Haystacks and Needles
By STRIX THE character of a man is known by his deeds : of a tyrant or commander, by his decisions : Of a government, by the colour of its com- promises : and of a nation—save in times of the Utmost stress—by its beliefs, prejudices and illusions at any given moment.
These beliefs, prejudices and illusions stand in the same relation to the history of our times as the scenery and the lighting do to the action in It modern play. They can dim or dwarf a good Performance, obscure or distort a promising Plot; or they can have. the opposite effect, and invest the mountebank in magic.
Even if they had not this power and this im- portance, they are in themselves intensely in- teresting; and it seems to me a pity that the minor landmarks of our era, which will one day help historians to interpret it, are almost wholly ex- cluded from the field of scholarship and organised research, save of the most pedantic kind.
In Shakespeare's theatre the scenery and the lighting did not matter very much; and the historian of Elizabethan England sails towards the truth down a channel buoyed by docu- mentary sources which are not now likely to be substantially augmented. He can, and does, re- interpret the evidence. Occasionally chance, or learning, exhumes a forgotten snatch of dialogue or throws new light on an actor's gesture. But What the historian of the Elizabethan, and still More of antecedent periods, yearns for is a guide 10 the climate of opinion, to the fluctuating mood of the times.
The historian of our era will hardly be able to see this channel for buoys. His dilemma will be the opposite of Robinson Crusoe's; on this sector of the beach the sands of time are obscured by a palimpsest of footprints, and in order to discover what a nation thought about some signal, event the conscientious scholar will face a task of daunting dimensions and complexity.
A year or two ago Mr. Alan Moorehead published an admirable book on the Gallipoli campaign. Suppose, thirty or forty years hence, a writer of similar calibre and integrity took it upon himself to put the Suez Crisis of 1956 in a similar perspective. In terms of time and space it would be difficult to find a more compendious subject. A brief campaign, small forces, a narrow front—the military side of the affair would make a short though hardly a stirring tale.
But the historian's interest in Suez will not centre on the military aspects of the episode, any more than his interest in Munich centres on the diplomatic aspects. It will be the political scene which will attract him, and here if ever was a crisis in which the background—the stormy climate of opinion—rivalled in interest the bold decisions and the pawky deeds which split the nation and agitated the world.
Think for a moment of the spadework here involved in digging out the truth. Hansard, and the. comments of the lobby correspondents on the debates, will enable the historian to scratch the surface; below lie strata of newsprint reaching to a great depth. The leaders in the national dailies, the weeklies and the Sunday papers, the letters to the editor, the public opinion polls— these will give him something to work on.
He will wish also to know what the BBC was saying, in its innumerable news bulletins and its talks, to listeners both at home and overseas; another ton or two of largely repetitive paperasserie confronts him here. By this time— unless he is morbidly conscientious—he will be feeling rather relieved that the impact of tele- vision programmes on the public mind, however formative, leaves few documentary traces. However formidable its bulk, all this material is at least in the public domain. Assuming (though on current form this is unlikely) that the historian obtains access to British, French and Egyptian archives, he will still be uneasily aware of gaps in his chain of evidence. Where, in 1998, will he be able to procure copies of the leaflets dropped by the RAF on the Egyptians? What has happened to the scripts of all those broad- casts in Arabic from Cyprus? How (if by some extraordinary chance he comes across them) can he ascertain whether, and by whom, they were heard?
The raw material of history shows signs of becoming indigestible. The truth is leaving too many clues behind, in too many different places : too many needles in too many haystacks. That is why I think there is a case for diverting some of the effort, and some of the resources, now lavished on the task of re-examining evidence about the past to the task of marshalling evidence about the present. I say 'marshalling,' not 'inter- preting,' for, the end-product of each study would really be • little more than an annotated bibliography of published sources.
I see this work being sponsored by some opulent and enlightened Foundation and carried out with the aid of grants by young historians as a profitable side-line. The work would be directed and apportioned by an editorial board.
'Gentlemen !' the head of this sagacious body would have announced one morning a few years ago, 'I note that the British are reacting in a vigorous, characteristic and mildly absurd way to the prospect of the BBC losing its monopoly in television. It is obvious, despite the strength of the opposition, that commercial television will be with us before long. In time it will become, for better or for worse, a national institution, and one day learned men are going to want to study' its earliest beginnings, as they study Miracle Plays and Moralities today. I suggest that we put a couple of bright young men on to the job.'
The young men would thereafter spend one afternoon a week compiling a sort of dossier or fever-chart of the controversy which raged inter- mittently (I seem to remember) for several months, together with a summary of the relevant legislation when it was passed and an analysis of early programme-trends. They would not set out to produce a 'social document' but merely an annotated guide to the contemporary sources on which, in the fullness of time, a serious study mild be based. The copyright in their work would be vested in the Foundation, and access to it would be granted only to suitably qualified applicants after the lapse of a period of years. This period might vary according to the theme; Material for a Study of British Reactions to the Russian Sputnik might, for instance, have an earlier release-date than a rather more specialised paper dealing with some alteration in the laws of cricket.
A main objection to this far-fetched scheme is that it would feather-bed the historians of the future; but if it helps them to arrive at the truth I do not see that this greatly matters. It would, after all, provide them with only a few selected packets of needles; there will still be plenty of haystacks to ransack for the rest of the needles they require.
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