Stanley Hoar – Personal NotesHoar... · Web viewArthur Stanley George Hoar was mostly known as...

Stanley Hoar – Personal Notes


Arthur Stanley George Hoar was mostly known as Stanley or Stan except for one school friend who called him ‘George’ and another, simply ‘H’. He was born at 33 Cardozo Road, Holloway, on 17 July 1903. In 1971 he produced a family history - The Hoar Family -going back to the early 19th century to John Hoar, who lived in Reading. This was the result of much painstaking research, well before the days of computers and the internet. It is well illustrated with some fine photographs. The story has since been extended well into the 18th century thanks to distant cousins Felicity and Caroline

Dad was deeply attached to his parents and writes movingly of them and the places where he grew up. He speaks of the impact on the family of the early deaths of his two younger brothers. Roy was less than two years Dad’s junior and had only just reached his fifth birthday. Reg, the youngest of the three boys, died aged 9½. Dad did not mention anything about how these deaths affected him. He only remarked that both boys’ deaths were associated with initial faulty diagnosis by the family doctor.

The family suffered many problems as financial difficulties closed in during the Great War – half of the house in Cardozo Road had to be let out to bring in extra income and, when that house had to be abandoned, they were squashed into a house in Penn Road together with Grandmother Hoar, Auntie Alice and two other families. These were Dad’s late teenage years, when he had to sleep on the settee in the drawing room and do his school work on the dining room table. He often spoke to us with gratitude of the part played in his development at this period by his mother’s sister, Edith and her husband Charles (Auntie Edie and Uncle Charlie), who also lodged at 45 Penn Road.

Dad was a successful student, but his tutor at the London School of Economics evidently was not impressed with his performance as an economics undergraduate. He enjoyed telling the story of being advised by this individual, in all seriousness, to consider emigrating to New Zealand and taking up sheep farming.

During his school years he developed a keen interest in natural history, especially reptiles and amphibians. He enlisted friends and relatives in his pursuits and kept a meticulous diary recording specimens he had observed in the wild or kept as pets: their size, state of health, lifespan and so on. One of the difficulties of life at Penn Road was to find space for his vivaria. ‘The only suitably sited ones,’ he writes, ‘were on the landing, though I tried to maintain larger vivaria covered with waterproof felt in the garden. Casualties mounted.’ He maintained the diary throughout his life; the last entry is dated 3 September 1971.

He stayed at Penn Road with his parents until his marriage in 1930, so it was from Penn Road that he set out to his first job at London County Council and, later on, to the Bank of England.

The Holloway Congregational Church, and in particular the Sunday School, was the centre of the family’s social life and that was where Dad met many of his friends. There was a cricket club, amateur dramatics, outings, picnics and so on. More importantly, it was where Dad met Florrie Leigh, our mother. She was 15 and he was 18 when they started courting. One of the earliest letters preserved by our mother is this one from the Isle of Wight, dated 22 May 1922 and written in a fine flowing hand:

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Dear Florrie,As I have told you, I write very bad letters – they tend to become either

sarcastic or quasi-humorous and generally finish up by being a prosy string of words conveying a microscopic amount of information and a minimum quantity of interest. So, to avoid this as far as possible, I have come to the conclusion that I must set out to tell you, more or less in detail, what I am doing day by day, and how I am doing it – and in order that this may be set down in an interesting form I must put my experiences on paper before their pristine freshness begins to fade. Hence this letter has been commenced at a very much earlier date than I intended, and in all probability it will be concluded in several instalments.

To commence, I must apologise for not using ink for this epistle but, with my usual forethought, I omitted to fill my fountain pen before coming here (c/o Mrs Dove, Iris Cottage, Niton, near Ventnor) and as there is no prospect of obtaining any of that commodity without considerable difficulty, I am reserving the meagre supply for the addressing of envelopes and similar uses.

We had a very comfortable journey down and were met at Ventnor by a Ford car which made havoc of the 4 miles, so that we were landed here in safety somewhere about 5.30 pm. We had had a most enjoyable passage to Ryde and consequently, when passing Brading, were much surprised to see a sea mist gathering off Bembridge. This had become quite thick by the time we arrived at Ventnor and was driving in wraiths over the hills and shut out any view of the sea from the road which skirts the high Undercliff.

After having done justice to a very welcome meal, we commenced our holiday by walking down to Puckmaster Cove, the nearest point of the sea. The grey mist was fitful, and at times we had a short spell of sunshine, but as it grew darker, it thickened again, and we had the pleasure of hearing the twin notes of the St Catherine’s Lighthouse fog horn – a rich baritone ‘Taa-ee!’ followed immediately by a basso profundo ‘Taa-aaah!’. This monotonous row was continuous throughout the night, increasing at times, when some vessel or other groped past, adding to the din with its particular brand of torture; but we did not imagine that things were so serious as to entail danger such as that to which the ‘Egypt’ succumbed. (On 19 May, 1922, S.S. ‘Egypt’, bound for Bombay, was rammed by a French vessel in dense fog and sank within 20 minutes off the coast of France.)

In the morning all traces of the mist had cleared, and what a glorious morning it was! I think a first ‘waking up’ on holiday in a quiet country spot such as this is an incomparable experience – the air has an unbelievable freshness, the birds seem fit to sing their little heads off, the lowing of the cattle is indescribably rustic, and the very rumbling of passing cartwheels seems unfamiliar and delightful.

24/5/22 - That last lyrical outburst, coupled with the fact that my candle has finally given up the ghost, has resulted in the fact that two days have elapsed before I resume the narrative – as they say in the ‘Blut und Donners’ (‘blood and thunder’ adventure books). However, I’ll continue from where I left off.

Sunday morning we walked for a considerable distance over the downs whose outer edge consists of the Undercliff. It was terribly hot and we were in

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semi-charred condition when we arrived back for 1 o/c dinner. The afternoon was spent down on the shore again, where it was somewhat cooler owing to a slight breeze off the sea.

The shore is somewhat dull, especially compared with that at Lynton (North Devon, site of several earlier holidays), the scenery of which has spoiled me for all but the very best. I don’t know if you are familiar with the Undercliff. It is composed of first a high plateau of down with a sheer rugged cliff towering some 400 feet above the lower cliff which juts out ¼ mile in some places and forms a shallow 10-50 foot barrier against the sea. (There follows a sketch of the Undercliff, in section.) The slopes of the loftier cliff and the whole of the lower plateau except the surface of the Ventnor-Blackgang road is for the most part densely wooded and delightfully cool, even in this weather, and it forms a sanctuary for multitudes of birds, notably a large colony of rooks whose cawing is to be heard at all hours of the day.

I don’t quite know what inspired all this description, but I have a vague idea it was to show that the cliffs immediately on the shore are not very imposing and consequently the ‘tout ensemble’ rather tame. In the evening Dad and I went to the Parish Church and endured a very boring service which was not improved by a tremendous amount of elaborate ritual which, I think, needs the imposing grandeur of a cathedral to convey the impression it is supposed to make – as it was, it was a tedious and hollow mockery.

Monday we went mostly on the beach again. Tiss, of course, (Auntie Joy, then aged 6 ¾) enjoys it to the full, as at the ebb tide there is a considerable stretch of good sand, and I can always find something of interest in the small rock pools or when turning over some heap of flotsam cast up by the waves. A rather interesting experience was seeing the passing of a large aeroplane ship (possibly HMS Argus, an early aircraft carrier). I saw the seaplane take off from the platform, which covers the whole deck from bow to stern, and alight on it again with the lightness and precision of a gull.

On the way home in the afternoon, I stayed behind the others to explore a rather likely-looking patch of gorse and while doing this ran across Mr Brown, a fellow lodger, and asked him if he had seen any snakes or the like. To my utter surprise he said, ‘Yes. I’ve just killed one.” He then took me to a bush some 50 yards away and showed me his victim – a large adder 23 5/8 inches in length, which I examined minutely, finding the fangs unusually small.

Next day we went to St Lawrence by the Undercliff Road and returned over the Downs, passing on the way the bodies of two Slow Worms which had been killed by some rotters or other. I wish I could get hold of them for 5 minutes – they’d be sorry! In the evening we climbed to the top of St Catherine’s Down and had a wonderful view of the country towards Yarmouth and Freshwater. Far away we could perceive the faint gleam of the Solent by Lymington. The country up on the downs is very wild, huge expanses of gorse and bracken stretching right and left for miles and miles. Today we have been inland a bit to Whitwell and down to the shore again this afternoon.

Well, I reckon you are getting about fed up with this interminable catalogue, so I will ring down the Safety Curtain right now (as the monkey once

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observed to the cat in New York). (No idea what this refers to!) It is pretty hopeless trying to describe to you how ripping the country looks just now. I only wish I could show it to you myself. The amount of wild flowers in bloom is simply astonishing, the most noticeable being primroses and bluebells, which are present in profusion in suitable localities, whole stretches of hillside being literally blue with the latter in some places. The whole country is wonderfully fresh and I am really enjoying myself wonderfully, although I cannot help my thoughts wandering back over the dim blue hills to where flows that wild river, the Thames.

I hope you are having a good time in London, and that you will forgive the wearisome tediousness of this letter, for I will cut short the garrulous dodderings of senility with an

‘Auf Wiedersehen, mein Liebchen’Another letter from this spot is rather shorter. He has not yet been for a swim for

various reasons, he says, one of them being: ‘I’ve had a tooth lugged out since I’ve been here, leaving a hole several feet in diameter in my upper jaw, and this does not encourage one to swallow sea water’. He reports that he has discovered the sandstone rocks on the shore and has succeeded in extracting a number of marine fossils. He has also ‘bought and studied pretty thoroughly’ a book on botany by Dr Marie Stopes. ‘It is … rather well written,’ he comments. ‘I trust that it will make an efficient groundwork for the further studies I hope to pursue.’

A few weeks later he is writing from his home in London to Florrie when she is on holiday, also on the Isle of Wight. Walking across Westminster Bridge on his return to work at County Hall he sees a column of white smoke rising from a locomotive funnel to the west. He looks up at Big Ben – it is 1.26 pm, just the time when Florrie’s train was due to pull out of Victoria Station. ‘It rather upset my capacity for work for that afternoon,’ he comments, ‘and interludes like the following were rather frequent:

Self (thoughts): Hullo. 3 o/c. Past Horsham I suppose and getting…Voice: Mr Hoar! Phone please!Self (oblivious): … on for Arundel. Hope the weather improves a bit …Voice (impatient): Mr Hoar!!! Kent Road on the phone!!!Self: All right! What’s the hurry? Can’t you see I’m up to my neck

in work?’(All rights reserved, England & USA)’

The surviving correspondence from this time – July 1922 when the couple were 19 and 16 respectively – to May 1924, when Dad was a couple of months away from his 21st birthday and Mum was 18, has a similar light-hearted, almost flippant tone to it. But there is a lot of vivid description too. The style could be The Diary of a Nobody or Three Men in a Boat.

In August 1923 he was on holiday with his family in Polegate, near Eastbourne, and describes coming across a gypsy encampment. ‘The caravan was drawn up beside a large fire which blazed merrily in the dusk. Nearby was a sort of “lean-to” tent of boughs and rugs, before which the only visible inhabitants, an old woman and a baby were sitting. Grandma was washing the young hopeful, which was howling most dolefully after the manner of its kind.’ A few days later he writes, ‘We wandered through Dittons

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Wood in the afternoon and in the evening went to a service in the village chapel. We turned away from the village after the service and pursued a narrow lane leading we knew not whither. After about a mile of this we ran into a small party of gypsies – two small boys and a young hooligan who all demanded alms in the usual sing-song. We did not fall in with their desires, to their great disgust, so when we saw a huge party of them camping right across the lane, with their campfires gleaming luridly through the dusk, we concluded that our nearest way home lay across certain barbed wire fences, bramble hedges, etc, which we duly accomplished.’

It was at the beginning of 1923 that Dad had joined the Bank of England, a fact he reflects in a letter written from home to Mum on his return from that holiday: ‘I did not feel much like work on Monday, and Consols does not treat one kindly in that respect. I‘ve never worked so hard in my life before. Scribbling stock transfers and powers of attorney for 3½ & 3 hours respectively without being able to raise eyes from paper is a bit of a strain. Also ¾ hours lunch....’

He was an enthusiastic cricketer in those days – a bit of a demon bowler, if not much with the bat. ‘We played against Cricklewood Congregational yesterday (August 25, 1923) – bitterly cold and grey skies – the very antithesis of cricket weather. Ultimately lost by 3 wickets. Ball was jumping nastily - Ralph got one in the face & had to retire hurt, Avery taking his place and coming out almost first ball, so I did not feel very comfortable when the first one I received whizzed past my eyebrow. Consequently I did the old silly trick and jumped out at them – stumped for a duck! However I picked up a bit later – R.W. 2 wkts, McNeal 1 & self 4.’

‘Had a most degrading experience yesterday,’ he writes a few days later. ‘Was chasing Tiss on all fours making weird rows the while, and foolishly charged headlong out of the door, running straight into the Standleys. I turned back dumbfounded & collapsed. The worst of it was that Tiss was right out of sight so there was nothing to justify my convolutions...!’

‘By the way,’ he writes from Lymington in October of that year, ‘I have bought unto myself a tweed cap, and the rustics behold with admiration the combined effect of this with sweater and sports coat, debating whether the wearer is the Prince of Wales or Georges Carpentier in training.’

‘The town has altered a good deal since 1915,’ he writes, recalling a previous holiday. ‘There are many quite good style houses erected and in course of construction. There is a motor service to Bournemouth & Southampton, but the charabancs nuisance has rather abated, thank Heaven. As a matter of fact the main roads are rather free from traffic, and in the bye roads I have walked for 3 or 4 miles without seeing a single person.’

A letter from Eastbourne in May 1924: ‘We have now taken a ride on the top of a bus to Hampden Park – a glorious place, and I am writing this while sitting on a magnificent lawn overlooking an exceedingly beautiful lake. There are not very many people here, or indeed in Eastbourne itself, all things considered....’

A couple of days later: ‘Yesterday Dad and I went by sea (per P.S. Ravenswood) to Hastings. It was a very enjoyable trip but Hastings is a frightful no-class place. The Old Town is rather interesting but frightfully squalid....’

Mum and Dad courted for four years before they were engaged in 1926. They married in August 1930. In the background there were worries about Mum’s father

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whose health was declining (he died in 1926) and Grandma de Beaucamp, who died in 1924 (?).

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Dad was an enthusiastic diarist – a recorder of events, journeys and scenes rather than personal reflections. In his retirement, he wrote a memoir describing his experiences as he progressed from his first job – at the London County Council – through the ranks at the Bank of England. The memoir has been submitted to the Bank Archive because it describes in detail the physical processes in use in the 1920’s and 30’s, as well as some of the technical background.

In brief, the memoir tells us that he joined the Bank on 1 January 1923 (not a Bank Holiday in those days), on a starting salary of £175 per annum. The appointment was subject to three years’ probation and had been secured after not only an interview but also passing an exam and securing a nomination from a Director. ‘It was the policy of the Bank at that time,’ he writes, ‘to recruit men for the permanent staff only between the ages of 18 and 22. Because of this age restriction very few university graduates applied for admission and the Bank in any case preferred to take its men direct from school, or nearly so, and give them its own training. This process involved a standard procedure for circulating around a number of offices for a period of a few months in each.’

Accordingly, Dad progressed from one office to another for the next six or seven years, all the time learning the procedures of each one. For the most part these operations involved handling a great deal of paper, checking for accuracy in every detail and the painstaking maintenance of records in leather-bound ledgers. Adding machines were in use for some functions but Dad also recounts: ‘I got to a point where I could run my thumb down a full page of 62 lines and add pence, shillings and pounds in one operation. I rarely made a mistake. We who were working on the ledgers ran what we called a “flop fund”, to which we each contributed a penny for every mistake. When a few shillings had been amassed, we spent them on cakes to have with our tea!’

Any alterations in ledger entries had to be initialled by the man concerned and counter-initialled by a Superintendent. Dad witnessed the following incident in his early days: ‘One of the junior men was an ex-serviceman named Lanyon. He had done well in the War but found the adjustment to civilian life in a humdrum sort of job rather hard to take. He drank too much with his lunch, on occasions, and one day returned in a state of careless euphoria. Almost at once he made a mistake in one of his ledger entries. Undismayed, he took up the ledger, carried it over to the desk of a Superintendent named Austin, set it down unceremoniously in front of him and said, “I say, Austin old man, do you mind initialling this for me?” Austin was a rather pompous little man, very sensitive on matters affecting his dignity. He snapped back, “Lanyon, I will not have you speaking to me like that. I’m Mr Austin to you. In fact, I’m Captain Austin.” Lanyon shot upright. “Ho! Captain Austin is it? Then I’m Major Lanyon to you, and you bloody well stand to attention when you speak to me.” Of course, the office loved it. Lanyon and Austin were sent off for an interview with the Secretary, who fortunately had a sense of humour and was not inclined to make an issue of the affair. No penalty was imposed on Lanyon but he did not really fit in and left soon after.’

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Of the staff he met and worked with, he reflects: ‘Though I did not recognise it, the Bank was moving into a different phase of its evolution. Before 1914 it had been a highly independent institution, lending money to the Government when it felt like it, managing its own note issue and giving benign but authoritative guidance to the commercial banks. It kept discreetly in the background, meditating quietly behind Soane’s unrevealing walls. The staff was small and very carefully selected. They had to secure a nomination from a Director of the Bank itself, or from the Prime Minister, or from the Archbishop of Canterbury. They were called upon to be honest, conscientious and capable of executing the various stages of the Bank’s operations. Policy was not their concern; its evolution or modification was decided by the Court of Governors (a self-perpetuating oligarchy of merchant bankers) and handed down from on high. The Bank was a benevolent, mediaeval autocracy, riding somewhat blindly on the wave of national prosperity.

‘This had its effect on the staff. While it was an undemanding occupation, a clerkship in the Bank of England was a very respectable thing to have. It was not incompatible with being accepted in society as a “gentleman”. The War had, of course, broken this little world wide open, and in any case the Governor, Montague Norman, was deliberately leading the Bank out into international affairs. New work, new objectives demanded new men. But in my early years some of the old characters from the past lingered on. Some of them had large private incomes and some, with their crabbed eccentricities, seemed to have stepped straight from the pages of a Dickens novel.

‘A number of the younger men had come from great public schools: Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Lancing, Felstead, Christ’s Hospital, Merchant Taylors’, St Paul’s and so on. They were a new type to me. For the first time I met young men who had been brought up on wholly different lines from anything I had known, who had moved all their lives among well-known people and who had acquired from their background of affluent security an air of confidence and authority which, at that stage, I certainly did not have myself.’

One of Dad’s assignments was with the Bank’s Western Branch, in Burlington Gardens in Mayfair: ‘This branch was concerned almost exclusively with the accounts of wealthy society people and of some of the Bond Street shops. The whole atmosphere reflected it – a large banking hall with a marble floor, divided up by rich mahogany counters and partitions, pass books bound in morocco leather and a general air of opulence.

‘The head man, named Boscawen and known as the Agent, lived in a house which was an integral part of the building. He had a butler and dressed for dinner every night. Occasionally, when we were working late, we had a glimpse of his white shirt front and a whiff of his cigar. I think he had been selected for his social graces and connections rather than his banking abilities. To the staff he was a bit of a tyrant; I thought he was a snob.

‘A very different type was an elderly man called Blyth, who had no need to work at all. He was reputed to have a private income of some £6,000 a year which in those days was a lot. It was probably more than twice what the Agent earned (although I believe the Agent also had a private income). The Bank had long since decided that all Blyth wanted, or was capable of, was a simple repetitive job which kept him occupied. He was therefore permanently limited to a junior rank at a salary, I suppose, of about

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£300 a year. His job was that of a superior office boy. Every morning Blyth went round the various sections of the Branch and collected cheques, securities, letters and other documents for delivery to Head Office. He then hailed a taxi (at his own expense) and proceeded to the City, where he distributed his papers to their respective destinations. In the afternoon he performed a reciprocal service in the reverse direction.

‘Blyth was invariably immaculately dressed in a morning suit and black tail coat, grey or white waistcoat and striped trousers. When he took up his black silk hat and tightly rolled umbrella, tucked his expensive briefcase under his arm and stood outside the Branch to hail a taxi, he looked magnificent. It was a piece of harmless silliness, but Blyth was happy and the Bank was happy to have a humble job well done by a thoroughly trustworthy man.’

In 1929 Dad joined the Central Banks Section of the Chief Cashier’s Office. ‘At that time,’ he writes, ‘some 60 per cent of world trade was financed in sterling and it was a reserve currency of top world order. It was therefore both prudent and convenient for Central Banks all over the world to hold substantial balances in London. This they did, for the most part, by means of running accounts at the Bank of England.

‘The Bank laid down two simple rules for these accounts. The first was insistence on exclusive relations, i.e. if a Central Bank wanted an account at the Bank of England, it could not operate one with any other UK bank. The second was that, instead of charging for operating these accounts, the Bank required a minimum balance to be maintained on which no interest was paid.

‘An interesting point was that no minimum was ever laid down. The Bank left it to each Central Bank to select a sum which would reflect its standing and importance. Not surprisingly, perhaps, pride and desire not to be outclassed moved most Central Banks to lay down a minimum higher than the Bank would have dared ask for.

