The Light's on at Signpost (10 page)

I suppose it is just a pipe-dream, but if we must, in the mysterious future, belong to any bloc, for God’s sake let it be the North American one. However the ethnic mix of the United States may have changed, they are our people still, in language and culture and ideals. Nothing but good could come of a reunion of the English-speaking peoples—not only Britain and America but the old Empire and Commonwealth countries, our kinsfolk, who stood by us when Europe crumpled, and who, we may hope, would be magnanimous enough to forgive and forget our betrayal of them in 1972.

This may seem at odds with my earlier strictures on US policy in Afghanistan, but it’s not. The present crisis is a passing thing, and the special relationship with America, while it has undoubtedly received a tremendous shot in the arm from Blair’s “shoulder to shoulder” stance, would not have suffered lasting damage if we had given America every support short of fighting. After all, our contribution is a drop in the bucket, and Blair might have employed his time as an honest broker rather than as a co-belligerent.

As to closer association with the US in years to come, I am aware of the affected-intellectual school who recoil with revulsion from “American culture” (while being all too ready to accept its benefits). I have heard the weary argument about “the 51st state”; well, assuming
that our association with the US flourished to that extent, we would be not one state but ten at least—and with the growth of non-white population in America, we would probably be welcome. (Oh dear, I’ve told another politically incorrect truth; when will I learn to fudge and falsify?)

Alas, it is probably too late, not only to hope for a North Atlantic Union, but to prevent Britain being sucked into Europe. The poor stewardship of the Conservatives, no less than the apostasy of the Labour Party, has left the pass wide open for sale. While Labour stood firm, and there were enough Tory patriots to stand too, we could hope, but that hope is fading now. How tragic, how degrading, that the marvellous thing that was Britain, the wonder of the world, should after all the travail and suffering and heroism and sacrifice and sheer bloody genius of centuries, end with the sorriest of whimpers, sold down the river by mere politicians, unworthy and third rate. And then it will be bye-bye Magna Carta, fare ye well Declaration of Arbroath, so long Bill of Rights and Constitution. You were great while you lasted.

If you have read the foregoing, it will come as no surprise if I repeat a phrase which I used in my introduction: that I have no wish to see our British laws and life influenced by the children of those wonderful people who gave us Belsen and Dachau. A reasonable outlook, I’d have thought, which would have commanded universal support at any time before 1970, and which I’m sure is still the view of a majority of my countrymen.

But not of the columnist A. N. Wilson, who in an article headed “We mustn’t believe all Germans are Nazis” was critical of what he called my school of thought, and by implication likened my opinions to those of Captain Mainwaring of
Dad’s Army
.

Now I admire Mr Wilson’s writing, agree with many of his opinions, and am not one of those who delight in crossing swords
with other writers. But his piece made me realise that what I have just written about Europe is incomplete, since it doesn’t deal fully with one of my particular reasons for loathing the EU and all its works. For that reason I take him up—or rather, use his piece as a peg to discuss my apparent affinity with the hero of “Dad’s Army”, or at least with his outlook.

Well, Captain Mainwaring may be nothing more than a pompous buffoon to the snug, safe modern generation, but even from the comedy series he emerged as an extremely brave and patriotic, if hilarious, figure, and remembering the old men and youths parading in school playgrounds and drill halls in 1940, I’d say there were worse role models, and my immediate reaction was to give Mr Wilson the obvious and appropriate retort: “You stupid boy!” I refrained, preferring to point out that I never said, and don’t believe, that all Germans are Nazis. I’m just pretty sure that they’re all Germans, and that is the point.

You see, while I don’t wish to tar a whole nation with the same brush, and have the liveliest admiration for Wagner, Marlene Dietrich, Beethoven, von Lettow-Vorbeck (whom my father helped to chase all over East Africa, without success), Marshal Blucher, Franz Beckenbauer, Conrad Veidt, Kurt Weill, Gert Froebe, Ute Lemper, the great Sig Ruman of
Ninotchka
fame, and others too numerous to mention, including Goethe and Schiller (whom I’m sure I would admire if I ever read them)—despite all these worthy folk, I still cannot overlook the German national record which, I suggest, has few if any equals for brutality, atrocity, and aggression. Consider the Thirty Years War, Frederick the Great, Bismarck, the Kaiser, Hitler, and all that they add up to; it’s an impressive roll-call of barbarism, and hardly mitigated by all those fine composers, authors, philosophers, poets, artistes, and the countless millions of decent Germans who, alas, have apparently been powerless to prevent their country becoming, from time to time, the abomination of the world.

A. N. Wilson deplored the fact that, for the Mainwaring generation, the German character seemed to be defined by the period 1933–45; we should, he said, know better, which is an interesting reproach from someone born in 1950. Twelve years in a shared German history is not, as he pointed out, a long time, but it happens to be the period of which we Mainwarings have bitter experience, and it seems to us not entirely inconsistent with the rest of German history. And while one doesn’t want to harp on about Hitler and the Holocaust and the Gestapo too much, it has to be remembered that they did happen, and were unique; no other nation, no other people, has ever done the like.

I don’t want to be unreasonable about this. It may be, as A. N. Wilson plainly believed, that the German nature, character, or whatever you care to call it, has changed in fifty years, and that the instability (for want of a better word) which led the German people to give overwhelming support to Hitler, follow him in his attempt to crush all Europe underfoot, abet with vigour his ghastly policy of genocide, reprisal, and total war, and attempt to remove him only when the war was plainly lost, has been eradicated entirely. But we shouldn’t take it for granted, as I think Mr Wilson wished us to do. He wrote of the “total extinction” of National Socialism; has he visited the Saltzkammergut lately, and seen the swastikas? Has he not read of alarm, in Germany itself, at the resurgence of neo-Nazism? Does he really believe that there is no nostalgia for the triumphant days of the Third Reich among that proud and valorous race, or that they have forgiven and forgotten that in two great wars the English-speaking people beat the hell out of them, humiliated them, conquered them?

