THE SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

I am not particularly certain why, but I discovered myself to be moved by Nikita Khrushchev's death and the manner of his burying. Since Lenin, Russia and the world have suffered the tyranny of Stalin — a terrible rule, the rule of a tyrant of gigantic dimensions — and the bumblings of Malenkov, Bulganin, Brezhnev and Kosygin. In the middle of these nonentities we all suffered, and enjoyed, Khrushchev. Compared with the brutal and rigid despotism of Stalin, and the dull conservative regimes of the nonentities, Khrushchev's time was one of excitement and of change.

We are all indebted to him in one regard: he loosened the Stalinist structure. His denunciation of the tyrant was a major historic act. After that ' secret' speech to the twentieth party congress at the beginning of 1956, nothing could ever be the same. The Soviet bloc was cracked, as by an earthquake: Poland shook, East Germany shook, Hungary exploded, and the entire Stalinist edifice almost fell apart.

I encountered him on a few occasions — in England, when he was still the junior Partner of the B and K double act, waddling behind Bulganin; in France, when he toured the battlefields of the First World War, and held court in a railway dining car, comparing himself with Jesus Christ; and again in Paris, for the summit, when. after he had walked out of the conference, he brooded in the Soviet embassy in the Rue de Bac, alone, wondering whether to listen to the beseeching of Macmillan and resume the talks with Eisenhower. He decided against; and a Russian press attache, looking for an Englishman to read the final announcement to the journalists outside the embassy, handed me the document. His greatest moment was shared with President Kennedy, when, between them, they averted the Cuban missile crisis which, between them, they had caused. His worst was the crushing of Hungary : but, given the .supreme requirement to preserve the Soviet system, he could do no less. In the long run, his time in office will be seen to have hastened the inevitable collapse of communism. It is oresumably their apprehension of this that has caused the present leaders in Moscow to treat his death so cursorily. The words reportedly spoken by his son, Sergei Khrushchev, at the graveside on Monday, were well enough said: "We will not speak of a great statesman.... This should be left to history and the press to judge. But there is one thing I can say. He left few indifferent. There were those who loved him and those who hated him, but few passed him by."

Question of collaborating

I watched most of The Sorrow and the Pity, Marcel Ophuls' marathon telly documentary on the collaboration of the Frenchmen of Clermont-Ferrand with the Germans during the war. Professor Douglas Johnson reviews the programme elsewhere, and takes a more charitable view of the French — and a more hostile view of M. Ophuls' programme — than I. Obviously the programme cheated a bit: but the fact remains that the French collaborated on a massive scale, and resisted on a very minor scale.

The following evening Late Night LineUp had a discussion on the programme, everybody leaning over backwards to be nice both about the French and to M. Ophuls. Joan Bakewell asked Anthony Sampson whether he thought that the British would have behaved as the French did, and I was shocked when he said, talking of the flaws in politicians, that he thought they would. I do not.. Of course there would have been plenty of collaborators with the Germans, had Hitler come here and conquered. No doubt the Establishment would have found some Marshal Petain and some Pierre Laval.

But Jacques Soustelle, on the same programme, said that about two per cent of France joined the resistance and that the rest collaborated. Perhaps a sizeable minority in this country would have collaborated and the majority have sullenly put up with the occupation; but far more than two per cent would have resisted, and far less than half would have collaborated. I found the programme sickening; and I also found Tony Sampson's self-righteous assumption that we would have behaved as badly as did the French also sickening.

The French still put up with a state control of their television service which has prevented the programme being shown on French television. I congratulate the BBC for their enterprise in showing it in this country. It should be compulsory viewing for every Euro-fanatic in the land,

The slippery slope

I am reminded that during the fall of France, in May and June of 1940, the former appeasers in the Churchill cabinet, led by Halifax, wanted to explore the possibility of peace. Halifax and his friends thought that possibly Hitler sought merely some continental equilibrium, and were intensely aware that France not merely wanted to make peace but wanted to make it through the agency and mediation of Mussolini. Halifax insisted, in stormy cabinet scenes, that Britain and France could not become separated, for ifthey did, both would be defeated. Churchill, rejecting this, vehemently argued that Britain had been defeated neither in the air nor at sea; that she still had open to her the commercial and political potential of her sea routes; and that the defeat of the French armies could in no sense be regarded as a defeat of the British Expeditionary Force, which had formed less than a tithe of those armies and which had, anyway, been under French command.

France, Churchill growled repeatedly in answer to Halifax's pleas, "is trying to get us on the slippery slope." This phrase is a more accurate reflection of Churchill's European position, and of his trust in the open seas, than the post-war pro-European speeches he made, in the theme of which (as Macmillan faithfully recorded in his memoirs) Churchill quickly lost interest.

Class and style

It was good news that George Best was cleared by the Football Association Disciplinary Committee. I sometimes watch football on television — it is many years since I watched Jackie Milburn and Len • Shackleton play, live, and even more since I once saw Stanley Matthews make fools of an entire team during a wartime charity game — but whenever I see George Best on the screen it is obvious that here is a player in the same rare class. Best's combination of effrontery and artistry excuses, so far as I am concerned, any amount of 'bad' language, of showing off, of clowning around in night-clubs. He is a rare player, a man with style.

Question and answer

A chartered accountant friend of mine has shown me the General Paper for this year's Intermediate Examination conducted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants The paper comprises ten questions, all of which must be answered within three hours. Question 3 is as follows:

A major problem in the United Kingdom is inflation. Suggest courses which a Government might take to deal with this problem.

My friend writes: "Can Skinflint do question 3? Our articled clerk was a bit pushed."