‘My particular assignment was to work under one other man in watching the movement of the Central Banks’ accounts and in daily employing any surpluses over the agreed minimum in the purchase of Treasury Bills and prime commercial bills. We kept an eye on the course of new instructions during the day, but some time during the morning we had to make an estimate of how many Treasury and Commercial Bills the Bank would need to buy from the Market that day on behalf of the Central Banks. This was a demanding task, for in any one day, some hundreds of millions of pounds were involved.

‘That summer I sat for the German Diploma of the Institute of Bankers and, having gained it, was duly awarded a grant of £50. More important, perhaps, was that it brought my name forward as my B.Sc. (Econ) had not done, and I was summoned for an interview. Shortly afterwards, I was moved into the Economics and Statistics Office and later into what eventually became the Overseas and Foreign Department.’

The new appointment brought him into contact with important changes in the Bank’s role. ‘Up to World War I the Bank had remained a citadel of mystery. The Bank’s authority was immense. But its policies were formed in secret and rarely explained.

‘The War and its aftermath brought about basic changes which affected relationships within the City and between the City and Government. The joint stock banks grew in importance. Insurance company reserves and the resources of pension funds and trades unions became major investment factors rather than the savings of

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wealthy and thrifty individuals. The appalling social consequences of trade recession and large-scale unemployment forced new attention to the factors which affected the level of industrial and commercial activity.

‘Overseas there were acute questions arising from the effects of German reparations and from the financial instability of a number of European countries. International financial cooperation and support were called for on a new scale. The United States was establishing itself as a dominant factor in world trade and world finance.

‘By the time I was admitted to some (very junior) touch with the Bank’s expanded activities, Montagu Norman (the Governor of the Bank) had collected a team of high-powered advisors. They had no executive responsibilities and they stood outside and, in financial matters, above the staff – lunching, for example, with the Governor and Directors. They developed their contacts and formulated proposals for policy.

‘These men needed support from below. They needed to be supplied with current information, and they needed records to be kept, research to be done, memoranda to be drafted and so on. Two offices were developed to meet these needs: Economics and Statistics – for British affairs; and Room 2, which became Overseas and Foreign – for overseas affairs. They started small, but their standing and importance increased steadily.

‘When I joined Economics and Statistics, it was a small, low-powered unit, groping its way towards understanding its function and equipping itself to perform it. It was beginning to assemble statistics of British industrial activity and to attempt to interpret them. The Agents of the Bank’s branches outside London (Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Plymouth) were required to make monthly reports of what was going on in their area. While I was in this Office the first steps were taken to establish the basis for an index of retail trade.’

Later Dad moved to the Overseas and Foreign section. The Governor at that time, Montagu Norman, was a controversial figure. Although he did much to modernise the Bank and adapt it to contemporary conditions, his policies regarding the devaluation of sterling are generally considered to have been a major factor bringing on the instability and human suffering of the 1930’s recession. Parallel to these policies – and on a more positive note – Norman sought to develop cooperation between European Central Banks as he believed this could help towards stability across the continent. One outcome of this policy was the creation of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland. Over time this became a forum for valuable exchanges of views.

‘The frontline responsibilities in connection with all these matters were borne by the Advisors. The Overseas and Foreign section was developed to follow relevant current affairs in detail and interpret them. To be selected for O&F was regarded as a high honour, and I was delighted to have the opportunity of working there.

‘It was our task to steep ourselves in what was going on in the countries which were our responsibility. We read authoritative articles in the English press, daily and weekly, and read the principal daily and financial weekly papers of their countries. We received the weekly returns of their respective Central Banks and recorded the main figures. They read and initiated correspondence with overseas Central Banks and others. In memoranda which went forward to the Advisors, they tried to interpret what they received. Sometimes they made special studies, e.g. of Kreuger and Toll shortly before the crash (the company went bankrupt in 1932). From time to time an individual was

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taken by one of the Advisors to act as his assistant at meetings of the League of Nations Financial Committee or of the Bank for International Settlements. It was challenging work of great interest.

‘I was allocated to Group 1 (responsible for Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the BIS). Each day I read papers like the Frankfurter Zeitung, Berliner Tageblatt, Hamburger Handelsblatt, Volkswirtschaftliche Wochenschrift, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Basler Tageblatt, Journal de Genève, Wiener Neue Presse. “Reading” meant skimming very quickly through them, marking selected paragraphs or articles and then sending them forward to be cut out and mounted by the filing clerks. This had to be done by 10.30 am. When we got them back, important or interesting passages were marked and, if useful, commented upon in writing. By noon the distilled essence of the papers was sent forward for the Advisors to look over during the afternoon.’

In 1931 his Principal, FF Powell, dropped him from his team and sent him to another department. Fifteen months later, to Dad’s surprise and delight, he was summoned back by CA Gunston, who had been left in charge of O&F following the absence of Powell on a two-year secondment. ‘Gunston now asked for me to join him on special work for which he also was being seconded.’

Here is what Dad writes about the man with whom he was to work, on and off, until 1946: ‘I had – and have – the greatest respect for Gunston. He was the son of a mathematics don at Cambridge. He was conscientious to a degree, precise in all he did and said. His standards were high and he expected others to observe them too. He taught me more than I realized at the time. Sometimes his merciless criticism of woolly writing and – still more – woolly thinking was hard to take. But I needed it badly and I shall always be grateful for it.

‘He was not without eccentricities, both of speech and behaviour, and his manner was at times unnecessarily blunt. Indeed most people found him hard to tolerate because he was often completely insensitive to their feelings and likely reactions. He once caused a volcanic explosion from Montagu Norman by putting a note on his desk warning him not to leave a Bank private code book lying about.

‘In the two and a half years Gunston and I shared a room, he and I had three flaming rows. But they burned out all misunderstanding and we became firm friends. He was, to tell the truth, prickly and aloof for most people, and I had the reputation of being the only man who could get along with him. He was certainly good for me.’

Skipping ahead a few years, Dad recounts that at the end of World War II, Gunston disagreed strongly with the policies the British government was following towards Germany, at the behest of the Americans. He refused to carry them out as far as his Bank duties were concerned. ‘In the end he resigned, forfeiting his right to a pension. He then set up a translation bureau which, by all accounts, has done very well but was an appalling waste of his great talents.’

The secondment which Dad now took up was as Assistant Secretary to the League Loans Committee, an international body set up in 1932 by the Governor of the Bank. The purpose of this Committee was to assure repayment of reconstruction loans made under the aegis of the League of Nations following World War I. The loans in question were to countries that were now being badly hit by the collapse in commodity prices and the oncoming great depression.. These developments had rendered them unable to meet their commitments.

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The Committee’s remit was to negotiate with the governments concerned to achieve the best possible outcome in the circumstances. The total amount of the original loans was £60 million (approximately £3 billion in 2016 terms). An intriguing aspect of the loans was that the finance had been provided not just by institutions but also by individuals - retired clergymen, widows and elderly people - who, as Dad puts it, ‘had put their savings into what they had vaguely sensed as a humanitarian cause’.

The Committee was headed by Sir Austen Chamberlain, a former Foreign Secretary. Dad describes him: ‘always immaculate in morning coat, (he) brought with him an air of diplomatic charm and, if need be, diplomatic wrath. I remember him screwing his eyeglass into his eye, raising his arms in a gesture of despair, letting them drop with a crash on the table and then, leaning fiercely forward...’ and accusing the opposite party of making fun of him and demanding that they go home and think again. ‘That was magnificent!’

The job of the Secretariat in which Dad served along with Gunston was to feed the Committee with information, work out details of the negotiated settlements and follow the course of their implementation. There was a great deal of staff work involved: bondholders and the press had to be kept informed, continual correspondence had to be carried on with interested parties. ‘All in all we kept pretty busy.’ Also, ‘we were available for actual negotiations – usually once a year.’

‘The governments with whom we negotiated were very different in their respective attitudes to their debts. The Hungarians were sensitive about their honour and credit standing. Negotiations with them amounted to little more than their asking us what we thought they could fairly and properly pay – and then agreeing when we told them. The Bulgarians were stubborn and fought for every per cent point of relief. The Greeks were wily, agile and would have paid nothing if they could have got away with it. The Austrians were charming and cooperative. The Estonians never defaulted until they were overwhelmed by the Russian invasion of 1939. Danzig did not default either, although we negotiated a new deal for them in 1937.’

In September 1933 Dad is in Geneva on one of several visits in connection with the League Loans Committee. ‘O.E.N. (Otto Niemeyer, the senior British representative),’ he writes to my mother, ‘turned up at 8.30 pm having smashed an axle somewhere or other: apparently he sent a wire which never reached me. As you will have surmised I had to attend the Fin. Cttee meeting on my own.’ The delegates attending the meetings were from the League of Nations Secretariat (Financial Section) and from the UK, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, Japan, Norway, Italy, France and Bulgaria.

On 12 January 1935 he is back at the Hotel les Bergues in Geneva. ‘The trouble is the Cttee don’t know, for the life of them, what to do with the Bulgars. They have nothing to bite on, that’s the trouble, because the Bulgars are just plain ignorant. They have to be led step by step like children along the paths of economic sanity – even then they probably don’t understand what it’s all about. The Cttee are completely baffled so far.’

Three days later he is even more caustic: ‘All the other countries are finished with but these Bulgars are the deuce. Everything is wrong in their country and yet they produce series after series of falsified statistics to prove all goes well that they can

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control. As regards the other side of the picture they try to make themselves to be ten times worse off than they really are. Consequently everything has to be checked, argued about and altered.’

In his memoir, Dad sums up: ‘The main negotiator was Sir Otto Niemeyer, with intervention occasionally by the Chairman. OEN could speak French well if he chose, but for some tactical purpose of his own, he usually used an excruciatingly Anglicized version of his own. On one occasion when the Bulgarians were being difficult, OEN exploded,’ telling the Bulgarian delegate, Bojiloff, to go home, look in his pockets and see if he couldn’t find something there. ‘Bojiloff got the point. In due course he returned with another 2½% of the nominal.’

Niemeyer was one of three dominating personalities driving the Committee. The other two were Sir Henry Strakosch (a South African banker, representing the UK) and CE ter Meulen, a senior Dutch banker. ‘To illustrate Niemeyer’s command: During the meetings he would tilt back his chair, close his eyes and apparently go to sleep. Every now and then, however, he would shoot out a trenchant question or comment. Then, after a while, he would produce a stub of pencil and begin scribbling on the nearest scrap of paper he could lay his hands on. Having finished his scribble he would break in on whoever was speaking and say, “Well, gentlemen, I think these are our conclusions.” He would read out – simple, to the point and obviously right – what was on this bit of paper. And the Committee would gratefully say, “Yes, Sir Otto, of course.”

‘One day, when Otto was at his scribbling stage, Weigelt (Germany) had something to say which he thought important. He whispered to the chairman, Mlynarski (Poland), to get Otto’s attention. Mlynarski coughed once or twice but OEN wrote on. Weigelt began to get restive. Eventually Mlynarski intervened, in a frightened little voice: “Sir Otto, we’re all waiting for you.” OEN temporarily removed his pipe from his mouth and, without, looking up, grunted, “I know. Wait.” And, like lambs, they waited!’

The memoir records: ‘I began to like this work very much. For the first time I was making contact with men of really high calibre, able to see how they formed their ideas, how they expressed themselves and how they reached their decisions. Moreover, they accepted me as moving naturally in their affairs, and this was good for my morale. Then I began to travel.’

In early 1935 Gunston, the Secretary, was recalled for direct Bank of England work. A new Secretary had to be appointed and the Bank put forward a candidate of Gunston’s seniority and ‘much senior to me’. He continues, ‘Much, I imagine, to the Bank’s surprise and certainly mine, Austen Chamberlain said he wanted me and got his way. And so in March 1935, I was appointed Secretary, and Harold Light came in as Assistant.’

Light did not last very long. After about a year he had to return to a Bank post. ‘In his stead, I was offered a young man who, I was told, was “rather wild” but if I could “lick him into shape”, seemed “to have a future”. Apparently I was not unsuccessful in executing this charge, and he certainly did have a future. Today (1971) he is Governor of the Bank, Sir Leslie O’Brien, and my very good friend.’

Letters to my mother illustrate the features and demands of journeys on Committee business. In October 1938, travelling from Geneva to Athens: ‘55mph, in the train, nearing Trieste. Not a very good night’s sleep – infernally hot. Woke up to lovely scenery between Viège and Brigue. Finished dressing while we ran through the Simplon

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Tunnel. The Italian side of the mountains equally majestic but veiled in mist so we did not see much. Stresa, by Lake Maggiore, was lovely & the sunshine so warm. All today we have been running across the Lombard plain. Venice is our last important stop & Trieste (due in half an hour) the next one. Next day we are due to traverse Yugoslavia.’ Two days’ later (17 October), he writes: ‘My last note was posted from Nish (in Yugoslavia, now Serbia). From then on we crossed an apparently unending plain for hours. It was ringed with mountains at a distance but we kept more or less down the middle of it. The ground is quite good soil, I should say, but spasmodically and inefficiently cultivated by an insufficient population. Hamlets are few and far between. There are isolated farms, some well built and some poor little hovels. The roads are mere earth tracks and traffic so sparse that between Belgrade and Djevdjelija (also spelled Gevgelija, on the Yugoslav-Greek frontier) we saw only 2 cars in the whole 350 miles. Most of the traffic was in bullock carts or on pannier-laden donkeys and mules. There were only a dozen or so bicycles even. We saw many quaintly dressed people, including a wonderfully dressed wedding party, and some of the men would need no make-up to take any brigand’s part you care to imagine. The general impression was of sun-scorched earth and grass, solitude and poverty.

‘Towards evening we joined a river and followed it towards the frontier mountains, which are threaded by the river gorge. This, in the fading light, was wild and desolate in the extreme. Night fell and we ran into Thessalonica at 10.25. Here we halted for half-an-hour.

‘I slept well and had to be wakened at 8 o’clock....Then this morning we ran down towards Athens. All very bright, sun-drenched, hot and clear. Mountains on every side, then undulating country with tamarisks, olive trees and vines. Arrived Athens at 10.16.

‘Our first interview is with the Finance Minister tomorrow morning, and that left most of today for sightseeing. Boschen & Jamieson were able to take full advantage of the opportunity & saw a sunset behind the Acropolis which, Jamieson said, was almost worth the 3 days in a train to come to see....’

Years later he was to recall: ‘On the way to Greece I spent some hours in Paris, to consult with the French Bondholders’ Association, whom I was to represent as well as the LLC. When heading for the Gare de Lyon to resume my journey I was involved in a taxi accident. I did not realise it at the time, but in fact I suffered mild concussion and some tendons in my right foot were snapped. So I did not feel at my best during this, my first visit to Greece.’

In May 1939 he was again on his way to Athens, but this time by train to Venice (with a quick gondola tour whilst there) and then on by boat, the S.S. Quirinale, to Athens. They passed by Brindisi, which he characterises as ‘a dismal hole...with nothing of any note except a fascist memorial in the form of a gigantic rudder about 250 feet high’. The voyage was a little stormy but calmed down later as they passed along the Peloponnesian coast. ‘It has been such a long journey here,’ he remarks, ‘that it is rather depressing to think that I have not yet started to do my job....’

This visit was headed by a UK Treasury delegation seeking to negotiate a deal for the UK to take extra Greek exports, to support a Greek stand against the Axis powers. ‘I accompanied them in the hope of being able to secure a proportion of the extra sterling accruing to Greece for the benefit of League bondholders. In point of fact the Greeks remained obdurate. I had a talk with General Metaxas, the Premier, in which he was

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friendly but very firm. He said, “I admit I could pay more to the bondholders, but Greece has so many needs for schools, roads and general rural needs that I feel I must spend the money for them. Greek credit internationally is so low that nothing I do or do not do could drive it any lower.” There really was no more to be said.

‘So in 1939 we passed into the War and my story of the LLC comes to its end. Estonia was engulfed by Russia. Hungary, Danzig and Bulgaria became enemy powers. Greece was overwhelmed. All payments to the bondholders ceased and O’Brien and I had other work to do.’

Dad was among those chosen by the Bank not to release for service in the armed forces. ‘I found that I was among the men scheduled as “indispensable”, presumably because I was 36 when war broke out and, though I did not know it, already marked for senior responsibility.’ His colleague Gunston, who was in the Territorials, was a gunnery instructor in Wales and later was made colonel to serve in the military government in North Africa and Italy.

The first task was to deal with an aspect of Exchange Control which was to come into effect following a White Paper issued in September 1939. Specifically this involved all securities payable in foreign currencies, which now had to be registered. ‘Three of us were handed the White Paper one morning and instructed to organise the Securities Control,’ he recalled.

‘The first week was pandemonium. After a first whip through the White Paper, we prepared a registration form. How many did we need? No-one had any idea. A rough estimate was made of 500,000, but I doubled this, to be on the safe side, and we stocked up with a million. Then the public announcement was made and one of the first applicants for a batch of registration forms was the Westminster Bank, who asked for two million!

‘Meanwhile a queue rapidly formed of stockbrokers with an infinite variety of questions as to what type of deals they could and could not put through. To begin with we did not know the answers any more than they did and we just had to work them out as we went along.

‘Of course we were working long hours and meanwhile the War had broken out. For 18 months I was to work twelve hours a day in the office and then in the train and at home, for seven days a week.’

After a short spell in another department, Dad was returned to the Overseas and Foreign group which he had left to join the League Loans Committee. He was now effectively in charge of the Department. The chaos of war affected the amount of information the group could access. More attention was now being paid to the Americas and also to Africa and Australia. Dad did not get around to saying much more about what he actually did during the War years. His memoir ends more or less at this point. (He died in March 1972.) He did, however, leave these memories:

‘One consequence of the German occupation of Denmark and Norway was that Iceland and the Faroe Islands were left without trading and financial connections which were vital to them. Britain stepped in with budgetary assistance, and we were of course glad to get their fish. The Faroese were splendidly independent: they accepted only a minimum of financial aid and brought Icelandic fish, as well as their own, into British ports when bombing frightened the Icelanders off. In fact, the Icelanders were not at all easy to deal with and we were not sorry when the Americans took them under their wing.

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‘I well remember one day in April or May 1940 when a young man in khaki uniform was ushered into my office. He was Hubert Ansiaux, later Governor of the National Bank of Belgium. Only a few days before, as an artillery officer, he had been galloping his horse-drawn field guns out of action before the onslaught of the German tanks. He had been a junior officer of the National Bank and was deputed to accompany one of the Deputy Governors, Adolphe Baudewyns, in a desperate flight to try to get to Britain and maintain an independent existence for the National Bank outside German-occupied territory. They had just managed to get out in time through Bordeaux. We found a room for them in the Bank of England until they could find their own accommodation outside. (Baudewyns and I shared a table in the Bank vaults during the first of the daylight air raids.)’

Although we children heard little from Dad about his professional work during the War at the time or even afterwards, we do know that he took the train every day, including Saturdays, from Arnos Grove into King’s Cross and then on into the City. At regular intervals, complete with tin hat, he spent the night on the roof of the Bank on fire watch.

He loved to tell of how the Governor, the august Sir Montagu Norman, was reprimanded one day for stopping to look into an immense bomb crater just outside the Bank. A gigantic policeman accosted him and gruffly told him to move on with the memorable admonition: ‘Why don’t you just get along and do a spot of banking, sir?’

We are able to pick up his story from 1945, or fragments of it, from his diaries and, most vividly, from the series of letters he wrote to our mother during the period he was posted to Germany to work with the Control Commission in the British sector.

DIARY – 1945

At the beginning of this year...I was alerted to the fact that, on CA Gunston’s request, the Bank would like me to serve for a spell in the Control Commission for Germany (British Element) which was now being formed.

Wednesday, 7 th February I went along to Somerset House to see SP Chambers, a member of the Board of

Inland Revenue, who was to be head of the Finance Division in the Control Commission. (After the War Paul Chambers rose to be Chairman of ICI, a major British chemical company.) Apparently he considered me suitable because when I saw Gunston next day at the Control Commission Headquarters in London, he told me that Chambers had approved my appointment as Head of the Reichsbank Section.

Wednesday, 14 th February On this day and each working day for the next week, I attended meetings at

Norfolk House, St James’s Square, which were addressed by General Templer on the state of affairs in Germany, on what the Control Commission was supposed to do and on the general circumstances to be maintained in our relations with the German people. Templer impressed me with his clarity of mind and moderation of outlook.

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Over the next few weeks I began to pick up my contacts with the Control Commission and to make contact with the Americans, who had established a Control Commission headquarters in Bushy Park.

Friday, 6 th April This was my first day formally with the Control Commission, on secondment

from the Bank of England. My service was immediately under Gunston, recently promoted to the rank of Colonel. A good deal of argument was apparently going on as to whether or not I should be given a formal commission. This went on for several weeks and was a great inconvenience because at one point I was told definitely that I should be given a commission and that I should order a service dress. This I did and then the War Office changed its mind again, so I had to cancel the order. Eventually the decision was that I should be given what they called ‘assimilated rank’, which meant that I had the rank of Colonel with the pay and privileges that went with it but without a formal commission. I did not like this at the time but eventually came to appreciate the advantages of it since I had the seniority without being subject to the rigidities of military control. When pushed into a corner I always could (and sometimes did) threaten to resign!

The work on which we were all engaged at this stage was to absorb the information coming in through despatches of various kinds about the financial situation in Germany. We were to begin to plan what we would do when we got there and took control. One of the things on which we wasted a great deal of time was in planning Operation Goldcup. This was an operation, with me in charge, to get into Berlin as quickly as possible after the actual fighting stopped in order to take possession of the Reichsbank and to safeguard any remaining assets. We had plans of the building and knew where we were going to lock up the staff and what keys we needed to get at what. Of course, when we finally got to Berlin- much later – the building we had been so accurately planning for was nothing but a series of holes in the ground and mounds of rubbles. Moreover, the Russians had had unrestricted access to what was left for a number of weeks.

