More than any other Western European nation, Britain has been involved in mankind. Geography placed these islands on one of the main routes between the Old World and the New. Ambition, avarice, and absent-mindedness combined to create the greatest of modern empires. Knaves and heroes, sinners and saints, fools and wise men took the blunt Saxon tongue across the snarling seas and into silent jungles. Now the Empire nears its end. But the drain of two world wars and the changes in the world make it more vital than ever to Britain that she remain a leader of international intercourse—a trader, a diplomat, a financial clearing-house for much of the world.

In discussing Britain's relations and attitudes toward other peoples, the whole field of international relations and diplomacy, we enter an area in which the British feel they are experts. This is a view hotly opposed by the piously patriotic operatives of the U.S. Department of State, but perhaps there is something behind the complacent British assumption. It is difficult otherwise to understand how this comparatively small island people built a world empire and held it despite the attempts of some of the greatest conquerors of modern times to seize it.

One of the most interesting contrasts in British life is that between the nation's world-wide interests and responsibilities and the strong strain of xenophobia in the national character. "Niggers begin at Calais" is only one expression of the Englishman's dislike for all foreigners, Froggies, Eyeties, Boches, and Russkis. I remember a slight shock at hearing one of the most eminent of British statesmen ask what "the Froggies" were up to. Similarly, the British working class, supposedly friendly to its comrades in other lands, has been remarkably cool toward inclusion of Polish or Hungarian refugees in its ranks.

There is a strong strain of isolationism in Britain. Usually dormant, it flowered late in 1956 after condemnation of the United Kingdom by the United States and other members of the United Nations. In periods of crisis the British have often been alone. In 1940 the surrender of France left the British without a major European ally. Physically this was a grievous blow. Psychologically it rallied the people. In the past there has been considerable agitation in British politics against imperialism. Overseas investment and new export markets in overseas colonies made imperialism important. But the "Little Englanders" persist. Their heir is the man who wants the British government to get out of the United Nations, NATO, SEATO, and the rest, and concentrate on Britain.

Britain's relations with the rest of the world are most important to us in the United States in six major areas: the Soviet Union and the Communist satellites in Eastern Europe; Communist China; Western Europe; the Middle East; and, lastly and most important, the United States.

Few aspects of Britain's position in the world are as little understood in the United States as relations between the Commonwealth and the mother country. This is a failing that irritates the British. "Do you know what they asked me in Chicago?" a British author said. "They asked me why we didn't stop taxing the Canadians to buy jewels for the Queen!"

Ignorance is not confined to the United States. One British diplomat who had dealt with Russian diplomats and officials for years reported that it was not until the summit conference at Geneva in the summer of 1955 that the Russians showed any glimmering of understanding of what the Commonwealth was and how it worked.

The Commonwealth evolved from the Empire. Its original members were the older colonies settled by Britons and Europeans: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. Its newer members are Asian or African peoples whose countries were parts of the Empire and are now sovereign within the Commonwealth; these include India, Ceylon, Pakistan, and Ghana. It is a matter of fact that in the years since 1945, while the supposedly anti-imperialist Russians have been establishing the rule of the red star over 100,000,000 souls, the British have created out of their Empire sovereign states with populations of over 500,000,000.

The Commonwealth is not "run" by anyone. But Britain, as the mother country, as the source of political forms and constitutional ideas, financial support and industrial exports, can claim to be the first among equals. The ties that bind the members of the Commonwealth to Britain vary in strength. And the ties between such Commonwealth members as South Africa and India are virtually nonexistent. The common purpose of preserving peace and the necessity of discussing common problems bring the leaders of the Commonwealth together in London periodically for conferences.

Despite the absence of a central ruling power, the system works fairly well. In Britain and among the older members of the Commonwealth there is a strong loyalty, almost a reverence, for the idea. The political orators who describe the Commonwealth as "a great force for peace and civilization" are speaking to a responsive audience. Because there is no central power, Americans are prone to doubt the strength of the ties that connect the nations. But it may be that today the very absence of such a power strengthens the Commonwealth.

Strong economic links exist between the United Kingdom and the members of the Commonwealth. As a basis there is the sterling area, in which all the Commonwealth countries except Canada are joined with Burma, Iceland, Iraq, the British Protected States in the Persian Gulf, the Irish Republic, Jordan, and Libya. These countries contain one quarter of the world's population and do one quarter of its trade.

