MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD NICOLSON .
DURING the past few weeks I have given several lectures, and attended several discussion-groups, in various parts of the country. The audiences have been composed of young and old, rich and poor, city workers and farm labourers, schoolboys, under- graduates and cadets. What has interested me most has been the attitude of the younger generation, whether Labour or not, towards the issues of current foreign policy. On the one hand I have been impressed by the fact that the young men and women of today pay far more attention to such problems than was ever vouchsafed to them by their fathers and mothers of the previous generation ; their questions and their remarks indicate that they are well aware of the tremendous difficulties with which we are today confronted. On the other hand I have been disconcerted by the extent to which their views are coloured by hopes and wishes, by sentimental affections or prejudices. I should have supposed, for instance, that our younger socialists would have taken pride in the fact that the Labour move- ment has produced in Mr. Ernest Bevin a Foreign Secretary who is not only the equal, and more than the equal, of the Ministers and Commissars with whom he negotiates, but who can compare most
favourably with his eminent predecessors from Walsingham to Eden. I should have supposed that they would have delighted in his massive imperturbability, his powerful patience, his stolid sagacity. I have watched many British Foreign Secretaries in action, and I have never seen one who equals Mr. Bevin as the representative, in diplomatic negotiation, of the qualities of simplicity, forthrightness and common sense which form the foundation of our national character. His voice, his manner, his very smile compel confidence and enhance credit ; on many occasions I have rejoiced at the'almost palpable impressiop which he makes on foreigners. He seems to me to embody all that is most sound and solid in our social democracy.
* .
I have seen it reported that Mr. Bevin, when asked to define the objectives of his foreign policy, replied as follows :—" I want to create conditions which will enable me to walk down to Victoria Station and to take a ticket for any country in the world." That does not seem to me a Fascist definition, a reactionary definition or an ignorant definition. It seems to me to embody wisdom in its simplest form, since, if such conditions could in fact be created, it would mean the removal of our present barriers which create fear and want ; it would mean that the world became a university, a garden and a playground open to all men and women ; it would mean that people could speak to people undismayed. That surely is sound Socialist doctrine and a purpose which should appeal to all men of sense. I have found, however, that my own view of Mr. Bevin is not shared by all the younger generation. One criticism that I heard struck me as par- ticularly illogical and strangz. It was not denied that Mr. Bevin was a worthy representative of the cause to which he has devoted all his life ; but it was contended that his previous ignorance of foreign affairs had obliged him to become the victim of his own officials. I was startled by this contention : it was as if someone had assured me that a buffalo was being bullied by a handful of gazelles. I suggested to my interlocutor that he had not considered the im- plications of his strange theory ; it would imply, logically, either that the Foreign Secretary knew more than the FOreign Service or that the Foreign Service knew less than the Foreign Secretary. Under the former alternative, you would have as Foreign Minister a man who had devoted his whole life to the study of international relations, and who was therefore unrepresentative of the party in power : under the latter alternative you would have to staff your Foreign Service with ignoramuses and amateurs.
* * * * Behind such confusion of thought there is of course a heavy mist of perplexity, suspicion and distress. Although I have devoted thirty years to the study and practice of diplomacy, I confess that I am confounded by the magnitude of our problems and the paucity of our means. It is inevitable that one should seek to escape from the menace of unalterable facts and take cover in the undergrowth of emotions, ideas or personalities which are not unalterable. It is easier to get rid of Mr. Bevin than to get rid of the United States or Russia ; it is more comforting to believe that there exists some new and magic formula for British policy than to face the hard fact that our policy is dependent upon certain unalterable geographical, financial and economic conditions. We find ourselves in the position of the family of someone who is desperately ill : inevitably at such moments people seek to change their doctor and to resort to patent medicines and infallible cures. The very natural anxiety aroused in the public mind by our economic dependence and by the dread of the third world war usually finds expression in impulsive suspicion and ill- considered ideas. It is thus interesting to come across a publication in which these airy nothings are given a local habitation and a name. I have been reading the pamphlet entitled Keep Left which has been composed by Mr. R. H. Grossman, Mr. Michael Foot and their associates, in anticipation doubtless of the forthcoming trip to Mar- gate. It is a plausible and persuasive document written with Wyke- hamist clarity and self confidence. With some of it I am in agree- ment ; but the sections devoted to foreign policy, while they will do much to crystallize the uneasiness to which I have referred, appear to me to beg the question.. Cogently do Mr. Crossman and his friends inform us that we should not be ill, if only we were in perfect health.
At times this pamphlet breaks into wild emotive words and phrases such as " imperialism," " oil," " dollars " and "no truck with Churchill," which are well calculated to arouse the passions of man. I do not care for such expressions, since they become divorced from their true meanings, and remind me of the cries with which cows or goats are herded : —" a orient diah,' a criant ' hue'." The general tone of the pamphlet is, however, sorrowful and restrained ; Mr. Crossman and his friends possess an excellent bed-side manner. In short but inexorable sentences they describe the symptoms of the grave illness with which their country is afflicted ; our financial anaemia has become so pernicious as to be incurable ; our powers of resistance have been so lowered that we shall be unable to survive another attack ; the decline in our physical force is so general and so permanent that we must for the future change our whole way of life. We are in danger of becoming the financial dependents, the " strategical outposts," of the United States ; we are in danger of being used as the tools of dollar diplomacy ; the victims of Wall Street. We must therefore restrict our commitments, reduce the strength of our armed forces, and then achieve our independence both of Russia and of the United States. And how, in our debilitated position, is this desirable objective to be secured? By creating a European security system, based upon the Anglo-French alliance, and gradually extending to other European countries. How agree- able, how comforting, it is to believe that what one wants to happen
is likely to occur ! • * * * * The fallacy to which Mr. Crossman and his friends have sur- rendered is that they fail to consider • or to mention the terrific obstacles which such a policy is bound to encounter. They do not state what countries will be asked to join their coalition. That is the central point. If Russia is to be included, then she will dominate the security system they envisage ; if she be excluded, then grave suspicions will be aroused. According to Mr. Crossman, the object of such a European security system would be " to deter aggression by Germany or by any non-European Power." The Russians have already shown their disinclination for Mr. Byrnes' Four-Power Pact. Is this new pact therefore to be directed implicitly against the United States? So invidious an implication would not for one moment allay Russia's suspicions, whereas it would cloud the great white soul of America. Our intermediary position, difficult as it is, could not survive such a complication.
Previous page