Monday, 23 rd April Just before the weekend I was suddenly informed that I was to be lent temporarily

to SHAEF, under attachment to G5 Finance. I left by train at 10 pm and spent the night on board a boat at Newhaven. We had intended to sail during the night but there had apparently been reports of a German submarine off the French coast. We therefore waited until the Navy and the Air Force could have a good look by daylight. Alarm over, we had a pleasant crossing and arrived at Dieppe which still showed many scars of war.

LETTERS

Advanced HQ, Control Commission, St. Cloud, France24 April 1945

My darling wife,

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This letter will not go off tonight but I must close this first complete day of separation by writing a short note to you.

It is now about 10.15 pm and I am writing this sitting up in bed and feeling clean and warm and comfortable after a hot bath.

My train did not arrive at the Gare St Lazare until after 7 pm. The journey across France was extremely interesting so that, although I became very tired, I did not really grudge the time taken. The countryside was beautiful – rather like Sussex most of the way – and the extent of bomb damage on the one hand and the progress of repair and tidying up on the other gave one plenty to look at and think about. Contrary to my anticipation, there were plenty of cattle in the fields, though few horses and sheep. Road traffic is sparse and rail traffic also. The sun shone warmly and the greenery everywhere was lovely.

I am billeted very comfortably but will tell you more about that side later. In the mean time I am so tired that I really must switch out the light.

All my love to you and Wendy, John and Robin. God bless you all.Stan

St Cloud, 29 April 1945This week has been very full for me. Gunston arrived 24 hours after I did and we

have been doing some very energetic scurrying around. He returned to London by air yesterday afternoon.

I am billeted in the former German Kommandantur and it is a queer thought to think of some Hun officer having occupied my bed not so very long before me. The house I sleep in is a typical French villa of moderate size. I have a good-sized room on the first floor, furnished with a very comfortable bed, a commodious wardrobe, a bedside table and one chair. The floor is of waxed wood. The outlook is on to a veranda and a mass of trees. It is all quite comfortable and my batman looks after me well. Usually I sleep excellently but last night there was such a howling gale that I did not do so well. There is a bathroom on the same landing and there is always plenty of hot water. The mess is in another villa close at hand and we live like fighting cocks, having the benefit of the American General’s rations plus French cooking. I find myself rather shrinking from the richness and variety of it all.

Yesterday I made a good long walk in the afternoon - a sort of circuit through lovely woods which stand quite high. A queer sight was some wrecked German AA guns, now the playthings of children. One gun could still be elevated and depressed and rotated. The children had swung it horizontal and were using it as a roundabout, sitting on the barrel. The woods were fresh and green but a number of the trees have suffered from periodic hail storms, which have stripped off many of the young leaves. The chestnut blossom has especially been a victim.

One gets very quickly out of touch. English papers arrive late and, indeed, I have little opportunity to buy a paper of any kind. Sometimes we get the 9 o’clock news on the Forces programme but generally speaking I am living in a kind of vacuum of news. This seems stupid when one is at the fountainhead but is perfectly true. I only heard of the rumoured (but no doubt authentic) Himmler surrender offer long after it was first announced, and then only by accident. We are supposed to work seven days a week, but

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as I have already mentioned, I took a walk yesterday and intend to take another break today.

I do not know definitely yet what my movements are likely to be but unless there is a very quick liquidation of the German situation (and by ‘liquidation’ I mean to include a certain amount of sorting out of chaos after the surrender), I should expect to remain here or hereabouts for two or three weeks yet – at least.

St Cloud, 3 May 1945I was so glad to get your letter with postmark 27th April. It arrived here on 1st

May, which was not bad.I was pleased to hear that the children are being good and helpful. Will you tell

them so, from me, please? It is my confident hope that they will keep it up.What price weather? I woke up the other morning to see snow falling heavily out

of a leaden sky and a layer of a good two inches on the ground. Fortunately the fall ceased around 8 o’clock and the fallen snow did not last very long; sun was shining by the afternoon. Since then the weather has been somewhat better but it is still cold enough for me to be wearing my overcoat. I was glad of the latter last night, when I drove six or seven miles in a jeep at about 10.30 pm. I had to thaw out in a hot bath afterwards! …

I had dinner with (Léon) Martin (an old friend; secretary of the French bondholders’ association before the War) at a small bistro in Paris on Tuesday night. We fed very well on some white fish, beautifully cooked; but, as you know, feeding in Paris restaurants is difficult these days except in the black-market places at fantastic prices. (Actually this question affects one of the few privileges of a civilian in this set-up. Soldiers are not allowed to feed except in the official messes!) There is no milk for the civilian population here, except for children and nursing mothers. Every little patch of ground is extensively cultivated and people from the urban area where they have no gardens travel miles into the open country at weekends to cultivate their allotments. This scarcity in the towns is bound to continue until more transport becomes available.

Martin is the same good fellow as ever and we had a grand evening together. It is queer that we are now near neighbours!…

I had never imagined that the outskirts of Paris were so beautiful. St Cloud stands high…, and parks and woods stretch beyond it until they merge into open agricultural country. The Parc de St Cloud is typical of the big domains: magnificently planned avenues of fine trees with radiating alleys giving vistas in all directions. All formalised, of course, but on such a spacious scale that they are impressive and lead one away into places of rest and quietness.

I have not been able to explore Versailles at all adequately and must certainly do so before I leave these parts. An entertaining guide to my ramblings would be a book in which some woman describes the occult experiences of herself and companion in the Hameau and the Trianon Gardens at Versailles; they allege finding themselves back in the 18th Century and seeing Marie Antoinette and some of her contemporaries in their appropriate settings. It is a classic in its way and I would very much like to read it. Both it and a subsequent ‘debunk’ are in the B of E library and O’Brien, I know, read them both. I wonder if you would mind ringing him up and asking him to send them on to me.… This is all pretty trivial, I know, but it might be fun.

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Changing the subject rather violently – I am sorry to hear about the hot tank. Stockmans themselves supplied it, I believe, and if so it would do no harm to remind them of the fact. The record, with date, will be in the blue exercise book of yours … in which I record payments made – look under ‘Repairs etc’. In any case, please have done whatever is necessary.

Surely the end of the fighting cannot be long delayed now. It is exasperating to me to be so cut off from the rising excitement there must be in town just now. I have heard of the sordid end of B.M. (Benito Mussolini) and the no doubt equally sordid end of A.H. (Adolf Hitler). What a heritage of execration and infamy is theirs.

The political and fighting scenes have one big significance, however. They do show that it will not be long now before I really begin to grapple with my German job; and the sooner I start on it the sooner I shall be back home again, please God.

St Cloud, 7 May 1945Now this is Victory night. I have been out this evening so have not yet heard an

official confirmation of the full surrender announced by the Germans themselves earlier. Paris, at any rate, is satisfied with the news. The city is ablaze with lights, coloured rockets are shooting up in various parts, there are bands playing and crowds thronging the streets and singing. After I got back this evening I went out for a bit to savour some of the excitement but I felt lost and out of place and soon came home again. Besides, I had my letter to write….

Yesterday I had dinner in Paris with some high-ranking American officers, including a general, and tomorrow I am to dine with a French Cabinet Minister. So I am pretty fully occupied in the evenings….

I am sorry to hear about the tank but the expense can’t be helped. I was delighted to hear of the removal of the hall window coverings and the supporting post for the staircase. That really sounds like a return to normality. Now for the old wall. What does Robin think of the new access of light?

What a pity about the little bird. I am so sorry for John: I can just imagine what he felt like. I wonder you did not try it with small worms….

Laundry is a problem. They have no starch here and my collars look like nothing on earth. Please don’t send out any more; I have given up wearing stiff collars altogether for the time being. Uniform, by the way, has reached a crisis. …I have sent in an ultimatum to the effect that I refuse point blank to wear the battledress of an ordinary private soldier, without collar and tie or any badges of rank. If they insist, I will send in my resignation at once. Everybody here supports me and commends me for forcing the issue. My case is supported by the fact that two other civilians, dressed in this inadequate garb and looking exceedingly scruffy, were seized by the Military Police the other day and given a most unpleasant grilling. The cream of the joke is that both were ex-colonels in the regular army….

Have you heard anything from the Insurance people about my baggage insurance…? You will receive advice in due course of the crediting of certain extra sums to my account. They will mostly be reimbursement of my mess bills.

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St Cloud, 12 May 1945On Monday I move forward to Reims but expect to return within 7 days…. I

would add, by the way, that we are now allowed to refer to our precise location so long as we are in liberated territory. For the moment the ban still applies to enemy territory, so I may become a bit vague in later letters….

On V.E. Day, I saw a good deal of the jollification in Paris, without getting involved in the great crowds which packed some districts (the Champs Elysées, for example) in a solid mass. I dined in the Ave Kléber, which runs off the Étoile, with the French Minister of Reconstruction, a very fine man indeed. Afterwards we walked out to the Étoile, where the Arc de Triomphe was illumined so skilfully that it looked like translucent alabaster. The flags of the Allies stirred in the currents of air blowing through the archway, and the effect was magnificent. Overhead aeroplanes shot out coloured Verey lights and there were rockets too.

The next day I went into town by car after dinner with some people from the Mess here. We covered much more ground that time and saw the Opéra (very spectacular), the Vendôme pillars, the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysées with its fountains playing and floodlit. Two great streams of people moved along the Elysées in opposite directions. Down the narrow space between them moved jeeps absolutely smothered in girls (20 or more per jeep) and there were lorries absolutely crammed with people. All joyful and shouting greetings. Paris was en fête all right and it was especially a family affair. There were many whole families, including quite small children, proceeding line abreast along the road. There were also long lines of men and girls with linked hands dancing in a serpentine ‘follow-my-leader’ in and out of the crowds. Everyone was excited and the spirit was tremendous but there was no disorder. I did not see a single person the worse for drink.

One moving experience was when about 20 English soldiers came along. They were only ordinary Tommies but they had a real sense of dignity and doing the thing properly. They had got hold of a Union Jack, which was only a poor print thing really, but they bore it like the Guards on parade. And as they came near me someone called out, ‘Vive les Anglais!’ and there was an immediate roar of cheering, echoing that cry, and a volley of applause, from tens of thousands of people. It brought a lump to my throat….

With regard to your side of the water, I see that petrol will be available soon. Will you have a word with McColl about getting the car overhauled, the batteries and the new inner tube wanted for the spare tyre? …Any luck with a gardener yet?

As from St Cloud, 15 May 1945At the moment I am forward at Rheims, having arrived yesterday. In the evening

I sought out the Cathedral and found it impressive. Externally it bears scars from 1914-18, but the essential structure remains. I arrived in front of it at about half-past eight in the evening and the level rays of the sun illuminated both the details of the towers and buttress and the interior of the nave to their best advantage….

I forgot to mention in my last letter that my collars have arrived safely. I shall not send them to be laundered, however, until I can find a more skilful blanchisseuse.

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S.1As from St Cloud, 18 May 1945

I return from Rheims to St Cloud on the evening of 22 May. Thereafter my movements may make the above address unsuitable. (This does not mean an immediate move to Germany.)…

It occurs to me that we might number our letters, with advantage, in order to have a check on any going astray. I will call this – see top left corner – S.1. Perhaps you will number yours in series also, making the next one ‘F.1’. (This system continued, with minor hiccups now and then, until S.73 dated 13 April 1946, from Berlin, followed by one further, un-numbered letter dated 17 April which acknowledges the receipt of F.72 .)

I have had enough of Rheims. The Cathedral is first class. The rest of the town is dull and unattractive. There is just nothing to do here except go to the flicks. The countryside is not worth walking in. It is, moreover, very hot and humid.

DIARY

Tuesday, 22 nd May I returned to Paris by train and the next day flew back to London. One of the

things that had obtruded itself during my stay with G5 Finance was the low morale of the American officers. Many of them were US Treasury or Reserve Bank men, and they were absolutely under the thumb of the senior American officer, a Colonel Bernstein. Bernstein was a highly disreputable character. (This emerged even more clearly after his return to the United States than it did at this point.) He was intensely suspicious of anything the British did. He more or less allocated his men to keep an eye on particular British opposite numbers and used his contacts in Washington to terrorise these men with implied threats to their jobs back home. The atmosphere was really unpleasant, but I found that the men themselves were thoroughly decent and likeable fellows with whom I was able to make good friends. Moreover, with a little encouragement, the relations between them and their British counterparts were quite easily improved. I learned subsequently (from Chambers) that I was given, rightly or wrongly, a good deal of credit for this. (One young American officer with whom I got particularly friendly was Lt. LA Jennings of the US Treasury. Subsequently he became Controller of Currency in Washington and is now (1967) President of the Riggs National Bank in Washington DC.)

LETTERS

St Cloud, 1 June 1945Here I am, duly installed (having returned from a brief home leave). … The trip

over was interesting. The same sort of plane as before but a different sort of journey altogether. There was good deal of cloud and we climbed to 5000 feet or so to get over the cloud masses. When we did, the effect was most impressive. It was like sailing along over the top of gigantic masses of white cotton wool, piled into fantastic shapes and gleaming in the sun. And all so quiet and dignified. Through occasional rifts in the clouds I could see the fields of Kent and Sussex, far below. We crossed the coast over Eastbourne; I clearly recognized Pevensey Castle.

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One not so good feature was that the variations in atmospheric pressure affected my ears rather badly. I went quite deaf soon after the plane got to its operational height and no efforts of mine could induce my ears to ‘pop’. …The deafness went off soon after we landed but later on I had quite severe pain in both ears which lasted all night and kept me awake for quite a while. It is gradually wearing off though and will probably be gone in another 24 hours….

The general aspect of SHAEF is one of movement and dissolution. Hardly any of my friends are left. Several have gone forward to Frankfurt and one or two have left the Army already. This St Cloud institution is folding up soon also, so I should not address any more letters here….

P.S. I hope you get the car out this weekend. Take it easily and remember there will be a lot of stupid drivers knocking about!

St Cloud, 5 June 1945Someone who has returned from London today tells me that a decision has been

reached on the famous uniform question. I shall believe when I see it!I wonder whether you have got the car out yet? I have seen one or two very

attractive German cars about here. Very roomy they are, with just the kind of collapsible hood we like. I wish I could get hold of one.

In a way I shall be glad to get up to Frankfurt. This place is shutting down fast and wears a moribund air. Moreover the material for our work is largely staying forward waiting for us so we have little to do but know that a whole lot is accumulating for us to our detriment….

I read today something which impressed me very much for its sincere devotion. It was an extract from a letter from a private soldier to his wife. The censor picked it out and recorded it (anonymously, of course): ‘I am writing this very slowly, love, because I know you can only read it slowly.’ There is world of feeling there…

My dear love to you and the children.

DIARY

Wednesday, 6 th June I flew, with the whole of G5 Finance, from Paris to Frankfurt am Main. The lift

was accomplished by US Air Transport Command in no less than 17 DC3s. In fact, when we ran into somewhat heavy cloud, this armada was badly dispersed and only six of the planes landed at the approved airfield (Y74) at Frankfurt. Fortunately I was in one of those six. The other eleven came down in all sorts of places, sprinkled over Belgium, Holland, Germany and France. Apparently this was due to the fact that the American custom with the Air Transport flights was to have a navigator in one plane in four; the other planes were supposed to keep him in sight.

Y74 was a small field in the crook of a railway embankment. The approach of necessity came in low over this embankment and a striking feature was the rusty iron wreck of a train which had been bombed and derailed. It was raining on arrival and the drive through the shattered streets of Frankfurt was most depressing. The area around the SHAEF main headquarters, formerly the office building of IG Farben, had deliberately

22


been spared from bombing and therefore our offices and the houses selected for billets round about were quite intact and indeed very comfortable. It was a strange feeling to be in Germany.

There was little more to be done with SHAEF, which was due to be wound up on 20 June. I was therefore largely concerned with arranging for the arrival of some of the British Element of the Control Commission. Offices were found in one of the industrial outskirts of Frankfurt, Höchst. Billets were found in a neighbouring village, Sindlingen.

Nonetheless, there were still a number of broad matters to be handled with the Americans and a number of bilateral discussions continued. Meanwhile there had been some high-level diplomatic exchanges about the zones of occupation. Originally the American Zone was to be in the north, with the British in the south and with no French Zone at all. Into the middle of this came the decision to pull back the British Second Army from the line it had reached on the Elbe, and the Americans from Dresden and parts of Czechoslovakia. This was in order to allow the Russians to come forward. There was great feeling among the fighting soldiers against this on both British and American sides. However, it was a Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin decision and there was nothing to be done about it. Then de Gaulle made a fuss on the French side, and the solution was eventually for the French to have the area around the Black Forest, while the British and American Zones were switched over. The Americans retained the enclave around Bremen (which was silly) but otherwise withdrew to the south. In general, the Americans had the scenery while we had the industry.

LETTERS

As from St Cloud, 10 June 1945This is my first letter to you from Germany. I will not mention the city but you

know well enough which one it is….It is hard to describe the destruction. One has read about it all before but the sight

of it beggars belief. Nothing we ever had in London approaches it. Quite wide main streets – like Oxford Street, for example – are nothing but narrow lanes between high-stacked walls of rubble on either side, with precarious piles of ruin in the background. In the main part of the town there isn’t a single factory that has not been smashed irretrievably. Many private houses have suffered too, and I would put the destruction at about 70-80 per cent.

Nevertheless, the huge block of modern offices in which our headquarters are was almost untouched. Smashed windows have been reglazed and we have excellent office accommodation. The buildings are set in fine gardens and the separate mess building is set back behind a cascade and ornamental pool. Here is peaceful and very pleasant.

Round about the office building is an area of villas and flats for the people who formerly worked there. A sort of Welwyn Garden City in German architecture. A good number of the houses were damaged by bombing but many remain and there we have our billets. The whole area – perhaps one mile by two miles – is enclosed within a barbed wire fence. The streets enclosed are all wide, pleasant thoroughfares with plenty of trees.

The house I am in at the moment is beautifully furnished and had not suffered from looting. It is very sad to see all the little things of someone’s home around you and

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to think of what it must have meant to them to be turned out. They had to leave at 24 hours’ notice and were allowed to take with them only food, clothing and bedclothes….

There are still a good number of people left in this particular town but obviously nothing like the original full population. They go quickly about their business and we have little contact. Nevertheless some things bear upon one if one has any sensibilities at all. I have a girl of about 18 who looks after my billet for cleaning and so on. When I first met her she was obviously frightened that I would bully her. The trouble is that one can’t be as pleasant as one would because of the non-fraternisation rules.

Near at hand is an area which the British Commission has taken over and there the guards are entirely British…. Fundamentally the British soldiers’ manners are good…. As a consequence, the Germans feel that reasonable requests will not be refused and I should say that mutual relations are quite good and will improve. This seems to me the only sensible course if we wish to re-educate Germany. No doubt I shall see many things in the course of time which will help me to fuller conclusions as to what the Allies should be doing and how, but I am convinced that the present bald non-fraternisation edict is dead wrong. Moreover it is bankrupt now that the Russians have thrown it overboard in their zone.

Frankfurt, 16 June 1945 I have had far more to do here than ever came my way in France. The reason is

that Chambers (Head of Finance Division, Control Commission) has made me into his unofficial alternate over the whole field of the Financial Division when he is absent. Consequently, my responsibilities, which a long while ago had spread from the Reichsbank over the whole field of banking, now embrace Public Finance, Foreign Exchange, Property Control and Currency and Accounts as well. All in all I have to hop around.

I notice from my diary that I have been forgetting to number my letters. I wrote S.2 to you on 1-2 June and have since written on the 5th and 10th so this should be S.5.

Frankfurt, 17-18 June 1945Here is the continuation of S.5. I hope it will go off hot on the heels of the other

…In the interval I have been glad to receive John’s letter and your F.3 containing Robin’s letter and the nail clippers.

I think John’s sums, and his letter, are fine and I am so glad to hear of the 14 stars. He seems to be going ahead well now. Robin’s letter also was first rate.

It’s good news about the car. Perhaps it’s just as well you were left to deal with the garage, because I am sure they wouldn’t have done things so quickly for me. I can well imagine both the relief to you and the joy to the children in being able to use the car again….

I think you are wise to fix up at Worthing and I hope I shall be able to join you on 8th Sept. It might be as well to enquire about garage accommodation and book up if possible….

I have been out and about a bit in the last week, both in the town and in the country side for 25 miles around. Chambers shares his car with me and while he is away I have it to myself. It is a big Humber (at last!) and runs very well. Since, moreover, it is

24


a general’s car, it is received with great deference by military authorities who otherwise pay scant respect to a civilian, which is pleasing.

One day I tried to get Chambers off by a certain plane but it left without him, so that he had to wait two hours for the next. We filled in the time by driving out into the adjacent hills and most pleasant it was – rich agricultural country among hills and woods, with little red-roofed villages dotted here and there. The sun was shining, the sky blue and larks were singing overhead. Not a sign of war anywhere: just peaceful and lovely as only the untouched countryside can be. Then there was a great swishing of wings among the barley and out came a great stork which flapped lazily over my head and across the valley to his nest on top of a church or some other big building. He had building material in his beak for urgent repair work! He was very handsome and so big that his every movement could be followed at half a mile or more away.…

One evening I took Edward Bach (a friend and colleague) back to his billet at Wiesbaden. On the way we ran down to the Rhine at Mainz to have a look at the river, which was quite impressive in the evening glow. Mainz was never a very attractive city, I guess; now it is absolutely pulverised. Wiesbaden was probably quite attractive but it is badly smashed as a result of one single half-hour’s attention by the RAF….

