17.8.39.

Foreign & General
1. Announced that full scheme for national register is now ready. Daily Telegraph [a]
Party Politics
1. I.L.P. dissociating itself from P.P.U.’s friendly attitude towards “the° Link” New Leader, 18.8.39
2. More evidences° of struggle going on between Negrin & Prieto, cf. 2.8.39 [File S.P.1 (as ‘i’)]
3. Speakers at Keir Hardie memorial to be: Maxton, Dallas (L[abour].P[arty].E[xecutive].C[ommittee].), Ebby Edwards (T.U.C.), Jas. Barr MP., Duncan Graham MP. New Leader, 18.8.39

[a]

16.8.39.

Hot. Ground again very dried up. Hoed onions & flowers in nursery beds, watered pumpkin & tomatoes, cut down broad beans, which have now got too big & are not worth leaving to ripen. Some turnips almost fit to pull. Cut second marrow. Grass which E. cut is now quite good.
10 eggs (3 small). Sold 25 @ 2/6 score.
Ripe plums now only 2d lb.

15.8.39.

Hot. Had some damsons stewed (rather sour.) Ground dries up very rapidly. A few larkspurs coming into flower, roses coming into second bloom (most of them not good owing to the species of blight they have this year). The pumpkin’s largest shoot now about a yard long & 1 female flower. Not certain whether it can make its growth in time, 1e. in the next 6-8 weeks. Found another dead shrew. Wasps beginning to be troublesome. The new snail has laid a lot of eggs. Now that the white broody is off her nest, something finds & eats her eggs. Suspect cat, but might be rats, jackdaws or the hens.
Only 2/11 each (ie. 2/8 without commission) for 7-week ducklings weighing 4 1/4lb. At this rate there is only a few pence profit on each bird, but we are buying mash in small quantities at which it costs 1 1/2lb.  At the price of Full-o-Pep (11/10 per lb) there would be more.
11 eggs (2 small).

14.8.39.

Warm & fine. Damsons (such as there are) almost ripe. Finished getting ground ready for greens. At last found the lost hen, which was sitting on 13 eggs. She has been gone just a month. Altogether 6 broodies now (out of 23 hens). Put them all in E’s cage this afternoon. Yesterday with great difficulty we weighed a duck, &, if we were not wrong, it was about 33/4lb (61/2 weeks). So we are going to send the 2 biggest to market to see what they fetch.
10 eggs (3 small).
Cwt. Full-o-Pep gave out today. Started on 4.7.39 – about 40 days. Should have been 35, so perhaps have been underfeeding them a bit. On the other hand in warm weather they often don’t eat all they are given.
Saw a cuckoo this morning. They have been silent for some time & are about due to leave. Found a dead shrew mouse on the road. I do not know why, one always finds them dead about this time of year.

14.8.39.

Foreign & General
1. German-Italian “compromise” scheme for Polish problem alleged to have been formulated, in a form that obviously would not be accepted by Poland. Daily Telegraph [a]
2. Staff talks in Moscow have begun. Daily Telegraph [b]
Social
1. Yesterday’s Sunday Express had scare article on the illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine which was in effect anti-Jew propaganda Sunday Express, 13.8.39 [c]
2. It appears that the opening of letters to persons connected with leftwing° parties is now so normal as to excite no remark. [E.H.][1]
3. G.K.[2] claims that the C.P. are so strongly entrenched in the French police & other public services that the gov.t can do nothing against them. [File S.P.1]
Party Politics
1. According to G.K., membership of the PSOP is now only 4000 [File S.P.1]
2. According to E.H., the Bermondsey anti-war conference was prevented from arriving at anything definite by the action of a few Trotskyists who will have no truck with pacifists & said so so violently as to antagonize the latter. [E.H.]
3. According to E.H., the older members of the I.L.P. are on the whole opposed to affiliation, the newer members in favour, but the only leading I.L.P’er who is uncompromisingly against is C.A. Smith[3] [E.H.].

[a] [b] [c]

[1] Unidentified; possibly someone in the ILP.
[2] Probably George Kopp, Orwell’s commander in Spain.
[3] C.A. Smith was editor of Controversy, later Left Forum and then Left, a socialist monthly dedicated to the realization of a classless society; see 382,n.1. He, with Orwell and others, urged that Rudolf Hess be interrogated at Nuremberg in 1946 regarding an alleged meeting with Trotsky; see Forward, 25 February 1946. Peter Davison

13.8.39.

Warm & fine.
10 eggs (2 small).

12.8.39.

Warm & fine. Some carnations now well out.
10 eggs (2 small). Sold 25 @ 2/6 score & 10 (pullets) @ 2/2 score.
Total this week: 73 (16 small).

12.8.39.

