Transgressions: March, 1941

March 1, 1941, Saturday

“Obviously, I can tell you nothing,” Jack. “But the King has matured, he has been tempered by adversity; he is not at all the callow youth we remember, although he is still beautiful.? Everything is arranged to the highest standard, most business-like without being in any way bourgeois.? We have enormous amounts of work to do:? Mosley is on the telephone continually and, from time to time, like a visit from a goddess, Lady Diana is glimpsed down an enfilade, on her way to or from an audience with the Queen-Empress.”

And a bit later:? “Lord Cecil’s condition is supposed to be improving a bit.”

March 3, 1941, Monday

The New York Times for February 16 led with stories about British victories in Somalia.? The editorial made two points:? that Germany often achieves through threats and other “diplomatic” means what it then need not chance through actual military activity, and that there is only a small group of leaders, whose removal would change the course of events.? This in contrast to the situation with the British Empire, which, despite the loss of the home island, continues to fight for liberty.?

The Canadians are forming brigades of American volunteers.? Or is it “volunteers”?

March 4, 1941

Berlin announces that Germany is claiming the Estonian intellectual and managerial classes as German and that the Soviet Union has agreed to the repatriation of 12,000 of them to the Fatherland.? The tapes brought here show that the US State Department has warned the Soviets that Germany intends to attack the Soviet Union in the not distant future.?

March 5, 1941, Wednesday

Dinner at Chillingham, where there is a good fire and good food.? One of the greyhounds has taken to lying next to Nadine’s armchair after dinner, signifying that Lady Kyloe and Nadine are now fast friends. Nadine said:

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“One of the problems that Cassel was worrying toward the end of his life was that of what he called the utility of the aesthetic sense, or, from the other side of the table, the utility of beauty.? You must remember that he was of that generation that thought of beauty as a kind of religion.? And yet, he would say, ‘What good is it?? Think of a gothic cathedral.? There it is, in some dismal provincial town, Ely, say, which was no doubt yet more dismal at the time when the building was put up.? It could have been a barn for sermons, like those the Methodists use, or some hideous piece of pious cake decoration, like those Irish Catholics build today, but instead, every proportion is perfect, every decision made by the builders right as a building decision and right aesthetically.? Why did they care?’

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“And sometimes he would approach it from the other side, wondering whether the issue is our own perceptions, that we perceive – or designate – Ely cathedral as “beautiful” because we have been taught to do so.? ‘Think of Chinese opera,’ he would say, ‘beautiful for them, but not for many of us’ – and then he would propose extending that particular idea of beauty to cover much else.? Beauty, he said, if extrinsic, might have a quite definite social function.? If a building is considered beautiful, it is much more likely to survive.? Which he thought would explain why it is so often a cathedral or other monument of power we consider beautiful.”

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“Did Cassel think that beauty is a manifestation of state power?”?

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“One possible manifestation of power, state or other.? There are others.? And other forms of beauty.”

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Watt, who is growing as silent as his mother, got up from the table, walked over to the fireplace, and using the mantel-piece as a writing table, made a note in the small book he always has with him.

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“And is that why the beloved is always beautiful?? Some crude Darwinism?”? Fiona, from where she lay on the floor, a sleeping greyhound for a pillow.

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March 7, 1941, Friday

Watt says that Sir David Petrie, ex- Indian Police, has been appointed Director-General of MI5, to begin working Monday.? He will be comfortable, no doubt, as the London government’s liaison with the Gestapo, given his experience in India.

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March 9, 1941, Sunday

Jack says that Lord Cecil has had a heart attack in hospital, but is expected to recover.

March 10, 1941, Monday

The New York Times of February 23rd reported that the new American Vice President, Henry Wallace, has given a speech in which he calls for the defeat of Germany by saying that if Germany wins, it will dominate South America economically, becoming “the single buyer” of their agricultural exports.? It will then move on to attempt similarly to dominate the United States.? He claims that “the only hope for peace in this hemisphere” is to support the British Empire.? He spoke about the post-war years:? “The job ahead is to give common men over the entire world the opportunity to work for a higher living standard . . . We shall work toward the time when no man shall go hungry.”? Wallace is a well-known agricultural expert who now represents the Left in the New Deal.?

The editors of the New York Times call for a “Defense Planning Commission” to advise the President on “grand strategy” and also call for centralized production and procurement.

March 11, 1941, Tuesday

My morning “mail” (by hand) informs me that the Irish have sent a senior representative to Washington to obtain arms.? They have been referred to the British (Ottawa) Purchasing Commission.? This in response to the refusal of the Irish to allow the British Imperial Navy to use Irish ports.

