then more than a million Shans, 1.25 million Karens, half a million Chins, and 200,000 Kachens in a total population of approximately 1
7 million, many of them being hill peoples. By 1984 the population had doubled.

2
.
Most Burmese are Buddhist, as are the Karens, but some 175,000 Karens are Christian.

3
.
The Thakin movement developed among radicals in the Young Men’s Buddhist Association schools (later the National Schools), who resented British rule. Two university students, Aung San and U Nu, who joined the movement after the student strike in 1936, were instrumental in leading Burma to independence. Aung San was among a number of Burmese politicians murdered in July 1
947 at the instigation of a former prime minister, U Saw. When Burma became an independent republic, on 4 January 1948, U Nu became prime minister. Aung San’s daughter, Suu Kyi, born shortly before his murder, has led a long fight against the military government of Burma (Myanmar). Her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in 1990 but was not allowed to govern. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

4
.
Orwell, when serving in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, passed the language examinations in Burmese and in Shaw-Karen.

On 27 June 1942,
Picture Post
published ‘the first article in an important new series’, ‘Britain’s Silent Revolution’ by J. B. Priestley. The series asked ‘What is happening in Britain? What kind of a country is being shaped by the war?’ At the head of Priestley’s article was this statement in bold type: ‘We are threatened with decay—but the war has saved us. Some of the old are uprooted; some of the new blessings are steadily growing. Here is our great chance to fashion a really healthy society.’ On 4 July, Vernon Bartlett,
MP
, wrote on ‘The Revolt Against Party Politics’ and on 11 July, a column was run, ‘What They Say About Bartlett and Priestley’. Two letters were printed in response to Priestley’s article, one from the Bishop of Bradford and this from Orwell.

To
Picture Post

11 July 1942

I am in agreement with Mr. Priestley as to the general direction in which our society is moving, but do not share his apparent belief that things will
inevitably
happen fast enough to prevent the old gang getting their claws into us again. Two years ago I would have echoed his optimistic utterances more confidently than I would now. At that time an appalling disaster had brought this country to what looked like the first stage of revolution, and one could be excused for believing that class privilege and economic inequality would quite rapidly disappear under the pressure of danger. Obviously this has failed to happen. But I do agree with Mr. Priestley that the sort of society we knew before 1939 is not likely to return. I don’t share the belief which some people still seem to hold, that ‘this is a capitalist war,’ and that if we win it we shall simply see the British ruling class in power again. What I should like to hear about in Mr. Priestley’s next article is not ‘What?’ but ‘How?’—just
how
we are to set about getting the truly democratic society we want.

George Orwell, Abbey Road, NW 8.

[XIII, 1269, p. 391; typewritten]

To Alex Comfort*

15 July 1942

10a Mortimer Crescent

London NW 6

Dear Mr Comfort,

The
Partisan Review
sent me a copy of the letter you had written them, along with some others. I believe they are going to print all the letters, or extracts from them, and my reply. But there was one point I didn’t care to answer in print. You queried my reference to ‘antisemitism’ (by the way I didn’t say antisemitism but Jew-baiting, a very different thing) in the
Adelphi
. Of course I was thinking of Max Plowman*, who hated Jews, and though he was aware of this tendency in himself and struggled against it, sometimes let it influence his editorship. I had two particular instances in mind. The first was when Macmurray’s book
The Clue to History
was published in 1938. This was a rather unbalanced book and extremely pro-Jew in tendency. Max was infuriated by this and had the book reviewed by five separate people, including himself and myself, in one issue of the
Adelphi.
His own review (you could look it up—round about December 1938) was definitely provocative in tone. Later on he got the
Adelphi
involved in a controversy with some Jew whose name I don’t remember, Cohen I think, about the alleged warmongering activities of the Jews. Having got the Jew hopping mad and said his own say in a very snooty manner, Max suddenly declared the controversy closed, not allowing the Jew to reply. This would be some time in 1
939. Since the war Murry has at least once referred with apparent approval to Hitler’s ‘elimination’ of the Jews.

