WIMSEY PAPERS -X

By DOROTHY L. SAYERS

[Being extracts from the war-time letters and papers of the Wimsey family] Mr. Ingleby, Copy-writer in Pym's Publicity, Ltd., to Mr. Hankin, Head of the Copy Department in that establishment.

13.1.40. 13 PEMMICAN Roan, WIMBLEDON.

DEAR MR. RANKIN,

I greatly appreciate the kindness of your letter, but I'm afraid I can't change my mind. The fact is, I have developed a conscience of a sort. After all these years in advertising, I'm pretty hard-boiled, but to my own surprise I find there's still a vulnerable spot in me.

Pm quite well aware that business has to be carried on, and that it can't be carried on without advertisement. As a matter of fact, I don't much mind—never have minded— the sort of direct lying we put out. It's labelled "adver- tisement," and if the public believe everything we tell them, they have been warned. And they have got some sort of check on it. If we say somebody's soap is made only of the purest ingredients, and neglect to add that one of the ingredients is the purest pumice, the "discerning house- wife" has a chance to discover the facts and has only herself to thank if she goes on buying the stuff after the first spoilt pair of sheets.

What I can't stomach is the indirect lying in the daily Press. It's always a pretty bad joke, but in war-time it gets beyond a joke. All this righteous indignation poured out in the name of the Gallant Troops or the Great British People whenever there's a hint of Government interference with the sacred rights of Branded Goods! I daresay the public ought to keep their eyes skinned. Anybody con- fronted with a leaderful of wrath about the pooling of This and That has only to turn over the pages of his favourite -organ and see how many thousand pounds' worth of adver- tising it carries for Branded This and Proprietary That, and discount the righteous wrath accordingly. Possibly I am a scrupulous fool. But I don't think it's scruple so much as sheer damned irritation.

It's not that I don't believe in a free Press. It would be a bad thing if even that kind of criticism were censored away. I shouldn't mind if I were equally free to say to the umpteen millions of readers all over the country, "That's all right, but do remember that papers have to please their adver- tisers." But no paper is going to make its columns free to letters of that sort, and I hate being made to feel helpless.

If only one could get a platform, one could say to these poor goops, "Do realise that, in the end, you can be the masters! Policy depends on advertising, but advertising depends in the long run on circulation. If enough of you stop taking a paper, its advertising revenue will fall off and its space-rates drop. A consumers' strike will bring any commercial body to heel." But they wouldn't do it, because they want the football news or the racing news or the fashions, so they swallow the pill of policy with the sugar. The public is fair game, very likely—but, nevertheless— This is a queer line for me to take, isn't it? " Ingleby's always so cynical." That's why I write what you are good enough to call "convincing copy." But I've suddenly got a distaste for the game. I'm a coward, too. I don't propose —you needn't imagine it for a moment—to give up my time and energies to enlightening the public mind. I've managed to wangle an Army job, and I'm clearing out, washing my . hands, behaving exactly like Pontius Pilate and all the other respectable people who let crimes go on because it's too much trouble to try and stop them. So my cynicism holds good, you see.

You've always been very kind to me, and I have a lot to thank you for, so I thought I'd prefer to tell you the truth, for once. I'm not taking a self-righteous line about the people who stick to the job. I admire those who put their shoulders to the wheel, even when the waggon has stuck fast in the midden. I've no right to the luxury of being fastidious. I despise myself for not having the guts either to shove or to take a spade to the midden. I'm the worst sort of Laodicean, and propose to spew myself out with the least possible delay.

The gist of all this rigmarole is that I can't see my way to withdraw my resignation, and have written to that effect to Mr. Pym—putting it on the ground of "National Ser- vice," God forgive me! Please accept my assurance that nothing could be less heroic than my conduct, and believe Harriet, Lady Peter Wimsey, to Mr. Paul Delagardie. in London.

15.1.40. TALBOYS,

DEAR UNCLE PAUL, GREAT PAGFORD, HERTS.

Your amusing letter came just in time to put me in a good temper and prevent me from writing a stinker to Helen, which would only have aroused family prejudice and done the Ministry of Instruction and Morale no good at all. I'll sent her a postcard, and make my complaint to your sym- pathetic ear instead.

It was only a trifle, really. For the last four months I have been badgering H. for speakers for our W.R.I., and got nothing but evasive promises. Now the M.I.M. want to send someone down, and Helen is " astonished " because I can't let her have a date before the summer. She knows perfectly well that we have to get our lists out early —she had plenty of experience of that kind of thing at Duke's Denver. But because she is in an official position, she pretends to be "astonished." The rulers of this country seem to live in a perpetual state of "astonishment." They are " astonished " that any- body should think the German propaganda needs answering —surely the spirit of the people is too good to allow them to listen to what the Germans say. (It jolly well needs to be good—you can depress the boldest spirit by neglect and indifference, and it's not fair to leave the common man to de- fend his bit of the moral front without leaders or weapons.) The P.M. is reported to be " astonished " at the "strong reaction" among the people and in the Press over the Belisha business. But obviously the people are going to get a bit of a jolt when the War Office swaps horses in mid- battle, so to speak, without any warning or preparation ; and obviously the Press, who have been suffering from headline- starvation for weeks, are going to smack their lips over the feast—so why be " astonished "?

When the Russo-German Pact was signed, the Govern- ment proclaimed themselves not only "astonished," but " astounded " and "thunderstruck." If they were, they'd no business to be, since any intelligent person who could read had had the probability of something of that kind dinned into his mind for months and years. Governments ought to be able to read, and they ought to know how people are going to react to things. If they are "astonished," then it simply means that they don't know how the people of this country are thinking and feeling—which is the one thing that a representative government must know, or what is it there for? I'm quite sure Queen Elizabeth and Queen Vic- toria didn't spend their time being " astonished " by their subjects' feelings—they knew; and Ministers and Parlia- ments ought to know, too—they're paid to know it. If novelists weren't better psychologists than politicians appear to be, they might whistle for their royalties. And yet writers are supposed to be a dreamy, unpractical lot! But one can't blame the politicians too much. The people put them where they are, under the impression that " prac- tical men" are the sort to get things done. As a nation we don't trust the men of imagination and don't put them in power, so we've really only ourselves to thank when our leaders are " astonished " at every glimpse of the obvious.

And it's true that the " imaginatives " tend to hold aloof from public affairs. They feel it's their job to show and to teach, and leave the rest of the world to do the organising ; but it looks as though, without imagination, you can't even organise things properly. And all the time there's this per- petual fight against stupidity, and the commercial mind that battens on stupidity. Trying to get people to see and act with imagination is like trying to hack one's way through a jungle with a penknife. But if you give up trying —well, there's Germany to look at. Even the low-brows ought to realise by now that a country that allows its intel- lectuals to be rendered completely impotent is not a very edifying spectacle.

So much for that—and now read me your little lecture on "la raison" and the superiority of the French attitude to life. I quite agree it's time we went back to learning from the French. They are our Allies, and we shared their civi- lisation for a good many centuries! . . .

(The remainder of the letter deals with family affairs.)