Membership in the sterling area or sterling bloc, as it is sometimes called, means that the greater part of the overseas trade of member countries is financed in sterling. The members maintain their foreign reserves largely in the form of sterling and maintain a fixed relationship between their own currencies and sterling. For the most part, they sell their earnings in foreign currency to the United Kingdom Exchange Equalization Account for sterling, and they can purchase for sterling such foreign currency as they need. The members also sell gold in the London market for sterling, and the United Kingdom's purchases of gold are held in the Exchange Equalization Account. The gold and dollars in this account constitute the central gold and dollar reserves of the sterling area.

The sterling area thus is an important means of maintaining Britain's position as the banker of the Commonwealth and as the center of financial transactions. It is also one of the chief markets for British exports, taking roughly half of Britain's export total. Of the Commonwealth countries, Australia is by far the biggest buyer. In 1955 Australia bought from Britain goods valued at £286,400,000, or about $801,920,000—just under 10 per cent of Britain's total export trade. Four of the five next biggest buyers of British goods were also Commonwealth nations: South Africa, third; Canada, fourth; New Zealand, fifth; India, sixth. The United States was the second-largest purchaser, taking 6.6 per cent of Britain's total exports.

Britain, of course, buys extensively within the Commonwealth. In the same year she imported goods valued at £1,888,200,000, or about $5,286,960,000, from the Commonwealth and the Irish Republic. This amounted to over half of Britain's total imports.

There are numerous irritations and imperfections in the conduct of this great world trading concern. The Australians and New Zealanders, for instance, complain often that British capital shies from investment in their countries.

The huge British investments for the development of countries overseas were among the most damaging losses in two world wars. As the nation slowly recovered its economic health in the post-war years, overseas investment was encouraged by successive governments. Many Commonwealth officials say that, although private borrowing for development has been encouraged, much more could be done.

The Capital Issues Committee, an independent group of seven men experienced in finance, commerce, and industry, approved in 1953 to applications for the investment of £40,000,000, or about $112,000,000, for Commonwealth development. The next year the figure rose to £48,000,000, or about $134,000,000. Compare this with the annual net investment overseas of about $504,000,000 in the years 1951-3. Evidently the Australians and New Zealanders have cause for complaint.

In contrast to commercial ties that transform credit in London into new factories in western Australia, there is the emotional tie mentioned earlier. The Crown's mysterious power to draw peoples as dissimilar as the Australian cattleman and the Brighton clerk into a community of patriotic loyalty cannot be denied. Whether in the next decade or so the same sort of connection can be established between the Crown and such sensitive newer members of the Commonwealth as India and Ceylon is one of the most delicate questions facing British statecraft.

A host of other institutions—some official, others the work of private individuals captured by the Commonwealth conception—strive to keep the relations between Britain and the Commonwealth countries happy and firm. In such dissimilar fields as the theater, literature, and sport there is much more contact among the countries of the Commonwealth and Empire than Americans realize. A British rugby football team tours Australia or South Africa, a West Indian cricket team visits Britain. British theatrical companies still make the long but financially rewarding trip to play in Australia and New Zealand. British authors tirelessly roam the provinces of Canada or India, discoursing at length upon the merits of the mother tongue and its literature.

Many young Conservative Members of Parliament are convinced that the Commonwealth is the great twentieth-century instrument for maintaining and extending British prestige. They see it expanded from its present form to include the Scandinavian countries and others in a world confederation that will be not a third force in the world but the third force. They do not, however, discount the problems that plague the Commonwealth now.

An economic problem is the filtration of American capital into the Commonwealth. The British recognize the enormous potential of American overseas investment, and they wonder what would happen to their position in a Commonwealth country where the United States invested heavily and purchased products with a free hand. The knowledge that the United States could, if it wished, literally buy out the Commonwealth is a patriotic incentive for greater British investment.

Two political problems are South Africa and Ceylon.

The National Party in South Africa is moving toward the establishment of a republic and the progressive weakening of political and economic ties with Britain. Complete independence of the Crown and the Commonwealth probably is the ultimate South African aim. This would be a grievous blow to the strength, both economic and political, of the Commonwealth.

Ceylon has shown signs of moving in the same direction. One of the first actions of the government of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, was to ask the British to leave the great naval base at Trincomalee. This was a severe shock to the British and a damaging blow to the position of the Western world in the Indian Ocean. At the subsequent Commonwealth Conference an agreement that allowed the British to remain temporarily was negotiated. But the restlessness of Ceylon within the Commonwealth and the desire of many of its leading politicians to divest themselves of all connections, cultural as well as political, with the British are a bad omen for the future.

