September 5th 1939

Tuesday September 5th

Reports coming in all day about the “Athenia” disaster, but no estimate yet as to casualties. I am afraid I was rather premature yesterday when I said there were only a few. The submarine was actually seen and there is is no doubt at all about the torpedoing. Added to that, she opened fire on the sinking ship.

I believe that the events  of the last few years - since the growth of this hydra Fascism - have dulled the general sense of the horrible: “We have supped full of horrors”.

Even the yellow press could hardly rise to superlatives. We have read, almost unmoved, of the use of gas on unarmed Abyssinians, of the shelling of Durazzo on Good Friday, of the prolonged martyrdom of Spain, of the terrible slaughter in China til there is no room left even for comment. The mind will not take it in.

And perhaps one may dare to hope that Doomsday is near and the world’s grown honest for even Italy tries, only half-heartedly, to justify Hitler.

The world is sick of bloodshed, before this blood-shedding has well begun, but it is sicker still of Fascism. It may perhaps die a natural death in Italy, it will die in Germany, but its death is going to be unnatural and violent.

The RAF flew over Germany again, unmolested, and dropped their visiting cards.

There is an element of fantastic unreality about this war, we all we all seem to be living in a dream. We hear the wireless and we read the newspapers, but outwards people are very much the same and life seems almost normal, so that the events going on all around us with tremendous speed seem to leave no mark on the brain.

We bagged two German ships, crew all saved of course, but lost another of our own, the Bosnia, one man killed.

Already we seem to have been at war for ages.