the British way of life. For a number of reasons the effect has not
been altogether good. Accuracy in portraying the American scene is not
one of Hollywood's strong points. A couple of generations of young
Britons matured nursing an idealistic view of the United States as a
wonderland where hippy stenographers lived in high-ceilinged houses,
wore luxurious clothes, drove big, powerful cars, and loved big,
powerful men. There was almost invariably a happy ending to the minor
difficulties that beset hero and heroine of an American film.
Realism was restored to some extent by the advent of the American
soldier. Very few of the GI's resembled Mr. Robert Taylor, and their
backgrounds were quite different from those portrayed on the screen.
There were, of course, some fast talkers who could and did make a pig
farm in Secaucus sound like a ranch in California, but, on the whole,
the American soldiers came from civilian surroundings no more exciting
than Leeds or Bristol. The movie-going public now views pictures about
home life in America with a more skeptical eye.
The series of American films about juvenile delinquency, drug
addiction, dipsomania, and other social evils created a problem for
those interested in presenting a balanced view of the United States
to Britons. Great efforts were made by the United States Information
Service to demonstrate that the ordinary American did not begin the
day with a shot of heroin or send his boy to a school that would make
Dotheboys Hall seem like a kindergarten.
These efforts were inspired to some extent by the manner in which the
Communists exploited such films as genuine reflections of life in the
United States. Both the comrades and the USIS were wasting their time.
The British public can be agonizingly apathetic, but it is not stupid.
I never met anyone who thought these films represented the real America
or who believed the Communist contention that they did. The fact is
that the ability of the United States to make and show such pictures
testifies to the strength of America. When the Russians produce an
epic about the slave labor that built the White Sea-Baltic canal or an
exposé of the corruption that riddled Soviet industry in the war and
immediate post-war years, we can begin to worry.
The theater since the war has exercised an important influence in
bringing America to Britain. Starting with _Oklahoma_, a series of
Broadway musical shows dominated the London stage for a decade. One
of the minor occupations of British critics is grumbling about the
shortage of "real" British musicals. But even the grumpiest have been
won over by the music of Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin and the
lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II.
British taste is not always in accord with our own. _South Pacific_ was
not the critical success in London that it was in New York. The British
loved _Guys and Dolls_--they had lost their hearts to the late Damon
Runyon in the thirties--but they did not like _Pal Joey_, in which John
O'Hara gave a much more realistic picture of the seamy side of American
life.
But the accent has been on musicals. Very few serious American plays
have successfully invaded London. In this field the traffic seems to be
the other way.
The comics, invariably described in left-wing publications as "American
Horror Comics," have been another medium for the spread of American
culture in Britain. Like the movies, they have their critics, and,
like some movies, they are used by the Communists to demonstrate what
fearful people the Americans are.
The reader will notice that British Communism, although of almost
negligible importance as a political party, is active in promoting
differences between the two nations. The Communists know very well that
the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom is
the strongest link in the Western chain; if they can break it, the rest
will be easy.
I have been at pains to point out the issues over which governments and
peoples on both sides of the alliance differ and those aspects of our
national behavior which occasionally worry and concern the British.
It should be emphasized that the areas of ignorance in the British
attitude toward the United States are of minor importance compared to
the ignorance of the average Frenchman or the average Indian. British
misconceptions about the United States can be corrected and Communist
attempts to exploit these misconceptions defeated because the British
public does know something about the United States. This knowledge may
be slight, but it is enough to build on.
Over the years there has been a change in attitude on the part of
young people which I find disturbing. When I first came to England
in the late thirties I encountered a good deal of curiosity about the
political and social aspects of the American system. Young people
wanted to know about American opportunities for education, about
technical schools, about the absence of a class system. Today such
interest as is displayed centers mainly upon the material factors in
the United States.
Perhaps what I encountered nearly twenty years ago was the lingering
afterglow of that period in our history when we stood as a promise and
a hope to the peoples of the world. Certainly many of the egalitarian
aspects of American society admired in pre-war Britain have been slowly
introduced into British society. A cynic might even suggest that they
know us better now. At any rate, I meet fewer young people who are sure
they would like to live in America and be Americans.
Ignorance of the United States lies at the root of many of the
criticisms of our country one hears in Britain. This is being overcome
to some extent by the work of the USIS, but the task is a serious one.
Beyond such obvious difficulties as the shortage of newsprint which
limits the amount that responsible newspapers can print about the
United States, there is another important obstacle to better relations.
