Chapter IX: Part 9

The attitude of the new working class to education, technical or otherwise, has been described earlier in this book. The boys, in the eyes of their parents, need no more schooling than that given them before they can leave school and go to work in the factory. The girls need a little more if they are to graduate into the ranks of clerical workers, but many girls, attracted by the independence offered by jobs in mill or factory, leave school with their brothers.

Let me sum up some conclusions about the British economy:

_The drive for exports is not a passing economic phase but a permanent condition. If wages and prices cannot be held down, Britain will be priced out of her markets, and the standard of living of the working class and of all other classes will fall._

_The ability of the country to meet the adjustments made necessary by the revolution in the sources of industrial power and by the introduction of new industrial techniques is gravely endangered by the restrictive practices of both employers and labor, by interunion bickering often arising from these practices, and by the prolonged and vicious Communist attack on the trade-union structure._

_Neither among the middle class nor among the working class is there sufficient awareness of the critical situation in which Britain finds herself._

This is a somber picture. It is relieved, I think, by our knowledge that the British are a surprising people. They are going through a period of change in their society and of adjustment to their society's place in the comity of nations. The very fact that they are changing argues for them. The Britain of 1938 could not exist in the modern world. The Britain of 1958 can be at the top.

Granted the indifference of the working class to politics and its fierce reaction against anything that seems to threaten its newly won ease, granted the middle class's penchant for the past, its out-worn ideas--these are still a great people, tough, energetic, at heart politically mature. And they believe in themselves perhaps more than they are willing to admit. Their character, more than coal or sea power or fortuitous geographical circumstances, made them great in the past. It can keep them great in the future.

XI. _The British Character and Some Influences_

_I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people from vice._

SAMUEL JOHNSON

_I have never been able to understand why pigeon-shooting at Hurlingham should be refined and polite while a rat-catching match in Whitechapel is low._

T.H. HUXLEY

Obviously there is great deal more to British society than political and economic problems, although a casual visitor might not think so. Visiting pundits find themselves immersed in the profundities of the Foreign Office or following the ideological gymnastics of Socialist intellectuals. Consequently, they depart firmly convinced that the British are a sober, rather solemn people. These islanders, as a matter of fact, are an exceptionally vigorous and boisterous lot and have been for centuries. Their interest in diplomacy, politics, and commerce is exceeded only by their devotion to cricket, beer, and horse racing. Nor should we allow the deadening background to bemuse us about the essential character of the British. The misty mournfulness of the English countryside, the bleak inhospitality of a Midland city, the eternal sameness of suburbia have failed to tame the incorrigible robustness of the national character.

To know the British today one must know not only their government and politics, their industry and commerce, but other aspects of life through which the national character is expressed. The press, the schools, the military services, sports and amusements, pubs and clubs all are part of the changing British world. Each has been affected by changes in the class structure. Each, in its way, is important to Americans and their understanding of Britain. Opinion about the United States in Britain is based largely on what Britons read in their newspapers. And, whether or not Americans admire the class distinctions inherent in the public-school system, perhaps a majority of the leaders with whom the United States will deal in the future will be products of that system.

THE PRESS:

THE THUNDERER AND THE TIN HORNS

A graduate of Smith, home from a stay in London, asked: "How can you read those London newspapers? Nothing but crime and sex--I couldn't find any news." Years ago Webb Miller, the great United Press correspondent, advised me: "Read _The Times_ every day, read all of it, if you want to know what is going on in this country and the world." Both Webb and the young lady from Smith were right: the British press contains some of what is best and a great deal of what is worst in daily journalism.

Most Americans and many Britons, when they speak of the press, mean the London daily and Sunday newspapers. The London papers concern us most because they are national newspapers circulating throughout Britain and influencing and reflecting opinion far beyond the boundaries of greater London. One newspaper published in the provinces, the _Manchester Guardian_, may be said to have national--indeed, world--standing. One of the most influential, interesting, and well-written newspapers, it can also assume on occasion a highly irritating unctuousness.

There are a large number of provincial newspapers--about a hundred morning and evening dailies and Sunday papers, and about eleven hundred weeklies. Many of them are read far more thoroughly than the London "national" paper that the provincial family also buys.

Not long ago a British cabinet minister who represents a constituency in the western Midlands told me his constituents "got their news from the BBC, their entertainment from the London dailies, and their political guidance from the principal newspaper in a near-by provincial city." Other politicians have referred to the same pattern.

Because most London daily and Sunday newspapers circulate all over the British isles, circulation figures are high by American standards. The _News of the World_, a Sunday newspaper that built its circulation on straight court reporting of the gamier aspects of British life, had a record circulation of about 8,000,000 copies. Recently its circulation has dropped slightly, a development that puzzles Fleet Street, for there is no lack of sex, crime, or sport--or interest in them--in Britain.

Of the London dailies, the largest in circulation is the _Daily Mirror_, a tabloid whose circulation average between January and June of 1955 was 4,725,122. The _Daily Express_, the bellwether of the Beaverbrook newspapers, had a circulation of just over 4,000,000 during the same period, and three other London dailies, the _Daily Mail_, the _Daily Telegraph_, and the _News Chronicle_, all boasted circulations of better than 1,000,000.