Foreign & General
1. M.G. correspondent reports that German mobilization will be at full strength half way through August & that some attempt to terrorize Poland will be made. War stated to be likeliest issue (as also in yesterday’s “Time & Tide”). The striking thing is the perfunctory air with which these statements are made in all papers, as though with an inner certainty that nothing of the kind can happen. Manchester Guardian Weekly, 11.8.39 [a] [Orwell incorrectly dates this as 12.8.39]
2. Appearances seem to show that fighting on the Manchurian border from Changkufeng[1] incident onwards has been fairly heavy but inconclusive. Manchester Guardian Weekly, 11.8.39 [b] [misdated as 12.8.39]; La Révolution Prolétarienne, undated
Social
1. Refugee problem stated to be becoming serious in London especially East End. Mosley said to have not greatly increased his following however. [Private]
2. It appears that the P[ost].O[ffice]. authorities are now able to read a letter, sufficient to determine nature of its contents, without opening it. [Private]
Miscellaneous
1. All my books from the Obelisk Press[2] this morning seized by the police, with warning from Public Prosecutor that I am liable to be prosecuted if importing such things again. They had opened my letter addressed to Obelisk Press evidently at Hitchin. Do not know yet whether because of the address or because my own mail is now scrutinized. [No reference]
2. Potato & tomato said to have been successfully crossed in U.S.S.R. Smallholder

[a] [b]

[1] On 29 July 1939 some 3,000 Soviet troops with 100 tanks attacked on a four-mile front centred on Changkufeng, about a hundred miles southwest of Vladivostock. They were forced back, losing approximately 400 men to about 120 lost by the Japanese. On 6 August the German and Italian ambassadors in Tokyo intervened to urge moderation by the Japanese to settle the dispute peacefully so the ‘Anti-Comintern Triangle’ would not become embroiled with Russia (The Times, 9 August 1939)
[2] Obelisk Press, in Paris, published books in English for sale on the Continent, some of which British authorities regarded as obscene. Their importation into England was liable to legal proceedings. See Jack Kahane’s Memoirs of a Booklegger (1939). See also letter to Victor Gollancz, 8 January 1940, 583. Peter Davison

11.8.39.

Foreign & General
1. Chinese dollar reaches about 3½d. Daily Telegraph [a]
2. Twenty Bulgarian MPs. received in Moscow. Daily Telegraph [b]
3. British-French military delegation arrives in Leningrad. Daily Telegraph [c]
Social
1. Fresh reports of trials of objectors by tribunals do not in any case indicate objection on political lines (normally members of Christadelphian etc. churches). Daily Telegraph [d]
2. Attack on “the° Link” in “Time & Tide”, with implication that it should be suppressed. Daily Telegraph [e]
3. Again denied that banning of “Time” by Federation of Wholesalers has political motive, though evidently it has. Daily Telegraph [f]
Party Politics
1. I.L.P. Nat. Council again speaks of unconditional affiliation, but in referring to intentions within L.P. suggests activities which would amount to flatly opposing L.P.’s present line on rearmament etc. & presumably will not be accepted. New Leader
2. Those present at the House of C. reception to Menna Schocat[1], representing League for Jewish-Arab Unity included H. W. Nevinson, Chalmers Mitchell, Lord Faringdon[2], Wilson (Cecil), Lansbury, A. Maclaren, M.Ps. New Leader
3. Various arrests in France in connection with anti-war & anti-imperialist activities include Lucien Weitz & R. Louzon[3] (18 months). New Leader

[a] [b] [c] [d] [e] [f]

[1] Menna Schocat was a pioneer revolutionary in tsarist Russia who suffered imprisonment and exile. She escaped in 1905 and went to Palestine, where she was active in various workers’ movements. She insisted on Jewish-Arab workers’ unity and championed the cause of Arab peasants. The ILP had proposed to work for the unity of Jewish and Arab masses against British imperialism, in the hope of setting up a workers’ state federated with neighbouring Arab states. It also championed the right of persecuted Jewish workers in Europe to enter not only Palestine, but all countries, including Britain and the dominions.

[2] Alexander Gavin Henderson, 2nd Baron Faringdon (1902-1977), a contemporary of Orwell at Eton, was Treasurer of the Committee of Inquiry into Non-Intervention in Spain, 1936; and Treasurer of the National Council for Civil Liberties, 1940-45.

[3] Lucien Weitz, editor of Independent News, published in Paris, was also associated with the journal of Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista, of which Orwell was a sponsor; see 434. Weitz and a number of others associated with that journal and with the ILP’s brother organization in France, Parti Socialiste Ouvriers et Paysans (see 7.8.39) and its journal, Juin 36, were imprisoned as a result of publishing articles exposing clandestine sales by French motor manufacturers to Germany, and antimilitarist tracts. Robert Louzon was imprisoned with Lucien Weitz and others. Of the nine people named in The New Leader as being arrested, Orwell picks out these two names, presumably because they were known to him personally or by their writings; Weitz in Independent News, and Louzon in La Révolution Prolétarienne or his book L’Economie Capitaliste. Peter Davison

11.8.39.

Warm & fine. In the reservoir came upon waterhen with one very small chick. This was in close to the side & remained absolutely still, on my prodding it & turning it over with a stalk of hemlock it still made no move, so that I thought it was dead, then suddenly dived & remained under water for several minutes.
The watersnail’s eggs appear to have hatched & the creatures are moving about, but they are still jellified & in some kind of embryonic state, not, as I had thought, fully developed before they come out.
Cut first marrow today. Fair amount of beans now.
11 eggs (3 small).