This is the fact, that although Americans travel to Britain each year
in tens of thousands, the prospect of the average Briton seeing our
country is remote. The British treasury doles out dollars with a sharp
eye on the gold and dollar reserves, and a large percentage of the
transatlantic travelers are businessmen selling British exports to the
United States. This is something, but it is not enough.
The industrial working class is the most numerous and politically
important in Britain. It is also the least informed about the United
States. Scholarships for Oxford and Cambridge students at Harvard
or Princeton and visiting professorships for English dons do not,
as a rule, help this class. The ideal would be an exchange system
under which hundreds of working-class men and women from Bradford,
Manchester, Liverpool, and the back streets of London were given the
opportunity to see America plain. The English Speaking Union in the
United States and the United Kingdom is attempting to bring this about.
Only through such contact, I believe, could the picture of the United
States built up by some Labor Party politicians be erased. There
remains a dangerous lack of understanding not only of our political
system but of what mass production and greater productivity in the
United States have done for the average workingman here. Newspaper
articles, television series, books help, but it is a thing that must be
felt as well as seen. It can be felt only in the United States.
The attention paid to differences and difficulties should not obscure
the value that Britons place on their relationship with Americans.
Materially, Britain's interest in maintaining the relationship is much
the greater; undoubtedly they need us more than we need them. But here
we must remember the national character of Britain. The British have
been an independent people for a thousand years. Even when the fortunes
of the nation have been at their lowest ebb, the people have been
outspoken in defense of what they considered their rights. The earliest
Continentals who traveled to England lamented the blunt independence of
the yeomen and the absence of subservience among the noisy city crowds.
Some sociologists have concluded that all this has changed and that
the industrial revolution and other social changes have transformed
the British from the rowdiest and most belligerent of nations into
law-abiding conformists. The national boiling-point, they report, is
high.
Certainly a superficial view of the British working class in its high
noon of full employment, security, high wages, and new housing would
seem to confirm this conclusion. Personally, I doubt that the turbulent
passions which sent Britons out to singe the beard of the King of Spain
and to make rude noises when Hitler proposed peace in 1940 are spent.
Phlegmatic, often apathetic, sentimental but not emotional, they are
a people capable of great outbursts of political action. They should
not therefore be considered a people prepared to follow docilely and
blindly where the United States leads. The failure to recognize the
presence in British character of this fundamental, unruly independence
even when it was flourished in their faces is one of the principal
reasons why President Eisenhower and his administration were surprised
by Britain's intervention in Egypt in the autumn of 1956. Granted that
the President was involved in the election campaign, it is mystifying
that a man of his experience in dealing with the British failed to see
the signs pointing toward independent action.
As early as August of that year letters in _The Times_ urged an
independent course for Britain and France in the Middle East. One
letter signed by Julian Amery, then a Conservative back-bench Member
of Parliament, ended with the reflection that if the two countries
followed such a course and took action independently of the United
States, it would not be for the first time. That _The Times_ would
give space to letters of this sort was a sign that the Establishment
recognized the ideas they contained. In September, when the Chancellor
of the Exchequer visited Washington, he made it clear to the most
important of his hosts that Britain would not take the Egyptian seizure
of the Suez Canal lying down--that if this was to be a struggle for
Britain's existence, his country would prefer to go down with the guns
firing and the flags flying. During that same month Sir Anthony Eden
had written to President Eisenhower in terms which to anyone familiar
with British official phraseology said that if Britain did not get a
satisfactory settlement of its difficulties over the Canal through
the United Nations, other action would be necessary. In speech after
speech, especially at the Conservative Party Conference on October
13, the leaders of the government carefully stated that they did not
exclude the use of force as a means of settling the Suez problem.
The British government badly miscalculated the Eisenhower
administration's reaction to intervention in Egypt. It expected
benevolent neutrality from a trusted ally. It got pressure and
criticism. But this miscalculation may have been natural under the
circumstances, for it can be argued that Britain did not expect the
United States administration to be surprised. It had, after all, given
abundant direct and indirect warnings that force might be used as a
last resort. How much of the administration's anger, one wonders,
was based in the realization that it had been told what was going to
happen--if only it had stopped to read again and think?