For every 1,000 Britons, 611 copies of the daily newspapers are sold each day. Compare this with the United States figure of 353 per 1,000. Britain is a good newspaper country, and the London press is lusty, uninhibited, and highly competitive.

American newspapermen working in London customarily divide the press between the popular newspapers, such as the _Daily Mirror_ and the _Daily Mail_, and the small-circulation papers, such as _The Times_ and the _Manchester Guardian_. The circulation of _The Times_ for January-June 1955 was 211,972 and for the _Guardian_ 156,154. Similarly, on Sundays there is a division between the _Sunday Times_ (606,346) and the _Observer_ (564,307) and such mass-circulation "Sundays" as the _Sunday Express_, the _Sunday Pictorial_, and the _People_.

The distinction is not based primarily on circulation. _The Times_ and the _Manchester Guardian_ and the _Daily Telegraph_ on weekdays and the _Sunday Times_ and the _Observer_ on Sundays print more news about politics, diplomacy, and world events than do the mass-circulation papers. They are responsible and they are well written. The _Daily Telegraph_, which has a circulation of over 2,000,000, is the only one in this group whose circulation is in the "popular" field. But it has given few hostages to fortune: its news columns contain a considerable number of solid foreign-news items as well as first-class domestic reporting.

The shortage of newsprint (the paper on which newspapers are printed) has curtailed the size of British papers since 1939. Almost all newsprint is imported, and with the balance of payments under pressure the expenditure of dollars for it has been restricted. But the situation has improved slowly and the London papers are fattening, although they remain thin by New York standards.

Considering this restriction, the responsible newspapers do a splendid job. Day in and day out the foreign news of _The Times_ maintains remarkably high standards of accuracy and insight. The anonymous reporters--articles by _Times_ men are signed "From Our Own Correspondent"--write lucidly and easily. _The Times_ has never accepted the theory that involved and complicated issues can be boiled down into a couple of hundred words with the nuances discarded. News is knowledge, and no one has yet found a way to make it easy to acquire knowledge.

But _The Times_, often called "_The Times_ newspaper," is a good deal more than a report on Britain and the world. It is an institution reflecting all British life. By reading its front page entirely devoted to classified advertising one can get a complete picture of upper-class and upper-middle-class Britain. In the left-hand columns are births, deaths, marriages, and memorial notices. If an American wants to understand how unstintingly the British upper classes gave their sons and brothers and fathers to the First World War, let him look at the memorial notices on the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. If he wants to see how hard-pushed these same classes are today, let him read the painful, often pathetic admissions in the columns where jewelry, old diplomatic uniforms, and the other impedimenta of the class are offered for sale.

The editorials of _The Times_--the British call editorials "leaders" or "leading articles"--are, of course, one of the most important features in journalism. _The Times_ is independent politically, but it does its best to explain and expound the policies of the government of the day. Over the years since the war it has supported individual measures laid down by Conservative and Labor governments and it has assailed the policies of both the left and right when this has been conceived of as the duty of _The Times_. The editorial writing in _The Times_ often attains a peak of brilliance seldom achieved in any other newspaper. For a time, especially in the period before World War II, "The Thunderer," as it was once called, had become a whisperer. Recently _The Times_ has spoken on national and international issues with its old resonance and sharpness.

The influence of _The Times_ among politicians, civil servants, and diplomats is extraordinary. It is, I suppose, the one newspaper read thoroughly by all the foreign diplomats in London. As recently as the spring of 1956 an editorial in _The Times_ discussing a reconsideration of Britain's defense needs sent the German Ambassador scurrying to the Foreign Office to inquire whether the editorial reflected government policy. It did.

This influence is the result of _The Times_'s special position in British journalism. The editorial-writers and some of the reporters of _The Times_ often are told things that are hidden from other reporters. Also, they are members in good standing of that important, amorphous group, the Establishment, which exists at the center of British society; they know and are known by the politicians, the key civil servants, the ministers. Occasionally _The Times_ is used to test foreign or domestic reaction to a measure under consideration by the government. By discussing the measure in an editorial, _The Times_ will provoke in its letter columns a wider discussion into which various sections of public opinion, left, right, and center, will be drawn.

No other newspaper in the free world has a letter column comparable to that of _The Times_. The first letter may be a sharp analysis of government policy in Persia and the last the report by a Prime Minister that he has seen a rare bird on a walk through St. James's park. Some of the letter column's discussions touch on matters of national interest. Others deal with the Christian names given to children or the last time British troops carried their colors into action.

The _Manchester Guardian_, with a smaller circulation and a smaller foreign staff, still manages to make its influence felt far beyond Manchester. Its policies are those of the Liberal party and, as the Liberal Party is now in eclipse, the _Guardian_ brings to the discussion of national and international affairs a detached and refreshing sharpness. Where _The Times_ occasionally adopts the tone of a wise and indulgent father in its comments on the world, the _Guardian_ speaks with the accents of a worldly-wise nanny. When the _Guardian_ is aroused, its "leaders" can be corrosive and bitter. It is less likely to support the foreign policy of the government of the day than is _The Times_. Consequently, the _Guardian_ is liable to be more critical than _The Times_ in dealings with the United States and American foreign policy. (The Suez crisis was a notable exception.) But it is well informed about the United States, and so are its readers. In Alistair Cooke and Max Freedman the _Guardian_ has two of the best correspondents now writing in the United States for the British press. Their reports are long, detailed, and accurate, and Cooke, in particular, never forgets that what a foreign people sees in its theaters, reads in its magazines, and does on its vacations is also news to the readers at home.

