MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IT has often been remarked that one of the minor pleasures in life is to be slightly ill. This statement requires qualification. It is no fun at all, when travelling alone in Asia Minor, to feel the first ache of ague in one's thighs ; it is not pleasurable in the least to lie fevered in some Anatolian hostelry suspecting that one's mounting temperature must mean bubonic plague. The bed bugs as they creep and pinch around one form a gibbering pattern with the voices of Armenians squabbling in the room below. It is discomforting to find oneself upon a tramp steamer off the Andaman Islands and hour by hour to watch upon the blistered ceiling of one's cabin the water-reflections stabbing like flying-fish through one's aching brain. In order to derive pleasure from being slightly ill one must in the first place feel comparative assurance that the illness is indeed slight ; one must have one's own people around one, tactful and yet solicitous, and one's own clock and pencils beside the bed. One must feel that if the fever rises beyond a certain point upon the thermometer the family doctor will be summoned, will enter cheerfully and talk to one about the difficulty of preserving cobnuts and whether it is, or is not, advisable to propagate primroses by division. One must feel that no external responsibilities or labours are accumulating during one's retirement, that detective novels can be read with an unblemished conscience and that one's illness is not so serious as to prevent one from tasting with languid relish such delicacies as have remained over from the Saturnalia. Certainly in such conditions it is pleasurable to be slightly ill ; to hug the hot-water bottle throughout the morning, watching the clouds drift past the roof, and listening to the familiar sounds of ordinary life outside, a voice calling, someone hammering at a distant stake, the postman's double rap.
The impression of detachment which one thus derives, the sense of suddenly suspended time, can enable one at favourable moments to see life steadily and see it whole. Warm and protected, one looks back with pleasant lassitude at the roar and rattle of human existence, feeling that whatever humiliations life may bring occasionally, the tapestry which is woven throughout the years by personal experience is, after all, a bright and vivid thing. Yet all moments are not favourable for these sessions of sweet silent thought. There come other moments when one lies there, listening to a man somewhere hammering at a distant stake, and feels that life and time are not beneficent, that they are maniacs scattering dust. The house shook and groaned in the hurricane which, in a whirl of wet, dead leaves, sent 1948 tumbling into the past and ushered in the wan white dawn of 1949. Great strength of character, or an unexampled capacity for self-deception, must assuredly be needed to enable any man, however healthy, to look back with gratification on the turbulent and inconclusive course of 1948. But when the lamp of vitality burns low, when the wheels of being seem to clog and ache, one looks back upon the past year with a sense of gloom and doom. It is possible, of course, to derive austere comfort from the con- templation of Sir Stafford Cripps and to pump up a certain stream of pride at the thought that under his resolute guidance, and thanks to the good sense and unselfishness of the British people, the pound sterling is regaining its dignity and may regain something of its power. It is possible to derive satisfaction from the thought that the currency reform in Western Germany has given to the inhabitants of those areas a certain revival of self-confidence and a determined desire to survive. We may feel relieved that India and Pakistan have for the moment refrained irom fighting each other and that our relations with France have been eased by the six-Power agree- ment. Yet if we are frank with ourselves we cannot pretend that the balance sheet of loss and profit is anything but a formidable and disturbing document.
As I look back upon these twelve months which ended in a roar of rain and wind they seem to my dyspeptic eyes to present a long catalogue of misfortune. For all our efforts (and they have been strenuous and commendable) we are still a long way from achieving that financial and economic independence which alone will enable us to play our rightful part in the councils of the world. The Brussels Treaties, welcome though they were, have not as yet led to any real consolidation or extension of the unity of Western Europe. The Ruhr agreement may have lulled French suspicions for the moment, but for how long will the moderates of the centre retain authority in France, and what will our relations be with a French Government directed by Duclos or de Gaulle ? The Iron Curtain has descended with a crash over Czechoslovakia. Poland, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria have ceased to be independent Powers. The partition of Germany, the impossible situation created in Berlin, are likely to give to German nationalism a passionate intensity such as may tempt many Germans to prefer any alternative to this degrading dislocation. Italy, for all the flashiness of her apparent prosperity, is a most unstable factor ; the wounds of Greece are still unhealed and may become septic. U.N.O. has failed to solve the Berlin problem, failed to impose a Palestine settlement, failed to deal in patience or wisdom with the Indonesian controversy. The Arab world is fermenting, Malaya and Burma chaotic, and China exposed to the menace of a further long period of war-lord rivalries. No, it is not possible, even when only slightly ill, to look back upon 1948 as a comforting or successful year.
It is permissible, of course, to contend that after a war of such dimensions it was not to be expected that the world would settle down to calm ; and that henceforward the strains and stresses, the minor earthquakes and shudderings, will tend to diminish. It is possible even (if one is not suffering from influenza) to pretend that 1948 was a fortunate year in that it gave us back Mr. Truman and did not, in spite of much provocation, lead to a war between the atom-bomb Powers and those whose possession of the atom bomb (in any serious quantities) is still in doubt. I admit that a war postponed is often a war averted and that the avoidance of a hot war in 1948 may well mean that, after a few more years of cold war, the lava will begin to cool. But even the most superficial optimist cannot have failed to observe that during the twelve months which are now behind us the level of active public conscience has still further declined and that the influence of the careless, the irresponsible and the ignorant has tended to increase. Seldom in my experience have I witnessed such an outburst of thoughtless criticism as has been aroused over the Indonesian episode, in which the Dutch have been judged impetuously and without one moment's consideration of the facts or the values involved. The arrest of Cardinal Mindszenty has been dismissed by people who should have thought more clearly as due to the Cardinal's own lack of tact. Even the British Foreign Secretary can jeer in public at Professor Savory's laudable desire to increase the import of French books. These may seem but picayune instances, but they are sympto- matic. Since a decline in active public conscience tends to induce responsible people to lose their sense of shame.
It is sad that we, who in so many ways have during the last year displayed energy and order, should still not be strong enough to communicate our sense of responsibility to a most irresponsible world. It may be, however, that, once again, saving ourselves by our energies, we may save Europe by our example. We are always much more serious than our rulers or our newspapers allow us to appear. With this comforting thought I can allow myself the pleasure of being slightly Ill ; can hug at my hot-water bottle, and slide off into a dream-world in which there are no Marginal Comments to be written in the morning, and always buttered toast for tea.
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