TO THE CHORUS of praise for Richard Nixon on his
visit to England, I feel bound to add a mildly
critical postscript. He struck me, in the hour or so I spent in his company, as a man who has learned much in the last few years; but like many
a man involved in the estimable process of dis- covering things for himself, he was a bit of a bore about it all. On and on he went, in a monotonous voice, telling us what we already knew; I had to doodle on the pad provided to light off encroaching drowsiness. Presumably some of the press enthusiasm for him can be accounted for by his turning out to be so much less awful than he has usually been pictured; he seemed an amiable soul—it was really quite hard to imagine him smearing political opponents. And, of course, we have been driven to expect so low a standard of what is 'statesmanlike' by the utterances of politicians here—the Prime Minister being perhaps the worst offender—that the sense Mr. Nixon talked sounded much more sensible than it really was. I could get no feeling that here was anybody out of the ordinary; by comparison with, say, the unlucky Adlai Stevenson he seemed mild beer. Still, at least Mr. Nixon showed that his voyages have opened his mind: if he should succeed President Eisenhower, it will not be the disaster it might have been five years ago.
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