Chapter XI: Part 11

This partisan approach to economic problems is as important a factor as complacency and lethargy in obstructing adoption by the working class of a national viewpoint toward the British economic predicament. The British political system is a marvelously well-balanced one. But the balance is disturbed now and has been for some years by the tendency of organized labor to think almost exclusively in terms of its own rather than national interests. Labor can with perfect justice retort that when the middle class dominated British society it thought in terms of its own interests, too. This is true, of course. The difference is that the present national position is too precarious for blind partisanship.

Much is made in public speeches of the educational side of trade-union work. It would seem that the great opportunity for the unions now is in this field. Someone or some organization that enjoys the respect of the workers must educate them out of their lethargy and out of their memories of the past. The popular newspapers will not or cannot do it--and, naturally, as largely capitalist, they would be suspected by many of those most in need of such education. But the job must be done if Britain is to benefit fully from the enterprise and ingenuity of her designers and engineers.

Certainly the educational process would work both ways. A traveler in Britain in the period 1953-6 would notice that in many cases there was a difference between the TUC leaders' views about what the workers thought and what the workers themselves thought. Many of the unions have become too big. Contact between the leaders and the rank and file is lost. The Communists take advantage of this.

Can the working class awaken to the necessities of Britain's position and sublimate its agonizing memories and fierce hatreds in a national economic effort? This is the big "if" in Britain's ability to meet the economic challenge of today. I do not doubt that the working class will respond again, as it has in the past, to a national emergency that is as real, if less spectacular, than the one which faced the nation in 1940. This response, I believe, will develop as firmly, albeit more slowly, under a Conservative government as under a Labor government because it will be a development of the trend, already clearly evident, in the new middle class to take a national rather than a class outlook on Britain's problems. But the response must come soon.

We have seen how the present political alignment in Britain has developed out of the political and economic circumstances of the years since 1939. What of the future?

The Conservative government since the end of 1955 has been engaged in a gigantic political gamble. It has instituted a series of economic measures to restrict home spending. These measures are highly unpopular with the new working class from whom the party has obtained surprising support in recent elections. At the same time the Tory cabinet has not provided as much relief from taxation as the old middle class, its strongest supporters, demanded and expected after the electoral triumph of May 1955. These are calculated political risks. The calculation is that by the next general election, in 1959 or even 1960, the drive to expand British exports will have succeeded in establishing a new prosperity more firmly based than that of the boom years 1954 and 1955.

To attain this objective the Conservative government will have to perform a feat of political tightrope-walking beyond the aspirations of ordinary politics. The new prosperity can be achieved successfully, from the political point of view, only if the measures taken to attain it please the old middle class without offending Conservative voters in the new middle class and the new industrial working class. This will mean budgets in 1957 and 1958 that will relieve financial pressure upon the first of these groups without alienating the other two, whose interests are mutually antagonistic. It will mean that Britain's defense commitments must be reduced and adjusted to the extent that the savings will cut taxation of the old middle class but not to the extent that the reduction of defense construction will affect the employment of either the new middle class or the industrial working class.

This book was completed before the government's course was run. If its policy succeeds, then Harold Macmillan must be accorded a place in history not far below that of the greatest workers of political miracles.

Had there been a general election in the winter of 1956-7, the Labor Party would have won, although its majority would probably not have been so large as its enthusiastic tacticians predicted. The party should be able to appeal to the electorate at the next general election with greater success than in 1955, providing certain conditions are met.

The big "if" facing the Labor Party concerns not abstruse questions of socialist dogma but the oldest question in politics: the conflict between two men. The men are Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party, and Aneurin Bevan.

Nye Bevan remains a major force in British politics. He is the only prominent politician who is a force in himself, a personality around which lesser men assemble. Like the young Winston Churchill, he inspires either love or hate. Untrammeled by the discipline of the party, he can rally the left wing of the Labor movement. Simultaneously he can alienate the moderates of the party, the undecided voters, and the tepid conservatives who had thought it might be time to let labor "have a go." If the next general-election campaign finds Bevan clamoring for the extension of nationalization in British industry, beckoning his countrymen down untrodden social paths, lambasting Britain's allies, and scoffing at her progress, then the Labor Party will be defeated.

I have known Aneurin Bevan for many years. For the weal or woe of Britain, he is a man born to storm and danger. A sudden war, a swift and violent economic reverse would brighten his star. In a crisis his confidence, whether that of a born leader or a born charlatan, would attract the many.

Barring such catastrophes, a reasonable stability in government is to be expected. The Conservative majority in the House of Commons after the 1955 election probably was a little larger than is customary in a nation so evenly divided politically. Despite the rancor aroused by the Suez crisis, there seem to be reasonable grounds for predicting the gradual disappearance of Tories of the old type and of the belligerent Labor leaders surviving from the twenties. The development of a national outlook by both parties seems probable.

Americans need not be concerned over the fission of the British political system into a multi-party one capable of providing a government but incapable of government. Stability means, of course, that British governments will know their own minds. In the complex, hair-trigger world of today this is an important factor. It is equally important in charting the future course of Britain. Nations that know where they want to go and how they want to go there are not verging on political senility.

This political stability is vital to Britain in the years of transition that lie ahead. For it is in British industry that the greatest changes will take place.

