Part 13

"They certainly have a different idea of dealing with the Russians here," said the young wife of an American diplomat in 1954. "Why, they have track meets with Russians running in them, and they talk about how they're going to get the Russians to agree to this or that. Folks at home think all the Russians have horns and tails."

She was describing the British ability to live with a problem while thoroughly understanding its dimensions and dangers. Since 1945 the leaders of Britain, Socialist and Tory alike, have been fully aware of the dangers to Western freedom of Russian Communist imperialism. This statement may evoke criticism from some stout Republicans who regard the British Labor Party as an offspring of the Communist Party. But the facts are that it was a Labor government that sent troops to Korea, that carried on a long and successful campaign against the Communists in Malaya, that joined the Royal Air Force with the United States Air Force to build the air bridge that broke the Berlin blockade, and that passed what was then the largest peacetime armaments bill in British history. All these measures were part of the general effort to bolster the defenses of Western Europe against Soviet aggression.

These exertions were a severe burden on a country whose economy was already in difficulties and whose resources were strained. They were undertaken because they matched the resolution of the leaders of the Labor Party. They were heartily endorsed by the Conservative Party, then in opposition, and were continued by that party when it came to power in 1951.

The point of difference between the British and Americans was that at the height of the cold war the British never moved toward abandonment of normal diplomatic intercourse and welcomed any move by either side which promised closer contact and friendlier relations with the Soviet Union.

Socialist and Tory governments pursued this dichotomy in policy with almost complete freedom from political interference. The British, an island people dependent on international trade, strive in any crisis to maintain communications with their enemies and thus retain a means through which negotiations can be carried out. They will go to great, often shaming lengths to avoid war. Once it comes, they wage it with earnest intensity and fight it to the end.

In periods of danger such as followed the influx of Soviet power in Europe, British politicians usually assume a bipartisan attitude. This does not mean that the opposition of the time refrains from criticism of the government policy. It does mean that opposition speakers use restraint. During the period of maximum strain with Russia, no politician shrilled a warning against talking with the Russians about Berlin or Korea, or predicted that the admission of Russian high-jumpers to a track meet would undermine the nation. The British never gave up on the situation; they did not like it, but they thought that any means of finding a way out should be used.

This was, as I have noted, a period of danger. The bipartisan approach broke down completely over Suez. When Sir Anthony Eden ordered intervention in Egypt the danger was real but indistinct. It was also a long-term economic danger arising from threat to the country's oil supplies rather than the immediate military danger represented by the Soviet Union's military strength in East Germany and elsewhere in Central Europe accompanied by Russian diplomacy and subversion. Russian military power already had won its foothold in Egypt. But the Labor Party refused to regard this power as an immediate threat and consequently rejected it as a reason for the adoption of a bipartisan approach.

The British people have never been so violently anti-Russian as the Americans. There is a distinction between anti-Russian and anti-Communist. Communism has had few more bitter opponents than Ernest Bevin or Herbert Morrison, two leaders in the post-war Labor government. They represented elements of the movement which for decades had been fighting in the unions and in the constituency parties to prevent the Communists from winning control of the Trades Union Congress and the Labor Party. But neither the leaders nor the led could be called anti-Russian.

The war alliance with the Soviet Union meant far more to Britons than the military co-operation between the Soviet Union and the United States during the same period meant to Americans. The British attitude was rooted in the situation of June 1941 when the Germans turned east and attacked the Soviet Union.

The British had then been fighting the Germans and the Italians single-handed for a year. Their cities had been bombed, their armies and navies grievously punished in France, Norway, Libya, and Greece. Each month the German submarines in the North Atlantic were bolder and more numerous and the toll of shipping losses was higher. Most Britons knew they had stout friends in the United States, but the wiser also recognized the strength of isolationist sentiment. And, although American industrial mobilization was gaining momentum, that would not avert another Coventry tonight or another Dunkirk tomorrow.

Suddenly all this altered. Russia, which had sided with Germany for two years and had gobbled up parts of Finland, Poland, and Romania as her reward, was invaded. Overnight the British became willing to overlook the despicable role Russia had played in the first two years of the war. Here, at last, was an ally. An ally, moreover, that fought, that was undergoing the same punishment Britain had known.

Naturally this warm admiration for the Russian war effort and this sympathy for the Russian people offered an opportunity for the British Communists, who exploited it to the utmost. Propaganda from the Soviet Union portrayed life there in glowing terms. The British working class was informed that this was a working-class war--a few months earlier the Communists had been calling it a capitalist war--and that side by side the British and Russian "brothers" would fight it to a successful conclusion.

