July-August. Bread rationing. Mankind may be obsolete. Goslings 1gn each. Bread for housewives. French visitor. Summer school on India. Cuckmere Haven. Squatters.
Wednesday, July 3rd
Sat up on Sunday night to listen to the atomic bomb, which was broadcast from Pacific over U.S. radio but heard nothing except atomic policies. The tendency at first was to minimize the effect of the bomb but it is clear that the was devastating on signal equipment and that fleet would have been rendered deaf, dumb and blind by the explosion.
Petrol coupons found in attaché case!
Friday, July 5th
Fierce and noisy debate on bread rationing. Main argument of Food Minister was risk of delay in replacing supplies owing to American labour conditions, etc, during August and September now all our reserves have been diverted to famine relief in Germany, Europe, India. Cannot take risk on small margin.…. 70lb sack of oatmeal just arrived for chickens so hope shall be able to keep some pullets at any rate through winter, now meal ration reduced from 5 to 2lb a month. Am hoping to dry grass and acorns and collect beech mast as well.
Been reading Lewis Munford’s Condition of Man and Admiral Jones’ letters from Portsmouth during war years, former learned and profound, latter very racy and crisp. Churchill being offered tea by his wife replied "My doctors will not allow me anything non-alcoholic between breakfast and dinner”.
Saturday, July 6th
Atomic bomb killed 80,000 people at Hiroshima, nearly three times as many as killed in all air raids on London – “indiscriminate bombing”! It is estimated that the bombs over London would kill 50,000 and destroy 3 sq miles of buildings. It was not a question of whether the battleships at Bikini were obsolete, but whether mankind will become obsolete.
Tuesday, July 9th
Went on river at Wargrave and through Shiplake lock. Thought this better than going on river at Henley as still convalescent and don’t intend to go back until next week anyway. Why have appendicitis is you can’t have a month’s holiday on the strength of it?
After a great effort the invitations to the Peace Conference have at last been sent out. Molotov stone walling to the bitter end…. object to prevent by rules of procedure any amendments by the small powers of big power decisions - in so far as they have reached any.
Wednesday, July 10th
Went today by car to see goslings. Anyway to have six at 1 guinea each. Had lunch and tea in beech woods near Fawley. Lovely summer day.
Been reading Enemy Coast Guard Ahead by Gibson, the man who breached the Ruhr dams. An excellent account of the planning and execution of this and the great raids on Berlin 1943 and 1944. Unfortunately he would go back to bombers after the dams and lost his life when conducting a raid as Master Bomber.
The problem of Germany has not been dealt with yet….. The Russians will not and have made no attempt to implement the Potsdam Agreement by which Germany to be treated as one economic unit. So in order to keep Germany in the west alive at all (and only just) we have had to pay out 50 million pounds and the Americans 150 mill. dollars. We have to ration bread to feed the western Germans while from the food producing part of Germany in the east nothing is transferred. It looks as though the Russians intend to use this as squeeze and blackmail – the threat of complete breakdown and disorder which may give them the chance to organize a communist Germany….. He who sups with the devil needs a long spoon. We seem to have got ourselves into a proper jam.
Move to get housewives classified with manual workers on bread rationing scheme, and so they jolly well ought to be.
Tuesday, July 16th
The American loan has gone through (the House of Representatives). Most people are glad because it means the possibility of an expansion of our purchases, but much gnashing of teeth by the imperial preference Tories, “selling out the Empire” and so on. One of the first results of the loan is an increase in the petrol ration, at present six gallons, by 50%. However as my last outer cover split on Thursday I am running without a spare wheel and not much chance of getting a second hand cover. Petrol will not in the end be much use without tyres. All tyres are supposed to be going on our export cars.
Churchill has visited Metz to meet General Giraud. He remarked when he landed at the airfield: “We have kept the rendezvous” – made in N. Africa in 1943. The great man drove through the city and addressed the guests at a banquet in the Town Hall. This he insisted on doing in his peculiar brand of French. However, it was a great success as it introduced a conversational or choric element to the speech, as when the speaker was at a loss for a word the audience supplied it.
Thursday, July 18th
Bakers said yesterday they couldn’t work the scheme for bread rationing, but today they seem to have come round. Debate on order imposing rationing in Commons tonight. Churchill said unnecessary, using sledge hammer to crack an empty nut. By September crisis would be over anyway. Very difficult to make out the whole thing. Read an article that German farmers still holding back wheat and grain from cities for animal feed, so we are, according to this argument, feeding the German cities by cutting our livestock in order that German farmers can keep theirs.
Ten years ago the Spanish civil war started. Really in fact the beginning of the war which was started in 1939, and Franco still in power.
Friday, July 19th
Had a visiting French student for an exchange to lunch – a nice boy from the Massif Central, fairish and grey-eyed. Reading English at university (Clermont Ferrand) and hopes to teach it. Gave him two copies of the King’s letter to children on Victory Day, at which very pleased.
Saturday, July 20th
Took chair at W.E.A. summer school on India. About 30 present. Last time June 29th, 1940. Before tea W.E.A. tutor on mistake we made in allowing communal voting in India, for it led straight to the development of the Moslem League and the present impasse. We should, he thought, have encouraged the National Congress as a democratic body embracing all religions and communities. Hoped we would not repeat the same mistake in Malaya, Ceylon, E. Africa. Generally rather pessimistic. After tea, Pulinwood, B.A. Bombay, very charming and sympathetic speech, full of hope for future of India. An Indian Christian from Travancore.
