Writers' mandate
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE
Thirty years ago writers and intellectuals took sides over the Spanish civil war with absolute certainty of their own rectitude. A compilation of their views published at that time struck an unbroken note of passionate dogmatism. They were all equally convinced that their views, as writers, were specially significant and valuable.
The most interesting aspect of this book on Vietnam is the extent to which many of the more distinguished writers, notably Auden, Robert Graves and Isaiah Berlin, find it difficult to come down unequivocally on one side or the other. Several, including Auden himself, even deprecate the whole idea of asking writers to express ideas on this kind of subject. Why, he asks, should anyone suppose that their views are more important than any other reasonably well- educated citizen?
At first glance this newly-discovered modesty - much more marked, incidentally, among the British than the American contributors—seems all to the good. Writers and intellectuals are peculiarly susceptible to the temptations of moralism and ideology which are the enemy of sound judgment in international affairs. It might well be thought, therefore, that the less seriously they took their own views on ques- tions of war and peace, the better for all con- cerned. The trouble, however, is that this new- found modesty coincides with a new-found willingness on the part of the British public at large to listen to their views with a respect that would have seemed incredible a generation ago. It seems that some of the most distinguished writers are beginning to take themselves less seriously just when the public is more prepared to be influenced than ever before.
The reason, of course, is that the traditional guides on international affairs have almost wholly lost their credibility. Thirty years ago the ordinary citizen looked for guidance on in- ternational affairs to the traditional ruling class, to the gentry and clergy, and to the establish- ment press. The views of writers and intellec- tuals were certainly vociferously expressed, but not listened to very seriously. On the Spanish civil war, for example, the great majority even of Labour supporters would have assumed as axiomatic that Anthony Eden was more likely to be right than Stephen Spender. Surely the reverse is true today. The views of a famous writer or television pundit, Graham Greene, say, or A. J. P. Taylor, command much more respect on Vietnam than those of George Brown or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Loss of confidence in the ruling class, in politicians generally, and in the Church has left the writers and intellectuals with an unprecedented degree of influence.
Yet this is the precise moment when some of the best of them start expressing doubts about their qualifications for exercising it. Unfortu- nately, the writers who do this, although highly distinguished in name, are by no means exten- sive in number. For every. Graves, Auden or Berlin who admits that the situation in Viet-
nam is too complicated to allow passionate posturing, there are scores of others who call for President Johnson's impeachment and casti- gate the Americans as worse than the Nazis.
The result is that the public gets rather a dis- turbing mixture from its new mentors. It is offered, on the one hand, sage equivocation -- Isaiah Berlin's contribution is a good example of this—and. on the other, foolish and over- simplified expressions of passionate partisan- ship. Not one single contribution among the 300 carries that stamp of moral authority and practical persuasiveness which helps a free society to make up its mind on a great public issue. Indeed, it is worse than that. Because the sensible writing—by sensible I do not mean pro-American but rather contributions which show some awareness of the true nature of the dilemma—is equivocal and lacking in certainty. the reader is likely to be most influenced by the passionate partisans, most of whom are hys- terically anti-American.
But what disturbs one most is not the arro- gance of those many contributors who write dogmatic nonsense—on-both sides, incidentally —but the humility of the very much smaller number who write sense. For if writers and in- tellectuals are to be taken seriously on public affairs—as they now are– it is disastrous that all the fire, passion, eloquence, and sublime self-confidence of the literary profession should be concentrated on misleading the public and over-simplifying the issues, while those writers who show signs of understanding what the problems are about seem content simply to deprecate their own qualification to form clear views. Can they not see that by refusing to get involved, by refusing to accept for themselves any true responsibility for thinking their views through to a clear conclusion, they are handing influence over not to some notional experts who know much more than they do, but to those of their own kind who know much less?
The truth is that anyone of moderate intelli- gence who has studied international relations since the end of the war, and who takes the trouble to consider with imaginative sympathy the pressures and problems that have faced American power during this period, bearing in mind not only the situation in the world as it is today, but the situation as it was when the seeds of what is happening now were first sown, cannot reasonably fail to appreciate how cruelly unfair most of the criticism of America over Vietnam actually is. No single act of policy can be judged by itself. Anybody who welcomed American willingness to protect Western Europe in the late 'forties and 'fifties has to understand how the emotional habits and attitudes to communism of that period, without the engendering of which no Ameri- can administration would have been allowed to accept the NATO commitment, were bound to promote a global American trend towards in- tervention which, in turn, was bound to involve her in disasters as well as triumphs.
It is intellectually contemptible and morally odious to applaud America's decision to accept responsibility for preserving world peace in general and British security in particular and at the same time to abuse her when the enor- mous difficulties of fulfilling this giant com- mitment lead her into awkward involvements such as Vietnam, which she might well have been wiser to avoid. No great power, operating on the scale which America has been encour- aged to do since the war, could be expected to avoid wrong calculations leading cumulatively to serious misjudgments leading in turn to occasional protracted local wars.
These are the realities which should govern British comment on Vietnam. To the simple- minded who cannot easily understand a highly complicated chain of cause and effect, and who prefer to judge everything as it seems here and now rather than in relation to how it came about, these realities are difficult to grasp. But writers and intellectuals can grasp them. In the past they have not tried, since international affairs have been left to a class who knew about them from long practice. Writers could enthuse and condemn without it making much differ- ence. But today the public listens and it is time writers showed more understanding of a sub- ject which really can be one of life and death.
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