British diversions from co-operation in policy over Suez or anywhere
else are, to a considerable extent, the result of the circumstances
governing the existence of the United Kingdom--circumstances that are
as different from our own as could be imagined. Here is an island
absolutely dependent on world trade. Westward lies the continental
United States, with a continent's natural resources at its disposal--an
almost completely self-sufficient power. The difference is inescapable
and permanent. We must expect the British to react sharply whenever a
vital part of their trade is endangered. In 1956 the harsh equation was
"Suez equals oil, oil equals British production, British production
equals the existence of the United Kingdom." Likewise, we must expect
the British to expand, within agreed limits of strategic restrictions,
their world trade. This is particularly true of trade with Communist
China.
In this connection we might remember that, to the British, diplomatic
recognition is not a mark of approval, and that if there is a
possibility of dividing the Soviet Union and the Peiping regime, it
can be exploited only through diplomatic channels. Diplomatic attempts
to wean China away from Russia may fail. But they are worth trying.
Can they be tried successfully without the co-operation of both the
United States and the United Kingdom? I think not. In any case, the
task this generation faces of preserving Western freedom in defiance
of the Communist colossi is difficult enough without discarding this
diplomatic weapon.
An alliance flourishes when it is based on realism. Realism involves
knowing your ally and understanding his motives. In war the strategic
reasons for an alliance are laid bare; the motives are there for all
to see. In peace, when international relations are infinitely more
complex, the task of maintaining an alliance is consequently more
difficult. In this chapter I have cited salient aspects of American
political life and government policy which have irritated and angered
the British. The differences over the Suez crisis were the last and
most important of these. That issue generated a great deal of anger,
and some harsh and brutal truths were spoken on both sides. I think
that from the standpoint of the future of the alliance this was a good
thing. It forced the British, I believe, to adopt a more realistic
attitude toward the United States and United States policy, and it will
lead them to take more, not less, diplomatic initiative in the future.
There will be other differences in foreign policy between the two
countries, for differences are inevitable in the relationship between
two parliamentary democracies. Indeed, they are a strength. It is
because the British are an independent, outspoken, hard-headed people
that they are good allies. It is because British governments think for
themselves and enjoy the services of an experienced, incorruptible,
intelligent civil service that their support is welcome and necessary
in the contest with the East.
And we know--at least, we should know--that if the worst comes the
British are stout fighters, ready, once every effort to preserve peace
has failed, to fight with all they have and are.
I carry with me as a talisman the memory of a conversation at Supreme
Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe, during the darkest days of the
war in Korea. An American general officer, a man of the highest
professional qualifications, suggested to a small, intimate group
that, with more and more American power diverted to the Far East, the
Russians might jump in Europe.
"It will be pretty tough for you people," he told a British lieutenant
colonel, an amiable, rather rakish character. "They'll offer you a
chance of getting out. If you don't take it, they'll tell you they'll
blow London and half a dozen other cities off the map. They'll probably
tell the French the same sort of thing. What do you think your people
will do?"
"What do you think we'll do?" the lieutenant colonel answered. "We'll
tell them to go to hell."
Beneath the political bickering, the unrelenting self-criticism, the
pessimism there exists now, as there did in 1940, a fiery spirit. The
British will never be vassals. Nor will they ever be easy allies. But
if this alliance fails, there is little left on which an enduring peace
can be built.
[Illustration]
X. _The British Economy and Its Problems_
_Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen
six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
twenty pound ought and six, result misery._
CHARLES DICKENS
_It would be madness to let the purposes or the methods of private
enterprise set the habits of the age of atomic energy._
HAROLD LASKI
[Illustration]
We must now take a closer look at the British economy as it is today.
This is a big subject, one well worth a long book. It is my purpose
in this informal estimate of our ally to sketch the fundamentals of
the present economic situation and to deal briefly with some of the
factors in it. Earlier we have encountered the Trades Union Congress
and the emergence of a new working class. We have seen that Britain is
changing behind the mask of tradition. In this chapter we will see that
the change in the national economy is progressing perhaps even more
rapidly than the change in the structure of society and politics. And,
of course, all three changes are closely related and interdependent.
The British Empire, which half a century ago stood at the apex of its
economic power, was built on coal. Largely because of the extent of her
coal resources, Britain got a head start in the industrial revolution,
which originated in England. An organized coal-mining industry has
existed in Britain for over three hundred years, or three hundred years
longer than in any European country. Not only was there enough coal to
make Britain the world's workshop, but until about 1910 British exports
dominated the world export market. In the peak production year of 1913
the industry produced 287,000,000 tons, exported 94,000,000 tons, and
employed 1,107,000 workers. Contrast these figures with those for 1955:
221,600,000 tons produced, 14,200,000 tons exported, 704,100 workers.
