SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
There has been a pleasant lull in all the tub- thumping about space exploration recently, but no doubt the Russian achievement in sending a 1th:tip of ironmongery to the moon and back signals the end of it. America will now have to demonstrate that its ironmongery is no whit inferior, and so the ritual will proceed -until as I read) 'a man will land on the moon be- fore the end of next year.' Well, one wishes the poor fellow luck and hopes he brings some nice pictures back from his trip, if he Should happen to come back. Apart from that, there it-Attie of an encouraging nature that the rest of the world can say. We will watch amazed at the superpowers expend their resources upon this peculiarly absurd enterprise; we will applaud the handful of men who actually ex- pose themselves to danger thereby; and then W'd will hopefully turn our minds to more important-seeming matters.
There appears to be an illusion, in Wash- ington and in Moscow, that the world is easily moved to admiration by these displays of power in space. I see no evidence of this. In- stead, a bit of President Kennedy's rhetoric comes to mind : 'Why, some ask, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? They may as well ask why climb the highest mountain?' Very true, but not in the sense intended. We would (I trust) most certainly have asked why climb the highest mountain if the cost had promised to be anything like that of the Russian-Ameri- can space effort. Sir Edmund Hillary would have been thought demented if he had proposed spending umpteen thousands of millions, in- volving a substantial remoulding of the national economy, in order that he should set foot on the top of Mount Everest. Of course, it's their money—the Americans' and the Russians'— not ours, and therefore their affair. What we onlookers must resist, though, is the notion that we ought to pay homage as a result of all this conspicuous extravagance, that Russia's moon stunts will make us overlook Czechoslovakia, that America's skylarking will induce us to look more indulgently upon (say) the Wallace boom in the pre-election opinion polls.
Against the law
The railways' latest scheme for inflicting punish- ment upon passengers is to play compulsory music at them from loudspeakers during journeys. This will be popular with neurotics who are uncomfortable without background noise; sane people, however, who resent being treated like battery hens by British Rail, may care to nznember that in a more rational phase the railway managers acquiesced in a railway byelaw framed to protect travellers from pre- cisely this menace.
Aggrieved victims of the new policy should javoke Byelaw 22, Section 1, which stipulates that `no person upon the railway shall, to the annoyance of any other person, sing, perform on any musical or other instrument, or use any gramophone, record-player, tape recorder or portable wireless apparatus.' This law was of course devised to protect the public from noisy louts travelling by train: I don't see any reason at all why it should not equally protect us from noisy asses wearing British Rail uniform.
Haywire diplomacy
, . Diplomats, so we are told often enough, no longer inhabit a separate world concerned-only with their own arcane mysteries : they are up to their necks in crude realities like the rest of us. Since I take this to be in general perfectly true I have read with fascination the leading article in this month's issue of The Diplomatist (`The Review of the Consular and Diplomatic World'), which deals with the invasion •of Czechoslovakia; for here indeed is vintage evidence of the survival of the other-worldly view of the diplomat's trade. The article begins by clucking disapprovingly over those Czech diplomats abroad who failed to 'wait for official instructions' before 'indulging in comments of any kind' while their country was under attack; `haywire diplomacy,' the article terms it with prim disapproval. There follows a merry chuckle over the bets which (it is said) other diplomats made over which Czechs would shortly be seeking political asylum—`There can be little doubt,' reports The Diplomatist owlishly, 'that those of the spokesmen who indulged in the most violent anti-Soviet out- bursts were considered the most unlikely candi- dates for a return to Prague.' One bows before such perspicuity.
But thereafter a different note intrudes. 'Obviously, the Prague authorities will for some time have their hands full with more important problems at home. However; when they will, in time, come down to checking on the work of their Embassies and proceed to strengthening their diplomatic representation they will no doubt find that a lot of personnel will need replacing.' How very true : how especially true, of course, if 'the Prague autho- rities' should be none other than our old friends 'the Moscow authorities.' Meanwhile these latter, in the eyes of The Diplomatist, have every -reason to be proud of their splendid diplomats abroad—not a bit like those un- disciplined Czechs, who broke the rules merely bedause their country was being taken over: `The Soviet diplomats maintained throughout a discipline which never wavered . . . They never faltered in that bonhomie which was obviously strenuous to keep up. They never gave up the attitude of minimising the whole affair . . . However much one hated the in- vasion . . . one had to acknowledge their mono- lithic strength.' As Mr Dubcek was saying to President Svoboda only the other day.
Exit unlamented
Not many people seem quite sure when summer ends and autumn begins. A common view is that autumn begins with the month of Septem- ber (I think this definition has some official status in the United States) but according to the astronomers autumn begins precisely at the point of the autumnal equinox; and that, it will scarcely be necessary to add for the benefit of this journal's readers, occurred at eleven p.m. last -Sunday. We have therefore seen the end of the summer for 1968. From all accounts, those. who live in the northern or western parts of these islands are by now deeply sunburnt, parched for water, and longing for a return to the invigorating coolness which is their normal ambiance. The rest of us, shivering damply for month upon month in the south-east, have little choice but to write off 1968 and wait as stoically as possible for something better next year.
_Ours has been, I suppose, the most cheerless summer in living memory, and good riddance to it—with its floods, blighted holidays, stricken harvests, and the full catalogue of complaint. Even one's garden has turned treacherous: the very rain which batters the roses to pulp acts as a deplorable stimulant for the weeds, en- couraging them to proliferate and grow huge, like inventions of science fiction. Yet as I write this the sun has begun to shine and the autumnal scene has become pleasant. And in reality there have been countless sunny moments even in this bedraggled year. That is the trouble with the English climate : at its best it's perfection, but you have to be ever-alert to catch it doing its stuff. An underrated aspect of Wordsworth's life, I have sometimes thought, was his habit not only of walking about the Lake District prodigiously but also of composing his poetry out of doors; he was often soaked but he was always on hand when the sun shone. That must have been a great help in cultivating the Wordsworthian view of nature. In 1968 most of us haven't even noticed those interludes when nature decided that, for the moment, we had taken as much punishment as was good for us.
Twenty-three years later
'As Mr Asher Ben-Nathan, Israeli Ambassador, shouldered angrily through the throng [at Frankfurt] shouts of "Fascist" greeted him, and "You are a pig."' (Daily Telegraph, 23 Septem- ber).
Another significant breakthrough by - the student radicals. Back in 1945, no one would have thought it possible that a German mob would again choose to hurl abuse at a Jew in its midst only a generation later; nor that, choosing to do so, it would display the_inefinct that would lead it to employ precisely those two epithets.
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