The British attitude toward the Commonwealth and Empire is a curious mixture of indifference and interest, snobbery and friendship, ignorance and knowledge. But the general approach has improved greatly since before the war. The British know they need their friends and markets overseas, and the old brusque approach to Commonwealth and Empire problems has changed.

So has the social attitude. Not long before the war an elderly and aristocratic lady told me she always "considered Americans as colonials." She thought she had paid us a compliment. Today such a remark would not be made.

The idea of a world-wide Commonwealth is imaginative and attractive. But the efforts to sell it to the people of Britain, with the exception of the almost daily exhortations of Lord Beaverbrook's newspapers, are depressingly feeble. The English Speaking Union and other organizations are devoted to the cause of strengthening Commonwealth relations, but such organizations usually preach to the converted. The great mass of public opinion has yet to be stirred. The British of all classes are much more likely to be moved by events in France than by events in Canada or Nigeria.

"They certainly have a different idea of dealing with the Russians here," said the young wife of an American diplomat in 1954. "Why, they have track meets with Russians running in them, and they talk about how they're going to get the Russians to agree to this or that. Folks at home think all the Russians have horns and tails."

She was describing the British ability to live with a problem while thoroughly understanding its dimensions and dangers. Since 1945 the leaders of Britain, Socialist and Tory alike, have been fully aware of the dangers to Western freedom of Russian Communist imperialism. This statement may evoke criticism from some stout Republicans who regard the British Labor Party as an offspring of the Communist Party. But the facts are that it was a Labor government that sent troops to Korea, that carried on a long and successful campaign against the Communists in Malaya, that joined the Royal Air Force with the United States Air Force to build the air bridge that broke the Berlin blockade, and that passed what was then the largest peacetime armaments bill in British history. All these measures were part of the general effort to bolster the defenses of Western Europe against Soviet aggression.

These exertions were a severe burden on a country whose economy was already in difficulties and whose resources were strained. They were undertaken because they matched the resolution of the leaders of the Labor Party. They were heartily endorsed by the Conservative Party, then in opposition, and were continued by that party when it came to power in 1951.

The point of difference between the British and Americans was that at the height of the cold war the British never moved toward abandonment of normal diplomatic intercourse and welcomed any move by either side which promised closer contact and friendlier relations with the Soviet Union.

Socialist and Tory governments pursued this dichotomy in policy with almost complete freedom from political interference. The British, an island people dependent on international trade, strive in any crisis to maintain communications with their enemies and thus retain a means through which negotiations can be carried out. They will go to great, often shaming lengths to avoid war. Once it comes, they wage it with earnest intensity and fight it to the end.

In periods of danger such as followed the influx of Soviet power in Europe, British politicians usually assume a bipartisan attitude. This does not mean that the opposition of the time refrains from criticism of the government policy. It does mean that opposition speakers use restraint. During the period of maximum strain with Russia, no politician shrilled a warning against talking with the Russians about Berlin or Korea, or predicted that the admission of Russian high-jumpers to a track meet would undermine the nation. The British never gave up on the situation; they did not like it, but they thought that any means of finding a way out should be used.

This was, as I have noted, a period of danger. The bipartisan approach broke down completely over Suez. When Sir Anthony Eden ordered intervention in Egypt the danger was real but indistinct. It was also a long-term economic danger arising from threat to the country's oil supplies rather than the immediate military danger represented by the Soviet Union's military strength in East Germany and elsewhere in Central Europe accompanied by Russian diplomacy and subversion. Russian military power already had won its foothold in Egypt. But the Labor Party refused to regard this power as an immediate threat and consequently rejected it as a reason for the adoption of a bipartisan approach.

The British people have never been so violently anti-Russian as the Americans. There is a distinction between anti-Russian and anti-Communist. Communism has had few more bitter opponents than Ernest Bevin or Herbert Morrison, two leaders in the post-war Labor government. They represented elements of the movement which for decades had been fighting in the unions and in the constituency parties to prevent the Communists from winning control of the Trades Union Congress and the Labor Party. But neither the leaders nor the led could be called anti-Russian.

The war alliance with the Soviet Union meant far more to Britons than the military co-operation between the Soviet Union and the United States during the same period meant to Americans. The British attitude was rooted in the situation of June 1941 when the Germans turned east and attacked the Soviet Union.