Such great provincial newspapers as the _Yorkshire Post_ and the _Scotsman_ follow the conservative approach to news adopted by _The Times_, the _Manchester Guardian_, and the _Daily Telegraph_. With the responsible London dailies they serve the upper middle class and are its most outspoken mouthpieces in a period when, as we have seen, that class is being pressed by high taxation, the rising cost of living, and the simultaneous development of a new middle class and a prosperous working class. The _Sunday Times_, for instance, has devoted many columns to the plight of the professional man and his family, and all of these papers have reported at length on the appearance of associations and groups devoted to, or supposedly devoted to, the interests of the middle class and opposition to the unions that represent the new working class.

The cult of anonymity has persisted longer in Britain's responsible and reliable newspapers than in the United States. Although Fleet Street knows the names of _The Times_'s reporters, the public does not. Richard Scott, the Diplomatic Correspondent of the _Manchester Guardian_, has no byline, nor has Hugh Massingham, the brilliant Political Correspondent of the _Observer_. The influence wielded in the United States by columnists still is reserved in Britain almost entirely to the anonymous "leader"-writers of the responsible British newspapers. Working with the editorial-writers are hundreds of industrious, well-educated, experienced reporters. They are good men to talk to and to drink with, and they are tough men to beat on a story.

But they and the newspapers they represent are not a part of the bubbling, uproarious, pyrotechnical world of the popular London dailies. Here is a circus, a daily excitement for anyone who enjoys newspapers. The _Daily Express_, the _Daily Mail_, the _News Chronicle_, the _Daily Herald_, the _Mirror_, and the _Sketch_ compete hotly for news and entertainment. Their headlines are brash, their writing varies from wonderfully good to wonderfully bad, and their editorials are written with a slam-bang exuberance that is stimulating and occasionally a little frightening. This is the true, tempestuous world of Fleet Street.

In this world the great names are not confined to the writers and editors. The publishers, called "proprietors" in Britain, tower over all. Of these the most interesting, successful, and stimulating is Lord Beaverbrook, who runs the _Daily Express_, the _Sunday Express_, and the _Evening Standard_ with a gusto undiminished by seventy-eight active years.

"The Beaver" occupies a unique place in British journalism and politics. No one has neutral feelings about him. Either you like him or you hate him; there is no middle course. I suppose nothing gives him more satisfaction than knowing that when he arrives in London, men in Fleet Street pubs and West End clubs ask one another: "What do you think the Beaver's up to now?"

Is "what the Beaver is up to" really important? The enmity of the _Express_, which is the enmity of Lord Beaverbrook, can make a politician squirm. But does it really lower his standing with the voters? I doubt it. Lord Beaverbrook is an incorrigible Don Quixote who has tilted at and been tossed by many windmills. He is, incidentally, a more powerful writer than most of his employees. Early in 1957 he was prodding his newspapers to the attack against the government's plans for closer economic association with Europe. The headlines were bold and black, the indignation terrifying. Will the campaign itself alter government policy? I doubt it.

Lord Beaverbrook once remarked that he ran his papers to conduct propaganda. Just before the retirement of Sir Winston Churchill, Lord Beaverbrook was asked why his newspapers were so critical of Sir Anthony Eden, the heir presumptive to the premiership. He replied that Sir Anthony had never supported the policies of the Beaverbrook newspapers. As no other leading politician had thrown his weight that way, this seemed a rather weak reason for attacking the new leader of the Conservative Party. The political affiliation of the _Daily Express_ is Independent Conservative.

But the Beaverbrook campaigns perform a real public service by fixing public attention upon issues. I do not think the editorials convince--I have yet to meet a _Daily Express_ reader who confused the "leader" column with pronouncements from Sinai--but they encourage that discussion of public issues which is essential in a democracy. Of course the _Express_ newspapers' tactics annoy nice-minded people. But the tradition of a free press includes not only such august journals as _The Times_ but the rip-roaring, fire-eating crusaders as well. There is not much chance that the popular press in Britain will model itself on _The Times_, but if it did so, the result would be a loss to journalism and to the nation. And as long as the Beaverbrook tradition survives--as long, indeed, as Lord Beaverbrook himself is around to draw on his inexhaustible fund of indignation--one section of the popular press is bound to remain contentious and vigorous.

The _Daily Express_, the morning paper of the Beaverbrook empire, is technically one of the best newspapers in the world. Its layout is admirable, and its headline-writers often show a touch of genius. In its writing and its presentation of news it has been much affected by such divergent American influences as _The New Yorker_ and _Time_.