I have chosen a flat in the adjacent village where the Control Commission Special Echelon are to be and will probably move in on the 22nd. … The flat is quite small but decently furnished. The snag is that there is no hot water for the bath and my batman will have to bring it up from a copper downstairs. …

I must tell you about my best excursion of all. I went with a colleague named Burgess to try to find a suitable group of houses for residences for Chambers and a few other high-ranking officials who wished to be up in the hills for the summer. We were free to look where we wished and took a roundabout route which led right up into the Taunus. The roads wound high up into the mountains and through thick pine woods. Unfortunately it poured with rain most of the time and we benefited from little except the mountain air. Having found two reasonably suitable locations on the lower slopes we returned home.

Frankfurt, 21 June 1945Glad to learn that Bill S. delivered the engine (a small static steam engine, about

25 cms tall, which gave much delight to us boys), but according to Dad they have not got it going yet. One reason may be that the heating apparatus does not belong to the engine itself - I found it separately - and consequently it may not bring the flame into close enough contact with the boiler. A first-rate man to tackle that job would be Mr Grant. He loves that kind of thing and is skilled in metalwork. I suggest you enlist his assistance. Incidentally, it is important to ensure that the water supply in the boiler does not run too low – otherwise you may get an explosion!

The weather has turned extremely hot – in fact rather too hot for my liking. ... I am due to move out to my new billet (35 Neulandstrasse, Sindlingen) this

afternoon and think it may be quite comfortable. Col. Debenham and I have succeeded, after much negotiation, in getting hold of a couple of one-bedroom flats facing each other on the first floor of a smallish house. There are a lot of fruit trees in the gardens and we are on the fringe of open country - flat country, unfortunately, but better than bricks and mortar in ugly heaps.

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Frankfurt, 22 June 1945A hurried note about kit. Major Sharpe is sending on for me: (1) 2 shirts

(flannel!!!!!); (2) 1 tie; (3) 1 cap; (4) cap and shoulder badges. If you should be able to spare an old sheet or two and pillow case, I would be grateful. Perhaps you can manage it. If so, Sharpe could make one consignment of both lots.

Another thing – could you buy me two officer’s khaki shirts in some better material than flannel - and a tie to go with them? … You may have to bluff a little about my officer status but you can state that they are to supplement my normal uniform. …

Thank Wendy for her splendid letter. I will write to her tomorrow if I can. Re newt – he must have somewhere to land when he feels like it: a piece of cork bark or something like that, or an island of rock. …

Gas on today so I can have hot water from now on.

Special Echelon, Control Commission for Germany (British Element), Frankfurt-Höchst, Germany)27-28 June 1945

Irregularity of despatch [of letters from me] … has not been due to either neglect or intention … but to sheer flogging hard work which has kept me active on all sorts of affairs other than those of my own choice till quite late every night. I have quiet moment now merely because I am holding the fort at Chambers’ house while he is recovering his equilibrium at an informal party after a most trying day. Poor chap, after changing his plane three times owing to all sorts of unexpected business cropping up, he made a 90-mile an hour dash to catch the last plane only to find it had been cancelled owing to bad weather. By the time we knew that, we were too late to stop a message to his wife telling her to expect him!

Next morning, 7.45 amI didn’t get very far with my letter after all. Chambers met Debenham and they

came back to this house right away. We then talked steadily – partly shop and partly to calm C. down – until gone 11. …

They are already making noticeable progress in cleaning Frankfurt up. There is quite a difference already since my arrival. At least two more tram routes have been brought into operation and a lot of progress is being made in clearing rubble from the sidewalks. The rubble is partly being stacked further back on the bombed sites, partly being carted away and dumped into aircraft runways on the new airfields.

I am now well settled into my new billet. The owner of the house comes in to do the housework in the mornings and has agreed to do washing, ironing and darning for me. The first lot was beautifully done and a great improvement on the really dreadful US Army laundry, which was the only alternative. I also expressed the wish to buy some of the fruit out of the garden if she could spare it; she produced a fine dish of raspberries, strawberries and eating gooseberries – and would not hear of payment! Incidentally, now that the good lady has found we take care of her home, she is gradually bringing little articles back. A small bedside lamp appeared one day; yesterday I found a rush mat in the bathroom. So relations are quite good. I think my batman must be a good ambassador.

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Frankfurt, 1 July 1945This British camp in which I am now established is settling down into its stride

and I hope that my letters will be reaching you more quickly in future than when they passed through American hands at SHAEF. I believe that SHAEF dies, officially, today, so that there may soon be an official modification of my address again. Moreover, Berlin comes more and more into the picture as a possibility.

I have not had my new kit yet but no doubt it will arrive soon. I remain uncommissioned and therefore plain ‘Mr’. Nevertheless I shall switch over to uniform soon and wear it consistently. The new ruling is that civilian clothes are optional but that, when worn, they must bear the Commission’s ‘flash’. I’m blowed if I will go about looking like a Jew in Nazi Germany! That raises the question of service dress, but there is no apparent likelihood yet of the coupons being provided. So that must wait for the time being. They go on muddling to the end, don’t they?

I’m glad Mr Grant was able to set John’s engine to rights. I was confident he could. What is the latest news of the newt? ...

Frankfurt, 3 July 1945In reply to Mum’s questions about the forthcoming General Election:It is my hope that this time there will be an appreciable increase in Liberal

representation in Parliament. They have no hope of forming a Government and indeed I would not want them to, since they lack men of sufficient experience yet. But I would like to see enough demonstration of faith in Liberal principles to encourage the considerable number of young men now in the Party to go on trying and accumulating political experience.

If [the majority of the Conservative candidate last time] was substantial, I would certainly vote for [the Liberal candidate], although I know nothing about him. If there is some danger of Labour getting in, however, I would vote for [the Conservative]. I have a deal of sympathy for Labour but they are a menace as long as they retain some of their present leaders. …

I have now heard that I am to be allowed to buy a pair of sheets at the officers’ shop over here, so I should be quite comfortable soon.

The past week has been rather dull. I was unable to get out into the country for a breather until Sunday, when Debenham and I managed to get in quite a pleasant walk for a mile or two across the fields.

The fields are quite different from ours - no hedges and each crop sown bang up to the line of each adjacent crop. And the areas sown with each crop are, in this neighbourhood, quite small strips. It looks very uneconomic for working but I suppose the Germans know best what suits their own land and people. Something to do with peasant holdings, I expect. The crops themselves are first-rate. There is a lot of bearded wheat round here, which is already being harvested. The wheat is hardly yellowing at all yet and oats are quite green. Barley is still unripe too. They grow more potatoes than we do and lots of vetch, lucerne and green vegetables. Most of the cultivation we see now was done by deportees from the occupied countries, of course, but there will soon be a good many demobilised soldiers to pick up where they left off.

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Debenham and I have managed to find a chess set and that is a great comfort. Otherwise we had no entertainment possibilities at all. He is too good for me, so far at any rate, but it’s good fun. I have won 1 game and drawn 1 out of 9 to date!

No. 9 Officers’ Mess, Main HQ, Control Commission for Germany (British Element), Lübbecke, Germany11 July 1945

Please note the change in my address. It indicates an abrupt change in my location and responsibilities.

To begin at the beginning: it rained harder and harder, as you know, on Tuesday morning and our aircraft could not get away until after 12 o’clock. Then we took off and plunged into thick cloud at once. It was strange and rather unpleasant to be charging on through impenetrable cloud. Eventually we ran out of the cloud layer at 6,000 feet and thereafter flew on an even keel all the way to Frankfurt. The clouds lasted until we were well into Germany and lay below us in thick masses, piled like the contorted surface of a frozen sea.

We landed all right, in bright sunshine, at 2.30 pm. Thereafter a series of meetings, with a brief interval for food, lasted until after midnight.

Just before midnight a thunderstorm broke and rain commenced which lasted without intermission all night and … until about 7 pm on Wednesday.

In the course of our meetings on Tuesday it was decided that it was essential to concentrate the Banking Branch at Lübbecke and consequently to swap Seligman (a Bank colleague) for me. Thus I find myself rooted out of my comfortable flat and landed in Lübbecke.

I ran up here with C.A.G. (Gunston) in his car yesterday afternoon. Left Frankfurt 3.45 pm; arrived Lübbecke 9.45 pm - distance about 200 miles.

Actually I have not seen the town of Lübbecke yet because we came to a transit mess on the outskirts overnight. I have to see about a permanent billet this morning. Meanwhile the situation is evidently a lot better than Frankfurt. The immediate countryside is very pleasant. The last few miles of the run were through smiling fields with orchards and woods and pretty little villages. Here we are up in the hills, with woods all round.

This mess is a large, bungalow sort of building. I should say it was a Nazi summer school or something of that kind. It is redolent of that smell of wood floors and polish that will be familiar to you. I am writing this letter on a sort of verandah, in the early morning sunshine.

Lübbecke, 14 July 1945I stayed up at the Transit Mess for another 24 hours. Then I moved to my

‘permanent’ billet. This is a bedroom in a pleasant villa, facing open fields again. A slight disadvantage is that it faces due west and gets the full afternoon sun. It is terribly hot just now and you know that I don’t like great heat. Furniture is quite comfortable and I have been provided with a pair of sheets!!

My plans are to make this place my headquarters and to make expeditions to different parts of the British Zone from time to time. I shall then decide where my strategic base is likely to be and move my HQ there. I think Hamburg is a likely place

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for eventual settlement. Actually I am due off on a rather hectic round tomorrow, so if I am late with my next letter, please forgive me.

It’s rather fun driving my own car again. I had to leave the Humber for Chambers in Frankfurt, of course. Here I have a part (major) share in a Mercedes Benz – not a very big one, about 14 hp, but very fine. I may pick one up entirely for myself in Hamburg. I find driving on the right has come quite easily so far.

DIARY

Monday, 16 th July In Hamburg. In accordance with arrangements made for me by the local military

government, I began a series of interviews with local German bankers, including Hermann Abs, who had been removed from his post at the head of the Deutsche Bank in accordance with the de-Nazification laws. Abs himself had never been a Nazi and his reputation was very high both as a banker and as a man. I took to him immediately and this meeting was the beginning of a friendship which has lasted ever since.

LETTERS

As from Lübbecke, 17 July 1945It is a queer thing to sit down here to write you a letter on my birthday. Here am

I, however - age 42 - in Hamburg. There you are, sweetheart, a long way away. My loving greetings to you over the miles that separate us for a time.

It is dull this morning and heavy with rain clouds, after having rained steadily all night. This follows over a week of unbroken sunshine and is rather a relief after the great heat.

I like Hamburg. There are areas of great devastation but some of the outskirts have very little damage and the business quarter round and about the two lakes (the Binnen Alster and the Aussen Alster) is not nearly so badly hit as I imagined. I am staying at the moment in a very big hotel near the Aussen Alster that seems practically untouched. There are, moreover, crowds of people here who throng the streets and go purposefully about their business. You probably know that the old Hansa city always clung stoutly to a good deal of independence and was a core of resistance to Nazism pretty consistently throughout. Thus one feels hopeful that here is spirit and determination and perhaps more elements of sanity than in most parts of Germany.

Because of the business and financial activity here I think it likely that I shall shift my HQ here in due course. In fact every one in the Banking Branch and most of the other Branches too agrees with that. But Chambers opposes it for some obscure reason.

Today I must drive back to Lübbecke – about 140 miles. I shall take it easy and spend about 4 hours on the journey. This may, in fact, seem pretty speedy to you, but on the Autobahn, which is largely deserted now except for Army cars or lorries every few miles, one can notch up 50 or more and stay there for half an hour or more on end. There are no crossroads and even feeder roads or exit roads only about every 7 miles.

I have been wearing uniform for this trip and had to borrow a cap, a shirt and a couple of collars to complete it. No parcel yet and no clothing store at Lübbecke for another month! What an organisation!

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Lübbecke, 22 July 1945I believe this should be S.15, but I’ve lost count!The harvest is now well advanced all round here and it will be a fortunate thing

for the Germans this winter that it has been an exceptionally good one. Incidentally, I don’t think there will be any shortage at all in country districts like this. There is plenty of most locally produced foods, and every farmhouse has a good store of hams and dried peas and pickled eggs hidden away. Eggs, I would mention, work out at something less than 1/2d each.

I flew down to Frankfurt on Wednesday morning and back again on Friday afternoon. It was a hectic couple of days and the upshot a conviction that there must be a drastic reorganisation of some aspects of the Finance Division’s method of working….I believe something will done about it; if not I shall have to make representations to the Bank. As it is, I am kept jumping from one place to another like a flea on a hot plate, with no opportunity either for adequate surveys of actual conditions or for forming mature judgments as to what should be done about them….What I need is an adequate headquarters, in touch with the other Divisions, and occasional trips of inspection into the field. It is quite impossible to add to that weekly excursions for committee meetings 200 miles away. (And, don’t forget, 200 miles over wrecked roads!)

Yesterday, believe it or not, I took part in a football match. We hope to start cricket when we can get a pitch prepared; meanwhile, football (in July!!) holds the field. This was an Officers v Other Ranks match. Not serious, of course, but quite good fun. I did not intend to play but got roped in because our side was two short. There were occasions when I wished I did not have 12 stone odd to shift about, but nevertheless it appears that I astonished a lot of people by my turn of speed. So perhaps I’m not so old after all. We lost, 4-0….

I have got a card for an officers’ shop when I can get to one. Meanwhile I have been wearing borrowed garments, which does not suit me at all.

Also, as a result of a wholesale reshuffle, I have got yet another car. It is being overhauled at the moment. (The original owner sabotaged it by putting chalk in the petrol tank.) It is a Ford V8 two-seater coupé – a huge thing, about 30 hp….

P.S. I would like to see The Times containing the Election results.

Lübbecke, 25 July 1945It is necessary for me to go off on another tour soon to survey my ‘diocese’ before

any conversations with the Russians. My ‘diocese’ is the British Zone in general, which you have no doubt seen delineated on Times maps. The main cities I shall visit, I hope, are Hannover, Münster, Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Kiel, each the head of a Province or equivalent governmental unit. I expect to be away from here 7-10 days but may pop back in the course of the tour….Thereafter I am due for Berlin but I see no reason for making that my base; my opinion (shared by all the Finance Division except the Chief!) is that we should maintain only minimal representation in Berlin, supplementing it by periodic visits from the rest of us when necessary. My reasons for that opinion are diverse and weighty; they are better conveyed by word of mouth than on paper….

My work is beginning to sort itself out quite nicely. No doubt there are snags ahead but, to vary the metaphor, I feel like the driver of a badly skidding car who is at

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last beginning to straighten it out. I believe we shall get the British Zone to work all right one of these days. The others remain somewhat problematical.

We have seen an interesting psychological development in our Mess. We have a British sergeant and corporal in charge, two German cooks (whom I have not seen) and four German girls as waitresses. The latter are led by a tough little Nazi. As blonde an Aryan as ever you did see and, originally, with a face like flint. She started by parading her four girls before the sergeant and saying, ‘We are ordered to work here and we will work. But you are our enemies and we are your enemies and we want no favours. Let that be understood!’ That from a 17 ½ -year-old! Well, that was the beginning. We all rather respected it in a way because we felt it was honest and made a far better impression than the rather slimy types who protest that they never were Nazis and never could have been in a thousand years. Anyway, without anyone doing anything in particular, the girl is being transformed in front of our eyes. She smiles and is quite pleasant now. Last Saturday, quite of her own accord, she brought one of her friends along and watched our football match. Moreover, before the match, she joined in with the Tommies in kicking the ball around! I wonder what the end of it will be?

DIARY

Sunday, 29 th July In the course of a walk over a field near Stockhausen, I came across a pile of

charred paper in a ditch. Amongst it I found some aerial photographs of Cardiff and Birmingham. Targets for bombing included the docks in Cardiff and various big factories in Birmingham which had been outlined in red ink. These photographs had apparently been taken from the Graf Zeppelin when crossing peacefully over England on its regular Atlantic flights.

LETTERS

Lübbecke, 29 July 1945Now that I have the Commercial Banks to look after, as well as the Reichsbank, I

have my hands over full. I press ahead with my campaign for recognition of the fact that we must be allowed time to stand back from our work and assess its perspective quietly. We work, or should be working, sub specie aeternitatis, and can’t work to that standard in the middle of Oxford Circus! We need more staff, less committees and less pressure on the accelerator by people who don’t understand the issues involved. A growing number of people recognise this but the evil lies very high up in the hierarchy…

The election results are rather staggering, aren’t they? The Liberal situation is most disappointing but reflects, as usual, the anomalies of ‘seats in relation to votes’. You will have worked out the proportion of their votes to those of other parties and compared the result with the proportion of their seats to other parties. It is at any rate satisfactory that nearly 2 million people voted Liberal. There was undoubtedly a revulsion of feeling against the Conservatives, and the Liberal trend probably got swamped. I have not lost hope yet.

I am afraid Churchill’s election tactics were thoroughly bad. A lot of old clichés in his speeches, too, with very little constructive programme. The fact is, I think, that the

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Services’ vote was dead against him. Now we shall see whether Labour really has a policy or not.

Lübbecke, 9 August 1945Last night about half a dozen of us…got onto the atomic bomb (the Hiroshima

attack took place three days before) and three of my colleagues expressed their horror and fear at such a terrible instrument of destruction. One or two argued that (a) reports were probably exaggerated and (b) weapons of attack were always countered by weapons of defence…. One man asked me if I was an optimist as to the future. I said that if he meant, was I confident that the underlying purpose of the universe was good and that good would ultimately be triumphant, I was an optimist.

DIARY

Sunday, 12 th August From Lübbecke I set off with one of my staff to assess the situation in the

Rhineland and left by car for Düsseldorf. We ran into heavy rain which was almost blinding at times and had quite a narrow escape from running over a blown bridge. We had been specifically directed along the road leading to the bridge by a German. This was the first instance I had come across of ill will and ill intentions. We chased around for him for a while, out for his blood, but could not find him.

LETTERS

Lübbecke, 13 August 1945I should have been off to Düsseldorf yesterday but am still waiting for a car. My

own Ford still awaits a new connecting rod. However, I hope to get off today and to return to Lübbecke on Thursday or Friday of this week. I am on short notice for Berlin, too, but hope that will be only a flying visit.

Yesterday a party of us went off to lunch and tea at a newly opened officers’ club at Bad Salzuflen, about 15 miles away - a pretty little spa town up in the hills. It is well built and the Kurhaus, where the club is, is well appointed. There was a good orchestra in the afternoon and we strolled around the grounds between the showers. There is a lake there with canoes available. These were soaked with rain, so I did not patronise them.

On Saturday afternoon I went for a short walk across the plain north of Lübbecke. I spent a short time talking to a farmer who was ploughing in the stubble. The plough was drawn by two cows. He was an interesting chap though his conversation was the German equivalent of [a West Country dialect] and somewhat difficult for me to follow.

Lübbecke, 14 August 1945I am finishing off this letter in Düsseldorf. I had to scamper around yesterday

morning. Then in the afternoon a car materialised unexpectedly and I left Lübbecke in a hurry. It was an extraordinary journey here. The first part was along the Autobahn – smooth and unimpeded. Then we struck the fighting area and were finally forced off the Autobahn altogether and had to follow a route through Dortmund, Bochum and Essen. You can imagine what it was like! To add to the fun we ran through a series of

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thunderstorms with such heavy rain that, even on good stretches of road, we had to come down to 5 mph. We did not get to Düsseldorf until 9 o’clock and by the time we had made contact with the Mil. Gov. people, got a billet and had a clean-up and meal, it was pretty late.

Lübbecke, 17 August 1945My trip was interesting but a rather sombre and terrible experience in its way. I

travelled through Dortmund, Bochum, Essen and Mülheim and you can have no conception of the devastation there. Dortmund now takes first place among all the towns I have seen for the extent of its destruction. The smash of everything in sight, the roads still cratered and littered with rubble, whole streets still impassable, tramlines looped and festooned in the air, the steel girders of former factories tangled like a mass of ravelled knitting. And it rained and rained till every ruin was spouting runnels of water and the roads were swimming with a thin gruel of mud. Through it all stumbled the people of the place, soaked and splashed and dispirited - dispirited because their homes are ruined and damp and overcrowded. There is practically no fuel and not much food. Yet it is amazing what they achieve. Mostly they are neat and tidy. In one place I saw an utterly ruined building: everything above the ground floor was smashed and rickety, dangerous walls jutted out at strange angles, and the ground floor consisted of empty caverns of charred destruction through which the rain dripped drearily. Yet, in a sort of semi-basement, there was evidently some kind of intact accommodation since the three tiny windows were shielded by lace curtains that were absolutely spotless. Somehow that brave show cut at me more than all the rest of it. They have paid a heavy price, these people, and the reckoning is not yet paid in full. God knows what the winter will exact.

Münster was another kind of experience. It must have been a lovely old city but, because it is a great railway centre and was the head of a Wehrkreis, it was very heavily bombed. It is almost completely destroyed over whole areas. I visited the Reichsbank, itself a shell. How the staff could work there I do not know, since the place was haunted by the stench of [physical] corruption….

