BOOKS Incorporating the Nation BY BERNARD LEVIN r THERE is inevitably

a certain embarrassment 1 for any journalist in writing about another paper. Once upon a time, rival magazines work- ing in overlapping fields would happily spend their time lambasting each other with ever- increasing vigour until, mutually exhausted, they would fall silent for a time, only to go at it with renewed strength when some new problem arose op which they differed. Nowadays, dog —as we all know, and as Mr. Randolph Churchill reminds us if we do not—does not eat dog. And although there are great dangers in the cad's agreement that what other newspapers do is not news, it should not be forgotten that there are also dangers, even if slighter, in our spending too

much of our time on each other. •

But a new danger arises. If we do not criticise, why should it be thought impossible to praise? Of course, the New Statesman, say, has its faults (have you ever read its monstrous regime9t of dramatic critics?), apart from views and attitudes which seem to me not only wrong but silly— just as, I have no doubt, many of mine do to them. Today, however, I come not to bury Caesar, but to praise him. A new study of our distinguished contemporary* affords a welcome opportunity for saying, in greater detail than is normally possible, how excellent a magazine the Statesman is in so many ways, and how impor- tant it is to the intellectual life of this country. that it should survive and thrive. And the op- portunity is the more welcome in that the author of this book adopts from the outset a distinctly hostile tone.

Mr. Plato starts off with a thinly veiled sneer in almost his first paragraph, putting into the mouth of one of his characters (the book is written in dialogue form) the faux-bonhomons remark, 'Well, then, after finding the Sophist, the task we now have to face together is to search out the Statesman,' adding, rather weakly, and doubtless on the advice of his libel-lawyers, or so it seems to me.' Mr. Plato goes on to ask whether the Statesman 'must be classified as one of those who possess some kind of expert knowledge, or must we begin with some other kind of definition?' and grudgingly answers that the magazine 'is to be defined as a kind of ex- Pert'. The author follows this with an unexcep- tionable account of the functions of the States- Mart's editor: Now consider a master-builder. No master- builder is a manual worker—he directs the work of others. . . . He provides the knowledge but not the manual labour. . . .

Nobody could question this description of M r. h'eeman's methods, but it is couched in terms No wide that it could apply equally to almost any editor. More particularly apposite to the States- Man is the next passage, recalling as it does the Curious dichotomy so often to be seen between the Statesman's front and back halves.

Well then [Mr. Plato's attempts at the colloquial style tend to grate after a time, his incessant 'well then' being particularly trying], Tnr SIAII:SMAN. By Plato. Translated by J. B. • emp. (Routledge, paperback, Rs.

6d.) A

may we claim that it is a sound division to split the whole . . . into two parts and to call one critical and the other directive?

But the author immediately seems to contradict himself when he says, 'I hope so, for it is much to be desired that those sharing a task should be of one mind.'

Some rather waspish comments on the States- man's leader-writers follow, Mr. Plato referring to those people • who 'receive commands which have been thought out and issued by someone else; then they issue them at second hand to others,' and an even more offensive de- scription of the Literary Editor as being 'like the man in charge of a whole herd of cows. . . All this, however, is by way of • preliminary skirmish. Mr. Plato then gets down to a de- tailed analysis of the Statesman and its attitudes. ItS old-fashioned views of society can be justi- fiably criticised, and few will dispute Mr. Plato's warning that 'We must beware lest we break off one small fragment of a class and then con- trast it with all the important sections left be- hind,', but he continues his attack with what is tantamount to an allegation of deliberate double- dealing and divisory tactics of a kind that we well know to be abhorrent to the men of Great Turnstile.

In the region into which the argument has moved we see two paths lying before us in- viting us to our goal. One path reaches the goal quicker. . . . The other is a longer way round but it observes the principle we enun- ciated before, that we should always divide down the middle where possible. We can go on by whichever of these paths we prefer.

And Mr. Plato makes this comment even more savage when, after having one of his characters ask in return, 'Is it impossible to take them both?', he has the other retort, `To take both at once is impossible—that is an amazing suggestion. . . . But obviously you can take first one, then the other.'

