The most positive of all performances on the British side
was, naturally, Mr. Richard Cross- man's. Having confessed that, because he had at last backed a winner, he found an ox sitting on his tongue, he thereupon summoned up all his considerable powers of paradox and personality and told his audience that Britain had no place in Europe, that de Gaulle and his policies were nothing to be worried about, that we in Britain can generate a far greater stimulus outside Europe, and that a socialist State can only be achieved in a small country. This last bit of romantic Titoismus was in response to Mr. Donnelly who had trailed his coat effectively earlier in the day. The notion that the Labour Party might well be aiming at the transformation of Britain into another Yugoslavia under American protection deepened the gloom of the Germans, who in any case are very doubtful indeed about Mr. Wilson If these were the words that could get past the ox on the tongue of such a brilliant praetorian, what on earth were those that had been held back? Those who had enjoyed Mr. Crossman's sparkling performances at earlier conferences were in no serious danger of getting morosely drunk on the content, for all that he is now a man of power and not merely of influence. One can only hope that the others were sufficiently corrected by Lady Violet Bon- ham Carter's admiring description of Mr. Cross- man as the best knockabout turn in the business —a certain Mister World, she said, if all the political comedians on the globe had a contest.
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