The _Express_ is brightly written (too much so at times), and its tastes in policies and politicians are incalculable. Along with a liberal helping of political, foreign, and crime reporting it offers two of the best features in British journalism: Osbert Lancaster's pocket cartoon on the front page and the humorous column of "Beachcomber" on the editorial page. "Beachcomber" and Lancaster are sharp and penetrating commentators on the daily scene. In many instances their references to the occasional inanities of the British society are more cogent than anything to be found in the editorial columns of the _Express_.

The _Express_ successfully caters to the new middle class that has arisen since the war, especially that part of it which is involved in the communications industry. The young advertising manager from the provinces who has "arrived" in London may find _The Times_ too verbose and the _Telegraph_ too stodgy. The _Express_, with its bright features on the theater or London night life, attracts him. But, oddly, three principal features of the _Express_ cater to very different tastes. Osbert Lancaster's subject matter is drawn usually from the upper middle class--his Maudie Littlehampton, after all, is a Lady. The humor of "Beachcomber" appeals to tastes that reject the average in British humor, and Sefton Delmer, the peripatetic foreign correspondent of the _Express_, often writes stories on international issues which are much more involved and adult than would seem suitable for the majority of the newspaper's four million readers.

This divided approach is not so obvious in the _Daily Mirror_, which has the largest circulation of any of the London dailies. This is an important newspaper in that it is the most accurate reflection I know of the tastes and mores of the new working class in Britain. There are many indications elsewhere that Cecil King, its proprietor, and his chief lieutenants have pondered long and earnestly about Britain's problems. The _Mirror_'s pamphlet on trade unions and an earlier pamphlet on Anglo-American relations are solid contributions to the literature on these subjects. But the _Daily Mirror_'s customary approach to policies and issues is as robust and sharp as that of a policeman to a drunk. It is belligerent rather than persuasive; it loves big type.

But the _Daily Mirror_'s handling of certain types of stories, particularly those involving industrial disputes and crime, is excellent. (British crime reporting in general, although circumscribed by the libel laws, is of high caliber.) The _Mirror_'s editorials, with their GET OUT or PASS THIS BILL approach to politicians and measures, may alienate as many as they win, but the editorials are alive, dealing often with problems--such as automation and wage differentials--that are of the keenest interest to the industrial working class.

The _Mirror_ is much closer to the thinking of this class than is the _Daily Herald_, usually considered the official Labor newspaper. The Trades Union Congress owns 49 per cent of the stock in the _Daily Herald_, and Odhams Press Ltd. owns the remainder. Once powerful and well informed on industrial and labor-movement happenings, the _Herald_ no longer seems to represent either the movement or the industrial working class that supports the movement. Its approach is stodgier than that of the _Mirror_, less in keeping with the tastes of the new working class.

The _Mirror_'s most renowned features are "Cassandra" and "Jane." The former, written by William Connor, is one of the hardest-hitting and most provocative features in British journalism. Connor has evoked the wrath of statesmen of both major parties. The Communists hate him. He is a deflator of stuffed shirts, a pungent critic, and a stout defender of the British worker.

The _Mirror_'s other salient feature is a comic strip called "Jane." Jane is a well-proportioned young lady whose adventures nearly always end in near nudity. She is a favorite of British troops abroad and their families at home. The information value of this daily striptease is nonexistent, but a _Mirror_ employee once defended the strip on the grounds that "the bloke that buys the paper to look at Jane may read Bill Connor or the leader."

The London press enjoys an advantage that does not exist in the United States. This is the presence of a remarkably well-informed critical opinion in the weekly reviews that are also printed in London. The _Spectator_, the _New Statesman and Nation_, _Time and Tide_, and, occasionally, the _Economist_ are careful, if sometimes pecksniffian, critics of the national newspapers. Fleet Street is one big family (it would be stretching things to call so tumultuous a community "happy"), and the inner workings of the great dailies are laid bare to the weeklies often through the agency of disgruntled reporters. Consequently, "Pharos" in the _Spectator_ and Francis Williams in the _New Statesman_ are authoritative and knowledgeable critics of the newspapers and their proprietors.

The weeklies themselves are a valuable supplement to the newspapers. They have time to reflect and space to discuss. In many cases they are often slightly ahead of public opinion, more so than the daily papers, and they are not afraid to criticize tartly such sacred cows of British journalism as the Crown.

Since the end of the war the tendency among the popular newspapers has been to entertain rather than to inform. This recognizes what I believe to be one of the fundamental truths of the communications business in Britain: the majority of the people get their news from the British Broadcasting Corporation's radio and television services and from the news services of the Independent Television Authority.

Readers of the more responsible London and provincial newspapers listen to the news on the BBC and then turn to their papers for expanded stories and ample interpretative material. But the average reader does not read _The Times_ or the _Manchester Guardian_ or the _Observer_. When he turns off the radio in the morning and picks up his "popular" newspaper, he is confronted with gossip columns, comic strips, newsless but beguiling stories about the royal family, sports stories, and, in some papers, a dash of pornography.

The "popular" papers do print hard news. Correspondents like Sefton Delmer of the _Daily Express_ and William Forrest of the _News Chronicle_ send interesting, factual, and frequently important stories from Germany or Russia. But such stories are increasingly rare. The trend even in this sort of writing is toward entertainment.

