Stalin Digital Archive

Back to Search

Stalin digital archive

Back to Search

Table of Contents

< Previous document Next document >

9 November

- Export Citation
- Export Annotation

View:

By Liakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)

The Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 1

Image view

Print
Save
Share
Cite

Translation Transcription

Translation

9 November

Once again I attended the traditional banquet of the lord mayor of the City of London. For the sixth time. It’s becoming boring, as the same ceremony is repeated every year. Just one episode is worthy of note. According to the ritual, every guest is to walk all the way along the famous Guildhall library to shake hands with the new and former lord mayors and their wives. Crowded on both sides of the strip, in their very finest attire, are the British notables of every hue – economic, political, military and cultural. They welcome every

Page 382

guest with applause. Its duration reflects the audience’s attitudes. This time they clapped me for a fair length of time, longer than last year. So I can assume that the barometer of Anglo-Soviet relations shows ‘fair’ for the time being. The new Japanese ambassador Shigemitsu elicited just a few sparse claps. Grandi and Dirksen went before me and I have no idea how they were greeted. Chamberlain received a lengthy ovation, but it seemed to me that much of it was quite deliberately artificial. Simon was not given a big hand.

At the table I was seated between the Hoares, husband and wife, and I had a very interesting conversation with Sir Samuel. At first, I avoided politics on purpose and spoke mainly about literature. Hoare said he reads a lot, in Russian, too. He enjoys Stendhal and Mérimée. He lavished praise on Alexei Tolstoy’s Peter the First, which he read in translation. Hoare is also a passionate admirer of Pushkin – he has read all his works in the original. He bought an old edition of the great Russian poet’s works in Moscow many years ago. Hoare spoke exceptionally highly of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. ‘It is not an ordinary novel,’ he remarked, ‘It is an epic.’ I suggested that War and Peace was the greatest novel in world literature and Leo Tolstoy the greatest novelist of all times and peoples. Hoare very nearly agreed, but with the reservation that Walter Scott’s novel Waverley should be bracketed with War and Peace.

Little by little, however, our conversation shifted to political themes, and what I heard from Hoare was highly characteristic and instructive.

According to Hoare, home secretary and member of Chamberlain’s ‘inner Cabinet’, it transpires that the prospects for peace in Europe are better today than they were six or twelve months ago. Why? Simply because the Czechoslovak question, the only one that could have been the cause of a European disaster, has been settled. The German expansion to the south-east is a ‘natural process’ and cannot lead to a European war. Spain is no longer a threat to peace in Europe. So there are no more political entanglements which might erupt in a European war.

‘And the colonies?’ I inquired.

‘Ah, the colonies,’ Hoare echoed. ‘That problem will be resolved sooner or later. But I don’t think that Hitler will raise the colonial issue very soon. Even if he does, it won’t be in a brutal form, but in the form of negotiations, and we’ll be able to find a compromise that will suit both parties. In short, I believe that we can confidently rely on at least two years of peace.’

With that, Hoare pounced with relish on the piece of roast beef on his plate.

‘Why are you so sure that Hitler won’t raise the colonial question in a brutal form?’ I asked.

‘Why?’ Hoare answered with a note of superiority in his voice. ‘If only for the simple reason that, in contrast to Czechoslovakia, Hitler cannot flood the colonies with his troops.’

Page 383

I laughed: ‘He can’t flood the colonies with his troops? He doesn’t need to. There is a much simpler way: to intimidate the mother country!’

Hoare choked on a bit of roast beef and looked up at me in alarm: ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s very simple,’ I answered. ‘Is Hitler incapable of intimidating Belgium and making it cede the Congo?’

Hoare said nothing, but my words obviously spoilt his mood.

‘And another thing: can’t Hitler confront France with the alternative – the colonies or war?’

‘But that’s impossible!’ Hoare exclaimed. ‘We shall never agree to this!’

‘Fine,’ I summed up, ‘but then why are you so sure that the colonial issue cannot lead to a European war?’

Hoare’s mood deteriorated still further.

I then started questioning him about what the British government was thinking of doing to increase the country’s defence capacity, particularly in the air. Was it intending to set up a ministry of supply? Or to mobilize the defence industry?

Hoare reverted to his ‘optimistic philosophy’. He argued that since the British government had at least two years at its disposal, there was no need for extraordinary measures and that everything required for rearmament could be done in the normal manner without upsetting the ordinary course of economic life.

I voiced my doubts about this and asked him what goals the British government was setting itself in the sphere of air force rearmament. Parity with Germany?

Hoare affirmed that the British government was for parity and that it would never sign a pact perpetuating German air supremacy. But then he set about arguing, at suspicious length, that parity as such is an abstract notion, for it depends not only on mathematical equality in the number of aircraft, but also on many other factors, including the strategic needs of the country. Passing on to figures, Hoare said that Germany had approximately 10,000 aircraft, including as many as 3,000 up-to-date first-line planes, while its monthly output amounted to 800. He would not give any exact figures for Britain, but admitted that the British air force was between two and three times weaker. Referring to those very figures, I repeatedly asked Hoare how in that case the British government was expecting to achieve parity with Germany in two years, all the more so as Germany could increase – and undoubtedly was increasing – its present level of aircraft production. Hoare was unable to give me an articulate reply.

Page 384

I concluded from my talk with Hoare that the British government is not planning to arm in earnest and has evidently reconciled itself to the prospect of German air supremacy. What lies behind this?

The main reason, it seems to me, is that Chamberlain has not yet lost hope of ‘coming to terms’ with the aggressors at the expense of third countries and of setting them, especially Germany and Japan, against the USSR.

Transcription

Document Details

Document Title9 November

AuthorLiakhovetsky, Ivan Mikhailovich (Maisky)

RecipientN/A

RepositoryN/A

ID #N/A

DescriptionN/A

Date1938 Nov 9

AOC VolumeThe Complete Maisky Diaries: Volume 1

Login Required

Your subscription has expired.