THE LABOR GOVERNMENT in Britain is now established in power with a landslide majority. Some sections of the American press and all too. many Americans in Britain talked about "ingratitude" to Mr. Churchill. Those who care can doubtless find parallels to this since the days of Athenian democracy. Mr. Churchill himself is reported to have commented jocularly: "How can I take the Order of the Garter from my sovereign when the British people have given me the order of the 'boot?" But Englishmen, after all, have been wondering for years about the extraordinary animosity, which seemed to them in turn black ingratitude, of so many Americans toward their great war-leader, the greatest American since Lincoln, Mr. Franklin Roosevelt. . .. England is itself. It is not a replica of Mr. Churchill. And it is more democratic than the popular stereotype of Britain leads Americans to suppose. Mr. Bevin, moreover, has a strong pro-American bias. The question is : what of the future.
On the American side, the abrupt termination of Lend-Lease, technically correct, could have been, to say the least, unhelpful if explanation had not speedily followed. As a Minister of the Crown commented to me : "It is rather as if somebody asked you into his house rent free and said, `Make yourself at home. Doubtless some time we may have to make a new arrangement. But don't worry,' and then had announced one evening, 'I am leaving tomorrow,' locked the house and turned you into the street." It may be well to dissemble your love but why kick me down stairs? Some may 'be irritated by British policy in the Caribbean and in Hong Kong. As I have said before, it is exceedingly shortsighted for Americans to haggle about fragments of the Empire when, if they play their cards rightly, some day they may get the lot. Patently the only sound policy is that advocated by Wendell Wilikie of a total economic and social fusion of States and Commonwealth. Indeed, in view of the dangerous jealousies inevitable in the now obsolescent nation-state system, nothing less is really practicable or safe.
Lend-Lease must come to an end, althowgh it can be tapered. A cash or credit basis has got to be established. The debt wrangle after the last war about payments in a common effort, and the respective weight of this or that political contribution or sacrifice, must at all costs be avoided. This resumption, however, of the cash or credit basis means for Britain a desperate search for export markets unless either her standard of living is to fall, or there is an agreed allocation of markets, or America integrates British economy with her own in some other fashion. Even from a propaganda point of view it will not be a good thing if Britain cannot afford to buy, e.g., American films. Jealousy between trade competitors assuming political forms is an inevitable accompaniment of the whole evil system of national sovereignties. Nor can it be pleaded satisfactorily, as the London Observer endeavors to do, that economically the war does not end with VJ day—if the object is to get British export industries "working full out," in unordered competition with American firms.
Jealousy will be exploited by the power politics of third parties as it was in the days of German imperialism. It may be safely said that every journalist who encourages this in either country is an enemy of both. A fall of the standard of living of the worker due to American action will not provoke popular love of America. Britain does not wish to be a beggar ; but it would be more long-sighted American policy to see that the British get a decent retaining fee for European services. The abrupt termination of Lend-Lease, fortunately explained and modified by the midnight broadcasts of the day of announcement, easily could seem like an attack on the Labor Government and the right of the British elector in a free country to make his own free choice and be damned to the others. So interpreted it could encourage those who are politically interested in building up the stereotype of democratic America as identical with Wall Street financiers and dollar imperialism. British commentators in America, such as Alastair Cook and Webb, could have explained to Britain more amply that Britain herself had declined to enter into credit arrangements which other Allied countries had regarded as satisfactory. Owing to the poor job (with out- standing exceptions) done in Britain by American war agencies in imparting a knowledge of the States, the danger of misunderstanding is very real. The battle for "one nation" is by no means won. And yet the time has come for even the world to be one nation, as indeed I dared four years ago to suggest in a book.
On the British side, the situation is probably hot improved by such a pronunciamento as that of Mr. Laski's in Copenhagen. He there said:"There remains the need to conquer the reactionaries and contra-revolutionaries, not only in Europe, but in the Far East and Africa, as well as in the capitalistic United States." Conquer is a strong word. Miss Susan Lawrence, late chairman of the Labor Party, was telling me the other day about the relatively modest role usually assumed by the chairman of the party during his or her year of office. But Mr. Laski has seized this singular opportunity to glorify his office—without always consulting the other members of the Executive Committee. The tension between him and the leader of the Party and other Ministers remains. Mr. Attlee almost went out of his way to assure the House that any newspaper, foreign power or politician who thought that the policy of the government would be shaped by anybody other than Ministers was "making a great mistake." To this Mr. Laski, interviewed on his statements in Paris, made the extraordinary comment: "It is quite obvious that I was only speaking for myself. . . . I was speaking on behalf of the Labor Party and not as a member of the Government."