Britain is moving in new directions, economically, politically, and socially. The base of this movement is industrial--a revolution in power. The world's most imaginative, extensive, and advanced program for the production of electricity from nuclear power stations is under way. This magnificent acceptance of the challenge of the nuclear age is also an answer to one of the key questions of 1945: how could British industry expand and British exports thrive if coal yearly became scarcer and more expensive to mine? The answer is nuclear energy, 5,000 to 6,000 megawatts of it by 1965.

The program for constructing twenty nuclear power stations in Britain and Northern Ireland is the most spectacular part of the power program. As coal will be vital to the economy for years to come, more economic and more efficient mining methods also are regarded as a matter of national urgency.

Throughout the nation's industrial structure there is an air of purpose and enthusiasm. Five huge new steel plants will be started in 1957. An ambitious program of modernizing the railroads and the shipbuilding industry is well under way. The new industries that have developed since 1945 and old industries now delivering for the export markets are pushing British goods throughout the world: radar, radioactive isotopes, electronic equipment, sleek new jet aircraft, diesel engines, plastics, detergents, atomic power stations. All are part of Britain's response to the challenge of change.

To fulfill present hopes, production and productivity must rise, management must grasp the changed position of Britain in the world. From the courted, she has become the courter, competing for markets with Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United States. Such competition existed in the past, but now, with the cushion of overseas investments gone, such competition is a true national battle. There is plenty of evidence that a portion at least of industrial management in Britain fails to understand these conditions. Such complacency is as dangerous to the export drive as the unwillingness or inability of the industrial worker to grasp the export drive's importance to him, to his factory, to his union, and to his country.

Due emphasis should be given to such failings. But we must not forget that the British are a great mercantile people, eager and ingenious traders ready, once they accept its importance, to go to any length of enterprise to win a market. It is also wise to remember that, although circumstances have made the British share of the dollar market the criterion of success, the British do extremely well in a number of important non-dollar markets.

The attitude of the industrial working class to wage increases is a factor in the drive to boost the exports on which the nation lives. The modernization of British industry to meet the requirements of the nation's economic position, alterations in management and sales practices, higher production and productivity will not suffice to win export markets if the wage level in industry continues to rise. A steady rise will price Britain out of her markets. Should this occur, the question of whether organized labor is to take kindly to automation will become academic. The country cannot live without those markets.

Early in September of 1956 when the world was worrying over the Suez Canal, _The New York Times_ carried a news item from Brighton, the English seashore resort, that surely was as important to Britain as anything Premier Nasser or Sir Anthony Eden or Mr. Dulles might say.

The Trades Union Congress, the dispatch said, had rejected the Conservative government's plea for restraint in pressing wage claims. The final paragraphs of a resolution passed unanimously at the eighty-eighth annual conference said that the TUC " ... asserts the right of labor to bargain on equal terms with capital, and to use its bargaining strength to protect the workers from the dislocations of an unplanned economy.

"It rejects proposals to recover control by wage restraint, and by using the nationalized industries as a drag-anchor for the drifting national economy."

These phrases reveal the heart of the quarrel between the TUC and the government. The Conservatives are belabored for not carrying out a Socialist policy--i.e., a planned economy--but restraint on wages is rejected.

The resolution represented a serious check in progress toward a national understanding of the country's economic position. It ensured, I believe, another round of wage demands by the unions, protracted industrial disputes, and, eventually, higher costs for industry and higher prices for foreign buyers.

The constant bickering between union and union, between unions and employers, and between the TUC and the government should not divert us from the qualities of the British industrial working class. It is highly skilled, especially in the fields of electronics and the other new industries now so important to the export trade. Its gross production and productivity are rising. It is, once aroused, intelligent and energetic. The nation is essentially homogeneous. There is obviously a wide gap between worker and employer in Britain, but it seems less wide when we compare it with the French worker's hostility toward his boss.

But of course the industrial worker is only one unit of the industrial system. Working with him are hundreds of thousands of engineers, technicians, planners, and managers--men of high quality, imaginative, daring, and resourceful. Together these two groups operate industries that are rapidly recovering from the effects of the war and the frantic post-war period in which all machines had to run at top speed, regardless of repairs, if Britain was to make enough to live.

If Americans understand that in a smaller country industry will be on a smaller scale than in the United States, they must concede that the steel plants in Wales and the North, the hydroelectric power system built in the fastnesses of the Scottish Highlands, the new nuclear-energy power stations now nearing completion are impressive industrial installations. British industry in the physical sense is not a collection of obsolete or obsolescent factories and rundown mills; new plants and factories are appearing with greater frequency every year, and the emphasis is on the future.

A journey through the busy Midlands provides the proof. Everywhere one sees new construction for industrial production. The rawboned red brick factories, relics of Victorian England, are silent and empty; many have been pulled down. The main problem for Britain is not the modernity of her industrial system but the lack of modernity in the outlook of her industrial workers.

The judgment may seem too harsh. It is manifestly unfair to place the entire burden of progress toward a healthier economy on one element in the economic situation. Certainly British capital in the past and to some extent in the present has been singularly blind to the country's new situation and unenterprising in seeking means of adjusting itself to this situation. The price rings and monopolistic practices have sustained inefficient factories and restricted industrial enterprise.

