Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

Lady Muriel quoted passages from her sister-in-law’s letters with burning indignation. Lady Boscastle, with cynical ingenuity, raised the question of the tenants’ peace of mind; they knew of Rosalind’s engagement to the late vicar; what would they be likely to think now? Usually, Lady Muriel was only too preoccupied with the tenants’ moral welfare; but she had not room for two concerns at once, and she brushed that point aside as though they were Tasmanian aborigines.

On paper, Lady Boscastle had the better of the argument; but, as usual when there was a difference about the family house, Lady Muriel had the greater staying-power, and harangued the others until she prevailed. Lord Boscastle appeared to turn into an ally; and in the end Lady Boscastle sent Rosalind an invitation. Lady Boscastle knew when she was beaten, and her letter was far more friendly than any Lady Muriel wrote to Rosalind (Lady Muriel still began “Dear Mrs Calvert”): Rosalind showed it to me with delight: I thought I could detect just one malicious flick, put in for the writer’s own benefit.

Rosalind accepted by return, and went to Boscastle in time for Christmas. In February, I had a letter myself from Lady Boscastle, in that fine, elegant, upright hand.

“This is really quite ridiculous,” she wrote. “God appears to have a misplaced sense of humour, which he reserves for those who haven’t taken him too seriously. There is no question, he scores in the end. Lewis, my dear boy, I once was pursued with singular pertinacity by a young gentleman of literary pretensions. He was remarkably, in fact embarrassingly faithful, and had a curious knack of turning up in unexpected places. I did not find him a particularly useful young man, but he added an element of interest by indulging in throaty prophecies about my future. He used to quote ‘ Quand tu seras bien vieille ’ in impassioned but distinctly imperfect French. He produced so many pictures of my old age that I was prepared for one of them to turn out right. (I should remark that he appeared to find them deeply moving: he was, as you would expect, a little too fervent for my taste.)

“But now I am bien vieille — pity me, for it is the only tragedy, as you will discover, my dear. Now I am bien vieille , and none of that young man’s absurd prognostications were anything like so undecorated as the truth. Really I did not expect this. It is a little much. I attribute it entirely to poor Muriel’s unappreciated virtue.

“Imagine me listening to the opinions, confessions, and simple aspirations of your friend Rosalind. It seems to me the most improbable occupation for my declining years. Except when I am immobilised and kept in bed (which, I have a feeling, will happen more often in the next few months), I do little else. Your friend Rosalind appears to think that I am a sympathetic listener. I have pointed out the opposite, but she laughs indulgently and feels it is just my little way.

“I have never been an admirer of my own sex. Listening to this young woman, I reflect on such interesting themes as why men are so obtuse as to be taken in. Feminine delicacy? Refinement? Frailty? Fineness of feeling? I reflect also on poor Muriel and poor Joan. I have to grant them certain estimable but slightly unlovable qualities: should one, under the eye of eternity, really prefer them to this companion of mine? To which of them does one give the prize for womanhood? I have never been a confidante of your Roy, but I admit I should like his answer to that question.

“I have met very few people, even very few women, who are as singularly unmoral as this young woman. I have known many whose interest in morality was slightly detached: but this one scarcely seems to have heard of such a subject. I must admit that I find it engaging when she assumes the same of me. It has not taken her long to regard herself and me as sisters.

“By the way, it also did not take her long to become unimpressed by the battlements and other noble accessories. Including my poor Hugh. She rapidly recognised that she could reduce him to a state of gibbering admiration. They both get a good deal of innocent pleasure from their weekly bridge with the new vicar and his wife. I suspect they are happier because my less enthusiastic eye is removed. Possibly I am becoming slightly maudlin about the ironies of time; but I do feel it is unfitting that nowadays Hugh should be reduced to this one high event each week. He fidgets intolerably each Thursday evening, as we wait for the vicar and his wife. No one could call the vicar a deep thinker, and he has large red ears.”

All through that winter and spring, I was attending committees, preparing notes for the minister, reading memoranda, talking to Francis Getliffe and his scientific friends; for decisions were being taken about the bombing campaign, and we were all ranged for or against. In fact, all the people I knew best were dead against. My minister was one of the chief opponents in the government; through Francis, I had met nearly all the younger scientists, and they were as usual positive, definite, and scathing. They had learned a good deal about the effect of bombing, from the German raids; they worked out what would be the results, if we persisted in the plan or bombing at night. I read the most thorough of these “appreciations”. I could not follow the statistical arguments, but the conclusions were given as proved beyond reasonable doubt: we should destroy a great many houses, but do no other serious damage; the number of German civilians killed would be relatively small; our losses in aircrew would be a large proportion of all engaged; in terms of material effect, the campaign could have no military significance at all. The minister shook his head; he had seen too many follies; he was a sensible man, but he did not believe in the victory of sense; and he knew that too many in power had a passionate, almost mystical faith in bombing. They were going to bomb, come what may; and naturally human instruments arose who could fit in. Against the scientific arguments, the advocates of bombing fell back on morale. There was something the scientists could not speak about nor measure. The others said, as though with inner knowledge, that the enemy would break under the campaign.

I went to a committee where Francis Getliffe made one of the last attempts to put the scientific case. Like most of his colleagues, Francis had left the invention of weapons and, as the war went on, took to something like the politics of scientific war. He was direct, ruthless, and master of his job; he had great military sense; he had never found any circumstances which gave him more scope, and he became powerful in a very short time. But now he was risking his influence in this war. Opponents of bombing were not in fashion. Bombing was the orthodoxy of the day. As I observed it, it occurred to me that you can get men to accept any orthodoxy, religious, political, even this technical one, the last and oddest of the English orthodoxies; the men who stood outside were very rare, and would always be so.

But Francis’ integrity was absolute. He was pliable enough to bend over little things; this was a very big thing. Someone ought to oppose it to the end; he was the obvious person; he took it on himself to do it.

He was much the same that afternoon as he used to be at college meetings — courteous, formal, clear, unshakably firm. He was high-strung among those solid steady official men, but his confidence had increased, and he was more certain of his case than they were. He was impatient of less clever men: his voice had no give in it. But he was very skilful at using his technical mastery.

He was setting out to prove the uneconomic bargain if we threw our resources into bombing. The amount of industrial effort invested in bombers was about twice what those same bombers would destroy. Bombing crews were first-class troops, said Francis Getliffe. Their training was very long, their physical and mental standard higher than any other body of troops. For every member of an aircrew killed, we might hope to kill three or four civilians. “That’s not business,” said Getliffe. “It’s not war. It doesn’t begin to make sense.” He described what was then known of the German radar defences. Most of us round that table were ignorant of technical things. He made the principles of the German ground control limpidly clear. He analysed other factors in the probable rate of loss.