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March 12, 1941

More tapeworm news:? The American Ambassador in the Soviet Union reports that his German colleague there denies rumors of a German attack on the Soviet Union, seconded by the Rumanian Minister, who attributes said rumors to Ottawa.

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March 16, 1941, Sunday

A cloudless summer afternoon.

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“The View from Washington:”

“It has been the custom of American presidents to claim reluctance to bring the nation into war, unless it is war in its own hemisphere, which is something of a recognized hobby for them.? We cannot, then, expect a declaration from the President of his intention to begin active intervention on this date or that.? At most we might find him declaring conditions under which the United States would be “forced into the war in its own defence.”? The leaders of the Republican Party, such as Landon, Knox and Willkie, are supporting the President, indeed, protecting him, by staking out positions more interventionist than his (but not more interventionist than that of Mrs. Roosevelt).? The New York newspapers seem already at war.?

“Which leaves an alliance of pacifists, isolationists, Nazi-sympathizers, Communists and the Chicago Tribune in opposition.? The President could hardly ask for a better group of opponents for his purposes.? They cancel one another out in the eyes of the public, while making their cause seem to be one created by foreign dictators of one ilk or another or eccentric and hardly less dictatorial millionaires.

“Meanwhile the labor unions appear to have decided to take advantage of the moment to threaten strikes for higher wages, more unionization and so forth.? On the surface this would seem to be an impediment to the policy of the administration.? However, it creates a sense of crisis in industry that might, at the right moment, serve as the pretext for the mobilization of precisely those productive parts of the economy most vital for war.

“All of which points toward the conclusion that the USA will come into the war, in one way or another, at the earliest opportune moment after the Inauguration.? That leaves only two questions:? In what way it will come into the war and what will be the occasion.”

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March 17, 1941

Kenyan and West African units of the British Imperial Army in central Abyssinia, have advanced (exactly) 744 miles up the Strada Imperiale in just seventeen days (BEBC).? These reports are encouraging and, no doubt, meant to be.? But 744 miles?? Why not 743 miles?? 748 miles?? This details, intended, no doubt, to underline the truth of the reports, by their very exactness, call it into question.

Yesterday Jack described a Pilgrims’ lunch given for Winant, attended by the? King-Emperor, PM, Jack, etc.? Jacks says that in private conversation Winant is almost inaudible.

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March 20, 1941, Thursday

The BBC (London) has banned various Communists and such:? Beatrix Lehmann and Michael Redgrave, also Low, the cartoonist.? There are rumors that Low has been imprisoned.

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Berlin has announced talks between the Finnish and German militaries.

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March 21, 1941, Friday

Churchill, on the wireless this evening, declaring “Anything in the nature of persecution, victimisation or man-hunting is odious to the British people,” said he would have lifted the BBC ban on Communists and that there would be no such BEBC ban in Ottawa.

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Tapeworms:? The American Ambassador in Moscow has told the State Department that he has personally leased a Dacha 15 miles north of Moscow, to be used by the Embassy staff in case of an evacuation of Moscow.

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March 23, 1941, Sunday

The Nazis have banned the entire German church press.

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There are rumors of Finland joining the Axis Pact.

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A mocking broadcast by Mosley on the BBC, congratulating Churchill on his “conversion to Bolshevikism.” à propos of Churchill’s condemnation of the BBC bans on Communists and others on the Left.? “Quite remarkable, really, but there’s no whore like an old whore and Churchill has sold himself to Roosevelt and no doubt now has jews in New York to write his speeches.”? And other such pleasantries.

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March 24, 1941, Monday

Rommel has recaptured El Agheila from the British Imperial forces, nearly without a fight.? This will encourage him to push forward towards Egypt.? Much schadenfreude from the BBC.? The BEBC tries to balance this by declaring that British Somaliland is now clear of Italians: Italienerrein?

A glimpse at sunset of Fiona and two men and a woman, on bicycles, leaving the courtyard, heading west.

March 25, 1941, Tuesday

Tapeworms:? Reports from the American Embassy in Moscow of rumors there (from Swedish sources) concerning a German ultimatum to or attack on the Soviet Union, in anticipation of the entry of the United States into the war.? German army groups are said to be prepared to strike east from Koenigsberg, Warsaw and Krakow.

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March 28, 1941, Friday

An item in my morning delivery from the Station to the effect that the Imperial Treasury (Ottawa) says that its funds are exhausted.? Current payments to the US for war supplies are only being met from a loan of gold from the Belgian government in exile.? The President acted none too soon with getting his loan bill through the Congress.

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The last time I saw her Livia said: ?“I can not bear it that there is suffering in the world.”

“It does seem that there is more each day.”

“I can not bear it that there is any at all.”

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