For example, not long ago a London popular daily, once renowned for its foreign staff, sent a reporter to Communist China. This was an opportunity for objective reporting. Instead the readers got a rehash of the reporter's own political outlook plus a few flashes of description of life in modern China.

This tendency toward entertainment rather than information is deplored by those who believe that a democracy can operate successfully only on the foundation of well-informed public opinion. In Britain, however, newspapers are customarily considered not as public trusts but as business, big business. If entertainment pays, the newspapers, with a few exceptions noted above, will entertain. Unfortunately, the BBC cannot provide the time necessary to give the news that the newspapers fail to print. Obviously the great mass of the British people will become less well informed about the great issues at home and abroad if the present trend continues.

During the thirties the critics of the British press liked to repeat a cruel little rhyme that ran:

_You cannot hope to bribe nor twist,
Thank God, the British journalist,
But, seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to._

Yet, from a knowledge of the type of man who writes for the popular press and a thorough acquaintance with his product, I would say that the blame rests not with the reporter but with the management.

It is certainly within the power of the proprietors of the popular newspapers to change the character of the papers. Some editors in Fleet Street habitually sneer at American newspapers and their practices, although these men are not above adopting some American techniques of news presentation which they think will sell newspapers. But the amount of factual information about national and foreign affairs in many small-town American papers is far greater, proportionately, than that provided by some great "national" newspapers in London.

Those who are interested in the improvement of relations between the United States and the United Kingdom must be concerned about the reporting of American news in the popular press. More space is devoted to news from the United States than formerly, and correspondents for the London dailies travel more widely than they did in the past. Men like the late Robert Waithman of the _News Chronicle_ did their best to get out of Washington and New York and see the country. But too often the correspondents devote time and space to the more frivolous aspects of American life. From the standpoint of international relations, the space devoted to the stream of stories about the royal family might be better spent on a frank discussion of why the mass of Americans feel as they do about the Communist government in Peiping.

Some good judges of the national character believe that the great mass of the British working class would not read such information even if the newspapers provided it. They see this group as complacent and politically lethargic, no longer willing to be stirred, as it was a generation ago, by great events in the outside world. If this is true, the future is dark indeed. For more than at any time since the summer of 1940 the British people must take a realistic view of their position in the world. They cannot do this if, beyond a few perfunctory headlines, their newspapers provide only the details of the latest murder or the bust measurements of Hollywood stars. To an observer from abroad, it is only too evident that the great problems of our times are not being brought to the people of Britain by their popular newspapers in a serious manner.

THE OLD SCHOOL TIE

Few institutions in Britain are more difficult for Americans to understand than the public schools. Yet a knowledge of the system, how it works, its influence upon British society, its traditions and customs, even its sports is essential to a knowledge of modern Britain. We are going to hear a great deal about the public schools in the coming years, for one of the great battles between the egalitarian, socialist Britain and the traditional, conservative Britain will be waged over the future of these schools.

The "public school" is in fact a private one. The public-school system includes all the schools of this type in Britain. As an influence on the national character it has been and still is extraordinarily potent. This influence is social and political as well as educational. It is, I think, fair to say that to hundreds of thousands in the upper and middle classes, attendance at Eton is regarded as more important than attendance at Oxford.

There are about two hundred public schools in Britain. They range from old established institutions like Eton, Harrow, Charter-house, Winchester, Rugby, Haileybury, and Wellington to smaller schools whose fame is local and whose plant, equipment, and teaching staff are little better, and in some cases inferior, to those of the state schools.

What keeps the public-school system alive in an era that has seen the fall of so many bastions of class and privilege? To begin with, the public schools represent a well-established, wealthy, and acute force within British society. Such a force fights to maintain its position against the public criticism and political maneuverings of its enemies. The fight is led by men who are sincerely convinced that the continuation of the public-school system is necessary to the maintenance of Britain's position in the world, and they will devote time, money, and effort to win the fight. One of the mistakes made by the Socialist groups that attack the public-school system is to underestimate the wit and energy of those who defend it.

Yet the existence of a powerful institution is no guarantee of its future life in a country that has changed and is changing so rapidly as Britain. The public schools survive and even flourish because of the conviction widely held throughout the upper and middle classes that such schools provide the best type of education for their boys. Indeed, the conviction goes even deeper in the class structure: it is noteworthy that as new groups move up the economic scale into the middle class, these too seek to send their boys to a public school.

Elsewhere I have mentioned the sacrifices that the old middle class makes to preserve its position in British society. Nowhere are these sacrifices more evident than in the struggle to raise the money to send the son or sons of the family to a public school. The Continental holiday may be given up in favor of two weeks at an English seaside resort. The car must be patched up and run for another year. Father will go without a new overcoat, and mother will abandon her monthly trip to "town" to see a play. But John will go to his father's old school. Why?

At the best public schools the formal education is excellent. But when the middle-class Briton speaks of the education his son gets at a public school he is referring only partially to what the boy learns from books. Principally, he is thinking about the development of the boy's character at the school, about the friends he will make there, and about how these friends and attendance at this old school will help the boy later in life.

