George Orwell: A Life in Letters (40 page)

It seems to me that the civilised answer to the German action would be something like this: ‘You proclaim that you are putting thousands of British prisoners in chains because some half-dozen Germans or thereabouts were temporarily tied up during the Dieppe raid. This is disgusting hypocrisy, in the first place because of your own record during the past ten years, in the second place because troops who have taken prisoners have got to secure them somehow until they can get them to a place of safety, and to tie men’s hands in such circumstances is totally different from chaining up a helpless prisoner who is already in an internment camp. At this moment, we cannot stop you mal-treating° our prisoners, though we shall probably remember it at the peace settlement, but don’t fear that we shall retaliate in kind. You are Nazis, we are civilised men. This latest act of yours simply demonstrates the difference.’

At this moment this may not seem a very satisfying reply, but I suggest that to anyone who looks back in three months’ time, it will seem better than what we are doing at present and it is the duty of those who can keep their heads to protest before the inherently silly process of retaliation against the helpless is carried any further.

Yours truly,

George Orwell

[XIV, 1563, pp. 97–8
; typewritten]

1
.
In his War-time Diary for 11 October 1942, Orwell recorded that following the unsuccessful raid on Dieppe, the Canadians had ‘chained up a number of German prisoners equal to the number of British prisoners chained up in Germany’. (See
Diaries
, p. 367.) The letter was not published.

To R. R. Desai*

3 March 1943

Dear Desai

The Indian Government have cabled asking us to do something in Gujerati
about the Beveridge report so we shall have to use your Gujerati period on Monday next for this. They evidently want to have the whole story, i.e. what the scheme proposes and also the history of the Parliamentary Debate. I need not tell you that the censorship would not allow through any comment, i.e. any comment on our part which amounted to a criticism of the Government for watering the Beveridge scheme down. On the other hand, the debate on the subject with the arguments brought forward for and against the report could be given, objectively. I should suggest simply setting out the provisions of the report, not going into too much detail, but emphasizing the more important clauses, especially family allowances, then mention the debate and then explain how much of the report the Government actually proposes to adopt. You can say, with safety, that whatever else goes out, family allowances on some scale or another are certain to be adopted. And it would be worth adding that this itself is an important advance and likely to raise the British birth-rate.
¹
However, they evidently want an objective report on the Beveridge scheme rather than a propaganda statement. You can use the whole of your period on Beveridge or use about ten minutes and reserve about three minutes for the headline news of the week, just as you wish. I hope you will let us have your script in good time. We have already cabled our people in India that we’re going to deal with Beveridge this week.

Yours

Eric Blair

Talks Producer

Indian Section.

P.S. If I could have this particular script on Saturday [6
^th
] I shall be much obliged.

[XV, 1923, p. 10; typewritten]

1
.
Orwell was proved right. Later, when the Labour Government of 1999 increased child benefits, the Institute of Fiscal Studies report,
Does Welfare Reform Affect Fertility?,
estimated that badly educated mothers had an additional 45,000 children in the year after the reforms were introduced (
Daily Telegraph
, 22 December 2008).

To Penguin Books

8 March 1
943

10a Mortimer Crescent

NW 6

Dear Sir,

With reference to your letter dated 5.3.43. I am not absolutely certain without looking up my contracts how I stand about the rights in my books, but I am
almost
certain that if the publisher has issued no cheap edition two years after publication, the rights revert to me. I can verify this, but in any case neither of my publishers is likely to make trouble about the republication of books which appeared some time ago. The books of mine which might be worth reprinting are (I give date of publication with each):—

Burmese Days
(193
4–1935).

Homage to Catalonia
(1938)

Coming Up for Air
(1939)

Inside the Whale
(1940).

I should say
Burmese Days
was much the most hopeful. It was first published by Harper’s in the
USA
, then a year later in a slightly bowdlerised edition by Gollancz. The English edition sold 3000 to 4000, the American about 1000.
¹
I think it deserves reprinting, and it has a certain topicality owing to the campaign in Burma. Gollancz’s stock of it has come to an end and it is totally out of print, but I possess a copy of the American edition.
Inside the Whale
is also totally out of print, the stocks of it having been blitzed, but I have a proof copy. It didn’t sell much but got a certain notoriety owing to parts of it being reprinted in magazines.
Homage to Catalonia
I think ought [to] be reprinted some time, but I don’t know whether the present is quite the moment. It is about the Spanish civil war, and people probably don’t want that dragged up now. On the other hand if Spain comes into the war I suppose it would be for a while possible to sell anything which seemed informative about Spanish internal affairs, if one could get it through the press in time.

I shall be happy to give you any further information you want.

Yours faithfully

George Orwell

[XV, 1942, pp. 18–19; typewritten]

1
.
In the light of Orwell’s later bitterness over the way Gollancz had ‘garbled’
Burmese Days
(see II, p. 310), his comment that it was ‘slightly bowdlerised’ is surprising. The
US
edition sold better than Orwell remembered. It was, in fact, reprinted. The first printing was of 2,000 copies. A Penguin edition was published in May 1944.

