What About the British?

I AM not the first American to regard the Times of London as an accurate barometer of how the British are thinking and feeling. The layout of its pages is sedate and unchanging; and as I sat reading it the morning after I arrived, I skimmed the fine print on the first page with those modest subtitles; “Births,”“Marriages,” “Deaths,”“In Memoriam,”“Personal,”“Public Appointments,”“Club Announcements,”“Stamp Collecting,”“Kennel Farm and Aviary.” No other ranking paper in the world has such a personal, unexciting first page. The sports come on page 2, and the lead stories in their modest quarter-inch headlines will be found on page 6, facing the editorials. This make-up seems to me indicative of the English love of quiet.

The Times, the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, and the Daily Telegraph were the four papers which I followed constantly; and in them all, I found a more relaxed attitude toward the news than I had known in America. The headlines about the cold war seemed more tempered. The speaking in Parliament is reported generously and with that flavor of banter and those traditional stage directions — (Cheers), (Groans from the Opposition), (Cries of “Hear! Hear!”) — which the British expect as they read their news. The editorials speak with force, and it seemed to me that they have the authority which in our papers has been shifting from the editorial writers to the columnists. The obituaries — I have reached the age at which I salute an increasing number of my acquaintances in this department — are essays in miniature.

But if you are willing to hunt through it, that Personal Column on the first page of the Times is one of the surest revelations of what is taking place in Britain. Here, in insertions of from three to five lines and at the cost of ten shillings a line, is a series of announcements which tell the changing times. My eye was first caught by the proclamation in capital letters that Universal Aunts, Ltd., would do “practically anything" for you in London that you wanted done. The Aunts, I found on inquiry, were a bureau who would do your errands, provide baby sitters and dog walkers, or order anything you needed in London. They were followed by such individual items as these: —

EX-PARACHUTIST, 29, P.o.W. escapee, second class Hons. French and German, widely read, wants unusual, dangerous, legitimate work till September.-Write Box Z.457, The Times, E.C.4.

DOES the Authentic History of Pleating, dating from 2850 B.C. throughout the ages, interest anyone? — Write Box E.408, The Times, E.C.4.

ADVERTISER wishes to PURCHASE 3 SILVER CHALLENGE CUPS (second hand); no dealers.— Write Box Z.501, The Times, E.C.4.

BLITZ YOUR BOOKSHELVES. — Books of all kinds welcomed by the Royal Alexandra and Albert School, who can turn them into money to help feed and clothe their 40 parentless children. — Parcels to 34, Ludgate Hill, E.C.4.

WANTED to hear of a really WARM HOTEL, sunny, and heated throughout. — Write Box P.279, The Times, E.C.4.

The little hotel I stopped at, just off Green Park, couldn’t have been warmer or more comfortable, and the food was infinitely better than that of 1948. It’s long been the fashion to disparage English cooking; hut for my money they cook turbot, trout, and plaice better than the French. During the war years when they had no lard they grilled less and boiled more; and now since their cooking fats have come back, their good dishes have a holiday taste.

The English extend their week-ends. Easter week-end begins on Maundy Tuesday, and after the traditional service in Westminster Abbey we went down to Dorsetshire, the Hardy country, with its narrow chalk streams — the water clear as gin —and its pre-Roman remains to be seen on the rolling downs—I mean the earthworks and the barrows on the hilltops, and that outsize and most masculine figure, the Giant Helith, 150 feet high and complete in all his parts, which was carved deep into the underlying chalk at Cerne Abbas long before the Romans came.

These downs make for good grazing and firm riding. The fields and hedges sloping gently down to the inevitable little stream in the valley floor form a natural course for a Point-To-Point, which to my way of thinking is the most exciting, spontaneous kind of horse racing. The Point-To-Point I saw was a colorful cross section of England which might have been written by Masefield.

We ate our basket lunch in the parking lot, and the atmosphere was that of a football crowd getting ready for a game in the Yale Bowl. I noticed in what pleasant ways with food and drink the English prepare themselves for an occasion like this. Then, joining the crowds that were pouring in by bus and by bicycle, we entered the sloping field which looked down on the Steeplechase. Here, from the high points, the entire course could be followed — the hedges, the water jump, the long homestretch up to the finish.

It seemed as if the whole country had turned out — the farmers, the tradesmen from the villages, the gentry, the racing touts, and the bookies. The horses for the first race were already in the paddock, and there was just time to make my bet. As I followed the card under the coaching of my host, it was easy to see that the farmers were playing a predominant part in this meet. Many of them were riding their own horses, and some of them had the best mounts in the field. The boots and saddles were burnished, the horses well kept, the racing silks bright, but I was told that this was no longer the work of grooms. Each rider simply did for himself, and I liked the idea.