Three centuries of mining means that the majority of the best seams
are worked out. Each year coal has to be mined from deeper and thinner
seams. Each year the struggle to raise productivity becomes harsher.
There are huge workable reserves; one estimate is 43,000,000,000 tons,
which, at the present rate of consumption, is more than enough to last
another two hundred years. But this coal will be increasingly difficult
to mine. Moreover, certain types, such as high-quality coking coal,
will be exhausted long before 2157.
In the reign of King Coal all went well. Britain built up a position in
the nineteenth century which made her the world's leading manufacturer,
carrier, banker, investor, and merchant. By the turn of the century,
however, other nations, notably the United States and Germany, were
challenging this position. Nevertheless, Britain was able to withstand
competition up to the outbreak of World War I through her huge exports
of coal and cotton textiles and through her ability to take advantage
of the general increase in world trade.
Coal and the industrial revolution, it should be remembered, gave
Britain something more than a head start in production: they enabled
her to train the first technical labor force in the world. The traveler
in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia will soon realize that
the British Empire and British influence of half a century ago were
built not on gunboats and redcoats but on the products of British
factories and on the bewhiskered expatriates, many of them Scots, who
tended locomotives in Burma and sawmills in South America. They, too,
as much as the booted and spurred heroes of Kipling, were builders of
empire. This advantage, at least, Britain has not lost. Today she still
possesses a large force of highly skilled labor.
The economic problems that developed into a whirlwind in the forties of
this century first became serious in the years after the close of World
War I. British textiles had to compete in Asia with textile products
from India and Japan which were produced at a much lower cost because
of low wages. Oil and coal from new European mines challenged Britain's
lead in coal exports. At the same period there was a fall in the demand
for many of the heavy industrial products that British factories had
supplied to the rest of the world; locomotives, heavy machinery, cargo
ships. The politico-economic dogma of self-sufficiency developed
in nations that for long had been British customers. They began to
protect their own growing industries with tariffs, quotas, and other
restrictions.
But the effect on the British economy of this decline in exports was
cushioned by income from investments overseas and by a substantial
improvement in the terms of trade. During the twenties and early
thirties British industry began to contract for the first time in
centuries. Unemployment averaged 14 per cent between 1921 and 1939.
By September 1939, however, the economy, stimulated by the armament
program, increased production, and greater industrial investment at
home, began to improve. Britain faced the Second World War on a secure
economic basis. Indeed, there were persuasive gentlemen in the London
of that Indian summer of peace who tried to persuade you that economic
strength alone could win the war.
When Americans think of the effect of World War II on Britain we are
apt to think in terms of bomb damage and ships sunk. Certainly these
were important parts of a generally disastrous picture, but the whole
is much more impressive than the parts.
The inability to continue industrial maintenance and make replacements
under the hammer of war, shipping losses, and bomb damage ran down
the British economy by about £3,000,000,000. At the present rate of
exchange this amounts to $8,400,000,000. The present cost of rebuilding
ships and houses and factories is, of course, infinitely higher due to
the upswing in labor costs and material prices since 1945.
This loss was accompanied by a drastic change in Britain's world
trading position. To begin with, she lost almost all her overseas
assets--those investments which had cushioned the shock of the
falling export market and whose income had largely paid for imports.
The terrible appetite of war--a ship torpedoed, a division lost, a
factory bombed--devoured them. Over £1,000,000,000 worth of overseas
investments ($2,800,000,000 at the current rate of exchange) were
sold to pay for war supplies. Of this amount, £428,000,000 (about
$1,198,400,000) represented investments in the United States and Canada.
Yet even this expenditure of the carefully husbanded investments, the
results of thrift and financial foresight, did not suffice to pay
for nearly six years of war. Britain also accumulated overseas debts
to the amount of £3,000,000,000, or, at current rates of exchange,
$8,400,000,000. When the money was borrowed, the pound sterling was
pegged at $4.03 and the dollar equivalent of the external debt was
closer to $12,000,000,000.
The emphasis on armaments and the priority given arms-producing
industries, the arrears of industrial maintenance and replacement, the
concentration of manpower in the services and industries of national
importance for the winning of the war, and the shortage of shipping all
reduced Britain's export trade during the war years. By 1944 exports
had fallen to less than one third of their 1938 volume.
This meant that, in some cases, nations whose economy had been less
strained by the war were replacing British sellers in these markets.
In other instances, nations long dependent on British exports began to
make their own products. When the British were prepared to return to
normal export trade, the markets were not so extensive as they had been
before the war.