Notebook
The ,New York Review' has published a harrowing description of Andre Gelinas of life in Saigon under the Communist regime. Ho Chi Minh's successors have overlooked no classic aspect of tyranny: arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, executions (and InanY more people driven to suicide), 'reeducation' camps for 'intellectuals gone astray.. All of this will be bitterly gratifying for those who supported the American war in South-East Asia. But it is a mistake, I would suggest, to claim that these horrible events retrospectively justify the war. There IS a striking parallel between the Vietnam war and our own last great colonial war, against the Boers. In both wars an imTenselY strong imperial state—the greatest '43wer of their respective days—entered tightly into an exhausting conflict in which its armies were trounced by primitive, fanatical guerrillas. Both countries resorted to increasingly desperate and brutal methods (the British, remember, invented 'concentration camps,' whose name the Nazis Mockingly imitated); both alienated their friends abroad and savagely divided public °Pinion at home.
The Parallel goes further than this: in either case men---cutting across party lines, jingos and pro-Boers, hawks and doves—made the same mistakes, mutatis mutandis. The Pro-Boers and the pro-Vietcong were wrong about the 'enemy' but right about the war. The Boers were idealised as gallant underdog nationalists, which, like the NLF, they were, but which view overlooked the fact ;flat they were fighting as well to keep their hands on the wealth of the Rand and to Continue oppressing the blacks, as the NLF Was fighting to institute a mindless totalitarian arian dictatorship. (Paul Kruger once met a famous American circumnavigator and ,,unblinkingly assured him that the earth was "at: the Vietnamese Communists' brand of Nitical philosophy is on that level of soPhistication and perception.) Both pacifist tParties, though, realised instinctively what the iingos did not, that the war was doing Irreparable damage to their own countries. The Vietnam war came close to destroying Al tnerica—destroying its moral justification and sense of national purpose. And the Boer War did destroy old England, even in victory (Pyrrhic if ever one was). So it was bound to wh:ta°1,bbeuinr, we fought, in the despairing words of is om —_ who conducted it, 'all for people , despise and for territory which phi bring no profit and no power to Smoking is a rather nasty and dangerous habit, and I have managed to give up smok ing cigarettes regularly (not difficult as, on a utilitarian basis, the discomfort I feel the morning after smoking more than twenty cigarettes is far greater than any pleasure I have enjoyed). Yet over the question of smoking, as so often, one finds oneself in what could be called a non tali auxilio situation. So much of the fanaticism and simple priggery of the anti-smoking propagandists is repellent. I hope that after the latest planned prohibitions, Mr Ennals will lay off his school-marmish lectures, and that the Government will leave somewhere where it is possible to smoke. It would be particularly deplorable if the ranting Good Food Guide has its way and bans smokirig in restaurants. In any case, a simple question : if the Government really wants to reduce smoking why, instead of spending large sums on propaganda and of introducing ever more prohibitions, does it not just raise the duty on tobacco so as to double the price of cigarettes? It couldn't be from electoral considerations, could it?
Coverage of the press by radio and television has always had about a flavour of the homage which vice pays to virtue (Wilde's definition of hypocrisy). But if the broadcasting media's interLst in newspapers has been half-hearted in the past it is now patently waning. The weekly papers naturally regretted and resented the disappearance of the Weekly World, a modest ten minutes every Saturday morning on Radio 4 which was evidently ten minutes too much for the BBC. Now television, in the form of Thames, has fingered another gesture of disdain. Granada's consistently interesting and entertaining What the Papers Say, never shown at peak time, has now been put back for London viewers to the absurd hour of
12.25 am, when many people—even journalists —are asleep. No one expects to see WPS at nine o'clock, but couldn't Thames at least show it in front of the particularly trashy thriller which it now follows?
Anthony Crosland's service of thanksgiving —as what were once funerals, then memorial services, are now called—had some odd features. In a religious service with `To be a pilgrim' and 'Jerusalem,' a reading from his own work seemed incongruous. But most surprising of all was the National Anthem. Few Labour politicians have had less interest in the Monarchy than Crosland (compare Harold Wilson, or Richard Crossman). Is it compulsory at the Abbey?
• Our contemporary the New Statesman will shortly be choosing a chairman for its board in succession to Lord Campbell. The names most frequently mentioned are those of Mr George Thomas, the Speaker, and a former company director (of the Commercial Bank of Wales), and Asa Briggs, the historian of BBC (and a lord nowadays). But various recent appointments have shown yet again that hotly-backed favourites do not always head the frame and it may be worth looking for outsiders. Mr Anthony Howard is said, surprisingly perhaps, to favour one of his predecessors, Mr Paul Johnson, but it seems doubtful whether Mr Johnson would command wide support. One man who would make an ideal choice, and who could be said to be carrying the highbrow social democrat colours, is Sir Claus Moser, head of the Central Statistical Office. But he already has other onerous commitments, not least as chairman of Covent Garden, and would likely rule himself out. There are two other darker horses, both with many qualifications for the post and both looking for further outlets for their energies. One is Mr Harold Evans, editor of the Sunday Times who recently came so near to the director-generalship of the BBC. And the other is Lady Falkender who could be said to be at a loose end, and who has long been on friendly terms with the NS. In many ways she might be the most interesting possible choice.
Most things get worse (two random examples: the disagreeable procedure, posing for a 'mug shot' and all, necessary to renew a British Museum Reading Room card; and the banks' imposition of a huge charge for cheques drawn on a blank form, about which I should be interested to know the legal position). A few get better, of which one is the standard of concert pianism. A friend well qualified to judge tells me that at no time in his musical memory, which goes back fifty years, have their been pianists of the number and brilliance of today, and I can well believe him after a fortnight in which we have heard Alfred Brendel, Walter Klien and Radu Lupu in London. I sometimes think that! shall take the economic crisis seriously when international musicians no longer play here for sterling.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
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