The British had then been fighting the Germans and the Italians single-handed for a year. Their cities had been bombed, their armies and navies grievously punished in France, Norway, Libya, and Greece. Each month the German submarines in the North Atlantic were bolder and more numerous and the toll of shipping losses was higher. Most Britons knew they had stout friends in the United States, but the wiser also recognized the strength of isolationist sentiment. And, although American industrial mobilization was gaining momentum, that would not avert another Coventry tonight or another Dunkirk tomorrow.

Suddenly all this altered. Russia, which had sided with Germany for two years and had gobbled up parts of Finland, Poland, and Romania as her reward, was invaded. Overnight the British became willing to overlook the despicable role Russia had played in the first two years of the war. Here, at last, was an ally. An ally, moreover, that fought, that was undergoing the same punishment Britain had known.

Naturally this warm admiration for the Russian war effort and this sympathy for the Russian people offered an opportunity for the British Communists, who exploited it to the utmost. Propaganda from the Soviet Union portrayed life there in glowing terms. The British working class was informed that this was a working-class war—a few months earlier the Communists had been calling it a capitalist war—and that side by side the British and Russian "brothers" would fight it to a successful conclusion.

The propaganda would not have made much headway, however, had it not been for the basic strain of admiration and sympathy which existed. The decade of cold war which included the rape of Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade, and the Korean war obviously altered the British working-class attitude toward Russia. But some of the old wartime feeling remained. It is there yet in the minds of the working class, tucked behind the football scores and the racing tips: the Russians didn't let us down, they went on fighting, they must be like us, they can't want another war.

The changes in Soviet leadership and tactics since the death of Stalin have affected the British approach to Russia and Communism. In Britain, as elsewhere, the immediate danger has receded. The East is slowly opening up. This means a great deal more to Britain than to the United States.

Trade is the answer. The British want to expand their trade with the Soviet Union and with China. Again, as in their diplomatic relations, this does not mean that they approve of Communism in either country. But they live by trade, and they must take it wherever they find it. To British industrialists and British ministers the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe represent a market for industrial products and a possible source of raw materials. However, they are wary of Russian methods of business. The initial approach has been circumspect. The British do not wish to throw everything onto one market; they would infinitely prefer an expansion of trade with the United States. Nor will they sell to the Soviet Union one or two models of each type which the industrious Russians can then mass-produce for themselves. Finally, although Britain and other European nations are restive under embargo restrictions on the sale of certain strategic goods, the Conservative government has no intention of breaking these restrictions under the encouragement of Mr. Khrushchev's smile.

The visits to Britain of a succession of delegations from the Soviet government and of three top-ranking ministers—Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party, Premier Nikolai Bulganin, and Deputy Premier Georgi Malenkov—fanned British interest if not enthusiasm.

Much has been written about the effect of these visits on the British public. Indeed, the faint hearts in Congress seemed to think that they would result in the immediate establishment of a Communist regime in Britain. But it appeared to many who had frequent contacts with "Krush and Bulge," as the British called them, that the greatest effect of the visit was on the Russians themselves. Like Malenkov before them, the Communist boss and the head of the government encountered a prosperous, vigorous democracy. To anyone accustomed to the crudity and ugliness that express Russia's raw strength, industrial Britain was a revelation. Here were huge, new, clean factories set in the midst of comfortable towns enclosed by green fields and parks.

"We'll have all this one day in Russia," Khrushchev said to one of his hosts. "But it takes time."

The British poured out to see the visitors. But it was symptomatic of the maturity of public opinion that in London and the other great cities, the Communists failed to generate any wild enthusiasm for the Soviet leaders. On the contrary, they were met in most cases with stolid, disapproving silence interspersed by volleys of boos.

Yet because the British were never so excited about the possibility of war with the Soviet Union as were the Americans, there is and will be in Britain greater willingness to accept the Russians at their own valuation. Also, the British working class is far more interested in the Soviet Union than American labor is.

To the American workingman there is nothing especially novel in the description of huge enterprises breaking new ground in virgin territory. Americans have been doing that sort of thing for a century. But to the Briton, accustomed to an economy severely circumscribed by the geographical limitations of his island, these Soviet enterprises have the fascination of the unknown. So he marvels over the pictures and the text in the magazines issued by the Russian and satellite governments.

This propaganda is intended, naturally, to divert the reader's mind from the innumerable cruelties that have accompanied the building of the Soviet state by impressing him with a glowing account of the results. Here, as elsewhere, the Russians underestimate their critics, of whom the British workingman is one. People do not easily forget cruelty, even if it has not been practiced on them.

