The Woodhouse View
IT is difficult not to compare this book unfavour- ably with Professor Seton-Watson's Between War and Peace, published last year. Professor Seton- Watson's is, of course, a far longer book covering a wider field—the struggle for power between the free world and the Communists. Mr. Woodhouse is writing about British foreign policy alone. But the difference between the two books is more than one of length. Seton-Watson provides not only a
profound analysis of the events we have survived, he also makes it quite clear where he stands and the direction in which we should go. Mr. Wood- house is, on his own admission, superficial.
But what possible excuse can there be for Mr. Woodhouse to write a superficial book? British foreign policy is the topic on which he has made himself expert over many years and when he writes about it his words deservedly attract attention. Why, then, offer us this? Because, according to him, to analyse more than what has been done and is publicly recorded, to go beyond this limited objective and consider the intentions and the motives behind those intentions, 'could only be guesswork.' Professor Seton-Watson, an academic by vocation, is neither so pedantic nor so cautious. To diagnose motive and intention is the job of the historian as much as to recount what is done as a consequence. To an even greater extent, it is the fate of the politician to conclude (or guess) from what is done, not only why it was done but what will follow it. Since Mr. Woodhouse is now an active politician and this is a political book, it's all the worse that he should have been so wilfully unambitious.
The great Lord Salisbury once said that noth- ing matters very much, and this splendid state- ment of profound scepticism has always seemed to me the only respectable basis for conservatism. The Woodhouse view, which is more up to date, more in tune with the Macmillan ethos, does not share this sovereign virtue and can either be described as unflappability or gross complacency according to your point of view. This is how he describes the international position in 1959:
For Britain in particular the outlook was en- couraging, since Britain was not a power that wished to bring about radical changes in the world but to live with the world as it was.
Those words might have been spoken by Sir Samuel Hoare in the spring of 1939 and they epitomise the fatal self-satisfaction which over- comes the British Conservative Party when it has been in power too long.
He is equally complacent about the past. Mr. Bevin's policy towards Palestine and (would you believe it?) the groundnuts scheme are both described as 'resounding failures,' absolute judg- ments which the author eschews when discussing the policies of succeeding administrations. Suez, for instance, a topic which it is impossible to avoid in a survey of this nature, elicits no evalua- tion from Woodhouse, though in Seton-Watson (where groundnuts have to be omitted, presum- ably for reasons of space) it is described as 'a catastrophe for Western policy.' As to its con- sequences, Woodhouse finds no real basis for the belief expressed by critics at home that it damaged Britain's reputation in the world. In fact it showed that 'given the support of her allies, Britain was still a considerable Middle Eastern Power.' Tell that to Nuri es-Said.
This whitewash was presumably applied soon after he had completed his election address in 1959; yet it is difficult not to be alarmed when a very similar approach seems to govern his attitude to the problems that still confront us in 1961. Though he asserts that the protection of interests rather than the pursuit of objectives is the proper purpose of British foreign policy, the preservation of the status quo is the objective he advocates with steady reiteration and this is clearly the criterion by which he judges success or failure. Yet even supposing the status quo can be preserved, and it has been a will-o'-the-wisp pursued by a succession of declining powers, it is doubtful if the best means of preserving it is a policy of almost total passivity such as this. Thus the nuclear balance is 'in,' but disengage- ment is 'out.' The Common Market is 'out' and the Commonwealth is most certainly 'in.' For, if passivity is your policy, the Commonwealth is your beau ideal; according to Woodhouse its functions are impossible to define in a positive manner; all formal links dissolve under close inspection; they arc neither economic. political nor military; in the long run it may not even preserve the English language or the English cul- tural tradition (elsewhere regarded, together with the maintenance of the English educational system. as one of the two most important tasks of British policy). Yet it offers two advantages: a sense of secure status (I can imagine the old Commonwealth tie being proudly worn at the UN Assembly), and secondly it prevents this country joining the Common Market.
The last section of his book is called 'Inter- dependence.' This can be accepted because it does not involve 'more than the minimum abdica- tion of sovereignty' and is so loosely defined as to be useless as a guide for action. According to Mr. Woodhouse the world is cooling down like a dying volcano. Apart from the Chinese Com- munists it has learned the lesson taught by Hitler, by Stalin and by the Japanese militarists.
Such men belonged to the pre-nuclear
age. . . . The present-day Chinese Com- munists also belong to the pre-nuclear age, it is reasonable to hope that before long they may enter it. By then there is a good chance that the volcano will be extinct.
A few months ago C. A. R. Crosland wrote that a middle-aged conservatism, parochial and corn- placent, had settled over the country, and such, precisely, is the impact of this author's opinions. The new President of the United States is an almost exact contemporary of Mr. Woodhouse. You would never think it from the present book.
MARK DONHAM CARTER
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