Sunday, July 21st
Timothy Auty down for weekend, bought me a sponge from Rome, but dark in colour. Back from tour in Jeep (45 m.p.h., six gears) from Belgrade, Sarejevo, Dalmatian coast and back to Belgrade. Nearly all villages burnt out because houses of wood, great hunger, but people working like beavers, on land, on roads, on houses. U.N.R.A. supplying flour, grain, seeds, also some steamrollers for roads. Italy one of the better countries for food now, Yugoslavia bad, distressing accounts of rickety children she saw in Sarajevo clinic; but Austria worst of all.
Bank Holiday Monday, Aug 5th
Term ended on Thursday and I went over to help Mary clean walls of her flat on Friday. Bought an anti-gas oilskin for 6s 9d – no coupons – enormous trousers and short coat; hope it will do to keep warm out camping and on Dartmoor..... Hilary very excited by prospect of going camping on Wednesday, but have had great trouble getting a tyre for the spare wheel. In the end found one at Maidenhead but had to pay £3-5-0 for it second hand, so that by the time have bought tyres, sleeping bags and ground sheets, would have paid one to stay at a good hotel!
Thursday, Aug 22nd
Returned with Hilary yesterday after a fortnight’s camping at Cuckmere Haven. A lovely site within 100 yards of the sea, but 1½ miles from milk and bread and ¼ mile from water. The weather was bad, two gales when one hardly slept at all, and so hours of continuous rain. Out of 14 days 4 days sunshine. However, with exception of broken guy rope on the stores tent they stood up to everything well.
John Guinness and family came down three times from Wilmington and Hilary enjoyed bathing with John’s daughter Lindis and Anna Brock. He stood up to all the trials and difficulties with weather manfully and thoroughly enjoyed the holiday. Had a great satisfaction in contending successfully with the elements and cooking and preparing meals. For doing the former I developed a low neolithic cunning, sleeping with the matches next to my skin to keep them dry and so on. Hilary kept shrimps and crabs in a bottle under his bed at night “in case they got wet”. He remarked of the grasshoppers which started at night time, “they are tuning their violins”. It was a fire-builders paradise because of the enormous quantities of driftwood after the storms. We used to go on what I called a flotsam and jetsam walk to see what we could find
During this time we heard no news, listened to no wireless, read no newspapers, went to bed when it got dark, got up when it got light – the delights of the primitive life. Only heard when we returned of H. G. Wells death.
[Ed. We were almost the only campers on this enormous site – when I saw it again years later you could hardly see the grass for the caravans and villa tents - but while we camped on the flat there was a couple camped on the hill to the east of the estuary and according to family legend, they referred to the rain-sodden Diarist and son as “That poor man down on the marsh”. Among the flotsam and jetsam we found a meteorite about the size of a big fist under the cliff and a string of glass floats used by fishermen at that time to keep nets afloat. The family still has the floats; the meteorite has disappeared.]
Sunday, Aug 25th
International situation seems deteriorating. Timothy, down for weekend, says UNRA being wound up because Americans are not in mood for international co-operation on relief and prefer to deal with demands for help themselves on their merits. Seems likely they will take a tougher line. They are strengthening their fleet in the Med. And are for the first time a Mediterranean naval power. Where the Atlantic powers of the West meet the Russian land power of the East is the line of mountains bordering the Adriatic and there in the Straits lie the American cruisers. Some say we cannot go on long like this and there will be either a showdown or war.
It looks as if the Russians are going to occupy East Germany indefinitely, for they are taking over German plants and transferring the workers to Soviet employment. American feeling has been much inflamed by the shooting down of American planes by the Yugoslavs and there are angry press comments.
The Paris conference drags on but has made little progress…. Tragic that when we need a settlement so badly the Paris meeting has been used simply to make propaganda and speeches. The Big Three have never met informally. The latest effort by the Russians has been to put up the Ukraine to renew the attack on Greece. In fact some one said the Russians use the U.N.O. as a punch bag; bring up some problem and you get a sharp comeback in the form of a propaganda attack somewhere else.
Hardly any honey but what there was I began to take off. A rotten year in the garden – and the geese ate the young purple sprouting plants; put in some more but very late.
Monday, Aug 26th
India now has its own government but Moslem League refuses to co-operate. Terrific riots, looting, killing and arson have broken out in Calcutta, and thus there is a possibility that northern India, where there are Moslems in large numbers, is on the verge of civil war….
Wednesday, Aug 28th
Squatters have now occupied empty camps. It has taken them a long time to do so. They are not to be evicted where there is adequate water and sanitary accommodation but some will be charged rent and the local authority made responsible
An excellent talk by Harold Nicolson on Russia and the Russians. The Russians suspicious of us and hostile because 1) their Marxist doctrine tells them there must be a war between capitalism (U.S.A) and communism and 2) in that war we shall side with the U.S.A. and be used as an advanced base for an attack on Russia. 3) Many know little about our war effort and what they do know does not outweigh the policy we followed from 1919 to Munich. They feel desperately not only the physical destruction but also the destruction of their life’s work by which they succeeded in raising living standards and are now thrown back again to begin once more. Hence their determination to protect themselves by a wide and deep fence from the West. Their feeling that we are going back on what we promised at Yalta, Teheran, Potsdam.
Saturday, Aug 31st
Off to explore Youth Hostels (with M). Lunch at Exeter then off by one of the most crowded trains I have ever been in to Brent. There we set off for Brentmoor House up a lovely moorland valley. The house was on the moor by a torrent in the narrow valley and the sides were thick with rhododendron and pine. The food was terrific, masses of bangers and sausage meat rissoles and potatoes and dried peas. As we got near the hostel it started to rain.
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