Oldest and Dirtiest
By BERNARD LEVIN So our Mr. Butler is at it again ! In a way, there is something im- mensely comforting about Mr.' Butler, of all people, having his private dinner-table conversa- tions issued by his host in the form of a unilateral communi- qu6 (Good God, suppose Mrs. Ian Fleming started doing it!), but he has been indiscreet at so many dinner tables in his time that sooner or later it was inevitable that he would be caught with his napkin down. Of course, I know that there are those who have been so conditioned by Mr. Butler's behaviour in the past few years, coupled with his habit of walking sideways, that they are unable to believe even in the theory that he is psychologically indiscretion-prone, as some are accident-prone, subconsciously wishing to open his mouth too wide while consciously trying to keep it shut; these people are already going about saying that Mr. Butler's hints over the gazpacho formed a deliberate and carefully-planned leak, • the outrush of gas from which is now supposed to fly the kite of Spain's admission to NATO, with the Earl of Home clinging to its tail. I yield to nobody in my admiration of Mr. Butler's subtlety, not to mention his ability to revolve so fast that centringal force, if nothing else, ensures that there are no flies on him, but Ockham's Razor cuts out the likelihood that his remarks were in- tended for wider currency; there were far less tortuous paths to his goal if he had really been going there. Besides, such a theory forgets the most prominent feature about Mr. Butler's more usual line in indiscretions; they normally make trouble for other people, whereas this one will make trouble for him. No; those who believe that Mr. Butler meant his remarks to be leaked, and made them with that purpose, will believe any- thing, even the bit next week where Mr. Mac- millan, questioned in the House, claims that Mr. Butler was misquoted.
I think Mr. Butler meant every pestilential word of it. And why shouldn't he? He favoured Franco during the Civil War : what has Franco done since to lose his respect? No doubt it will be a great comfort to many of those who have been in Franco's gaols without trial for twenty years and more to know that this support for their gaoler has come from one who is resolutely op- posed to the re-introduction of flogging, and by no means happy, if it comes to that, about hang- ing, just as the natives of Angola, if they can manage to smother the napalm-flames by rolling on the ground, will be solaced by the fact that the Earl of Home, who is off to hobnob with Dr. Salazar, was so diligent a Secretary for Common- wealth Relations, even if his career has been less unmitigatedly triumphant since, not to mention before. But if Mr. Butler really does believe (and who can imagine Mr. Butler saying anything he did not believe?) that the evil, corrupt, sense- lessly cruel, fatally diseased and—to the West— utterly useless Iberian dictatorships constitute 'a fundamental basis for the future greatness of
'Anil I think your policemen are wonderful . .
Europe', then Mr. Butler ought to be ashamed of himself. But I do not suppose he is.
Are we ever going to see an end of the attempts by our politicians to cast out Satan with Beelze- bub? Has it really struck nobody but myself that to include Portugal and Spain in NATO (it is a measure of the unreality surrounding the sub- ject that the similarity of their regimes is solemnly put forward as a reason for including Spain, rather than excluding Portugal) is to make the alliance weaker, not stronger? And I do not mean merely morally; 1 am not so naïve that I imagine questions of morality govern the picking of allies in the modern world, though on the other hand I sometimes feel that it is the pickers who are naïve if they imagine that the emergent African nations make no connection between the unspeakable atrocities being visited by the Salazar regime upon the Africans of Angola and the worth of the civilisation that a NATO which in- cludes that regime is supposed to be defending. Xenophobia is a product of nationalism, and no doubt in time black nations will hate other black nations as fervently as white hate white, but for the moment Africans politically sophisticated enough to be aware of nationhood count them- selves brothers beneath the skin alike of those who have achieved it and of those who still struggle for it.
But what, after all, is now the most im- mediately apparent feature of both the Franco and Salazar regimes? It is, surely, that they are doomed and dying. Franco will probably die in bed, though it is by no means certain; Salazar had better hurry if he wishes to. But in- both cases it is now clear that the regime will die with the dictator who created it, even if, indeed, events do not move so fast as to reverse the order, and bury the builder under the ruins of his house. Salazar can kill 20,000 Angola Africans (the most apparently trustworthy, and by no means the largest, of the figures that have slipped through his terror-struck censorship); he ' can slaughter every black man in the territory, and has made it clear that he will if he feels like it; and certainly the Earl of Home is not going to deter him. But what is happening in Angola spells death for the Iberian version of Fascism as certainly and in- exorably as D-Day did for its German counter- part, for what is happening there is part of the irresistible current of a continent on the move.
What is more, the two dictators are both old, as well as damned. Yet at this moment, instead of working to see that something may be saved from the wreck, that some at any rate of the forces surging to the surface to fight out the succession to the present regimes in Spain and Portugal will have at the back of their minds the belief that 'the West' (whatever that might mean) has some positive desire that free societies should be estab- lished there, we are working to shore up the tottering dictatorships, and making more and more certain that the kind of regime which suc- ceeds them will be neutralist at best. A British Government has often rejected morality for the sake of expedience; it has sometimes—alas, more rarely—rejected expedience for the sake of morality; and it has occasionally been fortunate enough to escape the necessity of rejecting either. But this must surely be the only occasion on which it has ever rejected both at once, for the sake of absolutely nothing.
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