February. Disgraceful Russians. World food shortage. Flu epidemic. Fats ration cut. Fed up with ration books. Coal crisis. How the shipping war was won in 1941.
Saturday, Feb 2nd
Bevin made a forthright speech in the Security Council and asked them to give a verdict on the Russian charge one way or another. "Have we been contributing to, or endangering, the peace of the world?” The incessant Moscow propaganda setting us one against the other, that was the danger to the peace of the world. The Russians do not want open discussion of the great powers’ policies and when Persia was raised they put forward Greece as a gesture in support of this. It was obviously disingenuous and has been followed up by a wireless and press campaign, which is peculiar between countries which have a treaty of friendship and are allies.
Saturday, Feb 9th
The more one thinks of this Russian business the more disgraceful it seems. Our troops have been in Greece for 12 months. Mr Vyshinsky arrives (late) for the U.N. conference and says nothing about it, waits until Persia without any encouragement from us brings up the question of Russian troops in Northern Persia, and then for the sake of scoring a tactical point he tries to make out that Persia and Greece are the same. He secures no support from the Council as everyone knows the British troops in Greece are not a threat to the peace. He refused to agree to a formal resolution of the Council clearing G.B. and threatened to use the Great Power veto if it was put forward. His attitude was cynical and irresponsible. He showed no desire to help forward U.N. as an agency for settling disputes but simply to use it for his own purposes to score off this country and make charges against her. U.N. depends on the loyalty and co-operation of the great powers. If this is the U.S.S.R.’s idea of co-operating in nursing an infant organization it won’t last long.
Nora went down with ‘flu on Tuesday night and got up today. The epidemic is widespread but it is not a very bad kind – Virus B according to the doctors. This year it is accompanied by bad pains in the back. Nora got it helping Eve Weiss, who got it badly at the same time as her three children.
Food is front page news again. Owing to the droughts there is a world shortage of grain, both maize and wheat as well as rice. Our bread is to contain more roughage, as in the war, and feeding stuffs for animals are to be cut. There is general impatience and dismay. Dried eggs were withdrawn first (when lend lease came to an end), then this week an ounce was taken off the fat ration. People did not realize what was happening; they are fed up with ration books, queues and shortages and are consequently in a thoroughly bad temper. They also suspect the Food Minister has not got a proper grip on the situation.
Sunday, Feb 10th
"Muddle” heading in Sunday paper. The coal crisis is on again, production has fallen again after a slight improvement before Christmas, factories have actually had to close for short periods because they had no fuel. If the men would put in four full days a week we should get the output, but apparently they don’t.
Then food. The Food Minister is not in the cabinet. Up till recently the cabinet did not seem to have realized the facts of what was happening. The question of the dollar exchange has got all mixed up with the world’s food shortage. We don’t know whether we are being asked to “sacrifice” because we can’t afford it anyway, or because we are giving it up to some one else. Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today. To cut feeding stuffs for stock again is very bad.
The job of the world food crisis must be tackled by international, not national, action, i.e., sacrifices of G.B., but what about U.S.A., Rumania, Denmark? We don’t want to send stuff to countries where it is wasted by thieving, incompetence and black markets, e.g., Italy.
Anyway what with coal, food cuts, influenza and the U.N.O. we are as depressed as we were during the war. For it is clear that we are going to get no real international government. We are simply going to have a conference of the great powers.
However, there are bright spots. It is clear that the position in Germany is not nearly as bad as we were led to believe it would be last summer. The winter has been exceptionally mild, and there have been no major epidemics. In the country districts people returning say the Germans are better fed than we are, but conditions in the towns very poor.
Monday, Feb 11th
Still we have come through worse than this! Another of Churchill’s secret speeches to the H. of C. released today. This one in June 1941 after a year of setbacks and the loss of 4½ m tons of shipping in the Atlantic. “In a few months we may be exposed to the most frightful invasion the world has ever seen.” He spoke of “the iron, unyielding, un-wearying tenacity of the British character by which we live, by which we alone can be saved, by which shall certainly be saved – and save the world….. All the great struggles of history have been won by superior will power wresting victory in the teeth of odds or upon the narrowest of margins.” So Churchill proclaimed in March “the battle of the Atlantic” and issued a secret order stating that all methods of attack were to be concentrated on the enemy’s U-boats and aeroplanes. The loss of 86,000 tons in February dwindled to 18,000 in June The deadly U-boat and air attack on which Hitler’s hopes had been built was ruptured. He was using the power which Parliament and the nation had given him to drive others irrespective of anyone’s feelings. If we win nobody will care. If we lose there won’t be anyone to care. The language the critics used had come nowhere near the language he had been accustomed to use, not only orally, but in a continued stream of written minutes. I bet it had.
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