Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

His voice, deep, fluent, could also change colour. Now it darkened. ‘These people, with their little parliament, busy agrarian unions, their pretty army, are learning to organize. We must remember to look over our shoulders.’

Involuntarily, I did so, made foolish by his pretence of not noticing but knowing I must reconsider our servants and retainers. There was frequent talk of Estonians on farms confiscated from the High Folk but behaving more harshly.

The Herr General gently pressed my arm. ‘Other matters may, quite soon, concern you more directly.You could see butcher-boy Stalin fulfilling Tsar Peter’s testament. He directed that Russia should expand without conscience, at whatever cost. One way of uniting Europe.’

We were walking back. ‘My great-grandfather, Erich, a privy councillor at the Russian court, desired universities, academies, high schools, but to exclude offspring of cooks, washerwomen, cobblers, fishmongers, domestics and Jews. He was killed, probably very justly, during the Polish rebellion.’

Foreign names were being repeated, greeted with disdainful pouts, approving nods, difficult silences. Colonel Beck, General Franco, Litvinov, Chamberlain – the English Mr J’aime Berlin. Prague, Memel, Danzig, Geneva, the League. England, Mother was told, reproachfully, coveted military bases in Estonia, possibly to pass to Russia in an anti-German deal. I might have English cousins selling Gulf harbours in a spirit of fun. In sly attentiveness, I heard talk of Russia preparing to attack Finland.

In America, realm of gangsters and huge cars, a youth, in protest of having been born, was suing his parents.

Father was speaking even less, Mother chattered like a hungry bird or Mr Churchill. The Herr General, though preparing for another journey, another adventure, sat with us, intervening only when asked to, as arguments flowed between faces ageing and well-fed.

‘Four prima donnas descending on Munich, eh? Well, we’ll hear whatever they choose to tell us.’

‘A city for the cultured drinker. For ladies, too expensive. First-class toys. And down at Schwabing, despite the squalor, you’ll find attempts at genuine art. Some mysticism, very elementary.’

The Munich Crisis bottled up a new war.We heard on the wireless the Reichsmarschall address the Czechs. ‘I pledge my word of honour that we only want better relations between us.’

Our spring came early, a scherzo of satiny buds, waterside harebells, swallows darting into reeds. But, without warning, two neighbouring families departed to Germany, leaving their estates for sale. Our own friends. Tenants began emigrating, or fleeing to Poland, abandoning their leases. A visitor informed us that the White Lady of Padiski had been seen trailing through a ballroom, an apparition foretelling trouble unless she carried a cowslip.

Mother trilled with gaiety. ‘So tell me, Joseph, what was she carrying?’

‘Nothing, dearest lady. Nothing at all.’

Yesterday, amid snowstorms, the German army had seized Czechoslovakia. Back with us in green and brown riding attire and a regimental tie certainly not Estonian, the Herr General joined us in the Small Drawing-Room, sitting, slightly apart by the fire, as if in a stage-box, while others closed in over schnapps and dispute.

A paunched, spade-bearded old gentleman, Alpine climber, President of the Ritterschaft , Court of Honour of the Baltic Nobility, grunted like a badger. ‘Should it come…’ he dropped the words, rather than passing them, ‘our interests will be respected. The Führer needs us. We, it may appear, need him. The country, too, of course. He’s scarcely the last word in culture, but he knows his own mind about the Soviet eczema.’

‘Tonight he sleeps in Prague. Castle of the Bohemian Kings. Queer contrast. But he’s not the worse of our continent’s afflictions.’

‘Questionable means, I suppose. Nevertheless, Bismarck himself… But we can trust him not to distribute bon-bons to those we need not name.’

‘Lithuania should surrender Memel. That can only strengthen us against the Bear. I understand that the good gentlemen in Reval have rejected the Kremlin’s guarantee of frontiers.’

‘Rightly so. That Georgian cannibal’s lost in a swamp, having butchered his officer corps and party élite. Scoundrels devour scoundrels as France so often showed, while showing little else. God be praised, the Reds have never been weaker. The Estonian Parliament, where foolishness is not unknown, at least knows how to treat communism. But an ungrateful lot. Dr Goebbels maintains that grumbling is the soul shitting. Not how his wife would express it, or so I suppose.With my own ears I heard…’ His ears, high and pointed as a goblin’s.

‘Those that live by the sword, Kurt… for once the Saviour’s text may be amply justified, apparently in Finland. If we ourselves must choose between Bear and Wolf…’

‘But is there a choice, Bruno? Our little Burgomaster, Päts…’

‘The choice is within our grasp. Perfect chalice, I could say Grail, Baltic independence, whatever the Finnish digression, suits the Great Powers. Cordon sanitaire , to put it so. The newspaper public is fatalistic, waiting for something to happen, while the lout in Moscow, the booming patrician in Washington, my Lord Halifax and the rest, dangle their gifts, few though they may be.’

The slabbed, mottled features grimaced as if over a chosen cigar, and still the Herr General warmed his hands, silent, but attentive as the voice continued. ‘Europe manoeuvres, it scarcely evolves. In its disunity is our safety. The Wolf cannot mate with the Bear, so smaller creatures can sit in the sun. But conceivably the time of lean kine and glutton philosophy is ending. So…’

Though he was wholly ignored, I suddenly fancied that Herr Max, formally black and white, dispensing liqueurs, had become more eavesdropper than servant. Then, exhausted, the chipped faces curved in one motion to the big man by the fire.

The Herr General’s nod was deceptively apologetic. ‘I have long had the notion, it would be presumptuous to call it more, but simple, and vital as a comma.Your newspaper public, Luther’s Herr Omnes, remains in astrological time, while dependent on science. The mystique of stars, oaths, flags, numbers… to escape this would be genuine revolution, not yet accomplished, barely attempted. And in any age, life had convinced me that history is maintained by a Ten Per Cent Factor. About this proportion passionately loves art, religion, charity. The equivalent is equally passionate in hating them. The remainder drift, at behest of fashion and leadership. This clarifies contemporary events, and, since you were discussing choice, surely this is already made. The lean kine are selected for requisite disposal.’

Though his manner was negligent, tolerant, unassertive, the eyes, so blue in the lofty, mobile face, were hard, as if summing up before sentence.

‘Latvia and, should it survive, Finland will submit to Russia in what is courteously called Mutual Assistance.’ His gesture was that of crumpling paper. Someone began, ‘And Germany…’

‘Ah.’ The pause was calculated, and, at several conflicting voices, Herr Max stooped to hear, almost to participate.

‘A hand on the tiller, General.Well and good, now that London and Paris relinquish the race and Washington declines to compete. Yet, if Hitler moves against the Soviets, who gets crushed in the middle?’

‘Amongst others, the League, endlessly disputing not only the righteousness of force but its validity. Civilization too readily assumes that people are rational.’

The Herr General looked aside, to the stags and shields carved along the fireplace. ‘A hand on the tiller? To cleave to that is better than writing of feelings one has never possessed.’