Nevertheless, it is my conclusion that today the industrial owner and manager understands the nation's situation and the union leader does not. The TUC has attained great influence in the realm. The industrial worker has won living standards undreamed of a generation ago. Nonetheless, there is a dangerous lack of tolerance in labor's approach to management. This carries over into labor's approach to government. It is a highly unrealistic attitude in which organized labor clamors for the adoption by a Conservative government of a system of economic planning which that government was elected to end.

As we have seen, thousands of the Tories' strongest supporters are angry because they regard the government they elected as pseudo-socialist.

This contest between labor and capital is involved and sharply partisan. Viewed from the outside, it may seem an insurmountable obstacle to British progress. But to accept that view is to ignore the most important, the most enduring of all the country's resources: the character of the British people.

From the time of Charles II on, visitors to Britain have been struck by the way in which the character of the British people has allowed them the widest latitude for internal differences, often carried to the very edge of armed conflict, and has yet enabled them to maintain their political stability.

There is a lesson in recent history. Imposing forces within the kingdom reached a pitch of fanatic fury over the Ulster question shortly before World War I. Great political leaders took their positions. The Army was shaken by rumors of disaffection. Officers were ready to resign their commissions rather than lead their troops into action against the turbulent Ulstermen. The Germans and others watching from the Continent concluded that the heart of the world empire was sick. Yet what was the outcome? Finally aware of the magnitude of the challenge presented by German aggression in Belgium, the country united instantly. The leaders composed their differences. The Army closed its ranks. The officers went away to fight and die at Mons and Le Cateau.

The lesson is that the British, because of their essential homogeneity, can afford a higher pitch of internal argument than can other nations. Indeed, the very fury of these arguments testifies to the vitality of the nation. It means a country on the move, in contrast to the somber, orderly, shabby dictatorship of Spain or the somnolent French Republic where the great slogans of the past have been abandoned for the motto "We couldn't care less."

Those who admire the British accept British character as one of the strongest arguments for their nation's survival as a great power. But before we go too far in endorsing this view we must note that there are bad characteristics as well as good ones. We know that the British society is changing. Is it not possible that in the process of change some of the characteristics which made the nation great are disappearing?

Mr. Geoffrey Gorer tells us that the British have become a law-abiding nation dwelling in amity and honesty under British justice. In some aspects of civil relationship this is true. Visitors to Britain only a century ago were alarmed by the behavior of British mobs. The cockneys of London pulled the mustaches of a visiting Hungarian general and shouted rude remarks at their Queen and her Prince Consort. From medieval times the British working classes have been long on independence and short on respect. The uprising of the _Jacquerie_ in French history is balanced in British annals by the dim, powerful, and compelling figures of Wat Tyler and John Ball.

Has all this changed so much? Have the turbulent, violent British really become a nation of sober householders indifferent to their rights or to those at home or abroad who threaten them? Superficially the answer may be yes. Basically it is no. The present strife between organized labor and the employers is only a contemporary version of a struggle which has gone on throughout its history and which is world-wide. It is when this struggle is submerged that it is dangerous. Despite all the damage it is doing now to the British economy, dissension in the House of Commons and in the boardrooms of industries is preferable to wild plots laid in cellars.

When we consider the heat with which these debates are conducted we must also take notice of one sign of British stability: partisan passions, either in industrial conflict or in political warfare, never reach the point where the patriotism of the other party is impugned. The Conservatives do not label the Socialists as the party of treason. The patriotism of Hugh Gaitskell is not questioned by Harold Macmillan. Ultimately we come round to the realization that, despite the bitterness of debate, the central stability of the state remains.

Much of this stability may result from the existence of the monarchy at the summit of British affairs. All public evidence indicates that the Crown is nearly powerless in modern Britain, yet it represents an authority older and higher than any other element in the realm. It may be the balance wheel, spinning brightly through the ages, that insures stability.

"At the heart to the British Empire there is one institution," Winston Churchill wrote twenty years ago, "among the most ancient and venerable, which, so far from falling into desuetude or decay, has breasted the torrent of events, and even derived new vigor from the stresses. Unshaken by the earthquakes, unweakened by the dissolvent tides, though all be drifting the Royal and Imperial Monarchy of Britain stands firm."

It can be argued that the excessive interest of the British people in the monarchy and the expense and labor involved in its upkeep are characteristics ill suited to Britain in her present position. This interest reflects the national tendency to dwell fondly on the past, to revere institutions for their historical connections rather than for their efficiency or usefulness under modern conditions. Serious criticism of this well-defined trait comes not only from Americans but from Australians, Canadians, and other inhabitants of newer nations. We look forward, they say, and the British look back.

There is some justice in the criticism, but perhaps the error is not so grave as we may think. Obviously, it is impossible for a people living in a country that has known some sort of civilization from Roman times not to be impressed by their past. A tendency in the same direction marks contemporary American society. Just as we are struck by the Londoner's interest in Roman relics dug up in the heart of his city, so European visitors note that an increasing number of Americans are turning to their own past. All over the East the fortresses of the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars are being reconstructed and opened to tourists. National attention is given to attempts in the Far West to re-create for a day or a week the atmosphere of a frontier that passed less than a century ago. Half-forgotten battles and generals of the Civil War are rescued for posterity by the careful labor of scholarly biographers and military writers. This does not mean, however, that the United States is looking back in the field of science or invention.

