If Hitler Comes by Christopher Serpell Read Free Book Online Page A

electric chandeliers. There was nothing theatrical about the gathering—no brass bands and no music from the vast and ornate organ that rose behind the platform and had accompanied so many lusty performances of the Messiah . The hall was insufficiently warmed, and I shivered in the Press seats, which were caught by a draught from one of the side-doors. The men about me talked in low tones. There was no smoking: tobacco for this class had become a luxury that was enjoyed only in moments of leisure, and this was not one. Here and there in the crowded hall I could see a woman when I stood up, but it was primarily a male gathering—row on row of serious-faced men, with shabby jackets or overcoats over the inevitable grey shirt.
    Then the committee filed on to the platform, and there was a brief stir and a perfunctory clapping from the audience. Still there was nothing to recall earlier outbreaks of Fascism—no roll of drums, no floodlights, and no saluting. Patrick Rosse was easily distinguished from the small group on the platform by his bright red hair and tall stooping figure. He wore a dark suit on which I could see the ribbons of the Military Medal and the Nuremberg decoration. Both he and his companions seemed to the eye of a journalist to be unusually slim and young to be occupying the platform of a public meeting. One was so used to the elderly and well-fleshed committee man.
    Lawson, a local journalist, named some of them for me in a whisper. “The scruffy little fellow on the right, who lookslike an atheist cobbler, is Morley, the secretary. The chap next to him is a German delegate—think his name’s Meyer—he’s over on some sort of goodwill mission.” (We could not know then that the pale face of Meyer with its fixed smile and staring blue eyes was later to preside over the horrors of the Godalming concentration camp.) “Fellow in the middle is the local chairman—Lewthwaite’s his name—and then there’s Rosse. Don’t know any of the others.”
    After a few laborious words by the chairman, which included an introduction of “our good friend and late foeman, Herr Meyer” and an acknowledgement of the “handsome donation from our brothers in arms in Germany” which he had brought with him, Rosse rose to speak. I took no notes: I was not there to give a verbatim report, only my impressions , and when I later came to write them up I found them incoherent. It was difficult to realize—much less to describe—the way in which that sober, rather stolid meeting was roused to a ferocious and hoarse-voiced mob which went out and did its best to sack the Jewish quarter of Leeds.
    It was, to begin with, the strong confident voice, reaching the ears without strain or violence, which disarmed the critical faculties. There was none of the practised lilt of the politician in it; it was not over-educated, and yet the latent brogue was too restrained to become “picturesque” or comic. It was in fact a pleasure just to listen. Then I found myself noticing, with keen appreciation, the extraordinary richness of the man’s vocabulary and vivid phrasing. But before long, in spite of all my training, I found myself gripped by his matter. He made the injustices done to ex-Servicemen sound like some huge and legendary crime which must make the world weep. He created bloated giants of oppression, which the feeblest Jack of all longed to rise up and slay. He surrounded us with a labyrinthine web of corruption and inefficiency, and then led us sword in hand to slash our way out. Above all, he depicted the Jew—not the oriental, child-murdering bogy of Nazi doctrine, but the well-to-do smiling alien in our midst—with such venom that even my sanity was clouded with resentment, while half the audience was on its feet baying with fury. Throughout the whole speech he played subtly on the sense of shame which secretly beset so many