A Spectator's Notebook

Good stories with happy endings are not very common in the newspapers these days. The healthy survival of the four Hertfordshire schoolboys after they had become lost in bad weather on the Carneddau range in Snowdonia was very good news. The boys appear to have behaved with great commonsense, pitching camp in thick mist and staying put. The RAF men who found the boys dry, cheerful and healthy deserve all the congratulations they have received for what was clearly a most remarkable piece of flying, navigating and spotting. It is no joke at all flying a chopper under very low cloud cover over mountainous ground with visibility in this case further affected adversely by snow and sleet. Flight Lieutenant Gordon Mitchell, who flew the Whirlwind helicopter, Flight Lieutenant Stan Burt, the navigator, and the winchman who first spotted the boys, Master Aircrewman Stanley Ormeston, did what was required of them absolutely right. The four boys, too, did nothing wrong.

I have little patience with those killjoys who now say that " the boys should not have been allowed to go." It is clear that they were wellinstructed. The spirit of adventure in boys is a fine spirit. Foolhardiness is another matter; and had the boys behaved foolhardy then both they and their teachers and instructors could merit blame. As it is, they all deserve praise. People who go in for dare-devil rockclimbing are different. They risk their lives deliberately; and although I do not really mind them doing so, they ought not to expect other men to risk their lives rescuing them. Neither ought yachtsmen who sail in seas too bad for their boats and their skills expect lifeboatmen necessarily to come to their aid. People always will try to rescue the foolhardy; but the fools should not rely on it. Of course, being fools, they never consider that they themselves will be endangered. It is always the other chap who fall off the rock, or whose yacht is overwhelmed by massive seas.

"The Major"

During the recent outburst of political activities in the cities and shires owing to the county council elections, a man of that type who is often known as " the Major " — which is a type slightly down on luck and harking back to the once-glorious possession of the Queen's temporary commission — called at the home counties house of Paul Johnson, socialist and former editor of the New Statesman. "The Major "(or whatever) politely enquired of Johnson "Would you care to join the Conservative Party?" This was a reasonable request, for the house, from the outside, looks like a Tory voter's house.

"I'm afraid not," said Paul.

" Ah yes," said "the Major," in a most understanding manner, " the.yacht, I suppose."

"Not at all," said Paul, who would certainly not permit a small matter like the Prime Minister's yacht to determine his party allegiance," this is a socialist household."

Revolution by cablese

Colonel Gadhafi's Cultural Revolution, whic.h to judge from certain reports reaching England, has produced almost as much confusion in Libya as Chairman Mao's produced in China, appears to be developing a fairly new line of propaganda technique. They have started sending telegrams out. At the begin ning of last week a telegram arrived at this office which read " As from April 13, 1973 a popular cultural revolution took place in Libya to enable the Libyan people to take over power in a bid to implement the fivepoint programme enunciated by Col Gadhafi in his latest speech stop the new revolution will be carried out through peoples committees in every district city village school faculty harbour airport and popular organisation stop the Libyan armed forces are entrusted to protect the new popular revolution stop (signed) Fathi." This telegram was marked " Etat," presumably to indicate that it was a state telegram. I was intrigued. On Tuesday morning of this week, another telegram arrived, this time marked " Press." It reads, in full, "The cultural revolution does not mean an embargo on foreign books but only on those that deviate from righteous precepts of Islam be they local or imported stop a committee of enlightened revolutionaries is examining the case stop academic curricula shall not be accepted if they are based upon foreign syllabi stop only the non-deviationsists shall remain in our revolutionary society stop the September first revolution shall _play a much more influential role in the Arab area stop the annul ment of existing laws will liberate the administrative apparatus from red-tape stop about the popular revolution Col Gadhafi disclosed there will not be destruction chaos and corruption but rather a welfare society will pre vail for quick and sound accomplishment of revolutionary objectives stop the first peoples committee has already been set up" and the telegram has apparently been sent by "The General Administration of Information Tripoli-Libya."

I cannot be sure; but I think this must be the first revolution where the revolutionaries

are cabling out their news themselves. Usually they broadcast it, which is much easier and ' cheaper. Perhaps a new age of oil-rich revolutionary affluence is at hand.

Playing ourselves

For months, Nicholas Tomalin told us last Sunday, in his published weekly diary, he hadn't heard from novelist Alan Williams, "my wildest friend." He must have some pretty tame ones, in that case, but let it pass. Now Alan Williams rings up Tomalin to tell him of his latest novel. "You are in it!" exults Williams. " I've sold the film rights. You can play yourself. Richard Burton will play himself."

I trust Nick Tomalin doesn't get too excited. Several years ago, shortly after Alan Williams published Barbouze he rang me up saying" You are in it! I've sold the film rights. You can play yourself." I went around for several days thereafter, waiting to get my first Hollywood film offer, but no call came.

Still, Alan Williams is an enterprising fellow, . whO appears to have smuggled Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward out of Russia. He_ has a certain taste for the cloak and dagger. He first came to my attention when his father, Emlyn Williams, turned up in Vienna during the Hungarian revolution, having lost his son somewhere along the Austro-Hungarian frontier. We used to go out each night' along the frontier, picking up refugees and so, on, to find out what was happening, but we didn't find Alan. He found himself all right. Indeed I do not think he was ever exactly lost. He was out of touch, which is entirely different, and in his case by no means uncommon. Good luck to his latest, The Beria Papers.

On standing by

The fuss over Harold Wilson's Czechoslovakian remarks set me to wondering what is the natural length of time for disgust to remain as a very active emotion. Those who took most offence at the Wilson remarks are among his most strident opponents, which obviously makes a difference. Had Roy Jenkins said something of the sort, would Bernard Levin have become quite so excited?

Presumably Bernard has by now more or less forgiven and forgotten the Germans, or at any rate the West Germans. He has no objection to mixing with them and indeed advocating that we actually Join them in a kind of potty union. I wonder when he decided the Germans were OK. And what about the Japanese. I suppose they came in from the cold somewhat later than the Germans. The R ussians, now, they are different: they are still nasty, although it Is some time since they went in for really gruesome genocide. The Americans? Well, theY are defending freedom, and so it's really a pity they have pulled out of Vietnam. Anyway, it all right for Americans to kill Vietcong communists; but it's not all right for communists to kill communists; and it's monstrous for communists to kill Czechs who are trying to stop being communists.

These questions are very difficult. What about our own bombers, what about our refusal to bomb Auschwitz, what about Dresden and Hiroshima, what about the policy Of unconditional surrender? If moral approbation were to determine our human intercourse, with whom would we meet and talk and treat? The, world is not so sweet-smelling a place that the stench of Czechoslovakia is peculiarly noisome now. What about your French bomb tests in the Pacific? They have not yet taken place. Who knows, perhaps public opinion could yet dissuade Paris from humanity's next piece of outrageous behaviour. We all stood idly by in 1968, all of us, Bernard: and almost everyone will stand idly by again.

France will plead national necessity. With more justification, the Soviet Union pleaded

raison d'etat in its crushing of the Hungarian revolution, and later of the Czechs. If the

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buffer' states of the Warsaw Pact were to collapse in a series of anti-Russian revolutions. the peace of the world would be threatened. Statesmen knew this, who stood idly by.