The new meaning of treason

by Rebecca West

Rebecca West’s gripping chronicle of England’s World War II traitors, expanded and updated for the Cold War era  In The Meaning of Treason, Rebecca West tackled not only the history and facts behind the spate of World War II traitors, but the overriding social forces at work to challenge man’s connection to his fatherland. As West reveals in this expanded edition, the ideologically driven amateurs of World War II were followed by the much more sinister professional spies for whom the Cold War era proved a lucrative playground and put Western safety at risk. Filled with real-world intrigue and fascinating character studies, West’s gripping narrative connects the war’s treasonous acts with the rise of Communist spy rings in England and tackles the ongoing issue of identity in a complex world.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, War, Espionage, Sociology, Womens

410 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Cicely Isabel Fairfield, known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic, and travel writer. She was brought up in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she attended George Watson's Ladies College.

A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public intellectuals of the twentieth century. She reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Sunday Telegraph, and the New Republic, and she was a correspondent for The Bookman. Her major works include Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), on the history and culture of Yugoslavia; A Train of Powder (1955), her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, published originally in The New Yorker; The Meaning of Treason, later The New Meaning of Treason, a study of World War II and Communist traitors; The Return of the Soldier, a modernist World War I novel; and the "Aubrey trilogy" of autobiographical novels, The Fountain Overflows, This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund. Time called her "indisputably the world's number one woman writer" in 1947. She was made CBE in 1949, and DBE in 1959, in recognition of her outstanding contributions to British letters.

Reviews

[David Lowther · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rebecca West's book is a very thorough examination of what treason is, how it affects the traitor and those whom he or she betrays.
The author uses a number of case studies, too numerous to be listed here, to demonstrate the shadowy unstable world of the traitor and those who pursue him. Each of her examples are fascinating but none more so that William Joyce and George Blake. Joyce, the wartime German propagandist whose broadcasts from enemy cities earned him the nickname of 'Lord Haw Haw' was not without intelligence and could have made useful contributions to British society had he not chosen to betray his country.
Blake, a post-war Soviet spy, claimed that money was not his motivation but rather a belief in different society from the western one in which he lived.
The motivation for the 'atom' spies, Alan Nunn May, Klaus Fuchs and the like, claimed that, as scientists, they felt duty bound to share their discoveries with others even if this helped the Russians to develop nuclear weapons. West's book refutes this and other excuses that some gave for their treachery.
An absorbing book.
David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil (thebluepencil.co.uk)

[Feliks · Rating 4 out of 5]

The number of women nonfiction authors represented on my bookshelves are scant; but this doesn't reflect the high esteem I hold for their general ability to excel in this field. Indeed several nonfiction milestones (in my view) issue from the pens of women authoresses. Joan Didion on culture, for example, or Rachel Carson on the environment. Barbara W. Tuchman, writing on WWI. Elizabeth Eisenstein, for European history.

Lately--I would definitely say--Rebecca West will be added to these elite ranks of my most favorite female thinkers. She has chosen a fascinating little topic for her milieu; and one much to my interest. And she is very good at delivering it.

Now, when I picked up her book and read the first few pages I congratulated myself that I could immediately recognize a markedly feminine prose style--even had I not known the authorship. It stands out nakedly to the eye. There are places even in the earliest few chapters where West lingers over 'appearances' ...'how someone looked', 'how he dressed'--rather more than any male writer would.

It is for this reason that I might likely have sniffed and set it aside--if this were a novel, for instance--but not in this case. West is not not remiss in the handling of facts; and the items she adds (which a male author might not) just for this type of material--add tremendous value.

For here, West is circumscribing the bounds of a subject matter for which her personal training as an observer --as well as any hereditary faculties she gains from her gender or private life--all come to the aid of material which cries out for intuition and emotional insight.

That subject is, betrayal. Really, who better than a woman to probe such issues? Who better to size them up in a fellow? It is a fantastic premise for a work of research. For such a topic, precisely *where* a pact or a bond or an obligation was broken and abandoned, must be sifted. Tiny details matter greatly!