Critics of the Foreign Office have often charged that British diplomacy is filled with the products of the public schools and that the representatives of the great mass of the nation are excluded from the Foreign Service because they have not attended public schools. Lord Strang, a former Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and thus head of the Foreign Office, answered this criticism in his book _The Foreign Office_.

"The Foreign Office," he wrote, "can move no faster towards fully democratic methods of selection than the State as a whole is moving in its educational policies, though it has already moved far at the pace set for it by these wider policies of political evolution. The fact is that the Foreign Service always must and will recruit from the best, in brains and character, that the prevailing educational system can produce."

Note that "character" is coupled with "brains" in this indirect reference to the public schools.

What does the middle-class Briton mean when he says that Eton or some obscure public school in the Midlands will develop his son's character? There is no complete answer. But I would say that he includes in character such traits as willingness to take responsibility, loyalty to the class conception of the nation's interests, readiness to lead (which implies, of course, a belief that he is fit to lead and that there are people willing to be led), truthfulness, self-discipline, a love for vigorous outdoor sports. I have heard all these cited as reasons why boys should go to public schools and why fathers will give up smoking or limit their drinking to a small sherry before dinner to provide the money for such schooling.

In considering the development of character in the public schools it should be remembered that these schools often represent the third phase in the education of a British boy. The boy's first preceptor will be a nanny or nursemaid, often chosen from the rural working class. At eight or nine he goes away to a preparatory school. At twelve or thirteen he is ready for his public school. Because of economic pressure only a wealthy minority can follow this system today, but it was the system that produced the majority of the leaders of the Conservative Party and not a few prominent Labor Party leaders.

Direct paternal influence is much less evident in the education of Britons of the middle class than it is in the United States. One argument for the system maintains that the boy learns self-reliance; when in his twenties he is commanding a platoon or acting as Third Secretary of Embassy in a foreign country he is not likely to be wishing that Mom were there to advise him. This argument implies acceptance of the proposition that people will consent to be led by the public-school boy or that his education and character will fit him for a diplomatic post abroad.

Critics of the public schools charge that the concept of public-school leadership was exploded by World War II. This does not jibe with my own experiences with the British forces from 1939 to 1945. I found that most of the young officers in all three services were products of the public schools and that, on the whole, they provided a high standard of leadership in the lower echelons. Their earlier training had enforced upon them the idea that they were responsible for their men, not only in battle but elsewhere. So they would tramp through the Icelandic sleet to obscure posts to organize amateur theatricals or sweat through an African afternoon playing soccer with their men because this was part of the responsibility. They were told that they had to lead in battle, and they accepted the obligation without doubts.

A great many of them were killed all over the world while sociologists and reformers were planning how to eliminate the public schools. Those who were killed were no more intelligent, no more attractive in person, no more energetic than those they led. But when the time came to lead, they led. These remarks, no doubt, will annoy critics of the public schools and public-school leadership. When I am informed how wars are to be won or nations to be governed without leaders I will be properly contrite.

The public school's place in British society rests basically upon this conviction that a public-school education provides character-training that will equip a boy for leadership in business, in politics, in the military services, and in society. But the system as it appears in British society is composed of much more than formal education and character-building. The public schools also mean a body of traditions and customs often as involved and as unrelated to the modern world as the taboos of primitive man.

The Old School Tie is one. Almost all middle-class and some working-class institutions in Britain have a tie striped with the colors of the institution or ornamented with its crest. There are ties for cricket clubs and associations of football fans, there are ties for regiments and clubs. But the tie that generally means most is the tie that stands for attendance at a public school. It is at once a certificate of education and a badge of recognition.

The phrase "Old School Tie" stands not only for the public schools but for their place in middle-class society. The tie is not merely a strip of silk but all the strange, sometimes incomprehensible customs and traditions that surround the public schools. Slang phrases used at one school for generations. Rugby football rather than soccer because there is more bodily contact in rugby and hence it is a more "manly" game and better suited to character-building. School courses which have very little to do with the problems of the modern world but which supposedly "discipline" the mind.

British public schools, like American universities, have been criticized for developing a type rather than individuals. There is a resemblance among their graduates, and the old Etonian and the old Wykehamist (Winchester) and even the graduate of some small school in Yorkshire have a great deal in common. The public-school graduate will be enthusiastic about sports, rather contemptuous and sometimes shockingly ill-informed about the world outside Britain, well-mannered, truthful, and amenable to discipline. In a crowd, whether it be an officers' training unit in war or an industrial training school in peace, he will seek out other members of the fraternity announced by the tie. He is ready to serve and sometimes idealize the State. He believes in, although he does not invariably personally support, church attendance, _The Times_, the monarchy.

Naturally, there are mavericks. Some of the greatest individualists in recent British history--the influence of the public schools on the nation really became apparent in the middle of the last century when the new mercantile and industrial leaders began to send their sons to them--have been public-school products. By a pleasing coincidence, Sir Winston Churchill, Prime Minister Nehru of India, and Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis are old Harrovians.