"Certainly, I'm a trades-union man and a good socialist," a printer said to me during the Khrushchev-Bulganin visit. "That's why I 'ate these bleeders. What they've done to the unions in Russia wants talking abaht, chum. Know what I 'ates most about them? It's them arsing around our country with a lot of coppers with them, the bleeders. We don't want none of that 'ere."

Finally, we come to a factor of great importance in molding British attitudes toward the Soviet Union. This is the large group of teachers, writers, editors, movie-directors, and radio and television workers who have been powerfully influenced either by Communism or by the results of a Communist society in the Soviet Union. Proportionately, this group is larger than its counterpart in the United States. It has never been drastically reduced in numbers by the pressure of public opinion. Outside of the "sensitive" departments of government, no great stigma is attached to membership in the Communist Party in Britain.

Politically, Britain is deeply and justly concerned with the liberties of the subject. Consequently, any discrimination by the government against Communists evokes the wrath of politicians and public bodies unconnected with Communism. This is true even when the government seeks to eliminate a known Communist from a "sensitive" department. The question is not whether Communism threatens Britain. The British know that it does, and they are prepared to fight it. But Britain's place in world society, it is reasoned, would be threatened even more if the liberties of the subject were endangered. The view that only a truly free society is capable of defeating Communism transcends party lines in Britain.

It is important to remember that the powerful influence of Communism on this heterogeneous group has affected it in two ways. Such people as Malcolm Muggeridge, the editor of Punch, were once sympathetic to Communism and are now among its best-informed and sharpest critics. In Britain, as in the United States, there are apostates who have turned from Communism and who now attack it. But their attacks, though often brilliant, command less attention in Britain than in the United States. This may be because the British never were so excited about the cold war as we were in the United States (after all, they were grappling with pressing economic problems). It may be because the British have scant respect for those who betray causes and then make money out of it.

On the whole, however, the group influenced by the Soviet Union exerts its influence to create friendlier relations between Britain and the Soviet Union. In its attitude toward the United States this group is sensitive, critical, and quite often abysmally ignorant.

The virtues and defects of the Soviet Union and the United States thus are weighed in public by an influential group that has already been tremendously impressed either by communism as a political creed or by the industrial, military, or diplomatic achievements of the Soviet state. They are receptive to news of Russia and, in many cases, remarkably uncritical. Indeed, they are generally less skeptical and critical in their approach to the Soviet Union than they are to the problems of Germany or the United States. One of their favorite sayings is "Let's try and keep an open mind about Russia."

In the battle for men's minds, this is a serious situation. It means that a considerable proportion of what Britons read, of what young Britons learn, of what the whole nation sees or hears through mass communication media is prepared by people whose attitude toward Russian claims and policies is less skeptical than it should be. On the other hand, the danger has been exaggerated by anxious Americans.

Since 1950 these fields of endeavor have been invaded by a group of young men and women much more favorably inclined to conservatism and modern capitalism than the group influenced by Russia. Some of them have been to the United States and are able to refute the anti-American charges of the other group with first-hand knowledge. Most of them developed intellectually in the period when the Russian danger overshadowed Europe, and they are not prone to make excuses for the Soviets.

Moreover, they are strongly influenced by the marked recrudescence of national feeling in Britain. Perhaps this is a revulsion from the internationalism of the group influenced by Russia. Perhaps it reflects a desire to do something about Britain's waning prestige in the world. Sometimes it indicates a new and welcome preoccupation with the political possibilities of an enlarged Commonwealth. Whatever the cause, it adds to the vitality of British thought. And it is healthy for the country that its young people should be interested in British development of nuclear energy rather than in Magnetogorsk or TVA.

The British attitude toward Communist China is unaffected by emotional memories of a war alliance, as in the case of the Soviet Union, or the sense of guilt regarding the conquest of China by the Communists which affects some Americans. Chiang Kai-shek was never a public hero during the war, as Tito and Stalin were. The London representatives of the great Anglo-Chinese trading firms might portray Chiang as the hope of the West in China, but the British people were not convinced.

Although the British military effort in the Korean war was considerably larger than Anglophobes would have Americans believe, the war's effect on the British was a good deal less. There has never been any sustained public outcry against Britain's recognition of the Chinese government. The danger of a Communist invasion of Formosa did not stir the British. When such an invasion seemed likely, the Conservative government faced a difficult situation: would the British people, in the event of war between China and the United States, have followed the Americans into the conflict?

The present British interest in Communist China is largely commercial. No one entertains the happy belief that the Communist regime can be overthrown—certainly not by Chiang and his aging forces. What the British want from Comrade Mao is more trade. If they get it and trade expands, the process will reflect not a national attraction to Communism but a restatement of the familiar British position that theirs is a trading nation which, in its present circumstances, must find commerce where it can.