The propaganda would not have made much headway, however, had it not been for the basic strain of admiration and sympathy which existed. The decade of cold war which included the rape of Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade, and the Korean war obviously altered the British working-class attitude toward Russia. But some of the old wartime feeling remained. It is there yet in the minds of the working class, tucked behind the football scores and the racing tips: the Russians didn't let us down, they went on fighting, they must be like us, they can't want another war.

The changes in Soviet leadership and tactics since the death of Stalin have affected the British approach to Russia and Communism. In Britain, as elsewhere, the immediate danger has receded. The East is slowly opening up. This means a great deal more to Britain than to the United States.

Trade is the answer. The British want to expand their trade with the Soviet Union and with China. Again, as in their diplomatic relations, this does not mean that they approve of Communism in either country. But they live by trade, and they must take it wherever they find it. To British industrialists and British ministers the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe represent a market for industrial products and a possible source of raw materials. However, they are wary of Russian methods of business. The initial approach has been circumspect. The British do not wish to throw everything onto one market; they would infinitely prefer an expansion of trade with the United States. Nor will they sell to the Soviet Union one or two models of each type which the industrious Russians can then mass-produce for themselves. Finally, although Britain and other European nations are restive under embargo restrictions on the sale of certain strategic goods, the Conservative government has no intention of breaking these restrictions under the encouragement of Mr. Khrushchev's smile.

The visits to Britain of a succession of delegations from the Soviet government and of three top-ranking ministers--Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party, Premier Nikolai Bulganin, and Deputy Premier Georgi Malenkov--fanned British interest if not enthusiasm.

Much has been written about the effect of these visits on the British public. Indeed, the faint hearts in Congress seemed to think that they would result in the immediate establishment of a Communist regime in Britain. But it appeared to many who had frequent contacts with "Krush and Bulge," as the British called them, that the greatest effect of the visit was on the Russians themselves. Like Malenkov before them, the Communist boss and the head of the government encountered a prosperous, vigorous democracy. To anyone accustomed to the crudity and ugliness that express Russia's raw strength, industrial Britain was a revelation. Here were huge, new, clean factories set in the midst of comfortable towns enclosed by green fields and parks.

"We'll have all this one day in Russia," Khrushchev said to one of his hosts. "But it takes time."

The British poured out to see the visitors. But it was symptomatic of the maturity of public opinion that in London and the other great cities, the Communists failed to generate any wild enthusiasm for the Soviet leaders. On the contrary, they were met in most cases with stolid, disapproving silence interspersed by volleys of boos.

Yet because the British were never so excited about the possibility of war with the Soviet Union as were the Americans, there is and will be in Britain greater willingness to accept the Russians at their own valuation. Also, the British working class is far more interested in the Soviet Union than American labor is.

To the American workingman there is nothing especially novel in the description of huge enterprises breaking new ground in virgin territory. Americans have been doing that sort of thing for a century. But to the Briton, accustomed to an economy severely circumscribed by the geographical limitations of his island, these Soviet enterprises have the fascination of the unknown. So he marvels over the pictures and the text in the magazines issued by the Russian and satellite governments.

This propaganda is intended, naturally, to divert the reader's mind from the innumerable cruelties that have accompanied the building of the Soviet state by impressing him with a glowing account of the results. Here, as elsewhere, the Russians underestimate their critics, of whom the British workingman is one. People do not easily forget cruelty, even if it has not been practiced on them.

"Certainly, I'm a trades-union man _and_ a good socialist," a printer said to me during the Khrushchev-Bulganin visit. "That's why I 'ate these bleeders. What they've done to the unions in Russia wants talking abaht, chum. Know what I 'ates most about them? It's them arsing around our country with a lot of coppers with them, the bleeders. We don't want none of that 'ere."

Finally, we come to a factor of great importance in molding British attitudes toward the Soviet Union. This is the large group of teachers, writers, editors, movie-directors, and radio and television workers who have been powerfully influenced either by Communism or by the results of a Communist society in the Soviet Union. Proportionately, this group is larger than its counterpart in the United States. It has never been drastically reduced in numbers by the pressure of public opinion. Outside of the "sensitive" departments of government, no great stigma is attached to membership in the Communist Party in Britain.