But the Germans call the British Zone the ‘Free Zone’. They are grateful that there are signs of a power in control which can be effective. The post is functioning again throughout our Zone, and that is the foundation for many things. The railways are functioning more and more, and there are passenger trains again. These and many other steps are still lacking in the other Zones. Bit by bit the skeleton of a functioning organism is being put together. I believe we shall win through, but the tasks needing immediate attention are stupendous and the battle will be very hard. I hope that the end of the Jap war will release a number of capable men who will devote themselves to this task with energy and imagination. I am convinced we can help this part of the country, at any rate, to rebuild its life and regain its soul. …

It was a relief and a solace to be entertained in a really good officers’ mess at Münster. The building was a former officers’ club of the Wehrmacht and quite undamaged. It is beautifully designed and furnished and with a lovely garden at the back. After dinner we had a small violin and piano recital in the lounge-cum-music room.

We have had almost continuous rain for about 10 days now, with intermittent thunderstorms. The outlook for the rest of harvest is pretty poor. The consequences of a

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crop failure, even if only partial, will be greater suffering by the Germans and greater difficulties for us.

DIARY

Wednesday, 22 nd August I interviewed a man called Hülse, one of the respected members of the

Reichsbank Direktorium. He, with Vocke, another member of the Direktorium, had been found living in obscurity in Berlin. The Russians were searching for them, but Gunston had smuggled them out of Berlin under a tarpaulin in the bank of a three-ton truck. Both men had a good political reputation and it was our intention to use Vocke to run the Reichsbank Leitstelle in Hamburg. However, this proved impossible because Vocke was called as a witness for the Nuremberg trial of Schacht and it was judged inadvisable to use him until the decks had been cleared. Instead, we appointed Kramer, whom I had recently met in Düsseldorf. (In 1948 Wilhelm Vocke became President of the Directorate of the Bank Deutscher Länder, the predecessor body of the Deutsche Bundesbank. The diary mentions Hülse in this capacity; this is not correct, but he may well have served as an ordinary member of the Directorate.)

LETTERS

Lübbecke, 27 August 1945We had practically no celebration about VJ Day. It seems so remote here. The

Japanese war meant very little to us. Its continuance or its end conveyed little more than a general sense of satisfaction. Nevertheless it evidently meant a great deal in London and I am delighted to hear of all the good fun the children had. From the illustrated papers it would seem that the illuminations in London were very fine.

DIARY

Monday 3 rd September I drove up to Berlin. We left the British Zone at Helmstedt, passing through both

British and Russian controls, and there was a big delay crossing the Elbe at Magdeburg. The autobahn bridge had been blown and there was a diversion over a floating bridge of pontoons which took quite a while to negotiate. Beyond the Elbe the road was not too badly damaged except in places where there had been bombing or shell fire. Here the Russian repair work was much inferior to what one saw in the British and American Zones. The Russian troops we saw were evidently of the poorest peasant type and had been looting heavily. They had troop carriers, gun carriages and even tanks loaded up with goods, including furniture. Not much of this got very far but was pitched off and destroyed. Such Germans as we saw working in the fields looked pretty miserable. There was no civilian traffic on the autobahn at all.

On the outskirts of Berlin we ran through first Russian and then Western Allied controls. The western outskirts did not show too bad a picture. I was put up at the Savoy Hotel.

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Tuesday, 4 th September I went to British Headquarters, in the former OKH (Army High Command)

building in the Messedamm and also went to have a look at the Reichsbank. This involved going into the Russian sector but there was no difficulty about that in a British car.

The Reichsbank itself was a wreck. The main building had been completely demolished and the Jägerstrasse was blocked and impassable because of the collapsed walls. I was told it had been hit by two blockbusters in an RAF raid and Russian artillery had finished off the rest. ... the banking district of Berlin, where the head offices of the all the big banks and insurance companies had been, was located wholly in the Russian Zone, and the Russians had gutted what was left of it when they arrived. There had, in fact, been not much left. The whole of this central area of the city was assessed as 90% destroyed and it certainly looked that way.

I went and had a look at Hitler’s Chancellery which had suffered very badly - at the hands of the Russian troops more than anything else. It had evidently been a most blatant and vulgar place but it was painful to see beautiful furniture smashed and gouged and upholstery and tapestry ripped and soiled. The Gedänkniskirche stood at the end of the Kurfürstendamm as a melancholy and shattered ruin. There were, however, shops functioning and I was surprised to find that I could have my glasses, which I had broken, mended with a new lens within 24 hours.

LETTERS

As from Lübbecke, 4 September 1945I have at last arrived in Berlin – eight years, almost to a day, since my last visit.We arrived at 7pm yesterday evening after a six-hour run from Lübbecke - over

small country roads through Minden, Bückeburg, Stadthagen, then Autobahn all the way to Berlin. From the region of Hannover to within 20 miles or so of Potsdam the country is flat and uninteresting- obviously poor, sandy soil, with sparse cultivation and a generally bleak appearance. Nearer Berlin one runs through thick pine woods and the road sweeps rather magnificently through them.

We ran, of course, through the Russian Zone and it was interesting to see my first Russian soldiers. Tough, healthy-looking fellows, looking quite smart and bearing themselves well. (He was not feeling so charitable when he wrote the diary entry above!)

As from Lübbecke, 28 September 1945I am again in Berlin, having come up by air on Wednesday morning. The journey

was accompanied by the irritating delays at each end which seem inseparable from air travel. In the course of some 7 hours I got to my hotel; I could have done it in 6 by car, easily.

There is a distinct nip in the air now and the leaves are beginning to fall. One has thus a premonition already of what the winter will bring. Nevertheless I have the impression that things are better here, in the British sector, than they were 3-4 weeks ago. There has been noticeable progress in clearing up. One sees lots of men at work repairing houses and I am told that we have already mended 142 out of the 155 breaks in

35


the main sewers when we took over from the Russians. Moreover the people look a little better fed (our dried milk?) and a little girl to whom I offered some sandwiches yesterday actually declined them because she wasn’t hungry. …

I had my first experience of a quadripartite meeting yesterday. I presided over the first meeting of the Currency Committee and was pleased that it went very well. The Russian representatives made a very good impression on me.

Berlin, 29 September 1945Yesterday I progressed further in my search for the S. family. (Erwin Steuer was

a pen pal and old friend from before the War.) … I talked to the person with whom Frau Steuer (Erwin’s mother) is living. I learned that …Erwin is dead, killed on the Eastern Front two years ago. That is bad news but I had feared that he would have gone by way of a concentration camp, which would have been infinitely worse.

The person to whom I spoke has had her tragedy. She is quite young, I think, but looks about 50. She has a small girl (Karin) just under two years old. Her husband was with her in the cellar of their house during the shelling just at the end and had to go out to try to get some milk for the baby. He was shot by the SS because he had no identification papers on him – he had left them in the cellar 200 yards away. …

I gave the small Karin some chocolate.

Lübbecke, 2 October 1945I saw Erwin’s mother at the third attempt. … I called and the door was opened by

the younger woman who is giving her shelter. This younger woman evidently told Frau Steuer that someone had called but did not say who.

I heard Frau Steuer say eagerly, ‘Der Jüngste?’ (Roman, her youngest son, is missing.)

‘Nein.’‘Also – meine Schwiegertochter?’‘Nein.’And then with a rising cry I cannot describe: ‘Der Engländer?’‘Ja.’‘Gott sei Dank. Er hat uns nicht vergessen!’Frau Steuer than came quickly into the hall, cried out, ‘Stanley!’, with a sort of

gasping sob, flung her arms around me, put her face on my shoulder and burst into terrible weeping. The poor woman (she is 67) has had great trouble and I think the sight of me brought out a depth of sorrow that had been suppressed too long. At any rate, she told me later, when she was somewhat recovered, that she had not wept so much ever since she received the news of Erwin’s death.

Roman she has not heard of since early 1944, when he was in Romania. Kurt she knows was badly wounded and in hospital in South Germany in April 1945. Possibly he is in American hands but she has heard nothing. Her home is utterly destroyed with every piece of clothing and furniture. She has neither papers nor cooking utensils. She feels utterly alone, and I was the one link for her back to the old life with her sons. It is no wonder that she was affected at seeing me.

Erwin was in a Pioneer Company and was engaged in widening a road some way behind the front when he stepped on a mine. This was on 6 October 1941, near Starya

36


Russa. He was apparently much affected by the war, which he knew to be wrong. His mother said that, on his last leave, he was talking about me and said, ‘How shall I be able to face him again?’ It is clear that the Steuer family regarded me as a faithful friend and I am glad I did not waver in my faith in them.

The SS men were responsible for burning the Steuer flat, after they found eight wounded Wehrmacht men sheltering there. They shot all eight and would have shot Frau Steuer too if they had found her.

I have never experienced such intensity of hate as Frau Steuer and those like her have for the Nazis. Of Hitler she said, ‘Dieser Satan in menschlicher Gestalt,’ (‘This devil in human form.’) and I could never convey to you the emotion in her voice. She seems to have expressed her views very freely all through the war and it is a wonder she did not get into serious trouble. She tells me she listened to the BBC every night without fail.

I will do all I can to help her, of course, but it will not be easy. What she needs is food and fuel. She is too feeble, you see, to go into the forests gathering wood as most of them do.

Finance Division, Advance HQ, Control Commission for Germany, Berlin.6 October 1945

I am staying with the Chief in his very comfortable and pleasantly situated house in Grünewald/Dahlem.

Berlin, 7 October 1945Yesterday afternoon I finished work early and then went for quite a long walk

across the Grünewald. This is a big stretch of wooded country, rather like Hampstead Heath but not so hilly and with thick growth of young trees instead of gorse. It was almost deserted except for a few people gathering wood for fuel. I think the reason for this is that the struggle for existence absorbs all the feeble energy of the people so that they have neither strength nor inclination for country walks. There were abundant traces of fighting in certain areas – German steel helmets, clips of rifle cartridges, water bottles, shell cases, slit trenches – and the top (steering vanes) of an RAF bomb.

The houses in the immediate neighbourhood where I am living are rather fine. Some are very large indeed and all are laid out in a fashion which indicates that the owners must have been very well to do. This district has suffered relatively little damage from bombs or shell fire, but very few houses have escaped altogether and about one in six or seven is completely destroyed. Owing to the very great number of trees one does not have the impression of even the amount of destruction that has been. Hence Grünewald, Wilmersdorf, etc, are very much less depressing than most of Berlin.

Yesterday evening I went to the Opera. The main Opera House is destroyed but ENSA have taken over a theatre which has fortunately survived and the Sadlers Wells Company gave a very good performance of La Bohème.

This morning I may go and watch some tennis. This afternoon my choice will lie between something in the open air and a Beethoven concert by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. …You will notice that Berlin affords certain amenities which certainly never come our way in Lübbecke.

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Berlin, 11 October 1945Chambers is in London and no-one else is here from Lübbecke at the moment. So

I live here in solitary glory, attended by a cook, four maids and a butler! This is of course immeasurably superior to anything Lübbecke could provide but is exceptional even for Berlin. Incidentally I understand that the Banking Branch will move from Lübbecke to Hamburg quite soon. That will be a relief.

I am working very hard on and for my two Committees. It is very interesting and I hope some useful results will follow our labours.

I wonder whether you realise that we have passed the half-way line of my year with the Commission. It is a great feeling. I am pretty sure that Chambers will want to keep me beyond the year but he is using me for general financial purposes rather than for the Reichsbank and that was not in the bargain. The Bank will, I am sure, have pretty strong ideas. …My best thoughts on the matter are to continue my work on the Reichsbank to the point where it can demonstrably be [ready to be] handed over to someone else with safety.

Lübbecke, 17 October 1945I embark upon yet another type of notepaper. I am sorry about all this variation

but the rather pleasant paper I used to use was an American issue which is not now available to me. The British supplies vary a great deal in appearance but are uniformly poor in quality. I now have an enormous pad of this; it ought to last for ages.

I came back here from Berlin yesterday afternoon. A wretched grey and drizzling day and a poor journey all round. About 30 miles from Berlin one of our tyres stripped its tread and was reduced to a loathsome nakedness of canvas. It was obviously unsafe so we changed to the spare. The latter did not look too good so we crept along rather gingerly, hoping it would last until we reached the British Zone, where spares would be available. It lasted another 30 miles, then burst! There we were, in the middle of a pine wood, 40 miles still inside the Russian Zone, with no tools and no pump! After two hours waiting by the roadside a British convoy came through. About a dozen chaps leapt onto the offending wheel, ripped off the offending tyre, put on a new one – and we were off in no time. But it was dark before we reached Lübbecke, having taken over 8 hours instead of about 5½.

I arrived to find my room cold and damp. The uninhabited feel was heightened by the fact that my batman had gone on leave. Not a very cheery homecoming but I soon had a fire going and aired the place off thoroughly, in the course of the evening….

The Banking Branch is moving to Hamburg on Friday week or thereabouts. I presume I shall go to Hamburg; it will be either there or Berlin. So I should say good-bye – without regrets – to Lübbecke. Hamburg should be much more satisfactory, from every point of view, during the winter.

Berlin has come rather strongly over the horizon these recent days. The Chief wants to build up strength there and it will be a tug of war between him and Gunston. It is interesting in Berlin and one certainly feels at the centre of things. But we are woefully thin on the ground already and I do not really see how the Banking Branch can spare me without replacement. From a personal point of view I want to avoid this half-and-half existence….

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Unfortunately I could not see Frau Steuer this time. She was out of town…and I could not fit in a visit. Thank you for the file of Erwin’s letters….I will deliver them next time.

Lübbecke, 20 October 1945I am off to Berlin on Tuesday morning and when I return I expect to go straight

up to Hamburg….I am sorry to hear young Robin has been playing up a bit. You had better

admonish him on my behalf. Tell him it is most disappointing to hear of one of my sons crying because he can’t get his way!

I can imagine poor old John flogging away at his library books. It will do him good no doubt but don’t let him overdo it. Is he enjoying what he reads?

Wendy should learn a lot from the Guides if it is a good troop.I am glad you have had the car looked at by G.N. Motors and it is very

satisfactory that you have persuaded them to service it for you. Two-monthly intervals will be quite all right for the small mileage to which you will be limited. You won’t forget the sticky stuff for the roof and to top up the batteries, will you? And try to get anti-freeze for the radiator. The latter will take some of your best smiles for I have an idea that it is next to unobtainable for civilian cars. If all else fails, cover the engine up….

…the new Bank Act. … You will have seen that the Governor (Catto) and Deputy Governor (Cobbold) and that the Directors (including Niemeyer and Siepmann) will go out on the appointed day to make room for the new Governors and Directors to be appointed by HMG. I hope they will have the sense to reappoint Cobbold; Niemeyer should be all right. For the rest…’nous verrons’. So far as I can make out there will be little change in the staff administration or method in which the Bank works.

I heard today that the Bank have informally expressed the view that they want me back by January! This was said, apparently, by both Siepmann and Hawker, so it seems to be a serious expression of their intentions. Whether this means that they are going to insist on January or whether this is merely a preliminary ranging shot in their battle to get me out by April remains to be seen. It will now come to a struggle between them and Chambers, so far as the period between January and April is concerned. For any period past 6th April the most important arbiter will be FMH.

Berlin, 24 October 1945I was glad to hear about John’s 10 goals. That seems to me a noteworthy

performance in any class of football. It was a good story, also, about his reaction to the long-standing competition (of which I have a vivid recollection) as to whether he or Rob should complete their dressing first….

I return to the QEGGS (Queen Elizabeth Girls’ Grammar School, Wendy’s school) appeal. I would send them a guinea.

…my journey up yesterday…it was a perfect October day…We ran out through Bad Oeynhausen to the Autobahn and then followed that all the way to Berlin. The early stretches curve magnificently through the hills past Minden and down to the plain towards Hannover. Beyond Hannover the country is flat and not so interesting, although the many coppices break the monotony of the farmlands. Once over the Elbe at

39


Magdeburg the way runs through pine forests for long stretches and the last 35 miles into Berlin are through continuous woods. You can imagine that the autumn tints were magnificent. I had my own car again, at last, and she ran beautifully throughout; it was a delight to travel so smoothly and reasonably swiftly (a steady 45), over such a well engineered roadway. We arrived about 5.30 in the evening.

Berlin, 27 October 1945I am now due to leave Berlin for Hamburg early next Tuesday morning. I shall

have a drive of nearly 300 miles so I want to make an early get-away.The tail end of the gale which has been lashing England has now reached us in

Berlin. I thought it was pouring with rain all night but now see that it was the wind rushing through the pines in the neighbouring gardens. I think it is only the wind which holds off the rain, though. I hope we don’t have too much rain because there is no garage available at this house and my car has to stand in the open all the time.

Incidentally the car, now thoroughly run in after its new piston fitment, runs beautifully. It is just the kind of car I want: a powerful, smooth-running engine, first-rate brakes and steering and great comfort and roominess inside. The mechanic at the garage … was most enthusiastic. It has done less than 4,500 miles…. I wish I could keep it at the end of my services here!

I saw Frau Steuer the day before yesterday and delivered the file of Erwin’s letters. .. I thought [she] looked a little better than last time. It now appears she has relations in Hamburg and if she can fix up to join them, I will try to shift her there. Her trouble in Berlin will be mostly with the cold; she is too feeble (although she is only 63) to go out like most Berliners and gather wood in the parks and woods….

You are quite right about my shuttling back and forth. I am having rather too much of it for comfort at the moment, but don’t worry about it. The whole of Germany is a mess of Allied officers trekking back and forth. It must look like a seething ant hill to any angelic observers.

Berlin, 30 October 1945Today was hard going but worthwhile. I finished off two reports and got them

past my Allied colleagues with 100% of what I wanted in one case (setting up a central financial agency) and 95% in the other (consequences of various methods of dealing with the Reich debt). The latter is a great success, really, because I had all the other three against me all the six previous meetings and I rather wonder whether they realise yet what they have let me get away with!...

I have had a letter from the Bank in which they tell me that they have informed the Treasury that they definitely want me back at the end of my year, i.e. by 6th April. … It is good to discern a speck of light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. … I am now tackling my work with nothing less than ferocity. I want to tear and smash it into shape so that I can be gone.

Banking Branch, Finance Division, Control Commission for Germany (B/E)c/o 609 L/R Mil. Gov. Det., Hamburg, B.A.O.R.1 November 1945

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This merely to let you know that I arrived safely yesterday and to give you my new address, as above. Somewhat cumbersome but, I am told, effective.

Hamburg, 1 November 1945Our offices are in the Esplanade Hotel. They are spacious and will be very

suitable in the long run, I think. At the moment they are without heating and I spent most of today in my greatcoat.

The mess is in a large house in the suburb of Blankenese, about 9 miles from the office. It is a house in the most hideous taste, built about 1905 I should say, but most solid and comfortable. The Deputy Director and I have the best two of the bedrooms on the upper floor and have a bathroom for our exclusive use. There are other, more junior officers in other bedrooms. … We have a large lounge/hall with an open fireplace in which logs are crackling at this minute. There is a large dining room and a comfortable lounge in addition. My bedroom is about twice the size of ours at home and well furnished.

So you can be sure that I will at least be warm and comfortable while I am in this house. Apart from periodic journeys to Berlin I should be here all winter.

It is a bit of a snag to travel 36 miles a day to and from the office (we come here for lunch), not only because of the time taken but because it means a minimum of exercise. As we take the cars from door to door there is not even the usual suburban dwellers run for the train….

(Referring to a letter to a superior at the Bank): I told him … I now wished the Bank to know that I had strong reasons for not wishing to stay beyond my contractual year. As things have turned out I believe there are many people becoming available in England who could do my job equally well. The development of Allied control has not been of the kind I anticipated when I took the job on. I am not being used for any specialised technical qualifications I may have.

Hamburg, 6 November 1945The question of Christmas presents is not one I had overlooked but it is not an

easy one. There seem to be a number of open shops in Hamburg but I have seen no toys as yet.

As from Hamburg, 9 November 1945I left Hamburg yesterday morning … am in Berlin until probably Tuesday

morning. Yesterday was a wretched day for weather. It rained in torrents practically all day….There was a strong wind too and although it was not really cold, one felt that winter’s grip was not far away. They will certainly have to lay on a passenger train service to Berlin soon.

The one pleasing thing about my journey was at the British/Russian frontier at Helmstedt, where I passed through just as a Stork convoy of Berlin schoolchildren came through in the opposite direction. (Operation Stork aimed to bring 50,000 children out of Berlin to live in healthier surroundings in country districts in the British Zone during the first winter after the War.) Their poor little white faces looked so happy and relieved as they moved past the first British guards. The latter grinned their usual friendly grins and

41


one felt that all was comparatively well for those little ones. ‘Bless them,’ said my driver, ‘we ought to have brought them out months ago!’

DIARY

Tuesday, 13 th November I returned to Hamburg through considerable snow. For the next few days it was

extremely cold. My office had no windows, the frames being covered with brown paper, and the one little electric fire was entirely inadequate. I do not think I have ever been so cold in my life.

The plight of the Germans was pitiable. By this time they were suffering severely from shortages of food. In spite of British efforts to get food in, they were down to about 800 calories a day (as compared with an acceptable minimum of 2,000) and had no fuel except what they could scrounge in the streets. Everywhere one saw them cutting down trees and carting them back, even the roots, in their little handcarts. It was not a pleasant sight.

LETTERS

Hamburg, 14 November 1945I travelled back from Berlin yesterday….When I woke up yesterday morning it

was to see a Christmas card world of falling and fallen snow outside my window. Not too encouraging a sight when 250 miles in a car is included in one’s programme. However we set off and the journey was not too bad. The snow seemed local to the Berlin area but we had sleet and rain most of the rest of the way. Fortunately my driver, a typical cockney, kept up a running fire of humour and common sense and real downright kindliness. So the time passed fairly swiftly (and quite safely) and here I am in Hamburg again.