Apparently he does. He has assured us that German invasion or domination are not a threat, and while one may agree with him that invasion isn’t (for the moment, anyway; they haven’t got the muscle yet, for one thing), domination may be another matter. Who needs to invade, when they can win the long struggle two
generations after the war by dominating, politically and economically, a Europe into which Britain has been tamely absorbed? It is happening, and the German Foreign Minister is intent on securing more votes in the European Council of Ministers than Britain (or France or Italy for that matter) on account of Germany’s size. After which, no doubt, he will have no further territorial (sorry, political) claims to make.

But then, I’m just a bloody dinosaur, living in the past, unable to understand that humanity (and expediency) demand that we forget that past, and pretend the Nazi era was just a glitch in German history, and couldn’t possibly, by any stretch of the imagination, ever happen again, because we’re all friends and good Europeans nowadays, and the last thing any modern German wants is to get his own back, and let’s have another rousing chorus of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.

Yes, I’m a Mainwaring, a blimp, a chauvinist or whatever, quite out of step with the joyous fraternal Europe of today. I know I’m very wrong and reactionary and pessimistic—but the trouble is that I remember (as Mr Wilson cannot), the thunder, hour after ghastly hour, of the blitz that almost abolished Clydebank, and the horror of hearing the news of Lidice and Oradour, and the sickening spectacle of those ghastly emaciated wretches stumbling out of Belsen, and knowing what it was like to live in a country besieged, and hear in imagination the tramp of jack-boots on our streets, and know we were in the most mortal peril we had ever faced, and that if we failed or even faltered or ran out of luck we would be a Nazi—no, a German slave-state. That is what the Germans wanted and did their damnedest to do to us—not just Hitler, the Germans. Is it wrong to keep it in mind?

What prompted Mr Wilson’s article was the German Ambassador’s anxiety about what he saw as a British obsession with 1939—45. Well, considering that Germany caused the greatest mass slaughter in human history in those years, and wreaked carnage on us,
and committed the most abominable crimes, it would be no wonder if we were obsessed. But the word is ridiculously strong, and the Ambassador’s complaint seems to me to reflect a wondrously Teutonic insensitivity, rather as though the son of a convicted rapist and killer should wonder what the victim’s family have got to beef about. But as I’ve already made clear, it is not only the last war that colours our view, but a perfectly rational feeling that Germany, whatever her statesmen and our Europhiles may say, has shown by her history that she is not a country to be trusted. And if I am prejudiced (which I am not, but post-judiced), it may be because I can still hear the words:

“Our countries are friends now; we can never fight each other again.”

They were spoken in my presence by a member of the Hitler Youth when he visited our school on a goodwill exchange in 1935. The tragic irony is that he may have spoken them with complete sincerity.

“Oh, grow up!” was Mr Wilson’s reaction to my Mainwaringish reservations about Germany. My difficulty is that, unlike him, I did grow up, but in my time, not his, and I want my grandchildren to grow up in theirs. I believe they have a better chance of doing that if Germany is carefully watched, kept within bounds, and above all not allowed the least influence in our affairs. To put it mildly, they haven’t earned the privilege. A dominant Germany is not, and never has been, a safe thing for the peace of the world, and we would do well to remember that—and reflect on the thought that came to me on the night the Berlin Wall came down, and all the politicians and pundits and media cheer-leaders threw up their sweaty nightcaps: I know one man who’d have exulted tonight, and his name was Adolf Hitler.

It’s too late for me and my generation to grow up; our government cannot hope to “educate” us into what Mr Wilson called “a different perspective on things”. We know too much, and are hardly
to be instructed by second-rate politicians who have still (we can only hope) to reach maturity.

Nor, I have to say, by A. N. Wilson. He does not see Germany as a potential menace, but thinks the most obvious threat to our civilisation is “creeping Americanism.” Well, I don’t care for McDonalds or the US Constitution or the Jerry Springer show or cheeseburgers (whatever they are) myself, and I do try to make allowances for the youthful folly of columnists, but there are limits to my tolerance.

It’s no use, I’ve got to say it: “You stupid boy!”

C
ONTRARY TO FASHIONABLE
, ill-considered opinion, the Act of Settlement, which in effect bars Roman Catholics from the throne, must be retained.

On the face of it the Act is discriminatory, unfair, archaic, bigoted, wicked, and all the other epithets its opponents can throw at it, and the case for removal seems obvious. There is, however, one excellent and over-riding reason for keeping the Act: the British monarch must never be subservient, spiritually or otherwise, to a foreigner, usually an Italian though at present a Pole.

It is that simple. I know little of Roman Catholic doctrine, and am not in sympathy with what I understand of Catholic beliefs and practices, but since I’m not in sympathy with anyone else’s religious beliefs either, I hope I may be acquitted of partisanship. But I confess I find it difficult to accept the plea for toleration from a Church whose intolerance is a byword.

If a Catholic wishes to reign in Britain, he or she must somehow discover (possibly with Jesuitical assistance) a means whereby he or she continues in his or her faith, but at the same time ceases to recognise the Pope’s superiority. (I think we’ve been here before, in Henry VIII’s time, but that’s by the way.) If such spiritual agility is impossible for a devout Catholic aspirant to the throne, then forget it.