Kingsley Amis - Dear Illusion - Selected Stories

His voice sounding hollow in the barely furnished room, Doll said: ‘But before that we must immediately negotiate a peace with Japan, while she still has some sort of military machine left. We’re going to need every ship and plane and man they have. A settlement wouldn’t be difficult. They’re talking about peace already. Nobody really cares who owns those islands — it’s the bases that count. And with a common enemy that’d soon sort itself out.’

‘What about the Chinese?’ the Postmaster-General asked. He was a corporal of dispatch-riders from the parachute formation, one of the few recent arrivals who had taken part in the parliament.

Doll never smiled, but cordiality enhanced his tones when he answered: ‘An excellent question. I think the Japs with their reduced bargaining-power could probably be bullied into making enough concessions to the Chinks to keep them quiet. Certainly the Yanks have got quite enough cash to bribe the Nationalist Chinks — Chiang’s lot — into selling their little yellow souls. The Red Chinks are more of a problem, though they won’t amount to much for a good while yet. I think there’s a fair chance they could be bought off too, into some sort of tacit neutrality anyway.

‘But the real problem is Europe. The thing there is to advance until we’re stopped. We stop wherever they start shooting. And they won’t do that for a bit. We push into Czechoslovakia and Hungary and the Balkans and southern Poland if we can get there, until we’re stopped. Then we dig in. They can’t have troops everywhere. Later on we straighten the line by agreement with the Reds. It’s our only chance of saving any of these people — to fight on our side later, if necessary.

‘We’ll need troops for that, of course. To dig in and stay there. Demobilization must be halted at once. Twenty-eight days’ leave in the UK for everybody we can spare, then back on the job. No Yanks are going home if I have anything to do with it; they’re all needed here. Re-form the French, Dutch, Belgian and Italian armies. And the Germans, as many of those boys as we can get. It does seem a pity we spent so much energy killing so many of them, doesn’t it? When if we’d gone in with them when they asked us in 1941 we’d have smashed the Reds between us by now? But we’ll leave that for the time being. We’ll have to put the Nazi Party back on its feet, by the way. They understand these things. Perhaps old Adolf will turn up from wherever he is and give us a hand. We could use him.

‘Well, that’s about it. Keep them nattering away in Potsdam as long as possible and move like hell meanwhile. I think it would probably work. Everybody’s exhausted, but our manpower and resources are superior. What we almost certainly haven’t got is the will. That’s their strong suit. In conclusion, let me just say formally that in foreign affairs the first policy of my party is resistance to Communism.’

Doll sat down, having finished his speech, a rare achievement in this chamber. There was a lot of applause, most of it based on close attention to what had been said. Nodding his head to the pair of gloomy subalterns who sat beside him, the major joined judicially in. He knew he was supposed to be impartial, but really there could be no question but that the whole thing was on the right lines, except perhaps for the bit about the Nazi Party, which was premature to say the least. His speculations why Doll had never put in for a commission were interrupted by the Foreign Secretary, who clattered to his feet and cleared his throat in a long bellow. Hargreaves’s normally mottled face was flushed; parts of his scrubby hair stuck out horizontally; his chest rose and fell.

‘Could I ask first of all,’ he said in a trembling voice, ‘if the Honourable Member imagines that any British Government would put the policy he outlines, put into effect the policy he outlines?’

Doll’s stare was not unfriendly. ‘Oh no. That’s to say almost certainly not. They’d be turned out as soon as the electorate realized what they’d let themselves in for. You’d be asking people to admit in effect that they’d been fighting on the wrong side, you see, and having their relatives killed doing it. And they’re tired too. No, I’d say the chances—’

‘Then what… what the hell…? I mean what’s the point of—?’

‘The point? The point of what we’re doing as I see it is to work out what we think we should do, not what the Government we elect probably will do. If we’re all just playing a guessing game, then I think I’m with you. You’ll very likely get what you want, especially if the country’s fool enough to elect those Socialist prigs. I only hope you enjoy it when you find out what it’s really like.’

‘Mr Speaker, sir,’ Hargreaves cried, and he was looking directly at Archer, ‘I never thought to sit in this House, which is a, which exists only with the traditions of that other House across the sea, sir, and hear an Honourable Member admit to an admiration for the Nazi Party, which has been responsible for so many dreadful crimes, and which, the German Army I mean, we’ve been fighting it all these years and now I hear this said, or perhaps he now wishes to—’

‘I didn’t admit to an admiration for the Nazi Party, and I would never do so. Their racial policy was against reason and their appeal was based on mass hysteria. No, I was only arguing that in a desperate situation like ours you need all the allies you can get, especially if they can organize and fight. That we all know the Nazis can do.’

‘No wonder you want the Nazis. You’re an aggressor, you want to aggress — you want to attack the Russians. The people who’ve died in their millions to stop the Nazis from conquering the world — honestly, how insane can you—’

The Foreign Secretary’s voice tailed off. The House was perfectly silent, crossing its fingers with the wish that no pernickety sod was going to invoke order. Doll said efficiently: ‘The Nazis could never have conquered the world. There were too few of them and they were confined to one country. The Reds are an international conspiracy. And my proposals were entirely defensive. What interests me is resistance to Communism, as I said, not an assault on it. It’s too early for that, or too late. There’s only been one assault on it in our lifetime, and it failed because we were too stupid to join in. And now perhaps somebody else might care to—’

‘Fascist!’ Hargreaves screamed. ‘The strong arm, that’s the thing for you, isn’t it? The jackboot. The good old truncheon. I know your sort, Doll. There are people like you in England, all over, in the bloody Empire, Africa and India, smooth as buggery in the club with the old brandy and soda and then off to break a strike or flog a wog or… You’re all the same. And everybody who clapped you…’ His unblinking glance swept the chamber, meeting the major’s eyes for a moment. ‘Ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Black-and-Tan material. You’re going to lose. You’re on the side of death. History’ll get you. Auden warned you but you never listened. I won’t even sit in the same room with you.’

Sincere emotion enforces a hearing. Hargreaves had almost reached the impressive exit doorway — no more than twenty years old but, to an English eye, redolent of weighty Teutonic medievalism — before comment and protest got properly going. Doll smoothed his abundant straight dark hair. Archer and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Home Office gazed with similar expressions after the retreating Hargreaves. The major blew his nose and tucked the pale tan silk handkerchief into the sleeve of his battledress blouse. His soft face concealed emotion at the hardly won memory (he did not care to blur with too much detail his faculty for making quick decisions) that Archer was Hargreaves’s section officer and, as such, responsible for everything he did.