SPECTATOR'S NOTE BOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON The year 1968 does begin to look more and more like one of history's uncomfortable turn- ing points, one of those climactic periods when numerous forces converge to hasten change. This could be merely a delusion induced by recent over-indulgence in explosive headlines. But events do tend to make one think of such a year as 1848, 'the year of revolutions,' when old political structures collapsed like the walls of Jericho at the sound of the trumpets. The marvel of that year was the way impatience with the old order broke out in so many distant places at roughly the same time—and this when news travelled slowly if at all and an invading army could march well inside France before Paris heard of its coming. What is hard to guess at in 1968 is the part played-by the instan- taneous communications we now enjoy or endure. The swift passage of 'unrest' across frontiers may be merely an aspect of the pre- vailing imitativeness of the global village, the ultimate in trendiness, in fact. certainly it was to be assumed that street fighting in Paris would, without a doubt, be followed by some sort of riot in London, and so it proved.
And yet the cracks spreading across the political edifices are not to be explained away quite so simply. They are occurring beyond the iron curtain, too; neither totalitarian nor demo- cratic institutions are exempt. It might have been possible otherwise to view the French upheaval solely in terms of France's seemingly inescapable alternation between strong rule and chaos; the French regularly grow tired of their constitutions, after all. In 1848 Lamartine had pronounced the famous verdict, 'France is bored.' The words also fitted France after ten years of de Gaulle. But surely something more powerful than boredom is stirring today.
Is rioting good form?
As Burke remarked in his reflections on the first French Revolution, 'whenever our neighbour's house is on fire it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.' It must be supposed, charitably, that Mr Wedgwood Benn's attempt to set up as some sort of guru of the disillusioned was intended in this spirit, But other gurus are doing better. The barricades of Paris, by all accounts, echo to the names of bookish revolutionaries far away in California or elsewhere.
The sudden apotheosis of a thinker can be confusing, though, possibly even to the thinker in question. Who (for example) wrote this: `The degree to which the population is allowed to break the peace wherever there still is peace and silence, to be ugly and to uglify things, to ooze familiarity, to offend against good form is frightening.' Simon Raven? Malcolm Mugger- idge? Mrs Mary WhitehousE? Answer: Herbert Marcuse, prophet of the new student left, in- spirer of Dutschke and Cohn-Bendit. (From One Dimensional Man 1964.)
Precedent
If President de Gaulle does resign and if the present constitution is not destroyed by civil war, then the presidential functions will be exercised during the interim period by M Gaston Monnerville, the President of the Senate. This, I think, would be another sign of the singularity of 1968; M Monnerville is an interesting figure for various reasons, among them being the fact that he is a black man (from French Guiana). Is there a precedent for a Negro being head of state of a European
country? I doubt it. -
Defeat in the west
So the Kennedys are beatable after all. I sup- pose the think-tanks at Harvard are hard at work polishing the excuses for Oregon: the Humphrey money behind the McCarthy cam- paign, the smallness of the negro vote which has so strongly supported their man elsewhere, and so on. The fact remains that,1Jack Kennedy won all his primaries handsomely and thereby forced himself on a doubting convention. The obstacles his brother faces at this year's conven- - tion, though different and more personal, are just as formidable; and now he no longer has an unbroken primary record to sustain him.
If Bobby does outstandingly well in Cali- fornia next week he will go to the convention with a fighting chance (although I seem to remember that when he entered the presidential campaign he was widely conceded California by a landslide, and now we are told anything over 50 per cent would be impressive). Even so, the most likely beneficiary of this week's upset at Oregon must • be Vice-President Humphrey, who should be able to count on the support of the McCarthy delegates if they are needed to stop Kennedy at the convention, and the struggle for the White House still looks like resolving itself into Nixon v, Humphrey, as Murray Kempton wrote three weeks ago. Not that McCarthy can be written off yet; he has an admirable way of confounding the form book; moreover, Kennedy must be near to retiring from the race, and if he does that the Vice-President will need to run scared.
Precaution
There's unresting vigilance in high places to keep dangerous toys out of the wrong hands in these worrying times. Nigeria is a special case, of course: we are pouring weapons in there to help the Nigerian troops subdue (for ever, probably) the mutinous Biafrans who nourish improper hankerings after indepen- dence. But we run no risks with South Africa. The other day, I discover, Mr Harry Oppen- heimer, South Africa's mining multimillionaire and backer of the Progressive party, placed an order for a pair of twelve-bore sporting guns at the august Purdey establishment in South Aud- ley Street. The Board of Trade was unbending: `We regret . . . that export licences cannot be grantefor the supply of arms or ammunition for this destination.' An arsenal for Lagos: no shotguns for Oppenheimer. Whitehall must never forget its sense of proportion.
Test of nerve
liagehot . . . told Hutton that 'at one time he always got his wife to "break" the sPEcm-roa editorial to him on Saturday morning as he found it too much for his nerves to encounter its views unprepared.' (From a note in The Collected Works of Walter Bagehot, vols 111 and IV, just published.)
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