This technique—of taking the point at which the Statesman is genuinely vulnerable, and build- ing on it a superstructure of quite unjustified criticism—is a favourite one of the author's. The Statesman may justifiably be charged with con- ceding too little to its opponents, and crediting its friends with too much. But it is surely a travesty of the paper's attitude to elevate this into full-fledged diabolism, as when he asks, 'Where shall we divide. . . ? By distinguishing whole-hoof and cloven-hoof. . ?' And it is much more than a travesty to follow this ques- tion, as Mr. Plato does, with a gratuitous sneer at the sex-life of at least one distinguished Statesman contributor, asking, 'Is . . . he . . . capable of interbreeding with another or in- capable?'

Soon Mr. Plato is nagging away again at the Statesman's attitudes, style and, indeed, motives: We have to bring in some pleasant stories to relieve the strain. There is a mass of ancient legend a large part of which we must now use for our purposes; after that we must go on as before, dividing always and choosing one part only. . . . Mr. Plato's reference to the Statesman's cele- brated volte-face on the H-bomb and unilateral

nuclear disarmament ('This change of motion most must regard as the most important and the most complete of all "turnings back" ') is not in- accurate; but he contradicts himself over this very

issue, saying, 'One mistake was not so serious,' but adding, in a reference to the Statesman's

abortive attempt to overthrow Mr. Gaitskell in

favour of Mr. Harold Wilson as Labour Party Leader, that it 'was a mistake on the grand scale . . graver and more far-reaching.than I thought it was.' But Mr. Plato's absurdly ill-balanced

outlook on the magazine can be judged from the next passage: though nobody would deny that the paper has had considerable influence, its most fervent admirer would scarcely go all the way with Mr. Plato here:

Obviously then we must try to define the way in which the Statesman controls the State.

And still more extravagant is Mr. Plato's in- sistence that we 'see the Statesman in a clearer

light as being alone entitled to be called

"shepherd of the people," feeding humankind in the way shepherds feed their sheep and cow-

herds their cattle.' True, Mr. Plato does not

make the mistake of seeing the Statesman as something fixed now for all time, however pre- dictable it may be ('. . . as a matter of fact I think that the likeness of the Statesman has not been perfectly drawn yet'), though why he should

choose the discussion of this point to drag in Mr.

John Freeman's celebrated confession, 'I hive made a real fool of myself,' is not at all clear.

And the same spoiling of a good argument

occurs shortly afterwards, when he asks wisely, 'Is our chief purpose to find the Statesman, or

. . . the larger aim of becoming better philo- sophers, more able to tackle all questions?' He makes it clear in his answer ('. . . we aim to

be able to solve all problems . . .') that even the Statesman is only a means to an end, only to spoil that excellent judgment with a quite uncalled-for sneer at the Statesman's critics: Then this is the name we can apply to the products of this whole group of arts. None of them has a serious purpose: all are performed for pure amusement.

In a very valuable passage towards the end of his book, Mr. Plato reminds us that the readers of a magazine are as much a part of it as its writers; but he could have been more polite to the Statesman's: . . . we must also look at another group--quite a large mob, in fact, which is coming clearly

into view now that all these particular groups have been distinguished. . . . A very queer crowd. . . A race of many tribes.• . .

But we can forgive Mr. Plato much for his clear realisation that it is to the young of today that this old-established magazine appeals most :

Do we realise that it is the Statesman . . . the good and true lawgiver, . . alone . . . able (for who else should possess the power?) to forge by . . . wondrous inspiration this bond of true conviction uniting the hearts of the young folk . . the young folk who have profited as they should from their education?

Truly, for all its faults, for all its hostile tone, Mr. Plato's book does give us who labour week by week parallel (as you might say) to the Statesman an opportunity to pay tribute. And for that at least, we (not to say' the Statesman) should be grateful. As Mr. Plato says in his last sentence, an apostrophe to himself: 'You have done what we have requested of you, Sir, and you have set beside your definition of the Sophist a picture drawn to perfection of the . . . Statesman.'