Similarly, British preservation of old castles or folkways is not a sign that the nation has turned its back on the twentieth century. The boldness with which the British accepted the challenge of the nuclear era in industrial energy is a better guide to their temper than their respect for the past. What is damaging is not reverence for the past of Nelson or Gladstone, but the tendency of some of the middle class to mourn the recent past, the dear dead days before the war when servants were plentiful, taxes relatively low, and "a man could run his own business." These mourners are temporarily important because their resistance to needed change infects others. But the life whose end they bewail has been disappearing in Britain for half a century, and the generation now rising to power will not be plagued by these memories to the same extent. To those who matured in war and post-war austerity, modern Britain is a prosperous land.

The trappings of British society are much older than our own. But their interest in maintaining an unchanged façade should not mislead Americans into believing the British are returning to the hand loom. Reverence for the past is often advanced as one reason for the lethargic attitude of Britons toward the present. Certainly an awareness of history, its trials and triumphs, gives an individual or a people a somewhat skeptical attitude about the importance of current history. But in Britain those who know and care least about the nation's great past are the ones most indifferent to the challenge of the present. They are the industrial working class, and their indifference results from other influences.

Talking to the planners, technicians, factory bosses, communications experts, salesmen, and senior civil servants, one finds less complacency and more enterprise than in most European countries. In fact, it sometimes seems to the outsider that British society is a little too self-critical, too contentious. Obviously, it must change to meet the altered world, but self-criticism pushed to the maximum can ultimately crush ambition.

If we turn to modern British writing, we find sociologists, economists, anthropologists, and politicians pouring forth a steady stream of books analyzing the nation's social, economic, and political problems. One of the great men of the modern Labor Party, Herbert Morrison, thought it well worth while to devote his time to the writing of _Government and Parliament_. The intellectual leaders of Britain have turned increasingly to a minute assessment of their nation and what is right and wrong about it.

This preoccupation with the state of the realm is healthy. The complacency that was once the most disliked characteristic of the traveling Briton is vanishing. The British are putting themselves under the microscope. Nothing but good can come of it.

We hear from the British themselves confessions of inadequacy to meet the modern world and flaming criticisms of aspects of their society. As a nation they are fond of feeling sorry for themselves; indeed, someone has said that they are never happier than when they think all is lost. Such British statements should not be taken as representing the whole truth. The reforming element is very strong in the British character. Without its presence, the social reforms of this century could not have been accomplished.

Anyone who frequents political, business, and journalistic circles in Britain will hear more about mistakes and failures than about success. (The most notable exception to this enjoyment of gloom is the popular press, which since the war has made a specialty of boosting British achievements.) Similarly, any discussion of British character with Britons is sure to find them concentrating on negative rather than positive traits. Perhaps this is because they are so sure of their positive characteristics. In any case, the latter constitute a major share of the national insurance against decline.

Over the years the British trait that has impressed me most is toughness of mind. This may surprise Americans who tend to regard the British as overpolite or diffident or sentimental--aspects of the national character which are evident at times and which hide the essential toughness underneath.

Although they bewail a decline in the standards of courtesy since the war, the British are a polite race in the ordinary business of living. From the "'kew" of the bus conductor or the salesgirl to the "And now, sir, if you would kindly sign here" of the bank clerk they pad social intercourse with small courtesies. However, when an Englishman, especially an upper-class Englishman, desires to be rude he makes the late Mr. Vishinsky sound like a curate. But it is an English axiom that a gentleman is never unintentionally rude.

With some notable exceptions, the British are seldom loudly assertive. They will listen at great length to the opinions of others and, seemingly, are reluctant to put forward their own. This does not mean they agree, although foreigners in contact with British diplomats have often assumed this mistakenly. The British are always willing to see both sides of a question. But they are seldom ready to accept without prolonged and often violent argument any point of view other than their own.

They are a sentimental people but not an emotional one. Failure to distinguish this difference leads individuals and nations to misjudge the British.

Sentimentalists they are. Their eyes will glisten with tears as they listen to some elderly soprano with a voice long rusted by gin sing the music-hall songs of half a century ago. As Somerset Maugham has pointed out, they revere age. The present Conservative government and the Labor front bench are unusual in that they contain a large percentage of "young men"--that is, men in their fifties. Sir Winston Churchill did not truly win the affection of his countrymen until he was well into his seventies, when the old fierce antagonism of the working class was replaced with a grudging admiration for "the Old Man."

On his eightieth birthday the leaders of all the political parties in the House of Commons joined in a tribute that milked the tear ducts of the nation. When, six months later, Sir Winston retired as Prime Minister there was another outbreak of bathos. But when two months after that a new House of Commons was sworn under the leadership of Sir Anthony Eden, some of the young Conservative Members of Parliament who owed their offices and, in a wider sense, their lives to Sir Winston pushed ahead of him in the jostling throng making for the Speaker's bench. It was left to Clement Attlee, his dry, thoughtful foe in so many political battles, to lead Sir Winston up ahead of his eager juniors. Sentiment, yes; emotion, no.

