The World and Hess

Hamlet: Ay, marry, why was he sent into England? Clown: Why, because 'a was mad. 'A shall recover his wits there; or if 'a do not, 'tis no great matter there. Hamlet: Why? Clown: 'Twill not be seen in him there. There the men are as mad as he.

Always alert for a pat tag from the Bard, a chance to get off a self-deprecatory wisecrack, Britons last week merrily quoted Hamlet to each other, felt an obscure contentment that the most fantastic episode in Britain's greatest war could be cosily tied up with Shakespeare.

Fact No. 1. The main fact was simple enough. Rudolf Hess, only two places removed from the leadership of Germany, had quit Germany under his own steam and gone to the enemy country, where he was imprisoned. In all the howling vortex of dope-stories, nut-stories, crackpot theorizing, official and amateur speculation that the Hess flight evoked, only the New York World-Telegram affected to doubt Fact No. 1. The Telegram hired a series of detective storytellers to mastermind the Hess Case. One, Lee Wright of Publishers Simon & Schuster, opined that Hess wasn't Hess at all, but British Secret Agent X.

The world and its press were scarcely to be blamed for turning the most startling change of residence in history into an international guessing game. The British Government, which had been handed a magnificent trump card, had by confused handling of the affair, practically exchanged its trump for a useless joker.

Only BBC kept its eye consistently on the ball. While the rest of London officialdom hemmed, hawed and disagreed with itself, BBC truly or falsely reiterated to Germany in ten broadcasts a day that Hess was talking freely, spilling the Nazis' innermost secrets. (A minor member of the Supreme War Council, Hess probably had no great fund of specific military information, but he probably knew the master outline of the Nazi campaign, certainly knew much about Germany's domestic situation.)

Typical of official miscuing were the statements that Britain's Ministers made throughout the week. Said Minister of Information Alfred Duff Cooper, two days after Hess's capture was announced: "His arrival here shows the first breach in the Nazi Party . . . since Hitler murdered a huge bloc of his own followers on June 30 1934."

The first public reaction to the news in Britain and the Americas was the same as Duff Cooper's. Hess was played up as a "decent" Nazi who had escaped from the enemy camp, would undoubtedly aid the British.

Later the tune changed. "In the public interest" Prime Minister Churchill (who said slyly when he first heard the news: "The maggot is in the apple.") delayed reporting to Parliament on the Hess incident. Then Labor Minister Ernest Bevin declared roundly: "I don't believe Hitler did not know Hess was coming to England. ... I have seen this kind of stunt over and over again. I am not going to be deceived by any of them. From my point of view Hess is a murderer. He is no man I would ever negotiate with."

That encouraged the gloomy second thought of the British people: Be wary of a Nazi trick, look out for a fifth-column exploit or an attempt to put across a peace deal in secrecy. And then the Government's Ministerial orchestra blew off another ragged discord.

Said Minister without Portfolio Arthur Greenwood: "Disunity, doubt and disillusionment are growing within the Reich."

Home Security Minister Herbert Morrison added: "It does not matter what kind of animal he is, the main thing is that he is caged."

Health Minister Ernest Brown was most lyrical. "It is the most magnificent tribute that could be paid to this island. We shall leave it to the Government to look after him and get on with the war."

Axis Antics. In Germany, the Nazi boss's flight caused almost as many Governmental contortions as it did in Great Britain, thus tending to indicate that had the British shut up and sat tight they would have had the Nazis well over a barrel. Lord Haw-Haw had originally announced that Comrade Hess had taken off against the Fuehrer's orders, apparently while insane, probably crashed.

After the news of Hess's landing, Berlin's next step was to say Hess had turned peace crank, had been led astray by soothsayers and astrologers. Promptly closed was every spook shop and fortune teller in Germany, not excepting a headline mind reading act in a Berlin music hall. In a special meeting, Hitler rallied the biggest shots of Nazi Germany, who obligingly "gave . . . an impressive demonstration of a determined will for victory." To assure the people that all was well, Nazi ward-heelers started a house-to-house canvass.

Finally, at week's end, Berlin called the incident officially closed. No explanations were given, but the Nazis denied arresting Hess's wife and son, his geopolitical mentor, Professor Karl Haushofer, Plane Designer Willy Messerschmitt. But Nazi spokesmen were probably not exaggerating when they said, "The English . . . will have more headaches over this matter than we."

Elsewhere along the Axis there was just as much pother. The Italian press simply parroted Berlin's official statements. Tokyo, on the other hand, showed plainly how puzzled it felt. Japanese papers dug up the dirtiest word they could think of, called Hess an Anglophile because he was born in Alexandria, lived there until he was twelve years old. (Until 1939 his father and mother remained in Egypt.) The land of Bushido (loyalty) could not understand how a man could run out on his boss. If it was all a great big clever Axis plot, the Japanese were not in on it.

