Foreign & General
1. French-Brit. military mission leaving tomorrow on slow liner which will take a week to reach Leningrad. The “Week” suggests that the move is not intended seriously. Quotations from Finnish papers & Swedish Foreign Minister’s speech suggest that Baltic States are genuinely nervous. Daily Telegraph [a]; Manchester Guardian Weekly [b]; The Week, 2.8.39
2. Germany said to be considering transference of Slovakia from Hungary in order to detach the latter from Poland. Said also to be systematically depleting Slovakia of timber, foodstuffs & machinery. Manchester Guardian Weekly. Given reference number 3 for 2 [c]
Social
1. Mander M.P. (Lib.) declares Anglo-German Fellowship a pro-German organization & asks whether Home Sec. Can suppress it. Hoare replies unable to do anything unless an organization breaks the law. Daily Telegraph [d]
Party Politics
1. Labour won Brecon & Radnor by 2500 majority. Labour vote rose about 750, Gov.t vote dropped about 4000, & total poll dropped. Daily Telegraph [e] [3.8.39]
Miscellaneous
1. Albatross Press arranging for publication of my last book require excision of certain (though not all) unfriendly references to Hitler. Say they are obliged to do this as their books circulate largely in Germany. Also excision of a passage about a page suggesting that war is imminent. F. Personal[1].
[a]
[b]
[c]
[d]
[e]
[1] Unidentified. Peter Davison
Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 
Gov.t vote dropped about 4000. it is not very good for his campaign
I presume the ‘last book’ was ‘Coming Up for Air’ I cannot imagine any publisher serioulsy thinking he would be able to sell a translated version of that book in a Nazi state ! Orewll on husbandry, yes, given the penchant in Nazi ideology for going back to the soil, but not detialed descriptions of Left Book Club meetings in Lower Binfield or wherever……….
David,
Actually Albatross published English language books in Germany for distribution on the Continent. It began in 1932 as a rival to another German publisher called Tauchnitz that had been doing this since the 1840s. More information here (this is long, but the info on Tauchnitz and Albatross is on the first page.
Click to access Collecting%20American%20PBOs%20-%201.pdf
Tauchnitz and Albatross books continued to be produced in English after the beginning of the Third Reich in 1933 up to 1939 (and I think there may have been some Tauchnitz editions of classics such as Shakespeare during the war). I suspect that since the books were not in German there was looser censorhip than for German language books. I know Tauchnitz resumed publication of English langauge books in the late 1940s and continued until the mid-1950s -not sure about Albatross.
Also excision of a passage about a page suggesting that war is imminent.
Albatross Press, you were certainly prescient about that crazy Orwell and his doomsaying! One supposes you booked passages on a relaxing cruise to Danzig, scheduled for late summer.
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