Insular Britain
By SIR ALFRED ZIMMERN Springfield, Mass.
MANY people I have met here, great friends of Britain, are getting worried about the present uneasiness in British-American relations, and are longing for some definite change for the better. But the more diligently they search for some means of improvement the more decidedly they come to feel that there is very little to be done from this side ; it is for England to make the next move.
Viewed from this side of the Atlantic, the present state of British opinion towards the United States seems quite inexplic- able. It runs counter to one of our deepest political traditions as well as to our most compelling immediate interests. More- over, it is quite unexpected. In order to realise this, we have only to look back ten years and ask ourselves how we should have felt in April, 1941, towards the American people if we had known that by April, 1951, they would have given the death- blow to Hitler, made amends for their rejection of the League of Nations by taking the lead in forming a new and far more effective body in its place, forgiven us our war debts and advanced us millions of dollars in addition to helping to restore our economic position, passed through a psychological revolution from an attitude of nervous aloofness towards world affairs to complete and unreserved acceptance of a responsibility corn- mensure with their power, and, finally, most important of all, firmly rejected the temptations which beset all possessors of newly-won power and made clear their intention to hold it in trust for the world under constitutional safeguards—safeguards laid down in a Charter framed in large measure by ourselves. Would we not have been inclined, in 1941, to say that such a picture was altogether too good to be true, adding that, if indeed it should turn out to be anywhere near the truth, the relations between the two peoples could not help being deepened and intensified for an indefinite time to come by their close associa- tion in the field of foreign affairs, where we had so long yearned for America's support in upholding the cause of justice and human decency?
What were dreams in 1941 became reasonable anticipations in 1945. Why are they being so sadly belied in 1951? It is not through lack of adequate machinery to maintain contact between the two Governments. Not only is the old diplomatic system still functioning, but the Embassy at Washington has assumed what would have seemed to an Ambassador of the older school truly gigantic proportions, touching the lives of the two countries in realms, such as education or methods of industrial production, from which the old-time blinkered diplomacy was quite remote. And in addition there are all the new contacts established through the United Nations in its American home, themselves also con- tinually expanding and bringing more and more Englishmen into touch with representative American public men.
Is it then the fault of the human agents? Emphatically not. Our country certainly has never been better served in the United States than it is at the present time. It used to be said that the British Ambassador in Washington had two functions to per- form—one at the Governmental level and the other as an inter- preter of one people to the other. Pauncefote is the model of the former and Bryce of the latter. Circumstances have now brought about the presence of two top-level British diplomats in the United States—one in Washington and one at the United Nations.
It would be hard to imagine two men better fitted for their respective roles. Sir Oliver Franks is a Bryce with more than a touch of Pauncefote, and Sir Gladwyn Jebb, professional to his finger-tips, has the comprehensive interests of a Bryce and a i ready wit in addition. To hear Sir Oliver address an audience of business men is to realise how tough and complicated problems can be resolved by the magic of academic clarity. After one such exhibition, when the speaker had fled to catch his train back to Washington. an Oxford man who remained behind received felicitations from all quarters upon his Alma Mater. In the case of Sir Gladwyn the congratulations have been going to Eton; for the millions who watched the Jebb v. Malik contest on television acquired a new respect for our much-abused public school education by hearing with their own ears and seeing with their own eyes what can be made of it when it is brought fully into action.
Nor would -anyone who knows the personalities concerned think of throwing even a particle of responsibility for the present unhappy situation upon the " opposite numbers " with whom our diplomats have been dealing on the American side—Senator Warren Austin and Ambassador Ernest Gross at the United Nations and Mr. Dean Acheson and Assistant-Secretary Dean Rusk in the Department of State. Fortunate indeed are our representatives in having to deal with a group of men so dis- tinguished and high-minded, so approachable and so thoroughly imbued with our common ideas and common standards of public conduct. And were we not equally fortunate in having so- vigorous and likable a personality as Mr. Thomas Finletter as Marshall Plan administrator in our midst?
If then the fault lies neither in the system nor in the men, where are we to look for it? Is it in the problems themselves—in the dollar shortage, or the conditions of the Marshall Plan, or events in Palestine, or the organisation of the Atlantic High Command, or the development of competitive industries, or the traditional United States attitude towards what used to be called Imperial Preference, or the American support of the idea of United Europe and of the Schuman Plan in particular? All these problems have involved disagreements. But to pass them in review is to realise that these have never been allowed to reach the acute stage, and that negotiators on the American side have almost invariably been most careful to make allowance for British susceptibilities. No one of these issues, taken individually, could account for the present mood.
The occasion for the change of mood is. of course, the events in the Far East. But it is the occasion, not the cause. For the cause, the true underlying cause, the working of which, if space permitted, could be traced in every one of the secondary problems mentioned above, lies in the mind and mood of the British people itself. An Englishman who has been living during the last four years and more in the United States, whilst attempting to keep in close touch with affairs at home, sometimes finds it hard to recognise the familiar outline of his country in what he reads or hears through private correspondence. It would appear to him that two developments have occurred which have had a baleful influence on British-American relations. The first is the lowering in the standard of public information, due, at least in part, to the shortage of paper. The second is that the general public, beyond the circle of those who are in the habit of follow- ing foreign affairs, appears to have " gone insular." The lowering of the standard of public information has been particularly regrettable in the case of the Far East, because it has led to the spread of a number of what can only be called myths which have misled and confused public opinion and thus hampered our diplomats. Obvious instances are the Myth of the 38th Parallel and the MacArthur Myth. There is also the,Myth of the Blame- less North Koreans, championed—as I was most surprised to observe—by a former colleague of mine in Oxford who bears an honoured name as a scholar. When truth has fallen on such evil days one can only expect trouble.
The reversion to insularity is no doubt a temporary pheno- menon, a natural reaction after all that the British people have gone through. But it is none the less unfortunate that it should coincide with a diametrically opposite mood in the United States, a mood of almost Elizabethan elation which is sending Americans, not only soldiers, sailors and airmen, but doctors. teachers, engineers and representatives of a score of other profes- sions, into every land and every sea—the Iron Curtain countries alone excepted. That the British people should not be associated —or associated only fitfully or indirectly—in this great experi- ence. the first large-scale experiment in the world's history of welfare internationalism, is a real misfortune. Another mis- fortune is the obstinate survival of the myth that the United States is a capitalist country in the old derogatory sense of that term. But I must not prolong these reflections by dwelling upon this tempting theme. It is enough to express _the wish that thousands and tens of thousands of my fellow-countrymen could enjoy the privilege of seeing American life at close quarters in these days. It would not only clear their minds of many mis- conceptions, but would give them back the elan enabling them to get once more into step with their American friends and march along with them on the road laid down in the United Nations Charter. For so many people in England seem either to have forgotten that we signed the Charter or to think that it was a mere empty gesture. For Americans the Charter is a constitu- tional document which is corning to take rank with their own constitution. How can they not be uneasy when they find that their friends are prepared to play fast and loose with it?
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