Politically, the public schools are conservative in thought, and usually their graduates adhere to the Conservative Party. But there are many exceptions. Hugh Gaitskell, the present leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party, is an old Wykehamist. His predecessor, Earl Attlee, went to Haileybury. Scattered through the ranks of the modern Labor Party are dozens of Old Boys of the public schools. If the Labor movement gradually sheds much of its old extremism, it is certain to attract an increasing number of public-school graduates.

The principal criticism of the public schools voiced by reformers at home and critics abroad is that it perpetuates in Britain a class system that divides society during a period when unity is essential to survival. There is truth in this, so much that it cannot be answered, as supporters of the system do answer it, with the assertion that there were no class differences in Britain until the Labor Party created them. Nor is the argument valid that the masses in Britain like class distinction, like to live their lives within a precise social classification. British society is changing today just as it has changed in the past. It would not have changed without popular pressure. The newly rich manufacturer of cheap cotton who decided to send his boy to a public school a hundred years ago was just as much a part of this change as the Labor Party politician who wants to abolish the public schools even though he himself is a graduate of one.

Another disadvantage of the perpetuation of the public-school system in its present form is that it is unsuited in many ways to modern conditions. It was admirable training for young men who were to rule thousands of untutored natives or maintain the might, majesty, and dominion of the British Empire with a handful of police or administer without deviation the justice of the Crown in smelly courtrooms half a world away. But today the young men are going out to sell Austins or electronic products or to represent a weaker Britain among peoples tipsy with the heady wine of nationalism. At home the old stratifications are breaking up, new groups of technicians and managers are shouldering the once unchallenged leaders of the professional middle class, new industries requiring a high degree of technical training are ousting the old.

In these circumstances the road will be difficult for a man who has been trained to regard himself as a leader, either born or educated to leadership, who has been taught that his caste is automatically superior to the industrialists of Pittsburgh or the scientist at Harlow or the excitable politicians of New Delhi and Athens. Certain traits encouraged by the public schools will always be important. But self-discipline, truthfulness, physical courage must be accompanied in the modern world by a broader outlook on that world and a more acute realization of Britain's place in it.

There is a strong movement in Britain for the expansion of technical education. The public schools are not technical schools; their object is the well-rounded product of a general education. While the public schools maintain their social prestige, the new middle class as well as the old will send its sons to them. But the leaders of tomorrow's Britain will be the leaders of the new technology taught in the technical schools. As these schools develop, they may offer a real challenge to the public school's position as the trainer of the governing or leading class.

The indictment of the public schools is that they are educating boys to meet conditions that no longer exist. Yet the public schools are trying to change with the times even while maintaining that what is needed to meet the challenge of modern conditions is not narrow technical education but precisely the comprehensive schooling backed by sound character-training that public schools are supposed to provide.

We should not overlook the role the public schools are playing and will play in the absorption into the middle class of the new groups that have entered it from industry, science, communications, and management in the last decade. Many men in these groups had no public-school education. In fact, a decade ago many of them were among the severest critics of the system. But a surprisingly large number today are sending their sons to public schools. The desire to keep up with the Joneses--the Joneses in this case being the old middle class that sent its sons to public schools as a matter of course--is one reason for this. Another is the recognition that the public schools endow their graduates with certain social advantages.

When change occurs in Britain it often takes place behind a façade that appears unchanged. The battle over the public schools is certain to take place, and, whichever group wins, the schools themselves will be altered by it. It is inconceivable that they will be eliminated from the British scene. It is equally inconceivable that they will not change under the pressure of the times.

In the spring of 1956 I lunched with a wartime friend who said he had given up smoking in order to save money to send young Nigel through Winchester. Someone else at the table muttered that "this public-school business" was a lot of damned nonsense. My friend smiled. "Damn it," he said, "you [the mutterer] are always talking about how well the Russians do things. Well, I read in _The Times_ this morning that Khrushchev says they're going to start schools to train leaders. What's good enough for old Khrush ought to be good enough for you pinks down at the London School of Economics!"

THE ARMY, THE NAVY, THE AIR FORCE

"The Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, they always play the game." So sang the girls and boys of careless, complacent Britain in the thirties. The verse symbolizes the middle-class public-school atmosphere of the services' place in British society. Prior to World War II the three services enjoyed a more honored place in British society than did the Army and the Navy in American society.

The commanding officer of a battalion on home service thought himself socially superior to the leading industrialist of the neighborhood, and, in most cases, the industrialist agreed. The retired Navy commander or Army major was a recognized figure in the life of the village or town in which he lived--a figure of fun, perhaps, to the bright young people down from Oxford or Cambridge, and an easy mark for social caricaturists and cartoonists, but also a man of importance in the affairs of the community.

