Evelyn Waugh is on to something in his discussion of P.G. Wodehouse (as part of a review of George Orwell’s 1946 Critical Essays):

It is, of course, insane to speak of Mr. Wodehouse as a “fascist,” and Mr. Orwell finely exposes the motives and methods of the Bracken-sponsored abuse of this simple artist, but I do find in his work a notable strain of pacifism. It was in the dark spring of 1918 that Jeeves first “shimmered in with the Bohea.” Of all Mr. Wodehouse’s characters Archie Moffam alone saw war service. Of the traditional aspects of English life the profession of arms alone is unmentioned; parsons, schoolmasters, doctors, merchants, squires abound, particularly parsons. Serving soldiers alone are absent, and this is the more remarkable since, so far as the members of the Drones Club correspond to anything in London life, they are officers of the Brigade of Guards. Moreover, it is not enough to say that Mr. Wodehouse has not outgrown the loyalties of his old school. When Mr. Orwell and I were at school, patriotism, the duties of an imperial caste, etc., were already slightly discredited; this was not so in Mr. Wodehouse’s schooldays, and I suggest that Mr. Wodehouse did definitely reject this part of his upbringing.

The full piece can be found in The Essays, Articles, and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh.

For new light on Waugh himself, see R.J. Stove’s essay at TAC today, “A Grief Unobserved,” which considers how a casually cruel remark about a dead daughter may have set off the descent to EW’s own end.