For many reasons the British as a people are anxious to find formulas that will guide them out of international crises, to avoid the final arbitration of war. The appeasement of Neville Chamberlain and his associates in the late thirties was in keeping with this historically developed tendency. One has only to read what Pitt endured from Napoleon to preserve peace, or the sound, sensible reasons that Charles James Fox offered against the continuation of the war with the First Empire, to understand that this island people goes to war only with the utmost reluctance.

One reason is that in 1800, in 1939, and in the middle of the twentieth century the British have lived by trade. Wars, large or small, hurt trade. Prolonged hostility toward a foreign nation--Franco's Spain, Lenin's Russia, or Mao's China--reduces Britain's share in a market or cuts off raw materials needed for production at home. In this respect we cannot judge Britain by the continental standards of China or Russia or the United States. This is an island power.

Because they are polite, because they are easily moved to sentimental tears--Sir Winston Churchill and Hugh Gaitskell, who otherwise have few traits in common, both cry easily--because they are diffident, because they will twist and turn in their efforts to avoid war (although at times, for reasons of policy, they will present the impression of being very ready for war), the British have given the outside world a false idea of their character. Beneath all this is toughness of mind.

I recall landing in England in April of 1939. It was then obvious to almost everyone in Europe that war was on the way. On the way to London I talked to a fellow passenger, a man in his late twenties who had three small children and who lived in London. "The next time Hitler goes for anyone, we'll go for him," he said casually, almost apologetically. He conceded that the war would be long, that Britain would take some hard knocks, that going into the Navy and leaving his wife and children would be tedious. But he had made up his mind that there was no other course. The thing had to be done.

After the war--and, indeed, during it--many Americans ridiculed the British reaction to the war. They found exaggerated the stories of the cockney who said: "'arf a mo', Adolph" while he lit his pipe, the women who shouted "God bless you" to Winston Churchill when he visited the smoking ruins of their homes. This was a serious error. In those days, the most critical that had ever come upon them, the British acted in a manner which made one proud to be a member of the same species.

But that was a decade and a half ago, and the circumstances were extraordinary. Nations change--compare the heroic France of Verdun with the indulgent, faithless France of 1940. Have war and sacrifice, austerity and prolonged crisis weakened Britain's mental toughness? I think not.

The prolonged conflict between employers and employed and among the great trade unions is the most serious friction within British society. Its critical effect upon Britain's present and future has been emphasized. I do not believe, however, that in the long run the men on both sides who hold their opinions so stoutly will be unable to compromise their difficulties in the face of the continuing national emergency. In the twenties and thirties such great convulsions in industrial relations as the General Strike were harmful but not catastrophic. The British economy was buttressed by overseas investments and by the possession of established export markets throughout the world. That situation no longer exists. Anything approaching the severity of a General Strike could break Britain. In the end, I believe, the extremists of both sides will realize this and will find in themselves the mental toughness--for it takes a hard mind to accept an armistice short of final victory in exchange for the promise of future benefits--to compose their differences and move toward a national rather than a partisan solution.

Of course, Britain's difficulties are not confined to the home front. But I have consciously emphasized the importance of her internal problems because they reflect the nation's present position in the world and help to determine how Britain will act abroad.

Just as the last decade has seen drastic changes in industrial direction in Britain, so the coming decade will witness changes equally great in the development of Britain's international position. Britain cannot, and would not if she could, build a new empire. But it is evident that the country intends to replace the monolithic concept of power with a horizontal concept. We will see, I am confident, a steady growth of Britain's ties with Europe and the establishment of Britain as a link between the Commonwealth nations and Europe.

The British have fertile political imaginations. They are adroit in discussion and debate. After years of uncertainty a number of politicians of great influence are moving toward closer association with Europe. At the moment the Grand Design (a rather grandiose title for the British to use) is endorsed by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, Defense Minister Duncan Sandys, Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft, and President of the Board of Trade Sir David Eccles. Given a change in government, I think we can assume that the idea would be supported, although enthusiasm would be somewhat less great, by the leaders of the Labor Party.

What is the Grand Design? It is the concept of a Europe cooperating in fields of economy and politico-military strategy. It goes beyond the Europe of Western European Union or the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance and thinks in terms of a general confederation into which the Scandinavian and Mediterranean nations would be drawn. Existing organizations such as the Organization for European Economic Co-operation would be expanded to include new members. At the top would be a General Assembly elected by the parliaments of each member nation. There would be a general pooling of military research and development.

The establishment of such an association of European states is at least ten years in the future. The British do not think it should be hurried. Careful, rather pragmatic, they advocate methodical progress in which new international organizations could be tested against actual conditions. Those that work will survive. Those that do not will disappear.

Is the Grand Design a new name for a third force to be interposed between the Sino-Russian bloc in the East and the United States in the West? The British say emphatically not. They see it as a method of strengthening the Atlantic Alliance by uniting Europe. Naturally, they believe their flair for diplomacy and politics, their industrial strength, and, not least, Europe's distaste for German leadership will give them an important role in the new Europe. Obviously, that role, as spokesman for both a united Europe and a global Commonwealth, will be more suitable and, above all, more practical in the world of 1960 than the obsolete concept of Empire.

