A Chill in the Air Read online

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  The diary is a curious mixture of news – both fake and genuine – rumour, comment and observation. Origo was to write later that she had joined “the wide captive audience, all the world over, listening to confused, discordant voices coming out of a little box”. The radio is at the centre of this diary. Iris and Antonio Origo and their friends gather round it, fiddle with the controls in an attempt to get the foreign stations, and anxiously discuss afterwards what they have heard. Mussolini knows how to exploit the medium. Propaganda pours over the airwaves. Discerning listeners like Iris sift the bombastic output for truth. “Far more than the whistle and crash of falling shells later on, or the dull roar of bomber formations over head,” she wrote afterwards, “this cacophony represents my personal nightmare of the years before and during the war.” Speeches from Hitler and Dolfuss, Eden and Chamberlain, the voices of schoolchildren or soldiers belting out Fascist anthems. “It is difficult to convey the cumulative impact of these voices, as we sat alone in the library of our isolated country house day after day, and the increasing sense they brought of inevitable, imminent catastrophe, of the Juggernaut approach of war.” Difficult it may be, but in this remarkable diary, she conveys it – all the anxiety and uncertainty, all the bafflement and frustration of a clever, well-informed person striving to make sense of a crazy situation.

  At La Foce the workers simply cannot believe war will come – even after it has actually been declared and their boys are being dragged off to fight. Iris almost shares their incredulity. How can Italy be sacrificing its young men on behalf of an ally who is so generally detested? (Italy fought against Austria and Germany in the First World War. The German-speaking peoples who had so long – as representatives of the Hapsburg Empire – dominated and oppressed Italians were described by d’Annunzio in the run-up to that first war as Italy’s ‘hereditary enemy’.) How can the supple shifts and rich ambiguities of intellectual discourse be replaced by crude propaganda? These questions are unanswerable. What Iris Origo captures here, poignantly and with great clarity, is the silence that falls when peace-time debate is replaced by the brute simplicity of armed combat.

  *

  One of this diary’s most memorable entries is that describing June 10, 1940. A message comes from the local fascio ordering that all the estate’s working men should gather to hear a broadcast at 5 p.m. The radio is carried out to the loggia and some hundred people are assembled. At five it is announced that the important speech is postponed for an hour. Bathos. The men sit on the ground, bring out bread and wine, play cards. “Antonio and the keepers discuss the young partridges and the twin calves born that morning: one of them will not live. I go indoors again; a great bowl of delphinium and lupins take me back for a moment to an English garden. A whiff of jasmine blows in at the window. It is all curiously unreal and also boring.” The broadcast resumes. Mussolini announces, with much bombast, that Italy is declaring war on France and Britain. Afterwards, “The men shuffle away in silence. We go back into the house and stand looking at each other. ‘Well, ci siamo!’* says Antonio. ‘I’m going out to look at the wheat.’ Flatly, gloomily, we go to fetch our hats and coats.”

  At that moment, conscious of what is to come and their disparate views on it, they have nothing to say to each other, but Iris Origo, of whom Frances Partridge once said that she was so perceptive that in conversation with her “you felt bored into”, could not be stunned into inarticulacy. In this unique and valuable diary, she conveys bewilderment and frustration, but she does so with such lucid intelligence and energy that volumes of historians’ generalisations drop away to be replaced by knife-sharp detail. The black-shirted squadristi, whose clothes strain over their pot-bellies, and who apologise politely when they tread on her toes in a crowded railway compartment. The air-raid shelter rigged up in the colonnades of the Doge’s Palace. The governess, an elderly lady from Alsace-Lorraine to whom Origo gives a lift, in floods of tears at finding herself, for the second time in her life, an enemy alien. The shaking of an old man’s hand as he takes Origo’s arm to tell her that if the four sons who work his farm are called up, he might as well drown himself in the ditch at once. The bad faith of a press which publishes articles about the deleterious effects of coffee just as coffee becomes unobtainable, and which greets meat-rationing with pieces extolling the benefits of vegetarianism. The young soldier, awkward in a stiff new uniform, crouching down to make a chain of dandelions for his tiny daughter. William Phillips, having lost his way, arriving late at a remote fishing lodge to be greeted by “a very small, shabby man in a brown overcoat who was standing waiting in the drizzle, quite alone” – the King of Italy. Vignettes like this stud the pages of this diary, filling it with vivid flashes of keenly observed life.

  Iris Origo was still the honest-eyed seer Virginia Woolf thought her. “She’s clean and picks her feet up”: Woolf ’s gnomic comment is given substance by this diary. Origo’s mind – clean of muzziness – bores into what she sees. Picking her feet up, refusing to be hobbled by prejudice or sentimentality, she gives a perceptive, poignant and often surprising account of a strange time.

  Lucy Hughes-Hallett

  * This is it!

  1939

  ROME, MARCH 27TH

  The train is packed; a thousand squadristi are on their way to Rome. The squadristi are the Fascists della prima ora, those who belonged to the first squads of 1919. They are going home to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the foundation of the Fasci and to hear the Duce’s speech tomorrow.