There is not much news from this end except the rather startling item that Gunston has been recalled summarily to the Bank. This was not altogether unexpected to me and I had tried to avert it. The fact is that, however much the thing is camouflaged, he has been sacked….It is tragic that the Finance Division should be deprived of his first-class brain.

I do not know who will succeed him as Director of the Banking Branch, nor how my own place in the Division may be affected….

It is possible that a need will arise soon to discuss banking matters in London.

Hamburg, 25 November 1945The train left Victoria to time and we reached Dover to find the sea smooth, grey

and cold under a thin mist which restricted visibility to about 400 yards. The crossing was uneventful but pretty chilly towards the end. Calais Maritime is very badly knocked about; very few of the buildings we used to know are still standing. The ‘Rhine Army Express’ was waiting and we left at 18.05 (about 5 o’clock London time). … The train ran quite well and we arrived at Bad Oeynhauasen at about 10.30 in the morning. Thence I went to Lübbecke for lunch and came on up to Hamburg by car, arriving about 5.30 in the evening.

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As from Hamburg, 28 November 1945I leave my address as before pro tem, but I am really writing from the Chief’s

house in Griegstrasse, Berlin. I arrived from Hamburg this afternoon….Developments are in the air. Chambers tells me that he wants me to take over the

Directorship of the Banking Branch from Gunston and to remain in Berlin to do policy with him, leaving Col. Rose, the Deputy Director, to implement the policy in the Zone. I would much prefer to live in Hamburg but from the work point of view I think it is the right decision. I suppose it means I shall now be made a Brigadier-General.

Hamburg, 3 December 1945I am definitely appointed Director of the Banking Branch and shall be proceeding

to Berlin at the end of the week to take up residence there.

Hamburg, 7 December 1945Yesterday we had a meeting of all the senior finance officers from the Military

Government Detachments spread through the Zone. It was a great success and we all profited from it. It threw up, moreover, a whole host of problems and I shall have a busy time ahead.

Berlin, 8 December 1945The lovely day of which I spoke [yesterday] became colder as the afternoon

passed… When I awoke this morning it was very cold indeed and falling snow drifted before a sharp wind. I therefore looked forward to my journey to Berlin without enthusiasm. I prepared myself against the elements with a pullover, woollen stockings over my socks, boots (given me by Gunston) and a recently purchased thermos flask full of hot tea. These, in addition to greatcoat etc and a heater in the car, kept me quite warm. And I needed such aids too; our breath was freezing on the inside of the windscreen.

The narrow cobbled roads were highly dangerous and we could move only slowly over them. For the first 100 miles or so we made such bad time that I began to fear we should not reach Berlin in one day….After reaching the Autobahn, however, the road was much better and we ultimately arrived here safely for nightfall.

DIARY

Monday, 10 th December Even at this stage, there were still occasional disturbances and one frequently

heard shots and shouts during the night. The trouble came mostly from Russian deserters who moved around looting and, quite often, killing German civilians. Gradually they were rounded up by British patrols and, on return to their own people, almost invariably shot on the spot. It was made an order that we should carry side arms and undergo a certain amount of weapons training.

LETTERS

Berlin, 12 December 1945

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I am now in my new mess….It is a large mansion, belonging to a millionaire tobacco man who is now in custody for his Nazi activities. It is modern and the bedrooms are large and beautifully designed. Unfortunately the Russians looted all the furniture and curtains so the effect will continue rather gaunt until we get some more up from the British Zone.

Berlin, 13 December 1945I am still hunting for Christmas presents. Yesterday I walked nearly five miles

through the snow and ice to visit an otherwise inaccessible shop. When I got there, it was closed! The snag is transport, all the time. When I have a car, I cannot spare the time; when I am less busy, there is no car. There are no buses, you know; and it would not be advisable to use them if there were.

DIARYWednesday, 19 th December

General Montgomery came to visit us. To my embarrassment I was delayed in getting to the meeting but this did not seem to matter at all. When Chambers introduced me, we had a very pleasant chat.

Wednesday, 9 th January I drove up to Berlin with Chambers and in the following days I took part in a

number of quadripartite meetings with the Americans, French and Russians. This happened to be the British month to take the Chair and I presided at all these meetings. They were not intrinsically difficult but two problems emerged with the Russians: (a) they were quite unfamiliar with capitalist financial practices and intensely suspicious about things they did not understand; and (b) they fought like tigers against the slightest alteration of minutes, even when the alteration was trivial and quite obviously necessary. The reason was probably that they had already had those minutes approved by someone in Moscow and did not dare to go back with the suggested change.

LETTERS

Berlin, 11 January 1946There are stacks of work waiting for me here. Today I had a very tiring Banking

Committee, which took five hours to reach a point that ought to have taken five minutes. Tomorrow, Saturday, I have a Note Printing Committee which bids fair to be equally tedious.

You, however, will all be able to go the Panto, I hope, and have a great, good time. I wish I could be with you.

Berlin, 16 January 1946On Saturday afternoon I at last found time to visit Frau Steuer and deliver the

various gifts. She seemed fairly well but is in a very low state mentally. She has heard from her eldest son, Kurt, but he seems in a very bad way. As a result of his wounds he has lost one lung entirely and is apparently bowed and crippled for life, poor chap. He

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has obtained a small post, working for the Americans, down in their Zone. He wants to come home but is not fit enough yet to travel. Thus, although Frau S. now knows that he is alive, she is overburdened by sorrow at his injuries. …

Today I had a meeting on Insurance, all day, which was very tiring but highly satisfactory, so far as it went. As Chairman, it fell to me to try to produce order and clarity out of absolute chaos. The others backed up splendidly, so that by the end of the afternoon we had got an agreed Anglo-Franco-American text, with the Russians farther towards meeting us than we had ever dared to expect. We will try to finish the thing off next week.

As an item of interest, they are now running a combined leave and duty train from Berlin to Bad Oeynhausen every night, with sleeper accommodation. So I should be able to avoid some of my more precarious expeditions along the Autobahn.

Berlin, 20 January 1946The snow we had at the end of last week remains on the ground as a thin layer but

frozen hard….I have had another energetic weekend. I have walked more than 20 miles around and about in the Grünewald. It was lovely in the woods and people were skating and sliding on the lakes. There are not many Germans skating, poor creatures, because they haven’t the energy.

Berlin, 26 January 1946Last night I was invited to a party in the Russian Zone. I went with very mixed

feelings but it was a very jolly occasion and I enjoyed it. To begin with, our journey took us through the east-centre and south-east of Berlin and through scenes of destruction that beggar description. It is quite a long run – out to Schöneweide….The whole place seems to have been evacuated of Germans and fenced in for Russian use for billets and messes. There is practically no bomb damage as far out as that but a certain amount of evidence of artillery fire. Then we entered the quite unpretentious house occupied by Maletin (P Maletin of the State Bank of the USSR) and found quite a biggish gathering (but not too big) of Russians, French and Americans. After eating black caviar, red caviar, ham, sausages of various kinds, salads of various kinds and so on for nearly two hours, we found that were still in the hors d’oeuvres stage! After that followed soup, a meat dish (veal with roast potatoes and other veg.) and a wonderful sweet with piles (literally) of real whipped cream. Somehow we ploughed through, and it was so spaced out and well assorted that it was no great strain for me to do justice right through. Moreover there was no pressure towards heavy drinking that I had rather feared. The Russians were quite abstemious – more so, in fact, than my honoured Chief. There were a lot of amusing little sallies by way of informal toasts and in the end we all sang, section by section, some of our national songs. The Russians were by far the best at that but the standard generally was not bad. All in all it was a homely, jolly party and there was an air of sincerity and good fun about it. All the Russians went up several points in my estimation.

Berlin, 29 January 1946…the question of my stay with the Commission…[A colleague] recently told the

Bank that if they withdrew me the whole edifice would collapse….As regards myself, there is certainly no adequate replacement in sight. The Banking Branch men are good

45


and would work hard but they are all commercial bank men. They have neither the training nor the experience which I consider necessary for this job, with its aspects of broad economics and even of diplomacy. In fact mine is a job which only Bank of England men are really fitted for, and O/F (Overseas and Foreign) men at that….

This German job is a long term one and a three-month extension would not meet the need at all. The Bank, it seems to me, should either lend somebody on really long term (which, apart from my personal feelings, they are not prepared to do) or they should send people over in relays….If someone is to take over from me from the end of April, he should obviously overlap from at least mid-March. If necessary, and albeit reluctantly, I suppose we could consider prolonging my stay for a few weeks but not, I think, beyond the end of May at the outside.

Berlin, 1 February 1946I have now visited the little shop where I bought the Christmas presents a number

of times and have become quite friendly with the owners. I have had some very interesting conversations with the proprietress, her husband and her son of about 18. On my last visit she produced a toy microscope. It is a child’s instrument but made, beautifully, by the famous optical firm in Jena. It fits snugly into a good wooden case and is complete with reflector, slides etc. The magnification is very good. It is not new but one would hardly know that it had ever been used. It belonged to the son of the house, who no longer wants it. And the staggering thing is that they absolutely refused payment of any kind! They regarded it, I think, as a sort of return for a packet of 20 cigarettes and one bar of chocolate which I gave them ages ago. Naturally I can’t let it go at that. Perhaps I can bring them back a little coffee on my next trip.

Berlin, 9 February 1946Tomorrow I set off with Debenham and my American opposite number for

meetings in Hamburg. It is possible that I may have to go on to Brussels after that for a meeting of the Rhine Commission….If the Brussels meeting does not come off, I shall return to Berlin for a Banking Committee on the 14th. Thereafter more travels may materialise.

I am beginning to see my way more clearly in respect of my service with the Control Commission. After checking the situation in Hamburg I think I shall be in a position to put a comprehensive programme of requirements before the Control Office.

Berlin, 1 March 1946Not very attractive weather outside. It has been cold and overcast since my

return, just above freezing point in the daytime and just below it at night. We have had some snow off and on and there was quite a heavy fall last night. I see from the papers that you have had somewhat similar conditions at home…

My nose, I regret to say, has been fixed too firmly to the grindstone for my liking. My in-tray remains a depressing sight in spite of the liberal use of midnight oil to reduce its contents. I had a mass of arrears awaiting me and a succession of committee meetings has seriously affected my ability to make some inroads upon it. The trouble is that this flogging away at day-to-day problems takes time which I should be devoting to more

46


long-range thinking. However, one can but plug ahead and do one’s best. I am due to go to Hamburg again at the end of next week.

I have not yet heard anything from Hawker in reply to my letter asking him what job I am to do on my return to the Bank. … You will, of course, have seen the changes at the Bank Court. Unfortunately we did not receive The Times for the day the changes were announced and I should be grateful if you would cut out and send me any relevant paragraphs….

I hope your mother will be out of the woods by now and that in any case the nurse will have arrived to take the main burden off you. I have prayed that you will have the strength to meet the needs of the day, whatever they are, and that the children will support you according to their fashion.

In spite of the snow outside, there are plenty of signs of spring around me. The Germans seem to be very good at forcing flowers on, in spite of all their difficulties, and our luncheon table has been decorated with lilies of the valley, grown in bowls, while forsythia grown in tubs flank the doorways. Both lots of flowers are in full bloom. This is most cheering and brings home to me very vividly the fact that my ’exile’ draws near to its scheduled close….

My dearest love to you all,Stan

Berlin, 5 March 1946The snow and slush were so unpleasant over the weekend that I was unable to go

out for my usual walks. Consequently I have just no news for this letter. I can only chronicle a long hard drudge of work without any particular interest. The only satisfaction is that I have put a good deal of stuff into my out-tray and away.

In a sense my impending release from the C.C. makes it difficult to retain a sense of reality….Seven weeks to go.

Would you please send me a driving licence application form? My licence runs out this month, and I should not like to be debarred from driving while waiting for a new one.

I have written a line to Phyllis and hope this clears the air with Ted. I should not like to be estranged from him.

DIARY

Thursday, 7 th March This day was rather hilarious. At 10 am I had a visit from Professor Findlay-

Shirras, a distinguished Professor of Economics from Aberdeen University. He asked me what the latest Reichsmark circulation was. I told him I had not the faintest idea. He smiled gently and said that he did not need to know the up-to-date figures but what was it last week or even last month? I told him I had not the faintest idea. He then said, with pained astonishment, ‘How can you pretend to control the banking system if you do not know what the note issue is?’

I took him to the window and showed him the vast area of shattered ruins that had once been the financial sector of Berlin. I asked him how many notes he thought had been destroyed in the fires, how many still lay buried in the rubble and how many had

47


been looted by the Russians. He then began to see the point, but during the rest of his stay he was very little use because he just could not comprehend the chaos and uncertainty left by the aftermath of the War. His tidy academic mind was completely out of its depth.

LETTERS

Berlin, 8 March 1946It is good news that your mother has made a relatively quick recovery. It would

certainly appear that your decision to stay helped her along the road. Next time somebody else can take a turn, with equally successful results, I hope! ...

I am glad to hear that the children played up well during a trying time. … I like the story of old Rob cutting himself a slice of bread and butter. Give them all my love.

Hamburg, 10 March 1946This will let you know that I arrived in Hamburg safely yesterday afternoon.

Strangely enough, the Autobahn had been cleared of snow by the Russians and was dry for most of its length. Thus I made good time to Helmstedt, where I had an excellent lunch. During the afternoon I felt it growing colder as I struck north-westwards and at times there was a deep layer of snow over the road which needed careful negotiation. Here in Hamburg the snow is lying firmly frozen and there is rather a damp, cold atmosphere, which is more trying than in Berlin. I was cold in bed last night in spite of 4 blankets and my greatcoat! ...

I wonder whether Churchill’s speech, in which he attacked Russia and Communism, was really wise. I feel strongly the need to show the world starkly what Christianity and goodwill are really up against in the dark forces of evil which are driving Russia today. But there was something about what Churchill said which seemed to me wrong in tone – or perhaps it was in timing. At any rate, what he said to the Virginia Assembly appealed to me much more. (Winston Churchill, in his speech in Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946, had coined the phrase ‘Iron Curtain’, laying down the divisions of the post-War world. In a speech during a visit to Virginia with General Eisenhower on 8 March, he praised the values upheld by the United States and concentrated on the need for closer cooperation between the US and Great Britain.)

Did you notice that the Liberals won two seats from Labour in the LCC (London County Council) elections?

(Continued the following morning)I made myself warm enough in bed last night by acquiring an eiderdown and slept

like a top in consequence. I think, as a matter of fact, that it is slightly warmer.I shall be having our Finance Officers’ meetings all day. They are usually very

interesting but it is more for me to give than to receive. Hence I expect I shall be pretty tired tonight.

Have you any further news about John - both with regard to his medical examination and to Highgate School? I should put the former in hand as soon as you conveniently can.

Berlin, 16 March 1946

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We have had unending grey skies until yesterday afternoon, when we had a few hours really beautiful sunshine. I was able to appreciate what the Berliners say about getting sunburned in March. The rays were really powerful – more like our June. Today is disappointing again. After a starry, moonlit night, the grey clouds are back.

I like the story of your expedition to Hadley Woods and John collecting his buds.I was very pleased to get Rob’s letter. I thought it by far his best effort so far….I thought about old Wend’s birthday yesterday and hoped she had a happy time. I

have no doubt she did. …You may be interested to hear that my promotion has come through at last, with

retrospective effect to 6th Dec 1945: Controller General, with an effective salary of £1930 – which with the Bank’s £240, which may now be raised to £300, is not to be despised.

Berlin, 17 March 1946It was lovely to have the opportunity of that telephone call this morning. It was

so clear and the contact so much more real and intimate than any written communication could be. …

Yesterday afternoon I took Edward (Bach) for a bit of a tour around town. Down the Kurfürstendamm to the Gedächtnis Kirche, into the Zoo, along the Budapesterstrasse past the ruin of the Eden Hotel, where I lunched in 1937, by devious ways to the Potsdamer Platz, into the Wilhelmstrasse and into the Reich Chancellery, out to Unter den Linden turning right to the Cathedral, an excursion off to the right again to see the former Reichsbank building in the Jägerstrasse, back to Unter den Linden and westwards through the Brandenburger Tor, along the Charlottenburger Chaussee, Bismarck Strasse, Kaiserdamm, then back to the Mess. You can follow this route quite easily, I think, on the map of Berlin I left with you.Continued 18 March:

The Zoo, which I had not visited before, was most pathetic. Right at the entrance is a communal grave for 25 German soldiers killed in the fighting in the gardens themselves. There are the usual enclosures and houses, practically all shattered and littered with debris. One could roam in and out of the lions’ dens and over the rock terraces. I found a sad brown bear pacing endlessly in his cage – the only cage which was intact in the whole bear house. There were a few mountain goats, some monkeys and apes and quite a brave collection of parrots, cockatoos, pheasants and other ornamental birds. There was also a hippopotamus, born to an uncomfortable Berlin in 1944, and – so I learned afterwards but did not see it – an elephant. There were perhaps 20 people in the whole place, of which about half were children.

The Chancellery is stupendous. A series of vast rooms and corridors. Ruined, empty, echoing and dismally cold. Pretentious and hollowly rotten, like the regime of which it was the embodiment. Edward and I wandered through it for half an hour. An interesting experience in a way, but I have no wish to go there again. On the other hand the Zoo, a symbol of a different life, will probably be set to rights in a couple of years and be an interesting place to visit again one day. …

I am glad you have fixed for John to see the specialist. … It is good news of his work. Bless him.

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Churchill’s New York speech was good, I thought. And Bevin’s speech at Port Talbot. Note the second column on page 4 of today’s Times.

Berlin, 3 April 1946This will let you know that I arrived safely back here yesterday afternoon. The

flight was uneventful and only marred by haze which prevented the view from being as extensive as it might have been. We flew at 5,000 feet and quite smoothly. I was in Berlin in nice time for tea at the Mess.

Berlin, 5 April 1946I found on my return that the military hospitals have been full of throat cases –

they call it ‘Berlin tonsillitis’, and it evidently was the same set of infections as mine, but rather worse.

Debenham has had a letter from Cobbold in which the latter replied to one D. had written about me. It would appear that Cobbold said, ‘I share your views of the high qualities of ASGH. I have the question of his future activities very much in mind at the present time.’ Which looks all right – or doesn’t – according to one’s mood at the moment.

I was touched at the solicitude for John expressed to me by a number of people to whom I had mentioned our projected visit to the specialist. … I do hope old John avoids any colds or bad throats this month. I want him to be as fit as may be when he goes into the nursing home. Will you try, gradually and very tactfully, to get him used to the idea that he will have to stay there for a week? And that, although we will visit him daily, he will be for the most part on his own. It makes me feel awful when I think about it but I also feel I am letting him down in being so protective. We must build him up in a quiet and confident courage. Fortunately, for all his tenderness, I believe he has very good reserves of courage to draw upon.

I hope all the children are playing up well….I expect you will have had a visit from Sturt & Tivendale (estate agents) by now.

I shall look forward to hearing what they have to say. There was a most attractive place in the Times yesterday, situated in the area we like so much – the Hertford-Hatfield-Hitchin triangle. Unfortunately the price was £16,500!

Berlin, 10 April 1946I had really intended to write to you yesterday but my time was so fully spent that

I did not get a chance. You see I am facing the triple burden of (a) a lot of highly important work which I must clear off before I leave; (b) saying ‘good-bye’ to a lot of people; (c) training my successor and introducing him all round.

Sunday was an excellent day. I took two American friends out to our country club at Gatow. We strolled around among the pines until lunch and then, in the afternoon, I hired a small yacht and we went sailing on the Havel. This was a most enjoyable experience and the Americans were enthusiastic. Afterwards we came back here to my Mess for tea and after that adjourned to the flat of one of my colleagues for some music. One of the Americans and my colleague are both excellent pianists and we had a cracking time singing songs from the Scottish Students’ Song Book and listening to Mozart, Chopin, Bach and Beethoven. It was one of those spontaneous occasions…. All

50


in all, I decided it was the happiest day I have spent in Germany. The Americans are really good friends and I hope to maintain touch with them.

On Monday my successor arrived and we had a quiet evening here in the Mess. Yesterday we were both invited to dinner with my American opposite number and had an interesting and profitable evening.

Berlin, 13 April 1946I believe Good Friday will be a holiday as regards the Control Commission

British Element but not, unfortunately, for quadripartite purposes. Consequently a meeting has been fixed for the Banking Committee on Good Friday, and I am afraid it will be confirmed for that day. I shall certainly have to attend that meeting, which means I shall not be able to arrive in London before Easter Sunday, midday.

I went to say good-bye to Frau Steuer yesterday and found the poor soul very low in spirits. She gets a small pension but has to pay more than half of it in rent for her one small room. The remainder is only RM 25 (say £2 at our price levels) for a month. Naturally she has had to live on her small reserve of notes (her bank balance is frozen because the Russians have closed her bank) and she is now at the literal bottom of her purse. She had just completed a meal of potato peelings! I gave her all I had with me (about RM 70) and will try to make arrangements for her to have a little more. But this is only a palliative and I shall try to make arrangements in Hamburg to get Kurt a job in the British Zone and to enable Frau S. to join him. It is doubtful whether anything can be done quickly though.