The development of British action toward the accomplishment of the Grand Design will be accompanied by the gradual transformation of what is left of the Empire into the Commonwealth. Ghana, established as an independent member of the Commonwealth in March 1957, will be followed by Singapore, Malaya, Nigeria, Rhodesia, and many more. Since 1945 Britain has given self-government and independence to well over 500,000,000 souls (at the same time the Soviet Union was enslaving 100,000,000) and the process is not over. Certainly there have been shortcomings and failures--Cyprus is one. But it seems to me that a people prepared on one hand to abdicate power and turn that power over to others and at the same time ready to conceive and develop a new plan for Europe is showing an elasticity and toughness of mind the rest of the world might envy. We are not attending the birth of a new British Empire but watching the advent of a new position for Britain in the world--one less spectacularly powerful than the old, but important nonetheless. The speed of its development is inextricably connected with an expanding and prosperous economy at home.

Bravery is associated with tough-mindedness. But bravery is not the exclusive possession of any nation. The British are a courageous people, certainly. As certain classes are apt to combine courage with the national habit of understatement, the bravery of the British has an attraction not evident in the somewhat self-conscious heroism of the Prussians. Of course, it can be argued that the apparent unwillingness of the British to exploit the fact that Pilot Officer Z brought his plane back from Berlin on one engine or that Sergeant Major Y killed thirty Germans before his morning tea is a form of national advertisement more subtle and sure than that obtained by battalions of public-relations officers.

Although they revere regimental traditions, the British seldom express their reverence openly. In war they are able to maintain an attitude of humorous objectivity. During the fighting on the retreat to Dunkirk I encountered two Guards officers roaring with laughter. They had learned, they said, that the popular newspapers in London had reported that the nickname of the Commander in Chief, General the Viscount Gort, was "Tiger." "My dear chap," said one, "in the Brigade [of Guards] we've always called him 'Fat Boy.'"

Coupled with tough-mindedness is another positive characteristic: love of justice. This may be disputed by the Irish, the Indians, the Cypriotes. But it is true that in all the great international crises in which Britain has been involved, from the War of Independence onward, there has been a strong, sometimes violent opposition to the course that the government of the day pursued. Beginning with Burke, the Americans, the Irish, the Indians, the Cypriotes have had defenders in the House of Commons, on political platforms, and in the press.

This is not the result of partisan politics, although naturally that helps. Englishmen did not assail the Black and Tans in Ireland because of love for Irishmen. Indian independence did not find a redoubtable champion in Earl Mountbatten because of his particular fondness for Indians. The impulse was the belief that justice or, to put it better, right must be done.

It is because a large section of the nation believes this implicitly that the British over the years have been able to make those gestures of conciliation and surrenders of power which will ever adorn her history: the settlement with the Boers after the South African war, the withdrawal from India, the treaty with Ireland.

The British people suffered greatly during both world wars. Yet any ferocious outbreak of hatred against "the Huns" was promptly answered by leaders who even in the midst of war understood that the right they were fighting to preserve must be preserved at home as well as abroad.

It was this belief in justice, a justice that served all, incorruptible and austere, which enabled a comparative handful of Britons to rule the Indian subcontinent for so long. It was this belief in justice, interpreted in terms of social evolution, which moved the reformers of the present century in the direction of the Welfare State. The British concept of justice is inseparably bound to the strong reformist element within the British people. As long as that element flourishes, as it does today, we can expect that British society will continue to change and develop.

Tough-mindedness, a quiet form of bravery, a love of justice; what else is there? One characteristic I have noted earlier: a living belief in the democratic process. The British know the world too well to believe that this delicate and complex system of government can immediately be imposed upon any people. They themselves, as they will admit, have trouble making it work. But neither fascism nor communism has ever made headway. Any political expert can provide long and involved reasons for this. I prefer the obvious one: the British believe in democracy, they believe in people. Long ago, as a young man entering politics, Winston Churchill, grandson of a Duke of Marlborough, product of Harrow and a fashionable Hussar regiment, adopted as his own a motto of his father's. It was simply: "Trust the People."

The actual practice of democracy over a long period of years can be successful only if it is accompanied by a wide measure of tolerance. Despite all their vicissitudes, this virtue the British preserve in full measure. The British disliked Senator McCarthy because they thought he was intolerant; they were themselves slightly intolerant, or at least ill-informed, about the causes that inflated the Senator. In their own nation the British tolerate almost any sort of political behavior as long as it is conducted within the framework of the law. Communists, fascists, isolationists, internationalists all may speak their pieces and make as much noise as they wish. There will always be a policeman on hand to quell a disturbance.

Toleration of the public exposition of political beliefs that aim at the overthrow of the established parliamentary government implies a stout belief in the supremacy of democracy over other forms of government. Even in their unbuttoned moments, British politicians will seldom agree to the thesis, lately put about by many eminent men, that complete suffrage prevents a government from acting with decision in an emergency.

Early in 1951 I talked late one night with a British diplomat about the rearmament of Germany. He was a man of wide experience, aristocratic bearing, and austere manner. During our conversation I suggested that the British, who had suffered greatly at the hands of the Germans in two world wars, would be most reluctant to agree to the rearmament of their foes and that the ensuing political situation would be made to order for the extremists of the Labor Party.

"I don't think so," he replied. "Our people fumble and get lost at times, but they come back on the right track. They'll argue it out in their minds or in the pubs. They'll reject extreme measures. The Labor Party and the great mass of its followers will be with the government. The people, you know, are wiser than anyone thinks they are."

