Home Thoughts from Abroad
From RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL
NEW YORK
Here in New York I am no more intoxicated by the glowing Christmas trees on Park Avenue than I would be by the garish illuminations of Oxford and Regent Streets. I agree with Mr Wilson about candy-floss. I am totally immune to the insinuating or blatant devices of the hidden persuaders of the mass advertiser. I shall not go out and buy a lot of things I can't afford for people who don't want them anyway. It is better to avoid the shops when they are full of people acting on a herd instinct which impels them to impede or trample on their fellow humans: it is also better to give presents to one's friends and family at some other time of year when, arriving individually and not in a cascade, they may perhaps be appreciated. Books may be given at any time of year: so may sweets to those of one's friends who are not literate. And there.are 364 other days in the year when one may entertain one's friends to luncheon or dinner.
Many people in New York are talking about Rhodesia. Mr George Brown's sobrietive talk and decorum of manner have impressed them- selves upon non-black and non-white alike—to extend the euphemistic jargon of Mr David Astor's Observer. So far he has not yet insulted Lord Caradon or any members of his staff—at least not in public. I, for my pctrt, have been doing my best to cool any rising temperatures by drawing on historical precedents.
For instance, I point out that when the American colonists successfully threw off the British yoke no one talked of applying sanctions and that the rebels were much aided by General Lafayette and the French. The rebels were greatly heartened by the noble oratory of the elder Pitt and of Edmund Burke. No one suggested there should be an interim period of 'broad-based' government or that Red Indians or Negroes should have the vote. Indeed, no one suggested that there should be one man one vote even among the wjte colonists. The founding fathers were left to sbrt these things out for themselves. Our only intervention was in 1812 when we burnt the White House down and, as I recently learned from Mr Dean Rusk, the State Department as well. However, this had nothing whatever to do with the franchise or with such questions as how the Americans should be educated. We only carried out these reprisals because the colonists had been very naughty in interfering with our just war to liberate Europe from the aggression and tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Of course, some of my friends reply, there has been a lot of progress since then. Different people give different examples of the progress. Some draw comfort from radio and television: some prate of the hydrogen bomb and the inter- continental ballistic missile: some delight in deep-frozen food and the imminent disappear- ance of all fresh foods: some luxuriate on the chaises-longues of psychiatrists: some speak with pleasure of how scientists can alter our genes and sex: some speak with respect of the break- down of discipline in the University of Berkeley, California, and of the emancipated waitresses in San Francisco with their topless dresses serving luncheon to jaded businessmen: others are merely moon-struck with the impending glories of travel in space.
Well, of course, all this is progress of a sort. So was that of the Gadarene swine, who rushed violently down a steep place into the sea. But I ask my friends, 'Have we made any progress in the arts of government?' I do not suggest to them that Ian Smith is as great a man as was George Washington. I think that Queen Eliza- beth II may be a great improvement on George III and that Mr Duncan Sandys may be a wiser man than Lord North. But are Wilson and Bowden, who oppose rebellion, greater men than Chatham and Burke, who fostered it?
I cannot pretend that everyone finds that these questions, as I would have hoped, lead to an agreed understanding of the issues involved. Public opinion has been so saturated with propaganda about the beneficence of the United Nations and the wickedness of colonialism that no one believes that Britain should be allowed to get rid of her colonies in her own way. Perhaps this is not surprising. Mr Wilson has shown that he does not know how to do it: so he has with a bad grace and late in the day sent Mr Brown here as a suppliant to the United Nations. But as he arrives Mr Wilson blandly announces that he
will decide what sanctions will be imposed. Mr Brown, however, may not get his own way; it will not help him if he bangs his shoe on the table or pays ill-judged exaggerated compliments to the wives of the members of other delegations.
Frankly, I find this attempt to make the whole world gang up against a small nation which is very much better governed than Russia or China an unlovely spectacle. If it is done whole- heartedly it will almost certainly end in blood- shed and may well be thought by some people to mar the Christmas spirit. It may, however, herald a prosperous New Year for armament manufacturers, gun-runners, mercenaries and other 'merchants of death.'
I propose myself to spend Christmas in the sunshine of a newly and successfully liberated British colony, Barbados. This happy island was first visited by a British vessel, the 'Olive Branch,' in 1605 and was first settled twenty years later. After 341 years of British rule it is, I am assured by those who have been there, quite fit to govern itself. Nearly all the countries in the world which have had a prolonged benefit of British rule have shown themselves in varying degrees fit for self-government. The three that come to mind most readily are the United States, India and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, some news items trickle here from England. Sir William Haley has recognised Mr Denis Hamilton in his birthday honours list (coming events casting their shadow before them?): the Welsh consortium who sought to lay hands on The Times have retreated to their caves in the Principality: and in the eyes of some schoolboys the Royal Prerogative has been abused so that the Prince of Wales may be edu- cated by Lord Butler of Saffron Walden.
God save the Prince of Wales.
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