  The six in our carriage are all middle-aged men – stoutish, with their black shirts bulging at the waist; their boots, too, have an air of being too tight for them. From their conversation we realize that they are businessmen, and from the North: three Veneti, two Milanesi and a Romagnolo. One of them has a bicycle factory; one (the Romagnolo), is at the head of some cooperative stores. Now and again acquaintances in the corridor catch sight of them and come in to join them (apologizing politely for treading on my toes). The atmosphere is that of a college reunion – embraces, chaff, personal remarks; a hearty, a wholly masculine world. Is the heartiness a little forced? After a while there is silence; our companions take up their papers. The front page is wholly given up to themselves – “our glorious squadristi…”. They put the papers down again. One of them – an elderly, grey-haired Venetian – shrugs his shoulders. “Well, we’ll know something more tomorrow. I don’t care what anyone else says. Tomorrow we’ll know what He says – il Capo!” I look across at him – a quiet, sensible, placid family man; there is no mistaking the genuine fervour of his tone. Everyone in the carriage agrees: “It isn’t only what he says – it’s the whole construction behind it! In these twenty years – look where we’ve got to! I remember in 1919….” and the reminiscences begin again.

  MARCH 28TH

  Well, he has spoken. These same middle-aged padri di famiglia have shouted “No, no!” when asked whether they want “Honours? Rewards? Or an easier life?” They have accepted the axiom that “perpetual peace would be a catastrophe for human civilization” and the order to arm “at whatever cost, by whatever means, even if it should mean a tabula rasa of all that is meant by civilized life.”

  The applause, however, is definitely less intense than on previous occasions. It is a cold, wet day, and many of the squadristi have slept in tents at the Parioli; but there is also another chill in the air: the universal distaste for Germany as an ally. The part of the speech received with the least applause is that which reaffirms the solidity of the Axis, but afterwards the prevailing comment is: “What else could he say? It’s England and France who have forced us into this position.” There is considerable relief, however, at the loophole still left for negotiation with France.

  Later in the day we walk about town. Everywhere the pavements are crowded with squadristi; they are walking up and down the Corso in parties of four or five, arm in arm. They are sitting at the cafés, they are flinging halfpennies (to ensure their return) int
o the Fontana di Trevi. They look – except for their shirts – good-natured, friendly and peace-loving. About 80% of them belong unmistakably to the working-class; the others look like small tradesmen or employees. Impossible not to like them; impossible too not to feel that Fascism was, in its beginnings, a genuine revolutionary movement of the people. Easy to see how they have been worked up to hatred of the countries presented to them as “obese, capitalistic, decadent” – to identify Fascism with the good of the working-class. Terrible to think of them fighting in Spain against men so like themselves. Terrible to think of what may lie ahead.

  MARCH 30TH

  The streets of Florence are hung with flags, to celebrate the fall of Madrid.

  LA FOCE, MARCH 31ST

  This year’s new recruits have just been called up, those of 1912, and at every little station the platforms are crowded with groups of bewildered country boys with their bundles or little fibre suitcases – sitting on the edge of the platform, or standing about aimlessly, with the dazed, patient look of their own cattle.

  Here, too, some of our peasants have gone (about twenty-five so far). When we go round the farms their wives and mothers come hurrying out. “What do you say? There won’t really be trouble, will there? It isn’t really anything to do with us?” A few of the ones who went first have sent back postcards, saying that they are “on an island.” Another says, “I can see nothing but rocks and sea and sky.” (Pantelleria? Leros?)

  Meanwhile there is a lull in the press propaganda. Daladier’s speech – which might well have provoked a violent reaction (with its declaration: “Not an inch of our land, not a single one of our rights!”) has been commented on with moderation. In Calabria Mussolini has said “Italy can afford to wait.”

  There is an immediate, disproportionate reaction towards optimism – and an even greater frankness of speech against Germany.

  One young officer (recently back from Abyssinia) says that the army is intensely anti-German. The King anti-war. If there should be a division of opinion on the subject between the King and Mussolini, the army would follow the King.

  Another young officer tells me the following story. A few days ago a German plane crashed near Padua, killing five men. The Colonel of the local regiment, on hearing the news, shrugged and exclaimed (before all his officers!) “Cinque di meno!”1

  I listened to Mussolini’s Calabrian speech in the street, in Florence, where a loud-speaker was relaying it. Gradually a large crowd formed. I was struck by the guarded, colourless expression on most of the men’s faces – and the undisguised anxiety in the women’s. The prolonged applause caused a look of exasperation to cross most faces, as it prevented one from hearing the end of some of the sentences. When it became clear that nothing vital was to be said, everybody gave a sigh of relief and, without any comment, went about their business.

  APRIL 1ST

  Chamberlain’s pronouncement about Poland has been received with unexpected moderation in the press and with some enthusiasm privately – as being likely to put a brake on Hitler.