Falseness and faithlessness can not be determined in a laboratory. Criticizing citizenly behavior from a purely legal point-of-view helps of course, (and West does this in great measure) but surely, in the final analysis of honesty in human relations--a woman's sensibility is the best judge.

For the basis of her investigation--and very likely the impetus for the book itself--West was furnished (via the coincidence of living and working at a time) when the most calamitous incidents of civic betrayal were afforded to public life and audience. World War II and its aftermath contains the most livid examples of treason known to the modern world.

The book begins with the analysis of William Joyce ('Lord Haw-Haw') who bedeviled the European airwaves during the Blitz. One could hardly ask for a better specimen of treason. Very promising start to what looks like a fabulous, savory read.

Updates to follow.

[Mommalibrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

The review I started writing somewhere around page 90, as I contemplated dropping this non-fiction book, read: a tedious third party description of how events and people were misread, the strength of class boundaries, and every formative event in the life of the main character, William Joyce, which lead his to commit treason. This is doubly tedious because at the very beginning of the story he is hung for treason. More appreciation for the story might be possible for those with a background in English history. It is hard as an American with very little of this background to understand the attraction of Fascism and communism had for the British. Interesting things mentioned but not expanded [I will have to pursue them elsewhere] (1) policemen and Irish emigration (2) German money in Great Britain before WWII - who was giving it to whom (3) British class structure how it is created, if it is ever broken down.

Like many writers the author attempts to present both sides of the character, William Joyce but she uses language which prevents the reader from having a positive opinion, She calls him "a queer little Irish peasant". He had graduated from the University of London with honors yet she writes he is "obviously odious in so many ways, so vulgar, so pushing, so lacking in sweetness". "He possessed the structure [of intellectual gifts] though not the substance of such a prodigious and commanding intellect, and it was not possible for such an oddity to know what it lacked, having none of it"; "features bespeaking the soul who, being nothing, passionately wanted to be something." I do not feel the author ever had any respect or insight into the reasons which led William Joyce to make the choices he did.

Somewhere after page 100 the histories of other treasonous Britains was covered and the variety of personalities and reason does become interesting. I finished the book. Reading this I recalled the (totally coincidental choice of reading material) An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro which I had just read. In it WWII is over and the Americans are occupying Japan. Those with no memory of before the war and the reality of living through it question the actions of the artist who lent his talent to creating motivational posters for his country. In both books characters followed their readings of current situations and their beliefs and did what they did for reasons which did not seem evil to them at the time. How will later generations judge our actions?

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1947, Ms. West wrote The Meaning of Treason, in which she considered, in her incisive and lucid style, the motivations and significance of several notorious British traitors in World War II. In 1964, she wrote The New Meaning of Treason, in which she updated her earlier work, and added to it the cases of numerous later traitors. She is horrified by the work of these people, and equally appalled by their ability to pursue their crimes undetected, frequently for lengthy periods of time, due to the inadequacy of existing security measures and personnel, and the incompetence of those in charge of the security that does exist. She is no less disturbed by the rationalizations of the criminals in justifying their treachery, and by the significant portion of the populace who harbor some sympathy for the perpetrators. Her pen is sharp and her aim is true. Her work is still recommended reading 50+ years later; enemy espionage still exists, and in fact has become even more sophisticated--and the security efforts with which we oppose it are still less capable and successful than they should be.

[Jeremy Egerer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seventy years old and timely. A beautifully-written account of fascist Britain before and after the war; and beyond this a story about how Communists were able to penetrate our institutions and throw us under the bus for the Soviets. With the antifa on the march and Chinese espionage on the rise, very much worth the read. Rebecca West was a sharp thinker and a stylish writer.

[Mk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never even heard of this author before. It is a good read (historical studies in the UK & Amer.) of treason with much background information about the spies & traitors. It is relevant to what is happening today at this very moment. I fire-walled my rating (I usually do unless the book is terrible).