There would be no great opposition to China's entry into the United Nations. Again, this would not reflect admiration for communism. For many reasons the British doubt the effectiveness of the United Nations. One reason is that a nation of over 500,000,000 people has no representation in the UN's councils.

The relationship between the French and the British is a fascinating one. For nearly a thousand years these two peoples have faced each other across the channel. During that period, in Britain at least, there has developed a curious love-hate relationship. By turns loving, exasperated, and enraged, the British think of the French as a man might think of an affectionate but wayward mistress.

In June of 1940, when the world between the wars was being shaken to bits, the fall of France shocked and saddened the British as did no other event of those terrible days. I remember that while waiting in the Foreign Office, the morning after my return from France, I saw an elderly official, a man with a brittle, cynical mind, walk down the corridor with tears streaming down his face. There was no recrimination. All he could say was: "Those poor people—God, how they must be suffering!"

Few enemy actions during the war distressed the British as much as the decision to attack the French fleet at Oran. Few post-war diplomatic achievements gave them more pleasure than the re-establishment of the old alliance with France. The rise and fall of French governments, the convulsions of French politicians are watched in Britain sometimes with anger and harsh words but never without an underlying sympathy.

Perhaps because of the alliance in two world wars or perhaps because France offers such a complete change from their own islands, the British know France very well, far better than they know the United States or some nations of the Commonwealth. This is true of all classes of Britons.

The elderly doctor or retired officer of the middle classes will spend his holidays at an obscure resort on the coast of Brittany. Before the war a Continental holiday was one of the indications of middle-class status. Today the Continental holiday is within the financial reach of the working class. The conductor on the bus I sometimes take to work was full of his plans this spring for "me and the missus" to motorcycle from Boulogne to the Riviera. Thousands like him tour France in buses or spend vacations not in Blackpool but in a French seaside resort.

The national attitude ranges from tolerance to affection. I do not believe, however, that the British respect the French as they do the Germans or the Russians. The mutiny in the French Army in 1917, the catastrophe of 1940, the Anglophobia of the Vichy government ended, probably permanently, popular British reliance on France as a powerful ally in world affairs. When the Suez crisis arose in 1956 and the governments of Sir Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet hastened to reinvigorate the alliance, their efforts awoke little response in Britain. "Now that we're in this thing, we have to go on and win it," a friend said. "But think of being in it with the French, especially these French—Mollet, Pineau, and Bouges-Manoury." He made a sound more customary in Ebbets Field than in a London club.

The British are amused by the French (the French, of course, are even more amused by the British). Sometimes it seems that every Englishman of a certain age and financial position has his own "secret" village where the Hotel de la Poste provides a good dinner for five hundred francs. Britons have great knowledge and affection for France born of contact in two wars, but they do not rely on the French.

For other reasons the British hesitate to rely on the Germans. Two generations of Britons have learned that the Germans are a tough, resolute, and courageous people, characteristics admired in Britain. But the British groups devoted to furthering friendship between the two peoples are fighting a losing battle. There is among all classes in Britain an underlying distaste for the Germans. This feeling is not often expressed, but it is there, as it is in most countries in Western Europe. The attitude is a factor in the relationship between Western Europe and the key question facing the continent as a whole: Germany's ultimate reunification.

The Germans, a singularly obtuse people in judging the reasons for foreign attitudes toward Germany, are inclined to believe that British mistrust is tied to the two world wars and the decline of British power. This is inaccurate. British mistrust and dislike of Germany have political rather than military roots. Both the Kaiser's imperialism of 1914 and Nazi imperialism in 1939 were seen not as overwhelming threats to Britain alone but as dangers to the democratic system of the West under which she had flourished. The horrors of the concentration camps, the solemn lunacies of Hitler and his court, the death of personal and political liberty—all these were factors more important than military posturing. Finally, the British do not consider the Germans politically stable, and they are suspicious—perhaps too much so—of German ambitions and intentions.

Repeatedly this has affected British politics. The great pre-war debate in foreign affairs was waged between those who, like Churchill, were not willing to trust the Germans and those who, like Chamberlain, were. Since the end of World War II the international political issue that generated the most heat in Britain was the debate over the rearmament of Germany. One effect of this debate was the emergence of the Bevanites in the Labor Party as a political force. Aneurin Bevan believed that German rearmament would unite the pacifists, old anti-fascists, and others as no other issue could. He was correct. The leadership of Clement Attlee was gravely endangered for a time when the party officially supported arms for the nation's former enemies.