I leave for Hamburg tomorrow morning. Back to Berlin on Tuesday. On Wednesday there is a most important Finance Directorate meeting. Thursday for good-byes and general clearing up. Friday the Banking Committee. Then Saturday afternoon streaking along the Autobahn to Bad Oeynhausen, whence train to Calais, Victoria and home!!!

I long to be with you all.My dearest love

Stan

DIARY

Saturday, 4 th May My resignation from the Control Commission became effective, and I

immediately returned to the strength of the Bank of England. May to July, 1946

I was not entirely happy on my return to the Bank. It had moved forward a good deal during my absence and the aspect of the Overseas and Foreign Department was considerably changed. I found myself on a sort of side limb and dealing with largely Exchange Control matters. I felt neither interest in them nor competence in dealing with them.

This was an uncomfortable time for other people returning to the Bank after absence. Some of the men who had been with the Forces had increased in stature

51


immeasurably and clearly their promotion was going to be rapid. However, there were also some tragic cases. (The original diary contains details of these.)

End of JulyI was sent for by the Deputy Governor (CF Cobbold) who told me that the Bank

had recalled me from service in Germany because they wanted to nominate me for employment by the newly created International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) in Washington, DC. He said that they had been somewhat embarrassed at keeping me employed with a succession of odd jobs, in which he knew I had not been interested, but they had been trying to persuade one particular man, AD Marris of Lazards, to accept the job of Loan Director. If he was satisfied with me, the idea was that I should be Assistant Loan Director. The negotiations with Marris had been long drawn out but now the Bank was able to broach the matter with me.

He said that they had selected me on two grounds: (a) because, due to my League Loans experience, I was one of the relatively few people who knew something about international lending; and (b) because SHAEF had reported on me that I had been successful in promoting cooperation between British and Americans, and this quality would be very important in the IBRD. If I accepted I would have to resign from the Bank but the Bank would offer me a pension on the agreed scale.

This was all a complete surprise to me and I had, of course, to ask for time to think it over. Eventually, however, I said ‘yes’ and, Marris and I having met, a formal presentation of my name took place in Washington.

August /SeptemberThese months were occupied initially with negotiating the terms of my

resignation from the Bank of England and my engagement by the IBRD and with winding up my affairs in the UK. At the same time, I studied what I could lay my hands on about the IBRD and the conditions in which it would be called upon to operate. Unfortunately, during this period Marris’s partners in Lazards decided, after all, not to let him go. There was further delay during which they tried to find another Loan Director but, this failing, it was decided that I should go out and take up my destined appointment on my own.

8 th October.1946 The whole family sailed from Southampton on the Aquitania. It was not a

comfortable voyage because the ship was still operating as a troop ship and was full of Canadian soldiers and the wives they had picked up in Europe. It was very crowded and there were no particular comforts. We landed at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and had a long journey via Montreal and New York to Washington. We arrived at our destination in the middle of a heat wave and hotel strike.

October 1946The day after my arrival I went along to 1818 H Street and made contact with Sir

James Greig, the British Executive Director of the IBRD. He received me very warmly and introduced me to Eugene Meyer, the President of the Bank. Meyer was cordial and rather embarrassed me by wheeling me almost at once into a Board meeting where he sat

52


me at the Board table and introduced me to the assembled Executive Directors. The atmosphere of interest and friendliness was in marked contrast to the feudalism of the Bank of England.

At that time the office building on H Street was in joint occupancy with the Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the US State Department. Over the next months there was a process of continual harassment to get the State Department out. Not until that was accomplished could the accommodation be divided properly between the Bank and the Fund and the necessary alterations to construct suitable and comfortable offices be carried out. Initially I shared a small room with the Canadian Executive Director (Graham Towers) and his alternate (Parkinson).

As Assistant Loan Director I found myself the only representative of the Loan Department. One of the first things that happened was that Jan Beyen, the Dutch Executive Director, whom I had known for a number of years, came into my room with an armful of files, said ‘Thank God you are here,’ dumped them on my desk and disappeared. The Loan Department was from then on in business.

About a month after my arrival the Loan Director joined the Bank. He was CC Pineo, a retired senior Manager of the Royal Bank of Canada. He was a genial, elderly figure, rather Pickwickian in appearance, full of kindness and common sense and very evidently known and trusted in the whole North American banking community. His experience had been with normal commercial banking rather than with long term investment and he had perhaps more difficulty than I in getting inside the skin of his new job. But he brought authority and a sense of order and determination with him which were very valuable.

End of 1946/early 1947

Gradually the IBRD was settling down. At the time Pineo and I arrived the total staff was only about 90 and both policy and departmental functions had yet to be hammered out. Moreover, staff were still being recruited and the pace was accelerating. I found that the Vice President, an American named Smith, was a delightful person but without much strength of character and quite at sea with long-term international investment. At this time a considerable underground struggle was going on to keep the Bank and the Fund independent of US Government interference. The Fund lost that battle. The US Executive Director of the Fund was Harry Dexter White, later under impeachment as a Communist, and he planted a number of his own men in senior administrative positions in the Fund. The result was subservience of Fund policies for a number of years to the ideas of a certain section of the US Treasury. The Bank resisted more strongly but Meyer, who was over 70 years of age, could not stand the strain and a few months after my arrival resigned. A considerable interregnum followed before a new President could be appointed and in the mean time the Vice President, Smith, unexpectedly died.

Before dealing with the close of the interregnum, there is one episode I must record. It happened only a few weeks after my Arrival in October 1946. There was at that time a Liaison Committee of the three Executive Directors of the Bank and three Executive Directors of the Fund, the alternating Chairman being the Vice President of the two institutions. One member of the Bank representation was Sir James Greig, one

53


member of the Fund representation was Harry Dexter White. I was, without warning, called down to a meeting of this Committee and sensed at once that the atmosphere was tense. The Chairman that day was Smith and he said to me, ‘Mr Hoar, we have been informed by Mr White that the Bank have sent a mission to Denmark of which the Fund were totally unaware. If this is so, it seems to us both inefficient and discourteous. We are told that you are responsible for the mission having been sent and we would like to know what you have to say about it.’

I replied that I was completely taken aback by this allegation since I had discussed the sending of the mission with the Operations Director of the Fund on at least three occasions before the mission was sent and had been told that there was no particular assistance to the Fund which such a mission could render. Greig at once turned to White and said, ‘There you are, White, you’re just a bloody liar.’ White said something about the manners of a ‘guttersnipe’, to which Greig began to counter, ‘I will not compete with you, sir, in plumbing the depths of scurrility but...’ At which point the Chairman intervened.

(White was closely identified with the formulation of the so-called Morgenthau Plan, which sought to make Germany a permanently enfeebled nation. This was a major bone of contention between the British and American elements of the Control Commission. The American was later alleged to have been at the centre of a number of Soviet agents in the US Treasury. One of this group’s more destructive deeds was an attempt – ultimately foiled - to undermine the German currency by enabling the printing of quantities of bank notes far in excess of demand. White always denied the allegations; he died before he could be brought to court and confronted with the evidence.)

Returning to the interregnum, the long delay was due to the insistence of the President-designate, John McCloy, on a clear understanding with the US Government that they would not attempt to exercise any undue influence and on bringing with him two senior bankers whose support he felt he needed. Eventually McCloy got his way and brought in with him Eugene Black as US Executive Director and RL Garner as Vice President. These three gave the Bank an extremely strong and competent leadership and great tribute has been paid to them. It is a pity that tribute has not also been paid to the top officials of the Bank, notably Pineo, who sustained morale and kept the machine going under quite difficult circumstances.

1947Under McCloy’s Presidency, the Bank really began to move forward....the first

loan, to France, was signed. Unfortunately Pineo found Garner’s tough and energetic direction rather too much for his independent spirit and in the late summer of 1947 he resigned. I was then left in charge of the Loan Department for some while until a new Loan Director was appointed.

************************************************************************

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14 October 1947, Copacabana Palace Hotel, Rio de Janeiro – ‘... we were taken by bus out to the La Guardia Field and the plane left to schedule. It carried 55 passengers at full load but we had only 19 so there was plenty of room. The plane ran very smoothly and steadily throughout, mostly at 6,000 to 10,000 feet.

‘We were still over the sea, of course, when dawn came. A good breakfast was served (grapefruit juice, bacon and eggs, rolls and butter, marmalade, a banana and coffee) and we came down at San Juan, Puerto Rico at 9.30. We were delayed in taking off here and thus were given lunch in the Pan American hotel there.

‘Off again at 2 o’clock and over the sea to Trinidad, where we arrived at 5.40. Here I had my only unpleasant experience. The pilot for some reason brought the plane down very fast and the sudden increase in pressure (10,000 feet to zero in a few minutes) gave me pain in my ears. Other descents were more gradual and I had no more of that trouble.

‘Up again – and, because of the lost time at San Juan, a late start – to cross the Caribbean once more. It was dark by then so we did not see the coast of South America, which we must have crossed somewhere in the Guianas. Down we came at Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, at 12.30 in the morning. Very sleepy, of course. Here we passed the Brazilian customs etc examination and spent a weary hour. Off once more at 1.30 am.

‘In the morning we were passing over the desolate wooded wastes of Northern Brazil. I expect it was desperately hot and steamy down there, but to us, 10,000 feet above in the clear, cool air, it was merely so much panorama rolling before our eyes. Nothing like a town, or even a village, appeared until we passed directly over Belo Horizonte. An hour later we passed over the high mountains and came down at Rio.

‘Because of our height when crossing the mountains, the pilot had to circle the famous Rio Bay twice before making his run in. This gave glorious views. We landed on an island, so had another pleasant experience in a 40-minute trip on a motor launch, to the main terminal in town. The air was wonderfully cool and fresh.’

17 October – ‘This weekend I am going to a place called Lages to a look at a big river diversion being undertaken by the Brazilian Traction, Light and Power Co. in connection with hydro-electric development. Sometime during the course of next week I hope to be able to nip down to São Paulo for a couple of days. Rio is very pleasant but not representative of Brazilian industrial development; it is like Washington. São Paulo is like Chicago.

‘The atmosphere in Rio is not American at all but Mediterranean. The architecture, the general layout, the people and the intangible “air” of the place are definitely reminiscent of Southern Europe. I am continually reminded of Athens, though there are marked differences. I am, incidentally, learning a little Portuguese, by force of necessity: very few people indeed can speak any English or French.’

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20 October – Reporting on the trip to Lages (Santa Catarina State, southwest of Rio): ‘Our route went at first along the sea. Later we swung inland and passed across a plain. ... all the surroundings so novel. There were palm trees, banana trees and thickets of bamboo. From time to time we saw poor little cottages which, as we got further from Rio, degenerated into grass-thatched mud huts. Finally we rose into the mountains in a series of loops and curves and found ourselves in scenes of what I can only describe as primitive grandeur. Finally we came to the house (Fazenda) of the works manager.

‘In the morning we visited a great dam, penning back an artificial lake, and went down a shaft into a tunnel being bored through the mountain; afterwards we went down the mountainside to inspect the hydroelectric works at the bottom. At lunchtime we drove over to yet another series of works, this time damming a largish river (Paraiba) and digging another tunnel to divert the water. All very interesting.’

See diary for more on this trip.

From May through July 1948, Dad accompanied Robert L Garner, Vice President of the World Bank, and other senior officials on an extended mission to examine the manufacturing infrastructure of various European countries. They sailed from New York on the Queen Mary – ‘a really magnificent ship’, reports Dad. ‘We sailed at about 6 o’clock on Saturday morning, in bright sunshine. We backed slowly out from the dock, then two tugs pushed our bows round until we pointed down river and we were off. Further down river we stopped to drop the pilot and to wait (at least an hour) for the tide to deepen the water over the sand bars. Since then we have been plunging inexorably ahead.’

On Wednesday morning he writes, ‘Yesterday and today we have been running smoothly through a very calm sea. Our runs have been: Saturday 89 miles, Sunday 656, Monday 644, Tuesday 656. We are now in green water again and have only 4/500 miles to go.’

30 May 1948, Plaza Hotel, Brussels – ‘We arrived safely and to time on Thursday night. Friday morning we had interviews and an official lunch at the National Bank at midday. In the afternoon Garner and I went over a big steel plant near Liège, visiting a coal development at Eisden on the way back: 300 km in all, back to the hotel 10.40 pm, to find someone waiting to talk business with us till about 12.45 am. Saturday morning saw us off to Liège again by 9.30 am; we visited a factory making arms and motor vehicles, another big steel plant and some electrical works. Back to the hotel 6.30 pm. ... One gets tired.’

2 June 1948, Kronberg Castle, near Frankfurt am Main – ‘We had the expected full day on Monday. Off at 8 am by car to Antwerp, where we were received by the Burgomaster and were shown over the Town Hall. Afterwards we were conducted to the port, where a small steamer was placed at our disposal; we were taken on a two-hour tour round the port. On the way round we were taken over a ship-repairing yard. ... we formed a very

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good impression of the activity of the port. Then a dash back to Brussels by car, where we packed up our luggage and were taken at once to the airfield. Our flight to Frankfurt was uneventful.

‘Frankfurt is improved a good deal since I saw it last. Blocked streets have been cleared of rubble and a good deal of rubble has been removed altogether. Numbers of buildings which were merely shells have been patched up and are now in use again. The trams are running again on practically all routes. Nevertheless the general impression is altered very little. It is a blasted and saddened city. I should add that there are a lot more people about than there were – refugees from the Eastern Zone. Overcrowding is serious.

‘We visited only one industrial plant – a cement works at Wiesbaden - but we talked to a lot of people: British, American and German. General Robinson (British Military Governor) was magnificent and impressed Garner tremendously. Sir Cecil Weir, British Economic Advisor, was also very good. There were good men in the medium ranks, both British and American, who impressed us with their flexibility and breadth of view; this is a great move forward since I was last in Germany. Unfortunately there is a reactionary group at the head of the American control who evidently are largely responsible for a lot of the present troubles. I am sorry to be so negative about the Yanks and puffed up about the British, but you ought to hear Garner (who was American).

‘Yesterday we came up to Düsseldorf. The city has been cleaned up quite a bit but not so much as Frankfurt on which, as the Bizonal capital, a good deal more effort has been spent. ... We were generally briefed in the morning and in the afternoon taken on a trip by launch through the inland port of Duisburg. Quite different from Antwerp and very interesting. In the evening we had a meeting and, subsequently, dinner with the Cabinet of Land Nordrhein-Westfalen. The latter were an unimpressive lot. Garner called them “the damnedest bunch of square-headed saps” he’s ever seen! This is the trouble all over Germany, I think; for various reasons it is only the third eleven playing.’

9 June 1948, Hotel des Indes, The Hague – ‘The stay in Germany was intensely interesting and well worthwhile. We visited the famous Krupp works at Essen and you never could imagine such fantastic destruction over its area of 4 square miles. The Controller told us that from three of their shops they had to remove 90,000 tons of debris. There are about 130 shops in all! Nevertheless some work is going on there – under very bad conditions, of course. We also inspected a coal mine at Essen (surface equipment only), the big Gutehoffnungshütte steel plant at Oberhausen, the Demag engineering works at Duisburg, the IG Farben works – dyestuffs, pharmaceuticals and sulphuric acid – at Leverkusen and a small machine shop at Düsseldorf-Oberkassel. The last named was unique in that it had sustained no bomb damage whatever.

‘We talked to German politicians, industrialists and trades union leaders. From all this we drew a greater measure of hope than we had anticipated. We have no doubt that the injection of a certain amount of steel and food would prime the pump and produce a swelling flow of goods. There are all sorts of difficulties, of course, with attendant necessary actions both by ourselves and the Germans, but we feel those two to be the

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primary necessities. Thank goodness the harvest throughout Western Europe looks like being good.

‘While in Essen we visited the famous Krupp mansion, the Villa Hügel. You never saw such a place in your life. Everything about it is of stupendous size and magnificence. It has 60 bedrooms, a reception hall about 5,000 feet square with a 40-foor ceiling, a dining room to seat 75 comfortably, a ball room which duplicates the hall, etc, etc. There is silver and cutlery sufficient to lay table for 450 persons. And pretty nearly all of this is in very bad taste. Only the pictures are good, and the site of the house - on the top of a hill commanding a beautiful stretch of the Ruhr valley - is magnificent.

‘Kőln was terribly bombed and was the only city we saw which still has many streets choked with rubble. We managed to get into the Cathedral, a lovely building which had a miraculous escape from destruction. It is a terrible mess inside, due to blast, but has sustained no major structural damage.

‘We were fetched from the RAF field at Wahn by a Dutch Government plane. We flew low and veered about to look at what interested us, notably the Philips works at Eindhoven ... and the port of Rotterdam. We landed at Schiphol aerodrome, where we inspected some new and very fine workshops of the KLM.’

13 June 1948, c/o BIS (the Bank for International Settlements), Basel – ‘Rotterdam was amusing if not so interesting as Antwerp. We were met at the outskirts of the city by two motorcycle policemen, who rode ahead of us clearing the way. Great stuff! At the Town Hall we were received by the Burgomaster and formally welcomed. Afterwards we were taken round the harbour on a launch. Afterwards we drove to Eindhoven and looked over the Philips electrical works. The latter were most interesting. In their radio studio I listened to the finest recorded music I have ever heard. They have developed the system of recording on tape with magnetised iron particles and intend to market it commercially at the end of the year. I suppose the new machine will be fabulously expensive.

‘Next day I went (alone) to the IJmuiden steel works. Yesterday we flew down by KLM, calling at Eindhoven on the way. ... my ears were rather troublesome. I will dodge the Rome flight if I can. Lots of old friends are here, including Otto Niemeyer. I have already shaken hands with them and am going for a more extended talk with them in a few minutes’ time.’

17 June 1948, Grand Hotel Continental, Milan – ‘Our journey across Switzerland was very pleasant. Our train ran through Olten to Lucerne. Then we rounded the lake to Flüelen and up to Gőschenen. Through the St Gotthard Tunnel and down the other side, the track looping around through tunnels so that we several times passed beneath the section we had run over a few minutes before. Eventually we came to Lugano, with the village lights twinkling in the dark water, and later to Chiasso. After the minimum of formality we crossed the frontier into Italy and reached Milan at midnight. We were met and conducted to the Grand Hotel Continental, which is stylish but the most appallingly

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noisy place I have ever stayed in. Trams, which are frequent, crash over some points just outside my bedroom window.’

18 June 1948, Grand Hotel, Rome – ‘My most interesting times in Milan consisted of visits to factories. On Tuesday I went by car to Genoa and was shown over the Ansaldo shipbuilding yards and made yet another harbour inspection. The port suffered a great deal during the war, mainly from bombardment by the Royal Navy, but has made a rather marvellous recovery. On the same day Garner went to see the Fiat works at Turin but that was a flop because the workmen staged a one-day strike. On Wednesday Garner and I went to see a textile factory at Saronno, about 15 miles away. The firm (de Angeli Frua) prints cotton, rayon and silk textiles, and the layout and organisation were impressive. Some of their hand-printed stuff was exquisite. In the afternoon we all went to see the Pirelli rubber works, near Milan, which were very interesting. I must tell the children, when I return, all the different procedures I have seen. On Thursday I stayed in town but Garner went to a couple of steel works (Breda and Falck), one of which he thought good, the other very bad.

‘Yesterday evening we caught the night train and arrived here at 7.30 am. Quite a comfortable journey.

‘Rome is a very different place from Milan. Already we have plunged into a deluge of meetings but I have driven through the streets a bit and it is a lovely city, with its trees and wide streets. There are the antiquities, of course, many of them well shown off in open spaces and parks, but I think the city would qualify for being a beautiful one without the contribution from the past. We hope not to have any engagements on Sunday afternoon and to do a little sightseeing. I shall look forward to that very much, not only for its own sake but because we have had no “time off” since we got off the Queen Mary three weeks ago.

‘By the way, I am going to dodge the air trip to Paris. I leave by train at 7.30 on Monday morning.

22 June 1948, Le Bristol, Paris – ‘I was up very early to catch the train. It was a beautiful run up through the Apennines, through Florence, Bologna, Parma to Milan. Then across the Lombardy plain past Stresa, which looked superbly lovely in the evening light reflected from the lake, to the Alps and Domodossala. Then through the Simplon (when I went to bed) to Brigue, Lausanne, Vallorbe, Dijon, Laroche to Paris, where we arrived at 9.30 am. The punctual arrival was remarkable because the journey was somewhat adventurous. At Parma the wagon-lits in which Acheson (a colleague) was travelling had to be taken off because of an overheated axle box. At Iselle, between Domodossala and the Simplon, we stopped with a terrific jolt by application of the emergency brakes. The coupling connecting my coach with the rest of the train behind had slipped undone, breaking the vacuum brake connection and automatically stopping the train. The corridor connection was torn away and the train was cut into two sections, which stopped about 100 yards apart. Eventually we were joined up again and all went well for the rest of the night but I was glad the accident did not occur in the middle of the Simplon Tunnel! We

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lost about 1 ½ hours from those two episodes so our punctual arrival was commendable. I slept well for seven hours!

‘In Rome on Sunday we did have a little time for sightseeing in the morning and some in the afternoon. One of the Banca d’Italia men, who happens to be a Count of the Papal Court, took us around the Vatican and St Peters. We all found the Vatican very impressive from the point of view of art and architecture: vast rooms and antechambers, galleries and chapels. The ceilings, frescoes and other paintings by Michelangelo and others are very fine. The Sistine Chapel is outstanding. St Peters is vast and, in my opinion, perfectly horrible – rococo to the nth degree. ... such a long way from the carpenter’s shop.

