Walter Hooper

Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949


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mentioned in his letter to Griffiths of 29 April the impending danger of war; in the next two he explores his increasing and justified concern. For this was the time of the Munich crisis. In March 1938 Germany had invaded Austria. By the end of May, encouraged by the lack of reaction to the invasion on the part of Britain and France, Hitler began to threaten Czechoslovakia, and especially the Sudetenland-a tiny section of the Czech Republic that lay on the border of Germany.

       In June 1938 Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, said ‘off the record’ that Britain favoured turning over the Sudetenland to Germany ‘in the interest of peace’. He sent a representative to Czechoslovakia to mediate between that country and the Sudeten Germans. Finally, on 5 September, the Czech president agreed to accept the German demands. That was not at all what Hitler wanted, and he used his own propaganda machine to cause outbreaks of fighting in the Sudetenland. This, in turn, led Czechoslovakia to declare martial law.

       Britain and its allies were very keen to avoid war, and on 29 September 1938 representatives from Germany, England, France and Italy met in Munich to decide Czechoslovakia’s fate. An agreement was signed stating that Germany would take over the Sudetenland. On 1 October German troops began occupying the region. After that similar settlements were made over Hungary and Poland. Hitler had succeeded and by 15 March 1939 he was to occupy the whole of Czechoslovakia.

       TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford

      Sept 12th 1938

      My dear Barfield

,25 and begin[s] to realise, and to acquiesce in, the rightly precarious hold we have on all our natural loves, interests, and comforts: then when they are really shaken, at the very first breath of that wind, it turns out to have been all a sham, a field-day, blank cartridges.

,26 instead of the opposite.

      I did in the end see (I dare not say ‘feel’) that since nothing but these forcible shakings will cure us of our worldliness, we have at bottom reason to be thankful for them. We force God to surgical treatment: we won’t (mentally) diet.

      This morning comes your letter, and I know you at least (I cd. hardly depend on any one else for so much) will not think me heartless for connecting it in this way with what I was already thinking, for the subjects really flowed together—indeed they are the same subject.

      Well, well: you know all I am thinking about at least as well as I do. As you said in that essay of yours one cannot in the Simon of Cyrene moment see the cross from the Joseph of Arimathea point of view, but one can remember that the other side is real: hence that apparently naked will, stripped of its emotional motives, which, on your view, is alone free.

      I’ll fix with Cecil.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      Out of the Silent Planet was published by John Lane, the Bodley Head on 23 September 1938.

       TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS (W):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford

      Oct 5th 1938

      Dear Dom Bede

      I was terrified to find how terrified I was by the crisis. Pray for me for courage.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      As from Magdalen College,

      Oxford.

      Oct 29th 1938

      Dear Madam

      Your letter is one of the most surprising and, in a way, alarming honours I have ever had. I have not been for very long a believer and have hitherto regarded the great mystical writers as a man in the foothills regards the glaciers and precipices: to find myself noticed from regions which I scarcely feel qualified to notice is really quite overwhelming. In trying to thank you, I find myself regretting that we have given such an ugly meaning to the word ‘Condescension’