To
Dwight Macdonald*

26 May 1943

10a Mortimer Crescent

NW
6

Dear Macdonald,

Many thanks for your letter (dated April 13 and arrived yesterday!) and cheque. I enclose a list of 15 people who° I should think would be possible subscribers to
P
[
artisan
]
R
[
review
].
¹
Some of them I know are acquainted with the paper, and some may possibly be subscribers, but not to my knowledge. I am circularising all of them, telling them you can accept foreign subscriptions, and offering to lend copies so that they can have a look at it. Forster was interested when I showed him a copy some time back, so I am pretty certain he would subscribe if you prodded him, also Myers and Rees.

I am glad the last letter was a success and I will send another as soon as possible. As you see by the above address I didn’t get the job I was trying for (in North Africa) and am still at the
BBC
. I enjoy very much doing these letters for
PR
, it is a tremendous relief every now and then to write what one really thinks about the current situation, and if I have occasionally shown signs of wanting to stop it is because I keep fearing that your readers will get tired of always hearing about affairs in England from the same person. My point of view isn’t the only one and as you will have seen from the various letters from Alex Comfort* etc. there are some pretty vigorous opponents of it.
²
But within my own framework I have tried to be truthful and I am very happy to go on with the arrangement so long as you are.

We have shortly coming out a book made up from the broadcasts sent out to India by my department.
³
I think some copies will be sent to the
USA
, and I will try to get a copy to
PR
. Of course all books of broadcasts are crashingly dull, but it might interest you to see some specimens of British propaganda to India.

I will send off my next letter probably in about a fortnight. In that case it should reach you before the end of July unless the mail service comes unstuck again.

All the best.

Geo. Orwell

[XV, 2098A, p. xxiv; typewritten]

1
.
For the list of names, see XV, pp. xxiv–xxv.

2
.
In his ‘London Letter’, 1 January 1942 (XIII, 913, pp.
107–14), Orwell attacked Comfort* and others. (See its n. 4
and ‘Pacifism and War: A Controversy’, XIII, 1270, pp. 392–400.)

3
.
Talking to India
, edited by Orwell, published 18 November 1943 (XV, 2359, pp. 320–1).

To Alex Comfort*

Sunday [11?] July 1943

10a Mortimer Crescent NW 6

Dear Comfort,

Very many thanks for sending me the copy of
New Road
. I am afraid I was rather rude to you in our
Tribune
set-to,
¹
but you yourself weren’t altogether polite to certain people. I was only making a
political
and perhaps moral reply, and as a piece of verse your contribution was immensely better, a thing most of the people who spoke to me about it hadn’t noticed. I think no one noticed that your stanzas had the same rhyme going right the way through. There is no respect for virtuosity nowadays. You ought to write something longer in that genre, something like the ‘Vision of Judgement’.
²
I believe there could be a public for that kind of thing again nowadays.

As to
New Road
. I am much impressed by the quantity and the general level of the verse you have got together. I should think half the writers were not known to me before. Apropos of Aragon
³
and others, I have thought over what you said about the reviving effect of defeat upon literature and also upon national life. I think you may well be right, but it seems to me that such a revival is only
against
something, ie. against foreign oppression, and can’t lead beyond a certain point unless that oppression is ultimately to be broken, which must be by military means. I suppose however one might accept defeat in a mystical belief that it will ultimately break down of its own accord. The really wicked thing seems to me to wish for a ‘negotiated’ peace, which means back to 1939 or even 1914. I have written a long article on this for
Horizon
apropos of Fielden’s book on India, but I am not certain Connolly will print it.
⁴

I am going to try to get Forster to talk about
New Road
, together with the latest number of
New Writing
, in one of his monthly book talks to India. If he doesn’t do it this month he might next.
⁵
There is no sales value there, but it extends your publicity a little and by talking about these things on the air in wartime one has the feeling that one is keeping a tiny lamp alight somewhere. You ought to try to get a few copies of the book to India. There is a small public for such things among people like Ahmed Ali
⁶
and they are starved for books at present. We have broadcast quite a lot of contemporary verse to India, and they are now doing it to China with a commentary in Chinese. We also have some of our broadcasts printed as pamphlets in India and sold for a few annas, a thing that could be useful but is terribly hard to organise in the face of official inertia and obstruction. I saw you had a poem by Tambimuttu. If you are bringing out other numbers, you ought to get some of the other Indians to write for you. There are several quite talented ones and they are very embittered because they think people snub them and won’t print their stuff. It is tremendously important from several points of view to try to promote decent cultural relations between Europe and Asia. Nine tenths of what one does in this direction is simply wasted labour, but now and again a pamphlet or a broadcast or something gets to the person it is intended for, and this does more good than fifty speeches by politicians. William Empson
⁷
has worn himself out for two years trying to get them to broadcast intelligent stuff to China, and I think has succeeded to some small extent. It was thinking of people like him that made me rather angry about what you said of the BBC, though God knows I have the best means of judging what a mixture of whoreshop and lunatic asylum it is for the most part.

Yours sincerely

Geo. Orwell

[XV, 2185, pp. 168–9; typewritten]