Politically, Britain is deeply and justly concerned with the liberties of the subject. Consequently, any discrimination by the government against Communists evokes the wrath of politicians and public bodies unconnected with Communism. This is true even when the government seeks to eliminate a known Communist from a "sensitive" department. The question is not whether Communism threatens Britain. The British know that it does, and they are prepared to fight it. But Britain's place in world society, it is reasoned, would be threatened even more if the liberties of the subject were endangered. The view that only a truly free society is capable of defeating Communism transcends party lines in Britain.

It is important to remember that the powerful influence of Communism on this heterogeneous group has affected it in two ways. Such people as Malcolm Muggeridge, the editor of _Punch_, were once sympathetic to Communism and are now among its best-informed and sharpest critics. In Britain, as in the United States, there are apostates who have turned from Communism and who now attack it. But their attacks, though often brilliant, command less attention in Britain than in the United States. This may be because the British never were so excited about the cold war as we were in the United States (after all, they were grappling with pressing economic problems). It may be because the British have scant respect for those who betray causes and then make money out of it.

On the whole, however, the group influenced by the Soviet Union exerts its influence to create friendlier relations between Britain and the Soviet Union. In its attitude toward the United States this group is sensitive, critical, and quite often abysmally ignorant.

The virtues and defects of the Soviet Union and the United States thus are weighed in public by an influential group that has already been tremendously impressed either by communism as a political creed or by the industrial, military, or diplomatic achievements of the Soviet state. They are receptive to news of Russia and, in many cases, remarkably uncritical. Indeed, they are generally less skeptical and critical in their approach to the Soviet Union than they are to the problems of Germany or the United States. One of their favorite sayings is "Let's try and keep an open mind about Russia."

In the battle for men's minds, this is a serious situation. It means that a considerable proportion of what Britons read, of what young Britons learn, of what the whole nation sees or hears through mass communication media is prepared by people whose attitude toward Russian claims and policies is less skeptical than it should be. On the other hand, the danger has been exaggerated by anxious Americans.

Since 1950 these fields of endeavor have been invaded by a group of young men and women much more favorably inclined to conservatism and modern capitalism than the group influenced by Russia. Some of them have been to the United States and are able to refute the anti-American charges of the other group with first-hand knowledge. Most of them developed intellectually in the period when the Russian danger overshadowed Europe, and they are not prone to make excuses for the Soviets.

Moreover, they are strongly influenced by the marked recrudescence of national feeling in Britain. Perhaps this is a revulsion from the internationalism of the group influenced by Russia. Perhaps it reflects a desire to do something about Britain's waning prestige in the world. Sometimes it indicates a new and welcome preoccupation with the political possibilities of an enlarged Commonwealth. Whatever the cause, it adds to the vitality of British thought. And it is healthy for the country that its young people should be interested in British development of nuclear energy rather than in Magnetogorsk or TVA.

The British attitude toward Communist China is unaffected by emotional memories of a war alliance, as in the case of the Soviet Union, or the sense of guilt regarding the conquest of China by the Communists which affects some Americans. Chiang Kai-shek was never a public hero during the war, as Tito and Stalin were. The London representatives of the great Anglo-Chinese trading firms might portray Chiang as the hope of the West in China, but the British people were not convinced.

Although the British military effort in the Korean war was considerably larger than Anglophobes would have Americans believe, the war's effect on the British was a good deal less. There has never been any sustained public outcry against Britain's recognition of the Chinese government. The danger of a Communist invasion of Formosa did not stir the British. When such an invasion seemed likely, the Conservative government faced a difficult situation: would the British people, in the event of war between China and the United States, have followed the Americans into the conflict?

The present British interest in Communist China is largely commercial. No one entertains the happy belief that the Communist regime can be overthrown--certainly not by Chiang and his aging forces. What the British want from Comrade Mao is more trade. If they get it and trade expands, the process will reflect not a national attraction to Communism but a restatement of the familiar British position that theirs is a trading nation which, in its present circumstances, must find commerce where it can.

There would be no great opposition to China's entry into the United Nations. Again, this would not reflect admiration for communism. For many reasons the British doubt the effectiveness of the United Nations. One reason is that a nation of over 500,000,000 people has no representation in the UN's councils.

The relationship between the French and the British is a fascinating one. For nearly a thousand years these two peoples have faced each other across the channel. During that period, in Britain at least, there has developed a curious love-hate relationship. By turns loving, exasperated, and enraged, the British think of the French as a man might think of an affectionate but wayward mistress.

In June of 1940, when the world between the wars was being shaken to bits, the fall of France shocked and saddened the British as did no other event of those terrible days. I remember that while waiting in the Foreign Office, the morning after my return from France, I saw an elderly official, a man with a brittle, cynical mind, walk down the corridor with tears streaming down his face. There was no recrimination. All he could say was: "Those poor people--God, how they must be suffering!"