Outsider that I was, I found myself losing steadily to ‘Andsome ‘Arry, the bookie from Liverpool who seemed to be giving the biggest odds. Perhaps, I thought, I can make it all up on the Ladies’ Race. As I stood on the edge of the paddock listening to the country comments on the ladies who were then mounting, I decided to bet my all on the prettiest. Trouble was there were two of them, both blondes, the younger in her twenties, the other slightly older but, as the countryman next to me said, with “as fine a set of bolsters as ever I’ve set eyes on.” At this indecisive moment, my host pointed out a horse-faced woman who was being eased aboard a black nag. “That’s Marriat,”he said. “When he runs, there’s nothing that can stop him. We’ll get big odds on him and he might do.” I took one last lingering look at the young blonde and then obeyed Satan. Marriat was in last place going over the third jump; and coming up to the fifth jump, swerved right off the course. Meantime my blonde was making a race of it and on the second time round, two jumps from the finish, she came into the clear and held her lead all the way home. So I scored a moral victory even though I lost my shirt.

2

THE British are so careful not to show emotion that an American rarely encounters in print or in table talk the deep-down angers and anxieties which beset them today. Only rarely, and then with close friends, did I touch off a blast of indignation against the Israeli from one who thought that the Arabs had been brutally treated; or realize the dismay of those who know South Africa and who feel that only calamity can come from the disintegration of the Smuts Party if it be followed by the ruthless racial intolerance of the Afrikaner; or uncover the widespread political hostility which, like the fires eating away under a peat bog, occasionally breaks to the surface in the Conservative hatred of Socialism, or vice versa. This heat which can be as bitter as anything engendered against F.D.R. is not confined to one party.

What changes have occurred during the twenty months of Labor rule since I was last there? Superficially, both town and country seem more prosperous. There are many more new cars in evidence — and incidentally, what a pleasure it is to drive, or be driven, in a country where the rules of the road are observed and the road hog does not exist. The traffic in London at noon and from four to five was as slow as the worst in Boston, but it was accepted with patience. This will get worse, for there is still a long waiting list for cars — it takes anywhere from six months to two years to get your new model.

A Bentley — which today is near the top of the market — with taxes included, costs in the neighborhood of five thousand pounds. And when you remember that there are in the United Kingdom fewer than two hundred persons whose income after taxes is in excess of five thousand pounds a year, you will understand that the purchase of Bentleys, like the purchase of so much else in England, is coming straight out of capital. In 1938 there were eleven thousand whose annual income after taxes was over five thousand pounds.

As the capital runs out, it is progressively harder for a man in middle life to earn, borrow, or inherit enough money with which to buy himself a partnership in one of the old firms. So you have the spectacle of men in their upper seventies, past the age of retirement, still actively directing their offices because there is no young man with the means to take over.

Self-help is the rule in the country, and the country houses might have gone to the dogs except for the British adaptability. What has happened is this: The biggest showpieces have been deeded to the National Trust and are preserved as museums. Others are being lived in (in one wing) by the owners, but they too are open to the public on stated days — and the question the Colonels were arguing about in Letters to the Times was how much of an admission fee it was right for them to charge. Still others have been subdivided and are now being occupied by two or three households. How the British maintain their sense of privacy when separated by no more than a partition is something an American will never quite understand.

The English are doing without savings and they are learning to do without servants. This is as the Labor Party would have it. But the Conservatives, the capitalists, have not ceased to think about the needs of a rainy day. There is a strong tendency to put such money as you have into the soil-to invest in a farming combine, a dairy herd, a chicken farm — or into a painting or hallmark silver or jewels or old furniture whose value at Christie’s may rise.

3

LONDON is beginning to take pride in itself again. The turf in the parks is well kept and the bomb shelters have been smoothed out of sight; the flower beds were gay with spring flowers when I was there. The clothes have smartened, and you will see many a Londoner in that typical costume dark coat, striped pants, tightly furled umbrella, and bowler. The shops have been painted; Regent Street with its flags and flower boxes looks ready for a parade; new buildings are beginning to fill some of the worst of the Blitz cavities, and one hears that British industry has installed more new machinery, more new processes, in the past twenty months than in any comparable period since the Industrial Revolution.

So much is on the surface, and what the friendly American wants to know is what goes on underneath. The new Budget was passed while I was there, and that gave me some indication. Two measures recommended by that exacting, Cromwellian figure. Sir Stafford Cripps, brought instant resentment: the increased tax on gasoline and a retroactive tax which had been deliberately aimed to penalize two motor magnates. These gentlemen the year previous had each been voted a bonus of a hundred thousand pounds in tax-exempt securities for the promise that they would devote their entire careers to the companies employing them. Now the Chancellor of the Exchequer decreed, months after the event, that these bonuses should not be tax-exempt; and since the gentlemen were each in the highest possible tax bracket, they were expected to pay back to the government nineteen shillings and sixpence on each pound they had received. With his ironlike candor, Sir Stafford remarked that this retroactive measure was “perfectly legal but indefensible,”and so the City thought it.

The tax on gasoline cut at every owner of a car or the poor man’s car, the motor bike, and particularly at those salesmen who have to pay their traveling expenses out of what they earn. The British railroads have been losing money steadily under nationalization, and John Bull interpreted this new tax on gasoline as a deliberate effort to force the people to give up motoring and use the railroads more.