He Took The High Road. In the confusion of hints, claims, expertizing and balderdash that flooded news columns last week appeared these grains of narrative fact.

Hess took off from the Messerschmitt plant at Augsburg in a new type of reconnaissance plane on a Saturday evening. He wore a gold wrist watch, a gold wrist compass. In the pockets of his superbly tailored flier's uniform he had a photograph of his four-year-old son, two phials of medicine, one for his weak heart, the other for a gall-bladder ailment. He also had a selection of photographs of himself at different ages; a map on which was charted a course from Augsburg to a blue-penciled circle which outlined the grounds of Dungavel Castle near Glasgow. Dungavel is the seat of 38-year-old Wing Commander Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton, 11th Duke of Brandon.

It was 11 o'clock Summer Time, the very end of the long northern twilight when he circled the grounds of Dungavel. He zoomed his plane a few thousand feet, then bailed out. Bullet holes were found in the tail of his wrecked plane later.

David McLean, a tenant of the Duke's, saw the Messerschmitt crash and puff into flame, saw also the white bloom of the parachute drifting down through the dusk Armed with a pitchfork, he found Hess lying on the ground with a broken ankle covered by his chute. In perfect English he said to McLean: "Will you take me to Dungavel to see the Duke of Hamilton?" Instead, McLean took him to his cottage, called the Home Guard. The local Home Guard officer arrived, sternly asked in pidgin-English: "You Nazi enemy?" Hess asked again to see the Duke.

At Home Guard headquarters he was turned over to the Army, while protocol-conscious Guardists protested the indignity of a second lieutenant's arresting a man of Hess's rank. Hess was taken first to the barracks outside Glasgow, then to a military hospital in the city. While he was on the way the Duke arrived talked for some time with Hess and British Intelligence officers.

Sporting Peer. With Hess incommunicado "somewhere in Great Britain," reading detective stories, eating better than many a Briton, talking to Government officials and Foreign Office-man Ivone Kirkpatrick, the press turned much attention on the Duke of Hamilton.

If the Nazi leader had been looking for an influential Briton to get the Government's ear for him, Dungavel was hardly the right address. The Duke was away on active service, and his prominence has come mostly in sporting papers and gossip columns.

The first account from London said that the Duke had met Hess at the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, that Hess had planned to approach him because before the war he was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship. The Duke's younger brother, also a flier, had worked in Nazi labor camps, married the strong-through-joy Hon. Prunella Stack, physical culturist and Nazi favorite.

After the Duke had met Hess and talked to him, an official announcement stated that Hess had written to him three months before, denouncing the war as "lunatic " This letter the Duke was supposed to have turned over to the authorities. A few days later, however, the Duke spoke for himself, insisted he had never met Hess before in his life.

As the Marquess of Clydesdale, the Duke was Scotland's amateur middleweight boxing champion, an excellent skier, one of the first men to fly over Everest. His debut in politics was less successful. While standing for Parliament he discouraged his Conservative backers by giving the same speech at all election meetings, getting booed when he tried another.

When he was married in 1937 (to Lady Elizabeth Percy, daughter of a house whose quarrels with the Douglases and the Hamiltons were the subject of many a bloody Scottish ballad) chit-chat writers recalled tales of his eccentric invalid father and his mother, who, by report, loved animals so much that she sometimes identified herself with birds.

But the young Hamiltons did receive a wedding present from, Nazi Diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop. And one month after World War II broke out, the Duke wrote the London Times: "We will not grudge Germany Lebensraum provided that Lebensraum is not made on the grave of other nations. ... I look forward to the day when a trusted Germany comes into her own. . . ."

The world waited anxiously last week for a word from the most promising source of information about Hess: Winston Churchill, who had promised to explain all to Parliament. But already it was evident that Hess's flight had disconcerted Germany too much for it to be an elaborate ruse; that he was no ordinary turncoat eager to aid his country's enemies, or the British would not have been so puzzled; that Hess's peace plan, if he had one, had not a slender chance of winning acceptance.

There are eminently creditable reports that Hess was in Spain shortly before his hop to Scotland, possibly talking peace to deal-loving British Ambassador Sir Samuel Hoare, possibly talking anti-Communism with Red-fighting, churchgoing Dictator Franco. But why should Hess risk a dangerous airplane ride and his first parachute jump, plus the very best chances of internment, for a chance to negotiate with elements he could probably reach in Spain, Portugal or Sweden? And if his mission were official, how could Germany risk the effect on national morale that his queerly explained flight must inevitably cause?

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