The reason why I don’t care to print anything about this is because Max was a very old friend of mine and was very good to me, and his wife might hear about [it] and feel hurt if I actually name names. In my reply in the
Partisan Review
I put in a note to the effect that I was answering this privately, but I daresay they’ll omit both this and your query,
¹
as I have explained the circumstances to Dwight Macdonald.*

Yours truly

George Orwell

[XIII, 1282, pp. 405–6 (including

Comfort’s response); typewritten]

Alex Comfort replied on 16 July 1942:

Dear Mr. Orwell

Thank you very much for writing to me. I didn’t know about Max in this connection, and you were entirely right. I shouldn’t really have replied to you where the
Adelphi
was concerned, as I have only known it since the war: I rather took it that you meant that Jew baiting in it was a recent thing—a feature which had cropped up during the period you were reporting on. (I suppose Max’s foible was of pretty long standing).

I thought some of the things you said should have been far more fully answered, but doubted if
P.R.
would have room for more than a squib-retort. I honestly don’t think that the last lot of us are any more constructively pro-Fascist than our predecessors, but from the people I encounter, I would say they were nearer to Russian nihilism than any contemporary line of thought.

However, I often want to remonstrate with
Peace News
, not for being Fascist, but for trying, as you say, to get away with both ends of the same argument. I have written a commination to J.M. Murry but he did not print it. He needs another beginning ‘cursed is the man who imagines one can assume opposite viewpoints and say that whichever turns out to be true, his main contention is right.’

I’d like an opportunity of congratulating you over that
Horizon
article on Donald McGill°. It was the best example of an analysis I think I ever read.

I’ll be writing to the editor of
P.R.
and explain that I entirely agree with you, on seeing the references. I didn’t want to put you on the spot over a personal question like that, and I apologize for my ignorance.

All good wishes and many thanks

Alex Comfort

I’d like to have started an argument over that review of yours,
²
but the
Adelphi
hadn’t room to unleash me. Anyhow, thank you for doing it. It made me revise several ideas.

1
.
Partisan Review
omitted all reference to this topic.

2
.
For Orwell’s review of Comfort’s novel,
No Such Liberty
, see XIII, 855, pp. 389–44.

To Routledge & Sons Ltd.

23 July 1942

The BBC

Broadcasting House

London W 1

Dear Sir,

My attention has just been drawn to a book published by you entitled
Victory or Vested Interests
, in which you have included a lecture of mine delivered last year for the Fabian Society. I submitted this lecture to you in type-written form, and, I believe, corrected the proofs. I now find that you have been through it and made the most unwarrantable alterations about which I was not even consulted—a fact which I should never even have discovered if I had not bought a copy of the book, as you did not even send me one. I am communicating with my literary agents to see what remedy I have against this treatment, but meanwhile, I should be glad to have an explanation from you. I shall be obliged by an early answer.
¹

Yours truly,

Geo. Orwell

[XIII, 1319, p. 424; typewritten]

1
.
T. Murray Ragg, the Managing Director, replied on 24 July explaining that they had made no alterations and had delivered copies as instructed by the Fabian Society. He suggested that someone at the Society had made the alterations. (For a full account see
XIII
, 884, pp. 66–7.)

On 8 August 1942, Captain Basil Liddell Hart wrote to Orwell expressing surprise that someone of his penetration had been misled by Philippe Barrès’s
Charles de Gaulle
, which Orwell had reviewed in the
Observer
on 2 August (XIII, 1346, pp. 443–4), in so far as it discussed the evolution of mechanised warfare and the use of armoured divisions. He sent Orwell six pages of notes to show that it was not de Gaulle who had devised modern methods of tank warfare, which the Germans, rather than the French or British, had adopted, but a British officer, Colonel J. F. C. Fuller (1878–1966;
CB
,
DSO
) in 1927. (Fuller was identified by the security service as ‘the military strongman willing to take part in, if not preside over, a British Vichy’.) Two years later, the British War Office had issued ‘the first official manual on mechanized warfare . . . embodying the new conception’. This included the organisation and methods that were to become the foundation of Panzer attacks. General de Gaulle’s book,
Vers L’Armée de Métier
(1934), had only ten of its 122 pages devoted to tactics, in the English translation. This, said Liddell Hart, was hardly surprising, since de Gaulle’s ‘first personal experience with tanks was not until three years later, in 1937’. Niall Ferguson in his
The War of the World
(2006) discusses the considerable influence Liddell Hart had on tank and aircraft strategy – alas, ‘it was hugely influential not in Britain but in Germany’, especially on Heinz Guderian, commander of the 19
^th
German Army Corps (pp. 386–7).

To B. H. Liddell Hart*

12 August 1942