People I met and places I have seen

(Excerpted from Selected Journalism by HAJ Hulugalle)

Just as I had concluded a memorable six weeks’ tour of the United Kingdom and north-western Europe, and was looking forward to a brief space of unregulated life, I received a summons from my lively colleague, the Editor of the “Ceylon Observer”, to send him some impressions.

These could easily fill a book, but I had not thought that an unconsidered narrative, of persons met and places seen, would interest a sophisticated public brought up on the “Observer’s” famous Sunday morning essays.

I have discovered that it always pays to answer an editorial summons. One of the leading Press lords of Fleet Street, whom I met recently, asked me to do twelve hundred words of my impressions of our first fortnight in London for a provincial newspaper. I sent the article in and left for the Continent. On my return I found a fat cheque which will enable me to return to Paris at the end of the month to attend the Peace Conference. On the present occasion, however, I have no mercenary intentions at all.

Of course, it was not my fault, or my merit, which put me among famous men and enabled me to visit historic places during the past few weeks. I just happened to be the delegate from Ceylon to the Sixth Imperial Press Conference, and it seems to me that the Press is respected, and rightly so, in all civilized countries.

If I were chronicling events merely with an eye to publicity, I should enlarge on the two hours the delegates spent at Buckingham Palace with the King and Queen and Princess Margaret Rose; lunch with Mr. Churchill at Hever Castle in Kent; a talk with Mrs. Attlee at the British Government’s reception; travels with the Chairman of “The Times” by train, coach and aeroplane; talks with German Communist leaders in Berlin; a walk round the room in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, in which the Big Four had met an hour earlier (one of the party even sat in Molotov’s chair, and another left a note for “Ernie” Bevan); civic receptions at half a dozen provincial capitals and a dinner at the Mansion House; and several private dinner parties to meet important and interesting people.

Of especial interest to a seasoned journalist was the opportunity to meet and talk to some of the most eminent men in the profession. I had the good fortune to meet Viscount Kemsley, owner of about twenty national and provincial papers. Both he and Lady Kemsley are keenly interested in helping the Empire countries.

Lord Beaverbrook told me that he would very much like to spend a holiday in Ceylon. I sought the views of Sir Walter Layton, Chairman of the News Chronicle and a leading economist, of the coming depression in the United States. Mr. Barrington-Ward, the Editor of The Times, gave us in conversation, his views on the Labour Government. He is a most attractive personality.

They have a fine team on “The Times.” I met Mr. Alan Pitt Robbins, the burly News Editor of “The Times” nearly every day during the month of June. Mr. Dermot Morrah works for The Times and the “Round Table” and was often present at the Conference. Two other charming personalities I came across were Mr. Ward Price and Mr. H.V. Hodson. Mr. Ward Price, a famous journalist for over 25 years and now a Director of the Daily Mail group, retains his youth remarkably. Mr. Hodson is the complete intellectual, but he has a big say in the production of the Sunday Times and the “Round Table.” There was also Sir Roderick Jones, a former Chairman of Reuters, both at the Conference and on our special train. The list can be continued, but it would interest only the journalist.

Among the delegates, whether from the United Kingdom or the overseas countries, there was a spirit of fellowship which will lead to many enduring friendships. One of the pleasantest incidents of the tour happened on the scene of the famous battle of Marston Moor. We were returning from the North and our train was drawn to a siding at this village not far from Leeds for the night.

After dinner, on a long summer’s evening, several of the party alighted from the train and walked across the meadow, looking either for the battlefield or the local public house. After two miles of walking the “pub” was discovered – a 100 yards from the train! In it we spent one of our merriest evenings. An excellent pianist was found among the New Zealand delegates, and all the old songs and many new ones were sung. The “pub” was kept by an ex-soldier and his young wife, and many of the local inhabitants joined the party. The beer was good and plentiful, and Marston Moor has now a new association for most of us.

Taking out my diary to refresh my memory of crowded experiences, I note that our first official function was a dinner given by Colonel the Hon. J. J. Astor, President of the Empire Press Union, and Lady Violet Astor at their house in Carlton Terrace. Colonel Astor is the proprietor of “The Times” but he has even greater claim to distinction. He is a man of fine character and great charm. Whenever he made a speech he said the right thing infallibly, though with an engaging modesty. His son, Captain Gavin Astor, has a high sense of public duty like his parents. I recall a pleasant walk with Lady Violet Astor through the meadows of Hever Castle after a visit to the dairy farm with its fine herd of Guernseys.

Our last official function was a Lucullan dinner in Paris. In between these two feasts, we saw much of England, Scotland, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany – our planes and motor coaches in Europe carried the label “from Normandy to the Baltic.” The charms of these countries are not identical.

In England, Hever Castle, Colonel Astor’s country house, in which Henry the Eighth courted Anne Boleyn, and Stratford-on-Avon stand out in our experience; in Scotland, Edinburgh and Alloway, the birth-place of Robert Burns. Germany, despite the unspeakable devastation of the war, was surprisingly beautiful. It is hard to understand why the Germans possessing such a lovely country, should have coveted the territory of their neighbours and brought a curse on themselves.

My impressions of France are fresh. It was only yesterday that I looked out of my hotel window and saw the gilded dome over Napoleon’s tomb and the Eiffel Tower. I was visiting Paris after an interval of 16 years. It has hardly changed. The old Trocadero has been replaced by an attractive structure which enhances the vista down to the Eiffel Tower and the “Hotel des Invalides.”

