24
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
speaker, Hamm was rated second only to Sir Oswald Mosley,1
who was in retirement on his farm after being released from
custody.
"Traitor Churchill, Traitor Attlee . . . England has been
sold down the river to America by Traitor Baruch. . . . Britain First, England for the Englishmen , . . The dirty Jews,
those miserable creatures crawling around London."
This sort of baiting delighted the crowd. They roared themselves hoarse. Somebody yelled: "It's time we wiped them
out!"
"P J! F J!" some one in the crowd began to chant.
"What does P J stand for?" I asked Burgess.
"Perish Judah!" he said. "It's a good slogan."
"England is not without a leader," Hamm was bellowing.
"It has a leader. A leader who was for Britain First, first, last,
and always. Our leader is the greatest living Englishman—Sir
Oswald Mosley!"
A deep roar went up from the crowd and echoed across Victoria Park.
"Mosley! Mosley! We want Mosley! We want Mosley!
Heil, Mosley!" All around hands were outstretched in the
Nazi salute. It was hard to believe that I was in London.
After the meeting I met Hamm, an educated, smoothspeaking man of thirty-one, who had once taught English in
the Falkland Islands. We went to a pub together and drank
warm ale. He told me he had been interned in South Africa
during the war as dangerous to national security, and later
been allowed to join the British army. Hamm was curious
about "nationalism in America," how active our groups were,
and what had happened to Father Coughlin.
1
The notorious Mosley, former fuehrer of the British Union of Fascists, studied the teachings of Fascism in Italy. Home Secretary fames Chuter
Ede disclosed in the House of Commons that, according to the former
Italian ambassador in London, Count Dino Grandi, Mussolini had been
subsidizing the BUF at the rate of $250,000 a year. Mosley visited Germany
and conferred with Hitler. He is now active in the Union Movement, composed largely of former BUF members.