CERTAINTIES AND DOUBTS
There can be no questioning the strength of the Prime Minister's zeal for Europe. He speaks and acts as a man possessed of the utter certainty of his convictions. His mind is cast. His position is that of a moated castle with the drawbridge up and the portcullis down. He is inaccessible to reason and immune to doubt. This is not necessarily a foolish and mockheroic posture. It sometimes happens that a nation suffers anxieties and indecisions and spasms of defeatism which are not publicly shared by its ruler, and whose will may become sufficient to overcome the doubts with which he is besieged. Undoubtedly there are critical moments in the history of any nation when the preservation of the nation has been due more than to any other factor to the resolution of a ruler who is in command of its fortunes and his own senses. Such a ruler, at such a time, will quite rightly strike heroic postures, utter noble sentiments, exhort the faithful, rally the wobblers, and, if he is successful, will by his example and his spirit make firm the infirmities that surround him, touch the patriotic nerve, and carry the day. It is in some such role that Mr Heath has cast himself.
The performances of Mr Wilson have been altogether more subdued. The public process of his laborious working through to an as yet undeclared decision has been marked by doubts, hestitations, unheroic postures, partisan considerations and a total absence of magnificent gestures and noble expressions of sentiment. Mr Heath proclaims his vision. Mr Wilson has no such vision, but sees instead of the broad and open road to a new dawn a rocky way whose destination is obscure and which contains pitfalls, traps, snares and delusions. Just as there are occasions for the heroic and the visionary ruler to assert himself when the life of the nation is in peril, or when huge and glittering opportunity is suddenly presented, so, too, there are occasions when the cautious and prudent note must be sounded. The life and the livelihood of a nation can be assured, and its future prosperity preserved, as well by caution and prudence as by heroism, as well by scepticism as by conviction, as well by the considerations of politics as by the exercise of an excited will.
These men cannot both be right. If this country as it stands at present is finished, then the defeatism which is behind Mr Heath's courageous valour and which impells him and those who think with him towards a Europe in which we will eventually, and assuredly, lose ourselves, is best camouflaged by the triumphant noises presently being made by the Prime Minister. That this country is at a low ebb few will deny — at an ebb as low as any since Munich and that accommodation with the continent then reached by the Conservative party, the Times and the Cliveden set. But Munich was a mistake : a mistake of the Establishment. If this country is to avoid another, similar mistake, produced by the same sort of people and by the same sort of mood as produced Munich, then it will have to ignore the triumphant blandishments of the Prime Minister's certain vision, and prefer the mundane and unglamorous doubts of a sounder patriotism. We cannot afford to be led astray by the Establishment again, and seek another disastrous accommodation with Europe reached by the Conservative party, the Times and this time the Hampstead set.
Previous page
