‘Well, she’s wrong. It’s not fair to blame Germany for everything. And the Versailles Treaty was unfair, ceding parts of Germany to other countries and making them pay reparations. They can’t afford them and that’s why their economy’s in such a mess. Daddy was in the war, a lot of his friends were killed, and it was all for nothing in the end. We have to stop it happening again.’
‘But don’t we have to have an army to defend ourselves, in case someone attacks us?’
‘Nobody’ll be able to defend themselves if there’s another war. All countries will get bombed, the planes will drop gas. Don’t cry, Sarah, it won’t happen, good people like Daddy will stop it.’
As Sarah grew older she became as passionate a peace campaigner as her father and sister. In her teens she signed the Peace Pledge and joined the meetings that often took place round the table in their home, though if she were honest she found many of the Peace Pledge folk argumentative and boring. Sarah’s mother always played the part of the busy hostess, boiling kettles and bringing plates of cakes and sandwiches. Her father didn’t speak much during their meetings, but sat smoking his pipe, his ravaged face sombre.
There was one evening, though, when he did speak and Sarah never forgot it; if ever she doubted the pacifist cause it always came back to her mind. It was just before her eighteenth birthday, a sticky summer evening in 1936. There was a campaign on to get more signatures for the Peace Pledge, and people sat round the table busily putting leaflets into envelopes. Sarah was tired and irritable, wondering what teacher-training college would be like – she had just left school – and was feeling flustered over a boy who wanted to take her out but whom she didn’t really like.
The Spanish Civil War had just broken out, and people who had opposed war for years were finding it hard not to take sides. A young man, a Labour Party member, said, ‘How can we blame the Spanish people for fighting back against these militarists who are trying to overthrow an elected government?’
Irene spoke up hotly. ‘Well, the Spanish army say they’re trying to stop chaos and bring order. Anyway, we can’t support violence on either side. We have to hold to our principles.’
‘I know,’ the young man said. ‘But – it’s hard, seeing these Fascists trampling down ordinary people.’
‘So what do you want us to do, build up armaments against Hitler, like that beastly warmonger Churchill does?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It’s so hard, but – it’s terrible, these Fascist and nationalist parties taking power all over Europe. 1914 was an orgy of nationalism and flag-waving and you’d think people would have learned from that, what it led to. But now . . .’ His voice trailed away, full of sorrow.
Jim spoke then: ‘In the trenches, at night, sometimes it could get really quiet. People don’t realize that. Then the big guns would start up over on the German side, somewhere down the line. And I used to sit there, wondering if the sound would get closer, if the shells would maybe land on us. I used to think, there’s some young fellow just like me over there, sweating to load one big shell after another. Just a young chap like me. It was nights like that which made me understand war is totally wrong. Not in the heat of battle, but during the quiet moments when you had a chance to think.’
There was silence in the room. The young man looked away.
Things were never the same for the peace movement, though, after the Spanish war began. Sarah, like most pacifists, had always thought of herself as progressive, but now some people were accusing pacifists of being blind fools, reactionaries, even. War was coming, fascism was on the march and you had to choose sides. She and Irene went to see H.G. Wells’ film Things to Come and the images of rows of bombers filling the sky, the clouds of gas, the ragged groups of people living afterwards in an endless bombed-out wasteland, haunted her. She remembered, when Germany annexed Austria, trying to explain Mr Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement to a class of thirteen-year-olds at the girls’ school where she worked, now a student teacher. ‘I’m not saying Herr Hitler is a good man, but Germany has some right to feel aggrieved. Why shouldn’t she join with Austria if both countries want it? Appeasement means trying to settle grievances, calm things down, not stir them up. Isn’t that the sensible way?’ Yet looking at the newsreels of Austrian Jews being thrown out of their homes and made to scrub the streets while soldiers kicked them, she felt, not doubt yet, but anguish.
It was easier for Irene; she had always been one to go wholeheartedly one way or the other and now she had joined the League for Anglo-German Understanding. She had met Steve there and become, like him, a Hitler enthusiast. Sarah asked how anyone who believed in peace could possibly see anything good in fascism. Irene answered, ‘Hitler’s a man of peace and vision, darling, you mustn’t believe the propaganda. All he wants is justice for Germany and friendship with Britain.’
Sarah turned to her father for advice. ‘You’re right, darling,’ he said. ‘Hitler’s an evil militarist. But if we go to war with him we’re just using the same methods as his. Mr Chamberlain is right.’ He spoke quietly, sadly. There were fewer meetings now and often Jim would sit in the lounge staring into space, his misery palpable.
Then came autumn 1938 and the Munich crisis. Men were digging up parks and lawns, making trenches where people could hide when the bombs fell, crosses of tape were stuck on the school windows so that splinters of glass would not slice into the children. Sarah thought, this time the civilians are in the trenches too. The school took a delivery of gas masks, horrible things of rubber and glass, large ones for the adults and small ones with Mickey Mouse faces for the children. When she went into school and saw the table piled with those blank, staring goggles, Sarah had to grip a chair to keep from fainting. The other teachers were staring at the masks in horror. The headmistress said they would have to show the children how to fit them. One teacher asked, tears streaming down her face, ‘How do we tell those little tots what those things are for, that people in aeroplanes will drop gas bombs on them? How do we do it?’
‘Because we bloody must!’ the headmistress shouted back, her voice breaking for a second. ‘Because if we don’t they’ll be dead. You think these are bad, you should see the maternity ward where my sister works! They’ve got bloody gas suits for babies there!’
But it didn’t happen. There was a miracle, Chamberlain came back with the Munich agreement giving Germany part of Czechoslovakia. ‘Only where Germans live, not Czechs,’ Irene said triumphantly. Steve said that if a war had come it would have ruined the country financially; all the businessmen and bankers had been terrified by the prospect. ‘One in the eye for that warmonger Churchill!’ When she heard the news Sarah felt relief course through her body like a drug. But then, a year later, in August 1939 it all happened again over Poland, trenches and gas masks and evacuation plans, and this time war was declared, Chamberlain’s heartbroken voice announcing it on the radio. The horrible wail of the air-raid siren sounded for the first time, only in practice but the next time it might be real. All over London you saw people, grim or tearful, taking their dogs and cats to be put to sleep because they would be defenceless against the bombs. In the first week of September Sarah led a sad crocodile of children, carrying gas masks and little suitcases and accompanied by mothers with haunted faces, down to Victoria Station for evacuation.
The switchback of hope and horror took another turn. For months after the evacuation nothing happened, no air raids, no fighting after Poland fell to Germany. Parents began bringing their children home. The phoney war, people began calling it. Some asked what point there was in continuing the war; it had been fought to help Poland but Poland was defeated, gone, divided between Germany and Russia. During the cold winter of 1939–40, watching the children throwing snowballs in the playground, Sarah began to hope again. But in April Germany suddenly invaded Denmark and Norway and British forces were thrown effortlessly back.