‘Today Garner and I talked with René Mayer, the Finance Minister, and found him a good man who talked straight. At midday the Bank of France had an official lunch in our honour. Tomorrow we are due to visit the Renault works and a couple of hydroelectric plants in the vicinity of Paris. In the evening Garner goes off on an industrial tour of Alsace-Lorraine and the North, while I go south to Schneider-Creusot, the silk mills at Lyon and the Genissiat dam in the mountains of Savoy.’

27 June 1948, Le Bristol, Paris - ‘I left Paris on Wednesday evening and arrived in Chalons at about 1 am next morning. Off again at 9 am by car to Le Creusot. Spent the whole day going over the Schneider works. Very interesting. Back to Chalons by car to catch a train before 9 pm. Arrived Lyon about 11.30 pm. Next day we started at 8.30 am and I visited four different factories. The artificial silk people gave me lunch and the real silk people dinner. Back to bed about 10.50 pm (a record!) but up at 6.15 am (only a cup of tea for breakfast) to catch a 7 am train (no restaurant car) for Genissiat. Arrived there about 9.30 am and spent the morning going over the big dam and hydroelectric plant. Lunch with the engineer in charge, then a restful afternoon. By car to Aix-les Bains. Caught a train at 11.20 pm for Paris.

‘At Lyon I heard (World Bank President John J) McCloy wanted me to go to his timber conference in Geneva. Have now thrashed the matter out with Garner, who insists he wants me in England and that I must stay in Geneva only two days. I told G I intended to sail on the QE (Queen Elizabeth) and keep my promised date of return, timber conferences or no! ...Arthur (AP Leigh, our Uncle Arthur, an immigration officer) and Garner on the QE!! Suffering cats!!!’

2 July 1948, 87 Mayfield Avenue, London N12 ( Grandma Hoar’s home ) – ‘That same Sunday evening I caught the train to Geneva. We arrived about 8 am and I was given comfortable quarters in the Hotel Richmond, with a most beautiful view across the lake to the mountains.

‘During the two days in Geneva I attended five meetings and conducted eleven separate conversations with representatives of the respective timber importing or exporting countries. The new League building, completed since my last visit, is the most beautiful and most practicable building I have ever seen.

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‘I left Geneva by the night train (10.28) on Tuesday evening, arrived Paris at 8 the next morning and left again, on the Golden Arrow, at noon. The crossing was very pleasant and it was grand to see the Dover cliffs once more. We reached Victoria by 7 pm and I was home here by 8.’

He reports in detail on the state of health and spirits of his mother and sister, of Grandma Leigh (‘looks ever so well and brown as a berry’), of Uncle Ted & Auntie Phyllis Leigh and of the ‘breakdown in the domestic arrangements’ of Uncle Arthur. A trip to Gerrards Cross is planned, to see Uncle Charlie and Auntie Edie. Then:‘Tomorrow afternoon I go off with Garner to Birmingham, where we stay on Monday, to look over the Austin works and GEC. There we split, Garner going to Stoke on Trent, Bolton, Manchester and Liverpool. I go southwest to Cardiff, Port Talbot, Porthcawl and Ebbw Vale. We reunite in London on Wednesday evening, have Thursday free and catch a train at 8.47 am on Friday morning; the QE sails about 1 pm.

‘London is quite a bit smartened up since we left and people are more cheerful than I had hoped. They don’t complain of scarcities so much, though monotony is trying. On the whole I feel cheered by what I have seen and heard. On this latter point, I saw Ernie Bevin on Thursday; he is not afraid of war!’

7 July 1948, ‘Four Winds’, Locks Common, Porthcawl – ‘Yesterday I came down to Cardiff to look over the steel works of Guest Keen & Nettlefolds, which I did in the early afternoon. Later I was driven to Port Talbot (48 miles) to see the site and first construction of the new mill for the South Wales Steel Company, which will be the largest in the world when completed.

‘You may remember that Porthcawl is on the coast not very far from Swansea. Opposite is the N Devon coast in the region of Lynton and Ilfracombe. Last night is was so clear that one could even see the fields. There must have been some queer optical projection because, though the Bristol Channel is about 25 miles wide just here, the Devon cliffs looked only a mile or two away. This morning is dull and there is not a trace of Devon to be seen.

‘Today I go to Ebbw Vale and catch an evening train from Newport back to town.’

8 July 1948, 87 Mayfield Avenue, London N12 – ‘I had an interesting day yesterday at Ebbw Vale steel works. My train arrived in London at 9 pm and I was home about 10.

‘I’ve just finished packing and feel almost on my way home! I was kept busy in town until 6.30 this evening. Forgive me if I do not write any more now. It is 11.55 and I have to be up at 6.30 tomorrow morning.’

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In January 1949 Dad set out to lead a World Bank mission to India, 18 months after independence had been declared. First of all he paused in London:

16 January 1949, 87 Mayfield Avenue, London N12 – ‘I am sitting in Dad’s old armchair by the fire at the conclusion of a very pleasant weekend. My word, the house seems cold, after our central heating!

‘You will have had my postcard from Gander. We had not anticipated stopping there, but apparently it was thought advisable to refill our petrol tanks. It was very cold there - 15̊ below zero – but there was surprisingly little snow. We stayed only an hour and were then on our way.

‘The flight from Gander to Heathrow took only 8 ½ hours and was perfectly smooth. We were not terribly high: about 9,500 feet, I think. There were clouds below us and gradually the moon rose to shine above. The plane (a Constellation) was well fitted and comfortable enough for sitting in but there was not enough leg space. I did no more than doze fitfully.

‘What was very fortunate was that the clouds below us broke just as we touched England, and there below us in a sparkling blue sea was Land’s End, with Penzance and Marazion. We flew up the North Cornish coast and, through patchy cloud, saw Woody Bay, then parts of Exmoor, later the Wiltshire downlands. Gradually the clouds dispersed and we finally landed at Heathrow in sunshine.

‘On Friday (a miserable rainy day) I went up to town and began my series of interviews. The only important business ones were with HM Treasury and the Board of Trade.’

On 22 January a telegram announces that he has arrived safely in Bombay. Then:

31 January 1949 c/o KC Roy, Ministry of Finance, New Delhi – ‘According to schedule, the whole Mission is due to leave New Delhi on Wednesday. To avoid any more fuss and bother with my ears, I have rearranged my tour on a rather more limited scale so that I can do it all by train. As it now stands, I leave here on 3 Feb; spend the 4th to the 7th in Calcutta; tour the irrigation and industrial area of West Bengal and Bihar for 4 days; spend the weekend 13th/14th at Jamshedpur; move on to Nagpur and arrive back in Bombay on the 18th; from there I return to New Delhi, for a final two weeks, about the 20th.

‘The past week has been one of great pressure, with so many people to talk to and a number of formal receptions. By Saturday evening my throat was almost played out and I was getting quite hoarse.

‘My impressions of New Delhi at this time of year are very good. It is beautifully designed, and the vistas of grass and trees, with the exclusion of commercial developments in the Govt and residential areas, make at least as great an appeal as Washington, if not greater. The so-called bungalows in which the Ministers and senior

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government officials live are very different from the bungalows that we are familiar with. They are of one-storey construction, built of brick and stuccoed and of very ample dimensions. Rooms are large – our living room would be only half the size of their main rooms - and the ceilings are very high: about 15/25 feet. There are huge fans pendent from the ceilings, for use in the hot weather. Of course there is no servant problem; if we lived here (which heaven forbid) we should have from 12 to 20 to run the house for us.

‘Incidentally I have a personal servant, called a ‘bearer’, attached to me. He looks a disreputable bandit but is very good. I have never had my clothes in such condition in my life. Everything is kept in apple-pie order. He attends to my laundry, keeps my suits brushed and pressed and my shoes shining, darns my socks and sews on buttons, sees I go out with a clean handkerchief, gets my bath ready, brings me morning tea and generally runs my bachelor household.

‘Our most notable occasion so far has been the lunch with the Governor-General on Saturday. He is the successor to the Viceroy and his house the former Viceregal Palace. Everything very regal, of course, and sumptuous. At lunch each of us had a towering bearded and turbaned Sikh, in magnificent scarlet uniform, standing behind his chair. In contrast to all this, the Governor-General is a simple little old man, dressed in plain white clothes and obviously impatient with all the splendour. He is by origin a Brahmin priest and impresses one with his spiritual power. We talked Indian development for a while and spiritual rearmament for a long while. After lunch he took us for a walk around the magnificent Moghul Gardens behind the palace. You cannot imagine how impressive they are. The best part of all is a circular sunken garden with a pool at its centre and a wall covered with climbing plants at its outer rim. Between are a series of terraces packed tight with flowers of all kinds. The whole sunken garden is about 100 yards in diameter!

‘Yesterday was our first day of rest. We went out for a drive round some ruined forts and monasteries in the environs. Everything was so strange to our experience: countryside, architecture, people, animals and so on. We saw bright green parrots flitting about. Monkeys also we saw, running through the fields and even coming to stare at us from the roadside. Camels we saw turning water wheels for irrigation and also pulling clumsy carts.’

5 February 1949 Government House, Calcutta – ‘I am writing this letter while sitting up in bed in the so-called ‘Dufferin Room’ in what used to be the Governor’s Palace (Governor of Bengal). ... This living in palatial surroundings is amusing. There are hordes of servants and soldiers on guard who salute me at the slightest provocation. I drive around in a shiny big car with the royal crest on it. What you are missing!

‘I arrived in Calcutta by train yesterday noon after a reasonably comfortable 900 mile journey from New Delhi. In the afternoon I went around the docks, which struck me as being pretty well run. The journey by train was across flat country all the way. Except at a few points in Bengal, there was not the slightest undulation of ground. Flat fields, dotted with trees, stretching away endlessly. Except when we passed through big towns

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like Cawnpore and Allahabad I never saw anything which you or I would dignify with the name of road. I saw lots of wading birds in the various pools beside the line – cranes and herons – some bright blue kingfishers and one peacock. I am told that tigers are now so rare that they are very difficult to find. This reminds me of a far-from-rare creature – the jackal. Jackals penetrate into New Delhi at night and their ghastly screeching has to be heard to be believed. Until one knows what it is, one’s hair stands straight up on end!

‘There is not much to be said of our last few days in Delhi. The days were filled with a hard round of interviews and working on our various problems. On Wednesday night I had dinner with the Prime Minister, Pandit Nehru, which was an interesting experience. He is a remarkable man.

‘On Tuesday next we set off on our rail tour of the irrigation and coal field area lying about 120 miles west of Calcutta. On the following Monday I leave the others to go south (to Madras etc) and strike westwards on my own, by rail, to Nagpur. After one day there, to talk to the Central Provinces government, I travel on again to Bombay, arriving on the 17th. I shall be in Bombay for 4 or 5 days before returning once more to New Delhi, again by train.

‘The real hard work of the Mission will come during the second week in New Delhi. In ten days I shall have the task of bringing this Govt down from dreams to realities, which will be no mean job.’

11 February 1949 Directors’ Bungalow, Jamshedpur – ‘Calcutta provided a much more enjoyable stay than I had anticipated. The centre of the city is rather well laid out. The ‘Maidan’ is a sort of Hyde Park and gives a welcome ‘lung’. The outskirts of the city are, generally speaking, the poorer quarters. You never saw such poverty in your life: dirt, squalor and disease unutterable. The urban areas are more poverty-stricken than those right out in the country.

‘We lived in state and in luxury at Government House. The trouble was to carve a little time for rest and reflection out of the heavy programme and the numberless unanticipated engagements. The Mission is having a considerable influence, I think, and I have even been begged by one of the Provincial Prime Ministers to press certain financial reforms which I have advocated, and which he has been trying in vain to get through, upon Pandit Nehru! It is extraordinary what opportunities for far-reaching influence can quite unexpectedly be placed in one’s hands.

‘We left Calcutta on Monday morning, the 7th, by train. We had two special coaches, which we made our headquarters for the next 3 days. They were not bad, though living on the railway is apt to be noisy. Our first stay was at Asansol, where we visited an aluminium factory, collieries, a steel works and irrigation schemes. Thence we moved to Dhanbad for a visit to a big fertiliser plant which is going up nearby. Yesterday afternoon and evening we drove 125 miles from Dhanbad to Jamshedpur. The journey took 5 hours because of the bad road for nearly half the distance. We came through wild and desolate hilly country and it was fun travelling in the dark over a very bumpy road, which was

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hardly more than track, through thick jungle scrub which is known to shelter many tigers. Unfortunately, we did not see a sign of a single one! Ten miles further on we ran into this great steel town of Jamshedpur, which houses one of the biggest steel plants in the world. The contrast is representative of India today.’

15 February 1949 Governors Camp, Nagpur – ‘I arrived by train from Jamshedpur yesterday afternoon and leave about 4 pm tomorrow for Bombay. Today I visited a cotton mill in the morning and had a meeting with the Prime Minister and Provincial Cabinet this afternoon. Tomorrow I am due to visit some manganese mines about 35 miles away before boarding my afternoon train.

‘The Governor of the province is a very pleasant fellow, who has made a charming host. Both he and Sir Jehangir Ghandy, one of the heads of the Tata Steel Works, have urged me strongly to come back in 2 years’ time.

‘I hear that a leopard was seen wandering round one of the neighbouring houses a few nights back. My door is open on to the dark garden ... but there are sentries patrolling outside!

‘Today I had an experience I have been dreading for some time! I was garlanded with a great rope of flowers and given an enormous bouquet. Thank goodness I was on my own, with no other members of the Mission present. It is meant as a great honour, of course, but did I feel a fool?!

‘I should revert for a moment to Jamshedpur, which is a remarkable concentration of heavy industry (steel, locomotives, cables, wiredrawing, etc) built up under the leadership of the Tata family. It is a first class technical development and set in a “model” town.

‘Apart from visiting the works (and getting very tired) I saw some good cricket between two “county” elevens.

‘I saw two remarkable sights. The first – and most impressive – was the unbroken line of country folk, miles long, coming in to market. Men and women, walking barefoot, with enormous loads of vegetables or poultry or kindling wood on their heads or shoulders. They come 10 or 15 miles and return with a few pence for their work and trouble. The other sight was a great crowd of the same people gambling away their meagre gains at cock fights by the roadside.

‘I stayed in the Tata’s guest bungalow, a beautifully set up place, as you can imagine. A gecko shared my bedroom and it was jolly to see him running up and down the wall: so sure and swift and silent.

‘From the cleanliness and graciousness of Jamshedpur I descended with a bump to squalor and dirt in the train. It was a fearful journey in a dirty compartment from which it was quite impossible to exclude further accretions of thick dust as we went along. I

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have seldom felt more uncomfortable from 8 pm one day to 3.30 pm the next. Tomorrow another dose of the same medicine – from 4 pm until 9 am on the 17th.’

2 March 1949 c/o KC Roy, Ministry of Finance, New Delhi – ‘These closing days in India are ones of very high pressure. Indeed I don’t know how I am going to fit everything in. We have important meetings at 10.30 and 2.30 every morning and afternoon, and there are numerous private interviews to fit in before and after them. On Tuesday evening I gave a speech to the Indian Council for World Affairs at, what I did not realise until after, was a public meeting. You will be amused to see the splash it was given in the Hindustan Times. Tomorrow evening the Finance Secretary is giving a reception for the Mission and on Friday evening I am giving one for some members of the Government and senior officials. There is to be a final meeting on Saturday and a winding-up conference of the Mission itself in the afternoon. So I will be hard at it right until I pack my bags to get on the plane.

‘I am flying back to London by Pan-American, because that will avoid going back to Bombay. My route back will be via Karachi, Basra, Damascus, Istanbul, Rome and Brussels.’

8 March 1949 87 Mayfield Avenue London N12 – ‘The air trip from India was very tedious. We left Delhi at about midnight on the 5th/6th. We had extended waits at Karachi and Istanbul and lost time on almost each of the intermediate runs. Eventually we landed at Heathrow 9 hours late.

‘I had an early lunch and went down to the City, returning about 5.30 pm. I was so tired that I fell asleep in Dad’s armchair, listening to the 6 o’clock news. Today I have been in the City and Whitehall and had a very busy time. Tomorrow I have a full morning before catching the 1.20 from Waterloo. I suppose we sail at the end of the afternoon.’

In the summer of 1949 we had our first home leave, arriving by sea in mid-June and staying until mid-September. In July Dad received a telegram from the President of the World Bank instructing him to proceed immediately to take a mission to Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav President, Tito, had just broken off relations with the Soviet bloc.

19 August 1949 c/o Mr Dragoslav Avramovic, Ministry of Finance, Belgrade – ‘Our journey to Paris was very pleasant. There was no restaurant car on the Calais-Paris train but lunch boxes were available and quite good enough. We stayed in a comfortable hotel near the Arc de Triomphe. Paris was really lovely. The fountains were going again and the city as a whole was closely approaching its pre-war gaiety.

‘From Paris on, however, things were grimmer. There was one sleeping car on the Simplon-Orient express but that was quite full and we all five had to cram into one sitting-up compartment. With the morning we ran into Switzerland. We were cheered at the prospect of getting sleeper accommodation for the second night. I would add that the Swiss had put on a restaurant car, so we fed well.

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‘At Montreux we had a minor excitement in that Raymond Cope (a colleague) got off the train to change some money, stayed away too long and was left behind! Fortunately another train followed us up half an hour behind and, since there is a 20-minute wait at Brig for customs formalities, the railway kindly held us back another 10 minutes to enable him to rejoin us.

‘Then we scurried on through the Simplon Tunnel and out into Italy. Lake Maggiore looked most inviting. Then Milan and the rather dull Lombardy plain. Venice was reached just as darkness fell and we saw the gondolas gliding over the canals with lamps in their prows. We reached Trieste about midnight and passed through the Italian frontier formalities at 2.30 am. And the Yugoslav about 4 am. We reached Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, about 7.30. The line through Slovenia follows the valley and gorges of the Sava and the scenery is magnificent. We reached Belgrade punctually about 8.30 pm (on Wednesday). We were met by various Govt officials including the Deputy Minister of Finance.

‘Yesterday we had meetings with the Minister of Finance, with the five principal senior officials with whom we shall be dealing and with the Minister of Foreign Trade. In addition I held a conference with the press. (It may have been after this that Radio Bucharest reported on the World Bank visit to its Soviet bloc listeners. It described Dad as ‘a sinister figure who stalks about the world with an atom bomb in one hand and a cheque book in the other’. It is a - possibly slightly inaccurate - quote we all enjoyed repeating over and over in succeeding years.)

‘Today we have been moved into a villa which will be ours for the rest of our stay. The whole place is of a most luxurious description and suits me very well! It is on a hill overlooking the city and the Danube below. Transportation is no problem because I have a large Buick for my own use. There is, of course, a whole squad of servants to run the place, which houses the whole Mission comfortably.’

Dad’s diary records after the visit: ‘The Yugoslav government was apparently nervous that an attempt might be made to assassinate me in order to embroil Yugoslavia once more with the West. I was, of course, quite ignorant of this, but we were, in fact, housed in a villa which stood in its own grounds while 40 guards were on duty the whole time I was there.’

21 August 1949 c/o Mr Dragoslav Avramovic, Ministry of Finance, Belgrade – ‘The people with whom we have to deal so far (various Ministers and senior officials) are pleasant and mostly extremely capable. The high quality of the Administration exceeds our expectations.’

25 August 1949 c/o Mr Dragoslav Avramovic, Ministry of Finance, Belgrade – ‘’On Monday I shall begin a tour for about a week – up into Vojvodina to look at some agricultural projects, down into Bosnia (Sarajevo) to look at the forests and out to the copper mines at Bor, near the Bulgarian border.

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‘The Yugoslavs with whom we are dealing are most pleasant and are excellent businessmen and administrators. I have also talked with several of the Diplomatic Corps and a general picture of the country is beginning to take shape. I would add that Belgrade is taking the present political tension with Russia a great deal more calmly than London or Washington. The Yugoslav Govt seem to me to be handling themselves with dignity and a high degree of diplomatic skill.’

29 August 1949 c/o Mr Dragoslav Avramovic, Ministry of Finance, Belgrade – ‘My peace of mind is not helped by the fact that one of my specialist consultants, an American, is proving a complete wash-out. I think I shall have to tell him he’s no good and send him back to the US. I can’t leave him here because the Yugoslavs regard him as incompetent (rightly) and he is dragging down the Bank’s reputation. You know how I hate that sort of job!

‘On Saturday we were taken to hear a Yugoslav Opera in an open-air theatre. The theatre is constructed out of large blocks of shaped stone at one end of a huge worked-out quarry. ... My only other excursion since I last wrote was to visit a couple of factories not far away. I may be going into Bosnia and Croatia about the middle of the week and return here on Saturday.’

Dad’s diary sums up the trip: ‘It was extremely interesting to see a Communist country and to participate in discussions when they were wrestling with whether or not they could adapt themselves to Western thinking and policies. Eventually they did decide to adapt themselves and the result has been to set on foot a process which has led in subsequent years, to diversification and freedom of industrial organisation and procedures with consequent effect on a number of political concepts too.

‘While I was there I had a discussion with Tito, whom I found very impressive. He was a born leader of men and, I sensed, an essentially kindly one. Fortunately he came down on the side of those who would not be swept away by doctrinaire attitudes and it was his word, I am sure, which turned Yugoslavia towards a more liberal economic and political regime I was very glad that our conversations laid the foundation for contact between the Bank and Yugoslavia, which has been maintained ever since.’ (This was written in the 1960’s.)

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Stanley Hoar – Personal NotesHoar... · Web viewArthur Stanley George Hoar was mostly known as...

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