I asked about the social services. “Are people expected to help pay the expense? And what about this talk of a shilling a prescription, to be collected by the druggist?” “It would require too much bookkeeping,” came the rejoinder, “and there would be nothing left when you got through your red tape.” “Well,” I asked, “what happens to Aunt Minnie when she breaks the first pair of spectacles you have given her? Can she get another set free?” “Personally, I think she ought to pay for that second set.” said a Labor friend of mine, but I am not sure he speaks for the party.

It is perfectly natural for the average Englishman to want to have more money to spend as he pleases. Who doesn’t? I thought I detected a growing exasperation against controls, and it seemed to me strange that the Conservatives had not made a more determined effort to meet this in the last election.

“I wonder what would have happened,” a Londoner said to me, “if the Tories, instead of playing safe with ‘me-tooism,’ had campaigned for a reasonable reduction of social service but stressed the intention of giving every English household five shillings more a week to spend as it pleased. They didn’t have the courage to try it. but I think it would have won them votes.”

There may be a ground swell here which will be felt in the next election. Herbert Morrison, one of the most acute minds in the Labor Party, who came out of the elections with increased prestige—he gained where Aneurin Bevan lost — is said to believe that Labor must anticipate this resurgence of independence. I heard talk that Labor might issue a national dividend each year with increased pay for certain ranks and certain industries, but of course that could never be done as long as Marshall Aid was on the books; and if it were done, it would mean the virtual suppression of collective bargaining. You could not have collective bargaining fought out against private enterprise, and a national dividend issued by a Socialist government. It is a case where Socialist theory and Labor practice collide.

The nationalization of steel, I was told repeatedly, would mark time until after the next General Election. Labor would come up with a blueprint of how steel was to be operated after nationalization, and this blueprint presumably would be ready next October. But it would then be up to the country to determine at the election whether or not these steps were actually to be taken. “If the Conservatives are returned,” I asked, “won’t the election be followed by a sporadic outbreak of strikes?" “ Yes,” my friend said, “I think strikes would come. But most of them would be short-lived. The thing this country wants above anything else is full employment. If management actually closed the plants, a compromise would be found and the men would go back.”

4

I LIVED for a year in England in 1922 — four years after the end of the First World War; and now on this trip five years after the Second World War, I could not help comparing the enormous change in the Briton’s attitude toward the United States. In 1922, we and the other Colonials were regarded with condescension if not arrogance. That spring I remember being bellowed at by a ruddy retired Colonel with whom I was sharing a railroad carriage on the trip from Cambridge to London. After an hour of silence, he suddenly snapped down the copy of the Times behind which he had taken shelter, “Mark you,” he said, “we’ll get it back. We’ll get it back!” It was the first word he had addressed to me, and I hadn’t the least idea of what he was thinking. “Get what back, sir?" I asked. “Our shipping—the shipping we’ve lost to your people during the war!”

For obvious reasons, nothing like that could happen now. The problems of adjustment which remain to be settled in Britain today, and they are huge, call for the best brains they have and the best we can loan them in men like Lewis Douglas, W. John Kenney, Thomas K. Finletter, and Clarence Randall. I had the feeling that something like an industrial renaissance has been taking place in Britain since the war. It needs to go on. The Chancellor of the Exchequer must continue to close that gap between British spending and British income. To do this, as I see it, he needs help in two ways from us: if we are serious in our desire to help revive British enterprise in our tariff adjustment, then we must be honest enough to give them the opportunity to sell us their goods on a competitive basis. Otherwise we commit them to our dole. Secondly, if we arc serious in the cold war, then we must assist the British in maintaining peace.

British apprehension may not show itself in the daily headlines, but it is there just the same. On one of my last days in London, I lunched with the editor of a liberal weekly, and present were two members of Parliament — the one Conservative, the other Labor — each of whom has given me good counsel in times past. The question of Leadership came up, and it pleased me to hear that Churchill was reported in fine fettle.

“Did that statement of his that he would be willing to reopen the discussion of atomic control with Stalin win him votes?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the Conservative, “it caught Labor out and it wasn’t just a political gesture either. The Old Man was confident that he was going to win the election, and he wanted the Russians to have notice in advance that he would be willing to come to grips on this most crucial subject.”

“How do you people feel in America?” the English editor asked me. “Do you feel that the Russians have made any real concessions? Are you prepared to go beyond the Baruch proposals?”

I said I thought that our negotiators felt that they had been beating their heads against a stone wall but that our people at large were still hopeful that an approach could be found to an understanding.

“Suppose we British came up with a plan,” the English editor continued, “a plan which your State Department was not willing to endorse. Would we be free to offer it on our own?”

“No,” the Conservative said, speaking for me, “I think the two of us act together in this.”

“Then,” said the editor, “what you are really saying is this: that in the event that all arbitration fails, the British Isles, which are today a great anchored carrier with no escape from an H-bomb, may have either to run the risk of the H-bomb or accept Russian occupation.”

“Yes, that’s exactly it,” said the Conservative, “and I say we’ll fight.”

Either you have an ally whom you can talk to, depend on, and with whom the word reciprocity takes on a larger meaning, or you don’t. If there is a stauncher ally for us than Britain and the Commonwealth, I don’t know where to find him.