The French Government gave the delegates a mixture of business and pleasure. The three days we spent in Paris were each followed by three nights; at the ballet, the Folies Bergiere and a dinner at the Moulin Galette on Montmarte. The dinner was perfectly Parisian, the champagne superb; the speech of our host, the Minister of Information, charming; the women beautifully dressed; the cabaret good bodyline bowling. We could see a large part of Paris below us as we dined. It was July 14, the National Day of France, and there was dancing in the streets throughout the night.

But to go back. After a month in England and Scotland the delegates left for the Normandy beaches in the company of some of the men who directed operations on D-Day. We had one of the most brilliant men in the British Army, Brigadier Belchen, chief of Montgomery’s brains-trust, to explain the operations with the help of large-scale maps.

Berlin is of course one vast ruin. Eighty per cent of this once great city is utterly destroyed. One can walk miles of its wide streets, passing nothing but rubble and twisted iron. Sometimes an undamaged clock stands in a shattered building with the hands registering the time at which the bomb was dropped and put its machinery out of action. The macabre scene is indescribable. Trams rumble noisily through empty and desolate streets. Families live in the cellars of their destroyed houses or six in a room where the houses still stand. There are hardly any young men to be seen in Germany. We saw them, prisoners of war, in every other country we visited, digging up mines or repairing damage. The elderly folk are dejected and obviously undernourished.

Many girls seem to be seeking a living in the streets. There are no motor-cars except those used by the occupation authorities. There is nothing in the shop windows, except heirlooms, often of considerable value, and postage stamps. Every adult carries a bag in his or her hand to pick up any food that could be had. At weekends, Berliners would travel 50 miles to get a few pounds of potatoes in the country.

All cigarette stubs thrown on the streets by visitors or Allied troops are greedily pounced upon by the Germans. Dried leaves and twigs are sold for tea, and coffee is still ersatz. Beer is flat and insipid. One enterprising Canadian bought the best pair of binoculars I have handled (made by Carl Zeiss) for one hundred cigarettes, two cakes of soap and two sticks of chocolate.

German opera is still first rate. We saw a fine performance of Von Floutow’s “Martha.” One of the staff of the Opera House walked with me to the hotel. I could not take him in, and we went into a cafe where we drank some insipid beer. He is a young lawyer about to start a practice. He said, “God! What wouldn’t I give for a piece of cake!”

Yes, the German’s are paying for their misdeeds. To clear the rubble of a city like Berlin would take years. To rebuild it would not be a practical task. The same goes for many other cities and towns. The work of hundreds of years has been destroyed in as many hours. In Cologne only the Cathedral remains among the public buildings, superficially intact. Part of Hamburg is still extraordinarily beautiful but the other part is a shambles. The people of North Germany are handsome and manage to look clean and cheerful on very little.

The countryside is gracious. The harvest is promising. The oxen are of enormous size. The fruit trees were laden with apples, pears, plums and peaches not quite ready for picking. We drove about 200 miles by road from Strasbourg to Baden-Baden and on to Freiburg where there is an ancient University. The old houses with their barns and medieval roofs were a delight.

The British Control in Germany is enlightened, humane and efficient. Marshal of the Air, Sir Sholto Douglas, the Commander-in – Chief, spoke to us of his problems in an “off the record” talk. British policy aims at helping Germany to organize herself as a democratic country, deprived of the means of aggressive action but not denied the opportunity of developing as a peaceful nation. The Occupying Powers do not always agree on this, but a great work is being done by the British who spend 80 million pounds sterling a year to keep the Germans from starvation.

No one would venture to say how long the occupation will go on but the lowest estimate is 10 years. A tremendous responsibility is placed on Major-General Bishop who supervises the Press, education and amusements of the German people. There is no Press censorship in the British Zone. One of the snags of the British control is the helplessness of the Germans when they have to decide something. If someone else decides for them, the Germans carry out the decision without a murmur. That is their weakness and their strength, and accounts for Hitler and for German resiliency.

Yes, I can’t leave Hitler out of this story. We went through the battered Chancellory as the Russians were stripping the walls of the marble panelling. The delegates helped themselves to sizeable bits for souvenirs. At the end of the garden is the famous underground shelter in which Hitler lived and worked during the heavy bombing of Berlin. There is a mound near the door where his body was brought up from below and soaked in petrol before it was burned. The bodies of Eva Braun, his wife, and Goebbels where burned near by.

The underground shelter has about a dozen rooms including Hitler’s study, bed-room and sitting-room. Eva Braun’s bed-room, Goebbels’ room, kitchen, bath-rooms and dining room and one or two other rooms. The furniture has not been removed although it is in bad condition. I got a bit of Hitler’s (or was it Goebbels?) wireless set when the Russian guard was not looking. Perhaps he would not have cared. A Canadian delegate made a deal with one of the Russian guards for three of Hitler’s invitation cards printed sumptuously in gold. The fact of Hitler’s suicide is not doubted by the British officers who were earliest on the scene.

An abiding memory of our trip is the very high level of culture and intelligence among the officers responsible for the British Control in Germany. One was always meeting people who had served in Ceylon or passed through the Island. They invariably retained the pleasantest memories of Ceylon, and wished her well. Admiral Pennant who was responsible for the first landings in Normandy told me at dinner that he served in Kandy for some time with SEAC and was delighted with the place.

At Hamburg I had the good fortune to sit at dinner between the heads of the land and naval forces, respectively, in the Hamburg area. They had both been in Ceylon and loved the country. Air Commodore Desoer, who accompanied us throughout the European tour said the same thing. At the Berlin Hotel I stayed in, I met a young officer who had been stationed at Kurunegala, my hometown. Ceylon has a good name and many friends among those who have visited it during the war.

(First published in 1946)