If Hitler Comes by Christopher Serpell Read Free Book Online

early ‘thirties, there had been legislation against political uniforms, and the “shirt” of various hues had been banned. But the philanthropic War Office, ably seconded by a North Country manufacturerof shoddy, issued each man on demobilization with a complete suit of “mufti”, including a grey flannel shirt. When Patrick Rosse began his series of meetings up and down the country it was men in grey shirts who flocked to hear him, and when the League of Britons was formed by the same Patrick Rosse its members wore grey shirts. Who was to forbid them? Who was to deprive the ex-Service man of the gift which his own country had made him?
    It is not easy to present a convincing portrait of their leader now. There are so many damning facts, so many equally damning suspicions attached to his history, that it is almost impossible for those who never came into contact with him to imagine the personality of a man who, in spite of his Irish origin and doubtful antecedents, could induce many thousands of Englishmen to follow him over the precipice of their own ruin. There is no doubt that he had been a member of the I.R.A.; his enemies said that he had been one of its leading organizers, but, if that was so, he had abstained from taking any active part in its campaign for some months before the war began. By hook or by crook he then entered the ranks of the British army—according to his enemies as a paid agitator. This at least is doubtful; it may well have been the Irish instinct to join in the biggest fight going. There is no record of his having indulged in any treasonable activity in France; on the contrary he was decorated for gallantry and his promotion was obstructed only by minor incidents of indiscipline which were natural in so obstreperous and reckless a character.
    His motives in founding and organizing the League of Britons are equally obscure. Those who regarded Rosse as endowed with a Satanic hatred of England and an equally Satanic ingenuity in accomplishing her ruin believe that the League of Britons was founded with the deliberate intention of building a bridge to the German domination of England, and that it was an I.R.A. conception no less murderous and devastating than a bomb. The complexities of the Celtic mind have always been beyond me, and it is, I suppose, not impossible that a man might give himself up heart and soul to the ruination of a foreign country, if he thought that he could thus free his own. But I find it difficult to believe that anyone with so Machiavellian a turn of mind could inspire his public utterances with the atmosphere of passionate and abandoned sincerity that surrounded the speeches of Patrick Rosse. There is unfortunately no doubt that the League received subsidies from Germany, under the transparent cloak of “gifts from German ex-Service men”, and that Rosse wasfully aware of this. But I personally do not believe that Rosse fully realized the purpose behind the “gifts”. I think he was a man naturally “agin the Government” who became intoxicated with his own popularity and success, and who in his fervour and fury would seize any weapon to attack his adversary.
    That is my personal opinion. But I met Rosse and I heard him speak, and I am prepared to admit that anyone who ever fell under the spell of that flaming personality is not a reliable witness. He was the most potent orator I ever heard. It was only a few weeks after the Treaty of St. James’s that I went north to attend a big Yorkshire rally of the League of Britons, held in Leeds Town Hall. Unemployment had of course hit the industrial areas hardest, and it was here that the League found its staunchest and most stubborn adherents. Delegations from all over Yorkshire and Lancashire marched into the great hall, each headed with a home-made banner bearing the name of the local branch, and took their places in the rows of red-plush seats under the huge and intolerably bright