Dorothy Sayers - The Wimsey Papers

Well, bless the Finns! They are a bright spot, and no mistake. I'm not surprised. The only Finnish child I ever taught in my school-teaching days was a miracle of competent independence. At eight years old she organished her form; at tehn, she would lead the school crocodile from Swiss Cottage to the Old Vic, while I meekly followed in her wake; at eleven, she got up and ran an athletic competition for the Junior School, and now she is manager of a big and successful store. You can't keep a nation like that down. But what it must be like, fighting in that dreadful cold place in the pitch dark, one simply can't imagine. You'd think the Russians would be used to snow, but apparently they sent the wrong sort of Russians — the southern kind. Isn't that a War-Office all over? They're all alike. I suppose, if ever we had to conduct a campaign at the North Pole, we should send troops from Bombay! Anyway, I never thought communism had much to do with common sense, judging bby the bright undergraduates who go in for it. Never did they succeed in arriving in time for a coaching, or arranging a meeting without at least three mistakes in the hour and place. An entertaining consequence of the war, by the way, is that the membership of the Communist Society at Shrewsbury has gone down by precisely the same number that the membership of the Student Christian Movement has gone up. There is a pleasing neatness about it.

Well, my dear, I must stop twaddling and go and finish my shopping. Christmas must go on, Hitler or no Hitler. I go back home tomorrow.

With the best of good wishes,

Yours affectionately,

LETITIA MARTIN

Telegram from the above to the above, 20.12.39, handed in at Selfridge's, 4.48p.m.

Take back anything harsh I said about poor Langsdorf sorry I spoke — Martin

12. Colonel Marchbanks to Lord Peter Wimsey (transmitted by a devious route to a destination unknown).

BELLONA CLUB,

W.

23.12.39.

My dear boy,

I must try to send you a line for the New Year, though God knows when you'll get it. Still, better late than never. I ought to have put it in hand for Christmas, but the confounded season creeps up on one in such a dashed stealthy manner that it's here before one realises it. Not but what I ought to realise it, as my wife and I have been working hard to get up entertainments for the Camp never our little place in the country — about all that's left in the way of military service for an old war-horse like me. However, with three grandsons doing their bit, we can't complain. It's a fairly high proportion as things go nowadays. Some of the young fellows — and the older ones too — are grumbling pretty heavily because the W.O. doesn't seem to have any use for their services. See here, I said to them the other day, I'm older than you, and I've served in two major wars, not counting the Burmese business when I was only a lad, and you can take it from me, the best thing you can do is to stand by and wait till you're wanted. They're not going to want you in a hurry, except for replacement of casualties. How many of our fellows do you want slaughtered, I said, so that you can put up a couple of pips? Robert Fentiman said this wasn't what he called a war — more like a ruddy sit-down strike. I said, I suppose what you want is another Passchendaele, but we're not having any this time, thank-you, we know what it's like. Nor is the German High Command, not unless that fellow Hitler starts sending out his personal order to scuttel the army. If you've forgotten, I said, and I haven't, what a frontal attack in impossible weather on a strong position looks like, go and see what's happenening to those poor dashed Russian blighters driven up like sheep against the Mannerheim line. Fentiman said, anyhow, the Finns were showing up how a war should be fought. Good luck to them, I said, so they are, and Stalin's showing us how it ought not to be fought, and why should we follow his example? What we've got in hand, I said, is siege warfare, and it's got to be fought in the proper manner. There's no sense in trying to fight the last war but one.

Thank God, I say, we're not saddled with Russia as an ally, which we should have been if some of our bright intellectuals had had their way. Remember those dashed Socialists last August? Bursting into tears all over the place, and prophesying the end of the country if we didn't throw both arms round Comrade Stalin's neck? I protested to the committee, and got their beastly rags shot out of the place. I'd a fairly good idea those Bolshies wanted to make a pretty dirty bargain for their priceless assistance, but even if we could have swallowed that — Heaven be praised we didn't — the Russians have never yet won a war against a first-class Power, and why should they begin now? They won't win this one, what's more, if somebody has the decency to keep Finland going with munitions and supplies. You can't turn incompetent soldiers into competent ones by abolishing Church and King — dashed ungentlemanly thing to do, anyhow — nor yet by shooting all your officers, poor devils. It's to be hoped some of these neutrals will pluck up heart and tell the Stalin lot to go to blazes. I only wish I was twenty years young and free to go and join in the scrap. But creaking old dug-outs like me can only sit tight and applaud, and hope that somebody will come along to push the supplies through.

Wish I had half the energy of old Admiral Barnacle. Somebody brought him in here yesterday, and he pooped off a broadside of I-told-you-so's that carried away all our defences and even put Wetheridge's guns out of action. (Wetheridge is getting very cranky — temper worse and worse — sits growling in the corner with a neutral zone all round him, and nobody but the new members ever ventures within range. Worst of it is, he completely monopolises one fireplace and I'm afraid he'll end by driving all the members out of the Club.) The Admiral had always said the next war would be fought at sea (and by gad! Sir, wasn't he right?) and the only way to keep the pace in Europe was to have the British Navy so big that nobody would dare challenge it, and so keep the whole adjectival lot quiet. He got so excited that Culyer and a couple of other fellows had to sacrifice themselves, and give him a game of bridge, and we heard him roaring away in the little card-room, and holding a court-martial — court-naval, rather — on every hand, till his friends convoyed him away to bed. Time too; he must be well over eighty.

But I'm beginning to think seriously, Peter, that there's something in what he says. So far, all the advantage in this war has been with the defence, and I think we might argue that if every country would provide itself with a Maginot Line so strong that an attack isn't worth the candle, we might reduce land warfare to a sort of perpetual check and fight everything out by air and sea. That would mean much less expenditure in lives, because there's a limit to the number of mean you can put in a ship or an aeroplane. Of course, it would mean a really efficient scheme of air-defence for every town, but that's not impossible either. They say the Helsinki shelters were solidly out in hand twelve years ago, and that's why the Russian raids haven't produced anything like the casualties you might expect. You may think this is a queer line for an old army man to take, but, speaking as a professional soldier, I don't like this business of whole nations in arms, and the wiping out of millions of decent youngsters. I say, strengthen your defences and don't waste men, and for us that does mean a strong Navy and Air arm, and personally I'm all for it. I never want to see anything like the 1914–1918 casualty lists again, and if you ask me the people who keep bawling to the Army to get a move on are a bunch of bloody-minded murderers. Of course, if the Boche gets to work on Holland, or Belgium, or Luxemburg, we may look for trouble.