Few enemy actions during the war distressed the British as much as the decision to attack the French fleet at Oran. Few post-war diplomatic achievements gave them more pleasure than the re-establishment of the old alliance with France. The rise and fall of French governments, the convulsions of French politicians are watched in Britain sometimes with anger and harsh words but never without an underlying sympathy.

Perhaps because of the alliance in two world wars or perhaps because France offers such a complete change from their own islands, the British know France very well, far better than they know the United States or some nations of the Commonwealth. This is true of all classes of Britons.

The elderly doctor or retired officer of the middle classes will spend his holidays at an obscure resort on the coast of Brittany. Before the war a Continental holiday was one of the indications of middle-class status. Today the Continental holiday is within the financial reach of the working class. The conductor on the bus I sometimes take to work was full of his plans this spring for "me and the missus" to motorcycle from Boulogne to the Riviera. Thousands like him tour France in buses or spend vacations not in Blackpool but in a French seaside resort.

The national attitude ranges from tolerance to affection. I do not believe, however, that the British respect the French as they do the Germans or the Russians. The mutiny in the French Army in 1917, the catastrophe of 1940, the Anglophobia of the Vichy government ended, probably permanently, popular British reliance on France as a powerful ally in world affairs. When the Suez crisis arose in 1956 and the governments of Sir Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet hastened to reinvigorate the alliance, their efforts awoke little response in Britain. "Now that we're in this thing, we have to go on and win it," a friend said. "But think of being in it with the French, especially these French--Mollet, Pineau, and Bouges-Manoury." He made a sound more customary in Ebbets Field than in a London club.

The British are amused by the French (the French, of course, are even more amused by the British). Sometimes it seems that every Englishman of a certain age and financial position has his own "secret" village where the Hotel de la Poste provides a good dinner for five hundred francs. Britons have great knowledge and affection for France born of contact in two wars, but they do not rely on the French.

For other reasons the British hesitate to rely on the Germans. Two generations of Britons have learned that the Germans are a tough, resolute, and courageous people, characteristics admired in Britain. But the British groups devoted to furthering friendship between the two peoples are fighting a losing battle. There is among all classes in Britain an underlying distaste for the Germans. This feeling is not often expressed, but it is there, as it is in most countries in Western Europe. The attitude is a factor in the relationship between Western Europe and the key question facing the continent as a whole: Germany's ultimate reunification.

The Germans, a singularly obtuse people in judging the reasons for foreign attitudes toward Germany, are inclined to believe that British mistrust is tied to the two world wars and the decline of British power. This is inaccurate. British mistrust and dislike of Germany have political rather than military roots. Both the Kaiser's imperialism of 1914 and Nazi imperialism in 1939 were seen not as overwhelming threats to Britain alone but as dangers to the democratic system of the West under which she had flourished. The horrors of the concentration camps, the solemn lunacies of Hitler and his court, the death of personal and political liberty--all these were factors more important than military posturing. Finally, the British do not consider the Germans politically stable, and they are suspicious--perhaps too much so--of German ambitions and intentions.

Repeatedly this has affected British politics. The great pre-war debate in foreign affairs was waged between those who, like Churchill, were not willing to trust the Germans and those who, like Chamberlain, were. Since the end of World War II the international political issue that generated the most heat in Britain was the debate over the rearmament of Germany. One effect of this debate was the emergence of the Bevanites in the Labor Party as a political force. Aneurin Bevan believed that German rearmament would unite the pacifists, old anti-fascists, and others as no other issue could. He was correct. The leadership of Clement Attlee was gravely endangered for a time when the party officially supported arms for the nation's former enemies.

The State Department and other American officials have taken the position that British opposition to German rearmament was the product of wild-eyed agitators on the left and had no popular support. This was an inaccurate, even a dangerous attitude. Field Marshal Lord Wavell opposed it. So did Viscount Norwich, who as Alfred Duff Cooper had allied himself with Churchill in the latter's long fight against the appeasement policy of Chamberlain and Baldwin.

For the time being, the issue is dead. Germany is being rearmed. But the excitement the issue provoked testified to the abiding British uneasiness about Germany. This concern centers upon the prospect that West Germany will someday succumb to Russian enticement, be united with East Germany, and leave NATO. A permanently divided Germany may be a danger to peace, but few Britons outside the Foreign Office see it that way. Two wars have come out of a united Germany.