Our foreign correspondence
AMERICA
The last best hope on earth
DENIS BROGAN
Washington, DC I have been in the United States exactly a fortnight and I leave in exactly a week. This is by no means my shortest visit but it is a short visit and it has been geographi- cally limited between central Virginia, cen- tral Pennsylvania and, of course, New York and Washington. I last left the United States on 11 January on the Rafaello and sailed from the dirt, rain, smog and general scruffiness of New York to the much cleaner and, despite the efforts of Vesuvius, less smog-ridden air of Naples. It would prob- ably be impossible to bottle Neapolitan air and sell it to gullible Londoners as a method of mastering the 'bet canto' (as was done a century ago) but it would be a cause of justifiable homicide to attempt to sell New York air for any breathing purpose. There are no doubt lines in Dante to describe New York's air but I can't remember them. Yet New York was cleaner at the end of September than it had been early in January. A few miles out to sea, the air was breath- able and 'smog' no longer made darkness visible. Yet the contrast between the air of New York and London 'atmospherewise' was one of the things that the many Ameri- cans I met who had been in London last summer insisted on. Film producers or dramatic novelists may still be depicting the London of Dickens but London has now a better winter climate than any northern American city and even than has my be- loved San Francisco. For this small relief, great thanks.
For we need some cheering news. It is distressing to read even the best American papers and magazines and to find out how easily they 'get on without British news. (Till the last week they have also got on without Canadian and Irish news. Gang- sters and Irish reminiscences of the Nixon ancestry are newsworthy at the moment).
There is a great deal of building going on in New York. New prophet's gourds spring up at every corner but only the Federal government is building on a big scale and Washington from being a city of slums and palaces had become a city of palaces and slums. Only Philadelphia seems to be building solidly, slowly and perma- nently but Philly has always been a stick in the mud place compared with Manhattan which may tumble down the walls of Jericho as soon as a bold speculator raises a few thousand dollars to build a new Ver- sailles on the ruins of a slightly older Louvre.
More serious than the collapse of the dreams and memorials of the local versions of Ozymandias, is the threatened collapse of public order. Last week in Philadelphia there was what could politely be called a fracas in South Philadelphia. Every day in Washington the Post prints a casualty list. (the casualties and their assailants were usually black). Mississippi has not repented Jackson or Ohio, Kent State. No wonder there is anger, alarm, despair. One would turn to the nearly peaceful brawling of Ulster if American papers paid attention to Ulster.
Yet I'm not as gloomy as are most ed- ucated Americans. (The uneducated, espec- ially if they are black, are even more gloomy with more reason.) This 'long hot summer' has not produced a new 1968, when there was far more bad and revol- utionary temper in Washington than the much overplayed Paris scuffles. It is pos- sible, if not probable, that Mississippi, for so many years the most discreditable state in the Union may at least show one sign of hope. Its governor may keep his trap shut for he never opens his mouth without to quote from that great man Speaker Reed `subtracting from the sum of human know- ledge'.
There are experiments in schools and colleges that are bolder and more hopeful than any I know of in Scotland, not to speak of England. The confused and confusing governmental systems are being examined critically. I have hopes even of the rich, complacent and highly irresponsible state of New Jersey.
It is only a few months since the great unified railroad system 'the Penn-Central blew up or broke down, driving a close friend of mine into an unaccustomed fit of bad temper for it meant that the highly bankrupt New Haven that he thought he had got rid of, was back in his lap. Fortun- ately, an ancestry of Cromwellian self-con- trol has kept him from indulging in exces- sive profanity. Yet having had to use the much touted Tenn-Central' Metroliners I can't say that this railroad system deserves its self-praise. For the tem- porary managers don't seem to have heard of modern trains such as British Railways and the effete French take for granted. I have made journeys that would have start- led passengers just after the first war and Russian soldiers after the second.
There are other traffic problems. Where is the Washington subway to go? Why do Americans' compact' cars so rapidly grow to the size of formidable armoured cars? Why do so many hundreds of thousands of cars just breakdown? Are all `garagistes' crooks? I think of rich American friends who never take an American car abroad, not because Spanish roads are bad or you can't get repairs done, but simply because American cars are too big, clumsy and ex- pensive.
However, even the sins of Detroit can't compete as a topic with the War and how and when to end it. Of course this was true a year ago, but 'the War' if too well-worn and unpromising was not then so much of a permanent and increasingly infuriating 'Spanish ulcer' as it is now. There are now I guess at least a million Vietnam veterans but few people boast of being veterans.
Gone are the days when an American Legion 'veteran' could qualify as a kind of survivor of the Old Guard or the Light Brigade on less active service many a humble London member of the Home Guard. This is one of the reasons since the revolting women's leaders like Mrs Friedan, can dodge the challenge of 'what did you do in the Great War Mammy?' Few armies have had so much fat on their military frames as have the mass of Vietnam veterans. And so many of the returned veterans, in- cluding especially those who have seen real
combat, have no more faith in the war either as right, profitable or winnable. The Mexican War seems a great national crusade com. pared with Vietnam (or as it now is again, Indo-China). A great many papers have quoted from the newly published volumes of General de Gaulle's Memoirs. And whatever that quondam naval officer, President Nixon may say or even think, the war may fizzle out. I wonder how many West Point officers are writing like Captain Sam Grant to his wife. Grant said that the Army now that Mexico was suing for peace would insist that Mexico take back Texas. South Vietnam must seem even less desirable as a prize of war.
Yet hope springs eternal even if the war drags on. I was the chief guest at a small dinner party in Philadelphia when the news came of the latest us peace offer. Everybody present was against the War. Some guests were blasphemously hostile to 'Cousin Dick' (I'm a Nixon on the maternal side). Yet everybody wanted peace on next to any terms or on any terms. Some had a super- stitious reverence for the President. He might be using Black Magic or even White but what was needed was some magic. There was far more angry despair over Vietnam than there had been in 1952 over Korea. I can remember in 1952 a bitter Democratic poli- tician saying to me 'We can't make peace even on good terms. Ike can make peace on any terms he likes. My cousin Dick can't quite do that but some bitterly hostile poli- ticians, some of them Republicans, think he should and will make peace on any terms to the applause of the American people. Hard- hats, Dr Carl McIntire, ex-Senator Know- A lad will be like the sad delegations of the exiled nations that were betrayed at Yalta— and as unimportant. At the' best, my spies tell me the United States will make a new peace of Amiens. One 'that nobody is proud of but everybody is glad of'. The American people will swallow the bitter medicine and turn from the wicked world outside to their domestic troubles, more serious if possibly more manageable than ours. The Peace of Amiens didn't last long so I can only say absit omen for if President Nixon has not made a peace (not likely to be victorious or glorious), the 'more perfect Union' will pass through a crisis like that which began with the firing on Fort Sumter.
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