Several of the papers are growing very restive because we are not doing more to help the U.S.S.R. I do not know whether any action, other than air-raids, is really intended, but if nothing is attempted, quite apart from the military and political consequences this may have, it is a disquieting symptom. For if we can’t make a land offensive now, when the Germans have 150 divisions busy in Russia, when the devil shall we be able to? I hear no rumours whatever about movements of troops, so apparently no expedition is being prepared at any rate from England. [1] The only new development is the beginning of Beaverbrook’s big drive for tanks, similar to his drive for planes last year. But this can’t bear fruit for some months, and where these tanks are to be used there is no hint. I can’t believe they want them for use against a German invasion. If the Germans were in a position to bring large numbers of armoured units here, i.e. if they had complete command of the sea and air, we should have lost the war already.
No talk of any formal alliance with Russia, nor indeed anything clarifying our relationship, in spite of more or less friendly utterances on either side. We can’t, of course, take any big risk until it is certain that they are in firm alliance with us, i.e. will go on fighting even if they have succeeded in beating back the invasion.
No reliable news from the fronts. The Germans are across the Pruth, but it seems to be disputed whether they are across the Beresina. The destruction claimed by both sides is obviously untruthful. The Russians claim that German casualties are already 700,000, i.e. about 10 per cent of Hitler’s whole army.
Examined a number of Catholic papers, also several copies of Truth, [2] to see what their attitude is to our quasi-alliance with the U.S.S.R. The Catholic papers have not gone pro-Nazi, and perhaps will not do so. The “line” apparently is that Russia is objectively on our side and must be supported, but that there must be no definite alliance. Truth, which hates Churchill, takes much the same line but is a shade more anti-Russian, perhaps. Some of the Irish Catholic papers have now gone frankly pro-Nazi, it appears. If that is so there will have been similar repercussions in the U.S.A. It will be interesting to see whether the “neutrality” that has been imposed on the Irish press, forbidding it to make any comment on any belligerent, will be enforced in the case of Russia, now that Russia is in the war.
The People’s Convention have voted full support for the government and demand “vigorous prosecution of the war” – this only a fortnight after they were demanding a “people’s peace”. The story is going round that when the news of Hitler’s invasion of Russia reached a New York café where some Communists were talking, one of them who had gone out to the lavatory returned to find that the “party line” had changed in his absence.
[1] From the moment the Soviet Union entered the war on the same side as Britain there was constant agitation for the opening of a second front. Much of this was promoted by Communists and Communist sympathisers.
[2] A journal of the extreme right. Peter Davison
