The London Cage

"In the City of London, in a restaurant in a narrow street--the street named aptly enough Old Jewry--I was fuming with anger one windy March day during 1939. At the luncheon table where I habitually sat with half a dozen executives from nearby office buildings, the topic of conversation was Hitler's Germany, in particular the Nazi onslaughts against the Jews. For a quarter of an hour I had been stifling my protests while listening to four respectable London businessmen uttering sentiments that were plainly, foolishly, outrageously pro-Nazi. Old Hitler was certainly putting the Jews in their place and good luck to him. . . we could do with a dose of the same medicine in this country. . what a farce was this Territorial Army recruiting campaign. . . why keep up the ridiculous scare of an attack from Germany? I listened, as I say, for fifteen minutes; then I could tolerate it no longer and with a good deal of venom told my companions what I thought of their opinions and judgment. . . . "