  A country neighbour (small farmer – a shrewd, sensible, elderly man) has just been to lunch, and has made no bones about expressing his disgust at recent events. He is particularly indignant at Mussolini’s phrase about peace being “a menace to civilization”. “What about Sweden and Norway?” he says. “Aren’t they more civilized than us? And happier? Are the working classes less well treated there?” (This is unexpected; he would not have said this five years ago.) He tells us that all his peasants, like ours, are terrified. One young woman, who is just expecting her first baby, prays daily that it will be a girl. “What’s the use of having boys if they’ll take them away from me and kill them?”

  APRIL 4TH

  Just back from Rome for the day. Full of rumours: Italy is about to invade Albania; England was going to occupy Corfu and only desisted on being told that it would mean certain war; Germany has got no less than thirty divisions in Libya. What does appear to be true is that some more Italian troops have gone to Spain and are encamped along the Pyrenees. Rhodes also is full of troops. Rumours flying about too as to the inadequacy of war material (both in quality and quantity) – and that Italy could not last a month, etc.

  Meanwhile the station is full of recruits waiting for trains to the South, and our train is packed with German tourists. Some University students (dressed in scarlet university hats, brilliant striped pyjama-jackets, and playing mouth-organs up and down the corridors) mock them mildly.

  APRIL 5TH

  The press is becoming more violent again. Yesterday’s papers attack Chamberlain’s “intervention policy to guarantee the privileges of the obese nations”. Long articles are written to prove that Poland, a Catholic country, will never subscribe to any alliance which will cause her to be dependent on the support of Russia. Gayda has written a virulent article today about the Franco-Italian agreement of 1935 as an impossible basis for negotiation. Manacorda ridicules “democratic senility” in France and England. And all papers agree in emphasizing Germany’s determination not to permit the “plan of encirclement” formed by the “Pharisaic policy of London”.

  Mussolini’s comment (to Béraud) on his own “extreme” propagandists: “Dans une maison bien réglée tout sert, même les ordures.”2

  APRIL 6TH

  Today much prominence is given in the papers to the meeting at Innsbruck of the Italian and German Chiefs of Staff. Comment on the British treaty with Poland is very acid.

  It is now clear what form propaganda, in case of war, will take. The whole problem will be presented as an economic one. The “democratic countries”, i.e., the “haves”, will be presented as permanently blocking the way of the “have-nots” to economic expansion. Germany and Italy must fight or submit to suffocation. This point of view is presented in The Times of April 4th as “the last ditch of the Axis argument”. Nevertheless, it is a view sincerely held by many educated Italians, who are profoundly convinced that nothing except violence will induce the democracies to concede a re-distribution of raw materials and of colonies. Fascists are thus enabled to see the impending war as a struggle between the poor man and the rich – a genuine revolutionary movement.

  APRIL 8TH

  And now Albania. The news, foreshadowed in the English and French papers and wireless, came here (to the general public) as a bombshell: announced on the radio (just before the three-hour Good Friday services) at 10 a.m. The bulletin took the now familiar form of stating that the invasion was a measure necessary to “safeguard the peace” of the country invaded and to quell the “armed bands” patrolling it; it was further stated that there was “no resistance worthy of mention” except an attempt at resistance by ‘bands’ at Durazzo, and that the population is “cordial”. The manifestos dropped by planes told the Albanians that “any resistance would be immediately suppressed”. “Do not listen to the members of your government who have impoverished you and now want to lead you to shed your blood in vain. The Italian troops have come to establish order, justice and peace”. Here a party of “orthodox” (Fascist) Italians merely laughed at the pretext of “quelling the brigands” – (“How much do you supposed they were paid?”) – but were equally sceptical about the subsequent accounts of the invasion from Paris and London, which told of violent resistance from the Albanians and of the bombardment of Durazzo. The ultimate result of unceasing propaganda has now been to cancel out the effect of all news alike. One man said to me, “The radio has made fools of us all”. Late last night a further Italian bulletin stated that the accounts given in anti-Fascist countries of the Albanian operations “are so fantastic that it is not worth while to deny them – as they follow the same methods adopted during the Ethiopian war. It is now known and proved that the Fascist régime uses one method only: always to tell the truth”.

  APRIL 11TH

  An uneasy Easter Saturday and Sunday, spent chiefly in trying to get foreign stations on the radio. Am particularly struck by two facts:

 
1) None of my friends (though devout Catholics) expresses any distaste at the choice of Good Friday for the invasion of Albania;

  2) No-one (though all in private life honest and honourable men) shows the slightest interest in the terms of either the Italo-Albanian Treaty of 1927, or of the Anglo-Italian Agreement of last November.

  On the other hand, their scepticism as to the facts supplied by their own papers or radio grows with every hour; and the disinclination for war. Also the certainty that war, if it does come, will be the end of Fascism.

  Yesterday I went to Assisi for the day. The discontent there very great. Fresh men being called up every day. The complaints are quite open; Mussolini and Hitler referred to as “quei due assassini”.3 One man, a blacksmith, says openly that if he is called up he will take the first opportunity to desert to the other side – and that all his friends feel the same. The Pretore – a noted anti-Fascist – belongs to the small number of people who will welcome a war, as bringing the certain downfall of Mussolini.