[Vel Veeter]

This is a revised edition of a book that came out not that long after WWII had ended and was revisited about 20 years later when the geopolitical situation surrounding the concept of treason further shifted from the politics of fascism and democracy to one of the Cold War logic of communism and democracy (and I know that communism is an economic system, but meaning here the authoritarian governments under communist regimes in Soviet Union, and within time China and North Korea, although the book doesn’t cover those countries).

The book takes on the evolving question then of what is and what was treason in a shifting world landscape. The cases that West examines with fascism involve primarily the ways in which statelessness of many of the actors and specifically through their changing or giving up specific British citizenship, or in the case of one actor, being born Irish and English, living in Spain during the civil war, and then moving on to Nazi Germany, how this complicates the question of treason as a legal charge, if not actually as a moral charge.

The book then moves onto the question of figures who gave or sold secrets to the Soviet Union, especially scientists, many of whom believed more in the concept of the scientific community as being outside politics than in loyalties to specific countries, especially in the wake of the second world war.

West still clings fiercely to loyalty to one’s country and finds the arguments about statelessness (whether fascist, communist, or capitalist) as being either temporary, untested, or even naive or childish. She’s conservative in her views of the changing world, if not specifically in her politics, and does not quite cozen to these different ways of looking at an almost post-state world. Ideologies don’t quite register with her.

The book is fascinating in its journalistic accounting of the topic, and I think West is clear in her thinking, even when I don’t agree with her, but I also feel like this book feels like the beginnings of a final cry of the state. I imagine a newer book would be an accounting of corporatism and terrorism.

[Christopher Skinner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find West to be one of the best stylists of the mid-20th century, so I always enjoy reader her prose.

This book deals with the concept of 'treason' in the modern age, specifically in the context of the Cold War. What is treason, when a single reproduced microfilmed document can lead to mass, perhaps global slaughter? Can selling such a document be considered, in the classical sense, an act of treason, especially when the transaction is one done simply for economic gain on the part of the seller?

Beginning with a revision of much of her 'Meaning of Treason' (which dealt with William Joyce and the early Cold War spy rings) West then moves on to detail what treason means in most post-war spy scandals up to Profumo. As always with West, her digressions (on the Webbs, Anglicanism, Wells, and the role of homosexuality in the diplomatic scandals of her day) as much as her main thesis make the book a remarkable cultural document.

In the end, West argues that moral positions must flow from established order, and that governments need more openness with their citizens, not less. In addition, she argues that scandals can only be properly dealt with if treated with the proper seriousness they deserve (i.e., Profumo should have been a minor issue, and many of the scandals dismissed as lesser by both Labour and Conservative governments should have aroused much greater concerns about aspects of security than they did).

Ultimately she deplore the political point-scoring of the Commons and Lords in dealing with 'treason,' and the degree to which salaciousness drives the press. She offers few solutions beyond a cleaving to sober rationality, which of course is as it should be. A good, if somewhat subjective, read.

[Steve Majerus-Collins · Rating 2 out of 5]

For years, I have read glowing reporters on this book so perhaps my hopes were too inflated, but it is disappointing. West examines a number of traitors and spies (she sees little difference) and expalins why they were wrong. She makes the infamous Lord Haw-Haw a sympathetic figure, but no one else, perhaps because they are mostly communists while William Joyce was fascist? I don't have any respect for communists or fascists, but I think it's odd West chooses the latter as the better men. Her point is so apparent that I don't know she bothered to write the book: We should look at what do, not their motivations for it.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

West covers the follies, captures, and trials of traitors to the UK during and after WWII. While West is more than a little eloquent and her intelligence can be intimidating, sometimes the writing is a bit dry. She does a good job of illuminating all of the fissures in English society during WWII. There is more than a bit of fearful obsession with homosexuality expressed in these pages. I know it is not unusual for the times but it will strike the modern reader as a cudgel.

[ROBERT]

Well written history of British traitors published in 1964. Some things have changed with other traitors brought to light. So many failures on the part of vetting. Book was part of the Time magazine reading program.

[Kevin Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Used for research.