The State Department and other American officials have taken the position that British opposition to German rearmament was the product of wild-eyed agitators on the left and had no popular support. This was an inaccurate, even a dangerous attitude. Field Marshal Lord Wavell opposed it. So did Viscount Norwich, who as Alfred Duff Cooper had allied himself with Churchill in the latter's long fight against the appeasement policy of Chamberlain and Baldwin.

For the time being, the issue is dead. Germany is being rearmed. But the excitement the issue provoked testified to the abiding British uneasiness about Germany. This concern centers upon the prospect that West Germany will someday succumb to Russian enticement, be united with East Germany, and leave NATO. A permanently divided Germany may be a danger to peace, but few Britons outside the Foreign Office see it that way. Two wars have come out of a united Germany.

The attitude of the upper-class Englishman toward people of the same class in Germany has altered since the war. Before World War I, and in the long week-end between the wars, upper-class Germans and Britons mingled a good deal. Ties of affection and respect were created. "I can't stand this feller Hitler," you were told, "but I know old Von Schlitz, and he's a first-rate chap. You can trust the Prussians." But in the end Von Schlitz and his friends, with a few honorable exceptions, threw in their lot with the Nazis. When the British see old Von Schlitz nowadays they wonder what deceits, what cruelties, what moral compromises he has countenanced to survive and prosper.

Seen from this background, the British acceptance of a Western policy that rebuilt German industry into Britain's leading competitor for export markets and created a strong state in the Federal Republic of West Germany was a remarkable victory of the head over the heart. The policy was accepted because the British saw that the Soviet Union under Stalin was the greater, more immediate threat. Any relaxation of that threat is bound to affect the British attitude toward Germany and her ambitions.

The mutual affection of the British and the Italians was interrupted but not broken by the second war. To a somewhat dour, unemotional people the Italians and their land have an irresistible attraction. Even when the war was at its worst the British regarded the Italians with rueful perplexity: how could such an amusing, gracious people be so deluded by Mussolini? Surely everything would be all right once Mussolini was eliminated.

Characteristically, when he was eliminated many British objected to the summary nature of his execution. They would not blink an eye when military necessity required the destruction of the German city of Kassel. But they did not like the picture of their old enemy, who had vilified them and attacked them when it hurt the most, strung up by his heels outside a gas station.

Now all is forgiven and almost forgotten. Each year the earnest tourists pour southward to Rome, Florence, Venice. In the autumn they come home to their fog-shrouded islands bringing with them memories of long, sunny days.

The British attitude toward Italy and the Italians is symbolized by their view of Italian Communism. They are not oblivious to the dangers of Communism in Italy or elsewhere. But they find it difficult to regard the Italians, communist, fascist, or republican, as serious factors in world affairs. As only a few Italians seem to desire such a position, and as the British are too polite to discuss the matter, all goes well.

The traveling Briton has lost his old status in Europe. The British tourist with his limited allowance of francs, marks, or lire is no longer the "milord" of the nineteenth century. That role, with its privilege of being the target for every taxi-driver's avarice, now belongs to the Americans.

During the peak years of the cold war between 1945 and 1953, Western Europe was threatened by military attack from Russia. The power to whom the Europeans looked primarily was not Britain but the United States. It is a disheartening reflection that, despite this military dependence, successive American administrations failed to create the reservoir of trust which would induce the nations of Western Europe to accept our policies and follow our lead once the Russians altered their tactics.

Despite their precarious economic situation, there has been a revival of British prestige and influence in Western Europe. To some Americans Britain may appear a small, almost insignificant power. But to a small European nation Britain, with its bombers, its atomic and hydrogen bombs, its thriving new industries, presents a different picture. Another factor is the gradual movement of Britain toward some form of union with the Continental nations, as evidenced in the Macmillan government's approach to a common European market. Finally, there are doubts about wisdom of United States policy, especially as it is practiced and elucidated by John Foster Dulles.

Western Europe was not impressed by the statesmanship of Mr. Dulles at two serious crises: one arising from the possibility of Western military intervention in Indochina, and the other emerging after the collapse of the European Defense Community. Nor was Mr. Dulles's attitude toward America's closest allies, the British, in the period of British and French intervention in Egypt calculated to create the impression that the United States, as an ally, would remain true in good times and bad.

Nowhere has British prestige and influence declined more rapidly as in the Middle East. Yet nowhere are Britain's economic interests greater.