Mr. Laski appears to have his eyes well fixed on that future in Europe and in the world when the pessimistic prophecy of the expectation of violence, expounded in the brilliant writings of Trotsky, will have fulfilled itself. Capitalism will have converted itself into fascism, id America or elsewhere. It is the more important that American democrats should not permit American policy even to give color to the theme that America, as "the great capitalist power," is the next fascist oppressor. Concretely this means that America must have no hand in depressing the workers' standard of living, which, alike in Britain, Europe and the East, will have to withstand the devastating consequences of war. It should be borne in mind that there is a doctrinaire capitalism, exalting "free enterprise" as sine qua non (and recently expounded in London by such an Anglophile as Mr.. Winthrop Aldrich), which is no less dangerous than doctrinaire Marxism. As touching, however, Mr. Laski, it has to be remembered that his influence in Britain has in no small part been built up thanks to his reclame in America. He is in a very real sense America's gift to Britain. There is humor in the fact that, by will of American editors, one of the chief commentators in America on the British Election should have been Mr. Laski, whether viewed on the ground of detached impartiality or of a representative party presentation.
Nor is it helpful that, according to the British press, no few of the American broadcast commentators gave a bad reception to the speeches by Attlee and Bevin on the surprising ground that they were too conservative or even reactionary. Those who desire pyrotechnic displays cannot be resentful if incendiaries are thereby encouraged. For the rest American editors will be well advised if they make up their minds what shape is to be taken in the continuity of American foreign policy. America has to consider who stands with her. Mr. Bevin has made his declaration for Britain, and should not be attacked by his American friends. There is every prospect that this man who has indeed traveled "from log cabin to White House" will prove a sane, balanced and excellent Foreign Secretary—perhaps a more outstanding Minister than some of his Eton and Winchester colleagues who share with him places in this Labor Ministry.
The atom bomb has clearly placed all international relations in a new light. It is the chief subject of discussion in responsible circles in Britain. David Low's cartoon of genius will not readily be forgotten, of death as a scientist holding up the atom to infant humanity, with the words, "Baby play with nice ball?" The San Francisco arrangements were stillborn, and today they are visibly decomposing. They amount to little more than the platitude that those who wish to agree can be provided with the means for doing that which they have the power to do. It is by no means clear that—the concurrence of the US Senate apart—we are even half a League onwards. The realities are of a different order, and that the grimmest.
Isolationism is impracticable, because the domination of half the world by one power, except by agreement, is intolerable to the others, as was found in the case of Germany despite Hitler's overtures and promises in "Mein Kampf." The logic of power, indicated in the reserved veto right of the San Francisco Charter, has but one conclusion. It is well that it should be so. Arguing on the plane of power-politics, it may even be a good thing that the dominance of the great powers over the middle and small should be made so brutally plain. And the conclusion of the logic is (as I have said in an earlier dispatch) that, if the USA and the USSR agree, then there will be peace. And, if not, then there will be atomic war in anything from five to twenty years. It will be a war fought for freedom, civilization, democracy on the one side and for justice, civilization, democracy on the other. The question that the ordinary citizen has to settle is how far he is prepared to pay the costs of peace. Frank Simonds's book on this subject, perverse in its conclusions, is still worth studying. He said that Germany would not pay these costs; and he was right. He also said that she should not. If so, who should?
There is no one who will not piously concludethat he is "on the way to peace"—his own way. Hitler did as much. Everyone (at least outside America) is going to argue that the secret of the atom bomb must be "internationalized." The communist press is arguing that it is in the hands of the high Tory and proto-fascists Duponts anyhow. This demand does not— presumably mean, shared with the Bulgars and Argentinians, but put under the control of a world bomb committee. Since the secret will probably be out in a few years, this must also mean putting the raw materials in charge of this committee, as has been argued recently by a professor of Rice Institute. But who is to control the world bomb committee, even if it exists? The sanest suggestion is perhaps that made in Parliament by Sir Arthur Salter, member for Oxford University, that the committee shall have right of inspection in every country. That means, right of detailed inspection beyond the Rockies 'by Russians and beyond the Urals by Americans. But I am frank to say that I do not see this happening. The best route is simpler. It is, as I have suggested, an all-out military alliance between the USA and USSR, even if this had to be forced on Russia by American determination. It should go further than the existing formal, but not insignificant, alliance between Britain and Russia. The ideal solution lies in the fusion of nations and abolition of frontiers now that the atom bomb has made the danger of retaining obsolete nation-state politics clear as the noon-day. But this fusion will in the first case, only be among those like-minded. Many people idly recite these words, but few take political steps to act upon them. There are also some who hope to see this federation or fusion take place in Western Europe alone. They press for free migration and one money system (as Willkie once did as between Britain and America). The dangers of this, as a method of reviving the balance of power, I have already emphasized. It might, however, take place over the whole of the West. Communists will have another solution, by no means out of the question; and are always jealous of security spheres other than their own. Anyhow the attitude of the British Labor Government will be determinant here—even more than the attitude of France. And the attitude of the British Government and workers will depend upon the statesmanship of Washington.
