Another voice

The New Spirit

Auberon Waugh

Sorry to be writing about the Falklands 1.-3 yet again. I know, I know. It seems to me there are some important points to be made. The first point concerns the almost unbelievable efficiency of the British armed forces in getting all those men (are there really 5,000?) and their equipment on shore, even unopposed. My own experience of the simplest troop movement is so much at variance that I can only gasp silently in the Somerset countryside. In moving a troop of four armoured cars around Salisbury Plain, as I sometimes used to do in younger days; one of two things could happen. Either all of them would disappear over the horizon and be lost for six or seven hours, or, somewhere in that vast plain, there would be two quite separate and un- connected crashes leaving four armoured cars out of action.

Yet all correspondents on the spot seem to agree on the superhuman efficiency with which the landing was conducted. Never mind what happened afterwards, or how they get to Port Stanley. At the time of writing, this is not known. In fact there has been only one suggestion of human in- fluence in the whole operation to date. That concerns the British helicopter which mysteriously turned up in Chile, 450 miles from the scene of the fighting.

Some have expressed puzzlement about this, others have produced lurid theories, but to me it is plain enough. Looking at the map of the area, I should guess it was trying to get from Goose Green to Port Darwin. Map reading is a ticklish enough job on the ground.

After landing in Chile, they apparently decided they were in Argentina, which is understandable enough, and went into hiding. Since then they are rumoured to have escaped, but nobody really knows. I only hope they were not engaged in any valiant 'take-me-to-your-leader' project to assassinate the resident dictator. It would be too much to expect that helicopter pilots are given identification kits to distinguish between General Leopold Galtieri of Argentina, the foul despot who eats two nuns and a Swedish teenager for breakfast every morning, and General Augustus Pinochet, the mild old-fashioned Liberal who saved Chile from a Michael

• Foot-style catastrophe and who seldom has more than a lightly-boiled egg and a glass of orange juice for breakfast. But many of these Latin American dictators look much the same. It may be too much to hope that the brave men are receiving regular airmail editions of the Spectator, but if they are I should urge them to ask whether they are in Santiago or Buenos Aires before shooting any dictator. If the former, there used to be

rather a good bar on something called the Avenue Bernardo O'Higgins.

But if the worst happens, and they suc- ceed in shooting General Pinochet by mistake, this may prove something of a set- back to my strategy of a Grand Alliance between Britain and Chile as the only means of keeping Argentina in order for the next 130 years. It would be intolerable to expect British servicemen to be stationed permanently on the Falklands. They are hellishly cold and dull, and according to the 1982 South American Handbook the two pubs in Port Stanley open for only one hour on Sundays. Santiago, on the other hand, would make quite a jolly posting for those who like flamenco dancing and that sort of thing. The cost of living is much lower there, too.

On the other hand, it does not really look as if Mrs Thatcher or her curious new Foreign Secretary intends to adopt my sug- gestion of a Grand Alliance with Chile or, indeed, any of the other helpful sugges- tions I make from time to time. Perhaps the only way to get her to do anything is to im- plore her to do the opposite. I would not be in the least bit surprised, when the history of this nonsensical episode comes to be written, if it turned out that what enraged President Galtieri beyond endurance and finally persuaded him to invade the Falklands, was Mrs Thatcher's pig-headed refusal to grant Mr Peregrine Worsthorne the knighthood he so conspicuously deserves. Although a person with few violent instincts, I must admit I sometimes find myself foaming at the mouth with rage when I see this obstinate woman on televi- sion and reflect on her treatment of Mr Worsthorne.

My second important point is rather in the nature of a recantation. When this ab- surdity started, I wrote a piece in the Spec- tator for 10 April — 'Being in the right' in which I described myself as struggling to get into my old army uniform which had unfortunately shrunk to about a fifth of its original size. At the time, I very much wanted to go out there. But having looked into the matter, and after reading Max Hastings's important account of it all in the Daily Express, I have decided I do not want to be there in the least. There is more important work to be done at home.

At quite an early stage of the general ex- citement, Mrs Thatcher started talking of a New Spirit which was taking over the na- tion. At the time, I discounted this as vulgar demagoguery, but with the closing of

,

Anyone for Denis? and the occasional replacement of Mr Ian McDonald as our military briefer by a uniformed colonel with clipped accents, I begin to take the threat more seriously. It seems to me that anyone who lived happily under the Old Spirit should stay around to knock this New one on the head as and when it appears.

Much criticism has already been levelled

against the Sun and Daily Star and even against the Daily Express, although , thought that Jean Rook's photograph 01 Ian McDonald as a baby — captioned 'The Naked Civil Servant' — was undoubtalb the scoop of the war to that point. But the newspaper which has disturbed — not to say nauseated — me most by its read) adoption of the New Spirit is The nines- At a time when the whole nation was yearning for the balanced wisdom of a Rees-Mq2, The Times started addressing us in the elir ped accents and over-excited tone of a Nla' tional Service officer trying to prove his keenness on exercises.

The New Spirit reached its peak in a

leader which appeared last week under the title 'A Sense of Proportion'. This coin- pared the Pope's difficulty in making Oh, Is mind over whether to visit Britain Christ's agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, and used this image to urge that neither the papal visit nor English Par- ticipation in the World Cup should 11,e cancelled on account of the Falklands crisis. Apart from the appalling taste of this comparison, it misses the point. Whatever one thinks about the Falklands escapade' it opened a few opportunities. One of these was to sabotage the papal visit, another O to sabotage the World Cup. A third, I might add, was the opportunity to blow tIP the huge grain silo at Rosario and the PI of Buenos Aires holding the greater part °. Russia's bread ration for the next six months. months. All these things were worth dolag regardless of any help they might have given the Falkland kelpers. One does not wish to discourage The Times's nice new editor — if Mr Murdoch e choice was between Charles Douglas-HoTe and Young Winston, I dare say he made the right one. On the other hand Wirtst°11; unlike Charles, has had the benefit of c university education. Murdoch must hO,c found himself in a Garden of Gethsentall, situation with regard to this one. Doug1P., Home at least was an army officer for' short time. But I don't like this New SOO; With the emergence of the Princess °; Wales on postage stamps as the Eva Per°I of the Falklands, it all looks a little En", Argentinian to me.