Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

He was grimacing as if about to chuckle, his thick moustache a caricaturist’s prize, his hands like a schoolmaster’s, raised against a class incorrigibly stupid. ‘The Crucifixion, bloody and torturing, was revenge, upon Evil, Tradition, Human Nature itself. My message, then? This. That whoever declares himself detached, unprejudiced, impartial, I fear as I fear smallpox.’

I would have liked to have heard Levi’s response. Though the Belgian was forced to his seat by unanimous dissent, Wilfrid shaking his head, Spender protesting, Trilling disapproving, I did not myself feel impartial towards those Russians or Germans, who had eliminated my family.

Though another had been granted the right, Odd Nansen was already speaking, compelled by feelings stoked by the Hero of Gravelines. Very tall, so stiff that, bending, he might crack, very noisily, he was using a clumsy but powerful French, surprising from his mournful, perspiring, spaniel-like face, and as if stubbornly breasting intractable waves. In mounting agitation, he constantly changed stance, anxious to reach all parts of the ballroom, even the tapestries, insignia of the deposed and lost.

‘I, too, am concerned with Retribution. In the camps I saw it. Day after day.’ This received a cheer, for Day After Day was the title of his recently published narrative of captivity. ‘M. Antelme will understand.’ Another cheer, Antelme half-rising. ‘Nor, in my hopes for European changes, do I crave the unreal. M. Cocteau has said, here in Paris, city of Voltaire, of Jaurès, that the purity of revolution lasts a fortnight. But a daytime’s purity is hard to discover anywhere. In the camps, good people volunteered as spies, as executioners, for a few extra months of life.’ His massive hands tightened, relaxed, as if of themselves. ‘Mesdames, Messieurs, all occupied countries supplied recruits for the SS. My Norwegians formed the SS Nordland Division. In the camps, we were privileged, Honorary Teutons. I myself, in respect for my father, was brought special food from the Commandant’s house.’ He quietened, as if confiding to old friends. ‘That Commandant had been a Christian missionary. We called him the Storm Prince. He had a greenish-yellow colour and brown, venomous, stinging eyes under that cap with its death’s head and crossed bones. He hanged seven thousand, anyone under his gaze, gypsies, Jews… anyone. Yet that man, with his tiny eyes, foul laugh, his sharp teeth, sharp as ferrets’, had charm. And we Norwegians, the privileged, thrust others aside to jostle for his favours. We all beat, kicked, betrayed. We stole food from the most wretched of all, the “Mussulmen”, hollowed-out remnants of life, who had totally surrendered. We lifted the arms of the dying, to snatch their bread. All Europeans are kin to the SS captain who told his American captors that he ignored terrible conditions because they only concerned others.’

While he wiped his face with a handkerchief like a tablecloth, a different silence enveloped us, not admiring, not purposeful but timid, actually afraid, though I was uncertain of what. The big, fair man, in the loose, ill-fitting blue suit, with the badly knotted tie and clumsy manner, swallowed, shook himself like a bear, resumed, unnaturally straight, as if barely recovered from surgery.

‘I must finish… finish I must, with this. Lenin instructed us that hatred is the gist of Communism. That, in a sentence, is the case against it and its imitators. So, I repeat… that in the camps, we, who should have been Europeans, refused to unite, we remained nationalists, sectarians, party members, haters. We preferred politics to civilization. None were immune, not even Jews. Now, in a new Europe, we have to share the boat with the young. If it sinks, the Storm Prince will rescue us, one armband red, the other black. So let us not, I appeal, be like the Wise Man of Gothland who sawed off the branch on which he sat.’

He received the loudest acclaim since Churchill, though Malraux’s arms still did not stir. Mr Spender was hot and scarlet with appreciation, agog for the New Europe, and Trilling and I exchanged comradely smiles. Wilfrid might be correct: that conferences, committees, certain schools, libraries, households, a particular walled garden, his Gascon bistro, were dikes against the barbarism that had poisoned assemblies, unions, regiments, erased a European civility like the Revolution before it. Yet, I hesitated, both Stalin and Eisenhower must have thought themselves as dike-kings, preservers.

Succeeding speeches were too professional, too righteous. The microphone was faulty, so that two women, internationally admired, were alternately shrill and inaudible. All seemed in rehearsal, not yet word-perfect, unlikely to start a children’s crusade, ridicule the virtues of suffering – the Pétainist curse – and the boldness of Internal Emigration. A Lyons historian eloquently demonstrated that the war had been won by the superiority of French values. A British woman minister, short, red-haired, argued that the war had been justified by providing opportunities for decolonization and social reform. An Austrian youth, who should surely have worn lederhosen, well nourished, pale hair smeared on honey skin, delphinium-eyed, spoke of his father, killed by Russians in Kiev, his mother, killed by the British in Dresden. However – his pretty, indeed angelic smile assured us – he forgave everyone. ‘Industrial West Germany will lead Europe.’ He awaited applause that did not come. A Czech philosopher apologized for his country’s attitude to minorities and declared that the problem of existential freedom was no problem at all. Trilling showed no relief.

The overall assumption was that violence, malice, greed were unnatural aberrations, divorced from the true nature of man. Studying the rococo ceiling, its glimmering foliage and Olympian calm, I yearned for some Hermes to lean down, grinning, but could only await the lavish banquet, itself much derided by the Left and Poujardist press. I had been alarmed by a proposal from a minority, that an all-night vigil on behalf of the dead should be substituted. Wilfrid, though seldom reliable in such matters, supported the hungry majority.

Sleepy, I would have been glad of the Radetsky March and, should he still be awake, was astonished at Malraux’s patience. Great orator, he remained in wintry silence, his cigarette alone showing life. And then … speeches still sounded stylized, over-rhetorical, or were read from manuscript, very monotonously. Beautiful feelings, Gide had once said, make bad art. The dull drop of words would have withered butterflies. An Argentine advocated Spanish as universal language. Outside, Paris lingered on the tremulous frontier between blue afternoon and violet dusk. Despite the soft light, I was aware of a slight gleam on Wilfrid’s face, distinct from his dark formal coat and cravat. Impatience? Yet I had never known the extent of his expectations. Determination to speak? Horror, as Suzie would say. I had never heard him address a crowd, had often heard his indulgent disdain of those who did so. We had already endured the pontifical, judicial, indignant, abject and absurd. Trilling was glancing at his watch, Mr Spender was writing in a tiny book, perhaps audaciously rhyming a satire. A Toute Vie surgeon cited Aristotle on inferior races, the Canadian bishop stuttered that God finds intolerable Good Works performed without Faith, thereby insulting Nansen’s father, agnostic, whose good works were massive. Perhaps only the Hero of Gravelines could wake us into Walpurgis extravagance, quicken Mrs Meier, Dr Flake, His Finnish Excellency, into a Dionysiac can-can. The Belgian, despite his bloodshot rant, was another Storm Prince: he had once almost drowned in the Meuse, rescuing a homosexual whom he loathed, personally and on principle.