Recent events have emphasized the economic connection between Britain and the Middle East. But the ties that connect a group of islands set in the cold waters of the northern ocean with the arid, sunny lands of that area were established long before the discovery and exploitation of oil reserves made the Middle East vital to Britain's economic life. Sidney Smith, Abercromby, Nelson, Gordon, T.E. Lawrence—a whole battalion of British heroes won fame in the area. The empty deserts and clamorous cities have exercised a fascination on Britons for more than two centuries, have called explorers and scientists, missionaries and merchants eastward. Nor was the Middle East's strategic importance to Britain born with oil. Nelson destroyed the French on the Nile, Kitchener triumphed at Khartoum, and Montgomery fought at El Alamein because the land bridge between Asia and Africa and later the Suez Canal were considered vital to the existence of Britain as a world power.

Centuries of involvement in the Middle East resulted in a strong British bias in favor of the Arabs. No such favoritism was extended to the Egyptians as a people, although certainly the British were at first as willing as the Americans to trust Colonel Abdel Nasser of Egypt. This bias, amounting in some cases to a blind affection, played its part in the formulation of British policy especially in the years when the state of Israel was taking shape. One example is the fact that the British consistently underrated Jewish military ability and overrated that of the Arabs.

Egypt's seizure of the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956, was a punctuation point in the long history of Britain's involvement in the Middle East. No British government could permit control of the canal to be vested in a single country, especially a country so openly hostile, without going to the utmost lengths to break that control. Given the shipping and pipeline facilities of the summer of 1956, the passage of oil tankers through the canal was essential to Britain's economic life.

Even when the program for the industrial use of nuclear power has been completed, oil will remain important to the British economy. The British government of the day was angry with Colonel Nasser, it was worried by Soviet infiltration in Egypt. But the primary cause of Britain's intervention in Egypt was that she could see no other way of securing freedom of passage through the canal. Reliance on oil was an elemental fact of Britain's position as a world power; it is extraordinary that the administration in Washington was so surprised when Britain took steps to insure her oil supply.

The influence of Britain in the Middle East at the time of intervention in Egypt was extensive. Tiny states on the Persian Gulf and on the south side of the Arabian peninsula behind the Aden protectorate were managed, if not ruled, by a few scores of officials from London. Iraq, Britain's firmest friend in the Middle East, benefited from British technicians and advisers. In Egypt and Jordan and Syria, Britain's prestige had fallen. But as late as January 1956, when I toured the Middle East, there was an evident respect for Britons and for British power, a respect which often was difficult to reconcile with the actual dimensions of that power.

In terms of oil, Britain took a great deal out of the Middle East. From an altruistic standpoint, the return was small. But it is important to remember that British power there did not take the same form as in British colonies. The British could not order schools to be built or irrigation works to be started; they could, and did, advise such works.

They were the first power—the United States will be the second—to encounter the jarring fact that the improvements which a big oil company brings to a nation promote nationalism. In the end, peoples are not content with oil royalties, clean company towns, and new schools. They want all the money, not merely royalties, and they want to build the towns and schools themselves.

The decline of British power in the Middle East coincided with the entry into the area of a new power, Soviet Russia. One of the oddest aspects of the relations between the United States and the United Kingdom was the calm—almost the indifference—with which the administration in Washington viewed the entry of Russia into the Middle East. As late as November 1956, after the British had destroyed large numbers of Soviet aircraft and tanks in Egypt, the State Department was undisturbed by intelligence reports that Russia had agreed to make good the Egyptian losses with new arms shipments.

Because of their economic involvement in the Middle East, the British undoubtedly will persevere in their efforts to maintain influence in the area. Early in 1957 all the cards were stacked against them.

One advantage of a long and stormy experience in international affairs is that it allows a nation to look with equanimity on reverses. After the withdrawal from Egypt in December 1956, many Britons thought they would make a comeback in the Middle East. No argument, neither Arab enmity nor the advent of American and Russian power, could shake this belief. They did not mean, of course, that they would come back along the lines of nineteenth-century colonialism. The British recognize that the days of British rule from the citadel in Cairo are as dead as Thebes. But with that placid confidence which is one of their most irritating characteristics, they predicted that in the future, as in the past, they would play a major role in the area.

When I protested that this was not the view in Washington or, probably, in Moscow, a soldier-administrator laughed and said: "Oh they thought we were finished in 1940." But it is in the Middle East that British hopes and ambitions conflict directly with those of the United States. And relations with the United States are another story—or at least another chapter.

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