He was also, in many cases, a man of means. Pay in the pre-war Army was ridiculously small, and an officer in a "good" regiment needed a private income if he were to live comfortably. Again, the retired officer and the serving officer knew a good deal about the world, a circumstance forced upon him (for he was never especially cordial to foreigners) by the necessity of garrisoning the Empire. He had lived in India or China or Egypt and fought in South Africa or France or Mesopotamia, and he had formed firm conclusions about these countries and their people. These conclusions, often delivered with the certainty of an order on the parade ground, raised the hackles of his juniors and were derided as the reactionary ideas of relics from Poona, the citadel of conservatism in India. There is an old service verse about the "Poona attitude":

_There's a regiment from Poona
That would infinitely sooner
Play single-handed polo,
A sort of solo polo,
Than play a single chukker
With a chap who isn't pukka._

After the Second World War had burst on Britain in all its fury and in its aftermath, it occurred to many who had fumed while the ex-officers talked that the Blimps had known what they were talking about. Earlier I noted that the retired officers were right in their predictions about what would happen in India once the British withdrew, and that the politicians and publicists of the left were wrong. I do not suggest that the British should or could have remained. But several hundred thousand lives might have been saved if the withdrawal had been slower.

The services and their officers thus had established themselves as a much more important part of society in Britain than had their counterparts in the United States. They were always in the public eye. The Army and the Air Force fought campaigns on the north-west frontier of India. The Navy chased gun-runners and showed the flag.

Socially, the Army was the more important. The sons of the very best families--which means the oldest and most respectable, not the richest--went into the five regiments of the Brigade of Foot Guards or into the Household Cavalry or into the old, fashionable, expensive cavalry regiments like the 16th/5th Lancers or the Queen's Own Fourth Hussars (which once, long ago, attracted a young subaltern named Churchill). It was the fashion among the intellectuals of pre-war England to laugh at the solemn ceremonials of the Foot Guards and to snicker at the languid young men who protested when their horses were taken away and replaced by armored cars and tanks. (It might be remarked that when the time came there was nothing to laugh at and a good deal to be proud of. The account for the parties at the night clubs and the hunting, shootin', and fishin' of the careless days was rendered and paid in blood. You could see them in France in May and June of 1940 going out with machine guns and horribly antiquated armored cars to take on the big German tanks.)

If the Army was predominant socially, the Navy held military pre-eminence. It was the Navy which was the nation's "sure shield," the Navy which had been matchless and supreme since Trafalgar. It was the Navy which time and again had interposed its ships and men between the home islands and the fleets of Spain, France, and Germany. The naval officer standing on his bridge in the North Sea or off some tropic port was a watchman, a national symbol of security.

As the two senior services were so firmly implanted in the public consciousness, it is easy to see why the Royal Air Force, the youngest of the three, lived on such short commons before the war. Socially it did not count. "He's one of these flying chaps," a young Hussar said at Lille one day in 1939, "but a very decent fellow." It did not attract the young men who entered the Guards or the Cavalry, for the RAF dealt with machines and grimy hangars smelling of grease and oil, and it planned for the future without much hope of governmental financial assistance or any real support from tradition. Whereas the Loamshire Hussars had been fighting since Blenheim, the Secretary of State for War was an ex-officer, and the port at the mess was beyond praise.

Militarily, the RAF meant a great deal more. When the war began, it became the savior of Britain--for a few years the one service through which the country could strike directly and powerfully at Germany. The rise of the RAF to pre-eminence among the fighting services in post-war Britain began with its long, bitter, successful battle against the _Luftwaffe_ in the summer of 1940.

The ascent of the RAF to its present position is the first of the changes that have overtaken the services in Britain, which is a martial if not a militaristic nation. Of course, the development of air power as the means of carrying the new nuclear weapons would have ensured an improvement in its position in any case. But the expansion of the RAF during the war, the post-war necessity for continued experimentation in associated fields such as the development of guided missiles, and the creation of a large, highly trained group of technical officers provided an opportunity for the new middle class and the upper levels of the industrial working class, the planners and technicians, to win advancement in what is currently the most important of the services.

The Battle of Britain was won by public-school boys. But the modern RAF, although it has its share of public-school boys especially among the combat units, is increasingly manned, officers as well as the higher noncommissioned officers, by products of the state schools. The RAF needs now and will need increasingly in the future the services of the best technical brains Britain can offer. The main source of supply will be not the officers' training units at the public schools or the universities but the new technical colleges and training courses in Britain.

It follows, then, that in time the military defense of the realm will rest primarily not upon the class who have always considered themselves ordained by birth and education to carry out this task but upon a new group springing from the new middle class and from the proletariat. This is a social development of the first importance.

The change in the character of the officer class is not confined to the RAF, although it is most noticeable there. There has been a change, too, in the composition of the commissioned ranks of the Army.

When World War II ended, the "military families," which for generations had sent sons into the local county regiments, found that the second war, following the terrible blood-letting of the first, had almost wiped them out. Perhaps one son in three or four survived. And he, surveying the post-war Army and the post-war world, was disinclined to follow tradition and devote the remainder of his working life to the service. He might gladly have served another twenty years in the "old" Army with its horses and hunting, its tours of duty in India, its social importance. But now tanks and armored cars had replaced the horses, India was gone, and a bunch of shirking Bolshies from the Labor Party were running things. Above all, the two wars had swept away many of the private fortunes with which young officers eked out their miserable pay and allowances. So the survivor of the military family became a personnel manager in a Midlands factory, and elderly men said to elderly wives: "Do you know that for the first time since '91 there's no Fenwick serving with the Loamshires?"