Lessons of My Life

AFTER a lifetime in the British Foreign Office, where from 1930 to 1938 he was Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Vansittart has written his own specialized equivalent, for his countrymen, of Walter Lippmann’s recent U. S. Foreign Policy. The parallel is certainly not to be sought on the surface, for Lord Vansittart is concerned that his country should understand the nature of her enemy, whereas Mr. Lippmann was considerably more concerned that we should recognize our friends. Moreover, Lord Vansittart is directing his words as much to us as to his countrymen. But neither book would have been written if Germany were not the enemy.

As a working diplomat, Lord Vansittart constantly relates Germany’s aggression to the openings so freely given her by her opponents. “I have often thought,” he tells us, “that everyone should be able to crystallize the principal experience of his or her life in a quite simple, or even single, thought. If I had to define mine in one phrase it would be this: I have seen all democracies, and especially the great ones, steadily lose the instinct of self-preservation. That loss is reflected in an almost total lack of policy.” Lord Vansittart sums up his own policy toward Germany in four words: Defeat, demilitarization, occupation, reeducation.