Tolerance is coupled with kindness. British kindness is apt to be abstract, impersonal. There is the gruff, unspoken kindness of the members of the working class to one another in times of death. The wealthy wearer of the Old School Tie will go to great lengths to succor a friend fallen on evil days. He will also do his best to provide for an old employee or to rehabilitate an old soldier, once under his command, who is in trouble with the police. This is part of the sense of responsibility inculcated by the public school. Even in the Welfare State it persists. "I've got to drive out into Essex this afternoon," a friend said, "and see what I can do for a sergeant that served with me. Bloody fool can't hold onto a farthing and makes a pest of himself with the local authorities. Damn good sergeant, though."

I remembered another sergeant in Germany. He was a man who had felt the war deeply, losing a brother, a wife, and a daughter to German bombs. When it was all over and the British Army rested on its arms in northern Germany he installed his men in the best billets the neighboring village could provide. The Germans were left to shift for themselves in the barns and outbuildings. Within a week, he told me, the situation was reversed. The Germans were back in their homes. The soldiers were sleeping in the barns. I told a German about it afterward. "Yes," he said, "the British would do that. We wouldn't, not after a long war. They are a decent people."

It is upon such characteristics, a basic, stubborn toughness of mind, bravery, tolerance, a belief in democracy, kindness, decency, that British hopes for the future rest.

Any objective study of Britain must accept that, although there has been a decline in power at home and abroad, the national economy has recovered remarkably and the physical basis of the economy has improved. Far from being decadent, idle, and unambitious, the nation as a whole is pulsing with life. The energy may be diffused into paths that fail to contribute directly to the general betterment of the nation. But it is there, and the possession of the important national characteristics mentioned above promises that eventually this energy will be directed to the national good.

In the end we return to our starting-point. Although there is a cleavage between the working class and the middle class, it is not deep enough to smash the essential unity of the people. No great gulfs of geography, race, or religion separate them. The differences between employer and employed are serious. But there is no basic difference, nurtured by the hatred of a century and a half, as there is between revolutionary France and conservative France. The constant change in the character of the classes, the steady movement of individuals and groups up the economic and social ladders insures that this will never develop. From the outside the society seems stratified. On the inside one sees, hears, feels ceaseless movement of a flexible society.

The long contest with Russia has induced Americans to follow Napoleon's advice and think about big battalions. But national power and influence should not be measured solely in terms of material strength. By that standard the England of the first Elizabeth and the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century would have been blotted out by the might of Spain just as our own struggling colonies would have been overcome by the weight of England. The character of a people counts.

So it is with Britain. The ability of the British people to survive cannot be measured only in terms of steel production. The presence of grave economic and social problems should not be accepted as proof that they cannot be solved by people of imagination and ability. The existence of external class differences should not blind observers to the basic unity of political thought.

It is natural that in their present position Britons are far more aware of the ties that bind them to the United States, ties that include a common language, much common history, dangers shared, and enemies overcome, than the people of the United States are aware of the ties that bind them to Britain. But Americans must guard against the easy assumption that, because Britain is weaker than she was half a century ago, because she has changed rapidly and will change further, Britain and the British are "through."

It is often said in Washington that the leading politicians of the Republican and Democratic parties and the chief permanent officials of the Treasury, State Department, and other departments did not recognize the extent to which Britain had been weakened by World War II. It is hard to understand why this should have been so. The sacrifice in blood was written large on a hundred battlefields. The cost in treasure was clearly outlined in the financial position of the United Kingdom in 1945.

Americans should not fear political differences between the United States and the United Kingdom on foreign policies. As long as the British are worth their salt as allies they will think, and occasionally act, independently. What would be dangerous to the future of the alliance in a period of crisis would be the growth in Britain of a belief that Britain's problems, internal or international, can be blamed on the United States. A similar belief about Britain existed in France in 1940. Verdun occupied the position in French minds that the Battle of Britain does today in some British minds, that of a great heroic national effort that exhausted the nation and left it prey to the post-war appetite of its supposed friend and ally. If this concept were to be accepted by any sizable proportion of the British people, then the alliance would be in danger. The possibility that this will happen is slight. The British retain confidence in themselves, undaunted by the changes in the world.

The United States can help sustain this confidence. It is difficult to see why the political, industrial, and social accomplishments of the British since 1945 are so casually ignored in the United States and why Americans accept so readily the idea that Britain's day is done.

Certainly many Americans criticized the establishment of the Welfare State. Certainly ignorance led many to confuse socialism in Britain with communism in the Soviet Union. Certainly the achievement of power by the great trade unions has alienated those Americans who still decry the powerful position of organized labor in the modern democratic state.

But it is folly to expect that even our closest friends and truest allies can develop economically and politically along paths similar to those trod by the people of the United States. It is time that we looked on the positive side of Britain's life since the end of World War II. We must remember that this is a going concern. The new nuclear power stations rising throughout Britain are part of the general Western community which we lead. British advances in the sciences or in any other field of human endeavor should not be thought of as the activities of a rival but as the triumphs of an ally that has in the past given incontrovertible proof of her steadfastness in adversity, her willingness to do and dare at the side of the United States.

