Letter 27

1st May 1933

In five minutes it will be May 1st! and these damn’ rejoicings begin. Nothing will induce me to buy a Hakenkreuz (a swastika)! I should feel that I was selling my soul for safety. Wouldn’t you rather I went to prison than sneaked around wearing a lie? Not that I expect to go there, to prison: in fact I shall be annoyed and surprised if I do go. Some fool is playing Meistersinger on a trumpet, and here’s some fool holding a political speech and all the students are singing. They are singing “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles” – then a political bellow, three yells of “Heil”! and another verse. This is the National Day. Russell, I am no more Christian than the worst Nazi. I am writing all this with the most violent dislike in my pen, to say the least.

Later

I was woken at 7.30, very bad tempered, by a band in the Berlinerstrasse, but stayed obstinately in bed till 8. It is a day of rejoicing, so I was determined to rejoice, however grimly. Well, later I walked through the Tiergarten to the Brandenbrger Tor. Heavenly weather! All the leaves beginning to consider Summer, and a cloudy warm sun A few people strolling about more or less bespattered with Hitler badges. However, when I got to Unter den Linden I met the scum coming away, processions of wretched little school children wilting under colossal flags. The Brandenbrger Tor was all bewreathed and beribboned. I followed one or two processions and landed in the Potsdamer Platz (corresponds to Piccadilly Circus) on the trail of a collection of misguided females wailing about Freedom. Processions and processions! Apparently anyone can have one if he likes. 10 little maidens in dark blue carrying little flags suddenly passed me in formation. I just caught a glimpse of a batch of Nazis running through the Tiergarten, followed by forests of flags – rather than “lovely legs”. After that I walked down Tiergartenstrasse and stopped in ecstasies of Patriotism in front of the British Embassy which was sailing the Union Jack. And now I’ve collapsed in the Tiergarten with a couple of sandwiches, a German novel and a holey stocking.

I’m not the only person to enjoy my sandwiches sitting on a bench in the Tiergarten. A couple of little chestnut brown mice are scuttling round after crumbs, and a shy lady blackbird, who is uncertain as to whether I am human, or a log. Impertinent little mice! They wear their tails out stiff behind like a spoon handle. That is modish in the mice world, nowadays – not curled like Alice’s mouse.

For the moment the air is free enough of military music and drums for one to hear a couple of squabbling tits and a chaffinch – (my mouse has come back) for ever chanting its own praises, a blackbird playing on a boxwood flute and endless rather vulgar, rather cheerful, and wholly endearing sparrows. A couple of great teutons, male and female – have plonked themselves beside me. I very much doubt whether my mice will care for them. Sure enough, they’ve seen my poor little blobs of fluff, and the great strong man has bravely leapt at them, brandishing his stick.

The Graf Zeppelin has just sailed over my head like a smooth silver salmon over the tops of huge spreading water weeds, and I a little fat slug at the bottom of the river. It looked beautiful in the sun……. I sat for five hours on that bench!