There they are, fifty millions of them. Kindly, energetic, ambitious, and, too often, happily complacent in peace; most resolute, courageous, and tough-minded in the storms that have beaten about their islands since the dawn of the Christian era.

What is at stake in the relationship between the two nations is something far greater than whether we approve of Aneurin Bevan or the British approved of Senator McCarthy. The union of the English-speaking peoples is the one tried and tested alliance in a shaky world. Three times within living memory its sons have rallied to defeat or forestall the ambitions of conquerors. To understand Britain, to share with her the great tasks that lie before the Western community is much more than a salute by Americans to common political thought, a common tongue, or common memories. It is the easiest and most certain method by which we in our time can preserve the freedom of man which has been building in all the years since King and barons rode to Runnymede.

_INDEX_

Air Force, 239-40

Albert, Prince Consort, 19-20, 27, 30

Alexander, Field Marshal Earl, 235

Amery, Julian, 55, 183

Anglo-American relations, 47-8, 109, 159-86;
tensions, 66, 163-76

Anne, Queen, 45

Anson, Sir William, 17, 18

armed forces, 84-6, 238-44;
Air Force, 239-40;
Army, 238-9;
Navy, 239

Army, 238-9

Atomic Energy Authority, 214

Attlee, Clement, 36, 58, 77, 78, 87, 88, 108, 113, 152, 235, 280

Bagehot, Walter, 22, 28, 97-8

Baldwin, Stanley, 55, 74, 95, 152

Beaverbrook, Lord (William Maxwell Aitken), 20, 30, 31, 54, 85, 140;
influence of, 224-5

Bevan, Aneurin, 18, 19, 61, 84-9 _passim_, 121, 152;
anti-Americanism, 47, 81, 109, 176;
opposition to hydrogen bomb, 48;
leader of opposition within Labor Party, 72, 73, 78-80, 269;
supporters, 82-3

Bevin, Ernest, 62, 77, 80, 108, 143;
opposition to communism, 109

Boyle, Sir Edward, 55

Bradlaugh, Charles, 30

British Empire, 91, 107

British Productivity Council, 196

Brogan, D.W., 164

Butler, R.A., 18-19, 49, 52, 54, 58, 59, 74

Cabinet, 43-6

Castle, Mrs. Barbara, 84

Chamberlain, Neville, 17, 35, 37, 63, 74, 95, 152, 166, 259, 280

Charles II, 25, 44

Charles, Prince, 15

China (Communist), 79, 184;
British attitude toward, 149-50

Churchill, Sir Winston, 17, 18, 37, 51, 52, 59, 76, 80, 82, 95, 113-14,
133, 152, 200, 235, 239, 252, 259, 279, 285-6;
party peacemaker, 35;
skill in debate, 40;
on monarchy, 276

clubs, 257-9

Commons, House of, 38-43, 46

Commonwealth, 29, 91, 107, 137-41, 283

Communist Party in Britain, 35, 49, 142-4, 146, 147, 164, 179, 180;
in labor unions, 72, 82, 83-4, 109, 200, 208-15

Connor, William, 202, 227

Conservative Party, 50-69

conurbation, 6, 7

Cooke, Alistair, 222

Cripps, Sir Stafford, 77, 95, 107, 113

Crossman, R.H.S., 84

Delmer, Sefton, 226, 228

Dilke, Sir Charles, 30

Dulles, John Foster, 170-1;
British attitude toward, 47, 48, 155, 167, 172

Eccles, Sir David, 282

Eden, Sir Anthony, 18, 20, 52, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 61, 65, 133, 143,
171-2, 183, 224, 280

Edward VII, 27

Egypt, 54, 55, 61, 66, 88, 143, 151, 155, 156, 168, 183, 184

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 37, 41, 60, 80, 183

Elizabeth II, 13-33, 114, 251, 252

Elizabeth, Queen Mother, 22, 27

European Defense Community, 171

Foot, Michael, 56, 84-5

Forrest, William, 228

Foulkes, Frank, 213

France, British attitude toward, 150-1

Franks, Sir Oliver, 85

Freedman, Max, 222

Fyfe, Sir David Maxwell, 52

Gaitskell, Hugh, 18, 20, 36, 49, 56, 73, 77-8, 80, 87, 89, 235, 280;
opposed by Bevan, 88, 269

George I, 45

George IV, 25

George V, 16, 19, 25

George VI, 16, 17

Germany, British attitude toward, 151-3

Gorer, Geoffrey, 275

Gort, General the Viscount, 284

Grand Design, The, 282-3

Griffiths, James, 18, 49

Halifax, Earl of, 17

Harding, Gilbert, 107

Hardy, Keir, 36

Horner, Arthur, 210

Howard, Ebenezer, 116

India, 36, 96, 105-7, 170

Italy, British attitude toward, 153-4

Jacobson, Sydney, 202

King, Cecil, 226

Korean war, economic influence of, 192-3

labor unions, 200-13, 215, 266-7;
communist influence in, 208-13, 215

Lancaster, Osbert, 225, 226

Laski, Harold, 97, 113

Lloyd, Selwyn, 52, 282

Lloyd George, David, 19, 56

Lords, House of, 39, 42-3, 44

MacLeod, Iain, 52, 130