WHAT MACMILLAN BELIEVES

London TIME Bureau Chief Max Ways last week cabled this authoritative report of Harold Macmillan's views as he took office:

MACMILLAN will gladly go to the U.S.--if he is asked. His friendship with Ike, which goes back to their work together in North Africa during World War II, is very dear to Macmillan, and, at the moment, Anglo-American relationships are uppermost in his mind.

The outburst of anti-Americanism in Britain in recent weeks, Macmillan believes, is a bad sign, and he is grateful that it was not matched by anti-British feelings in America. A tendency to blame the other fellow is usually a sign of one's own weakness and lack of self-confidence. But while anti-Americanism is mainly a bad sign, it may also be a sign of something good in Britain. There is something patriotic in it. There is self-respect in it, too, and it's not entirely a bad thing if a lot of Britons think that Britain has been in the right. What must be done, in Macmillan's eyes, is to draw the poison out of this feeling, leaving the patriotism and the self-respect. If the poison comes from lack of self-confidence, then what Britain needs is more basis for confidence.

Macmillan is deeply interested in European integration, because he feels that it is bad for Britain to feel pushed around and overshadowed. Europe has been and still should be a great force in the world. Other areas have combined, and there is no reason Europeans should not combine to assert, protect and expand those valuable things for which they stand in the world. Looking to the future, Macmillan thinks that perhaps one source of increased British self-confidence will be found in closer economic and political ties with Europe. That does not mean weaker ties with the U.S. or the

Commonwealth. In fact, both the U.S. and the Commonwealth may find Britain a better partner if Britain has much closer ties with Europe.

Macmillan is amused to find himself described as a right-winger, since for years in the '305 he was considered a near Socialist. But he believes that the present decade should be a period of economic opportunity for individuals in Britain, not one of mass equality. To his way of thinking, there was a time for Socialism, or at least for equality, and in its essential aspects he welcomed the welfare state. He fought for it. He wrote books that he hoped would help bring it into being. He does not regret feeling as he did in the '305, when the landscape was dominated by bitterness and suffering and appalling inequalities. And after the war, as Minister of Housing, he believes he did not act like a man who was having public housing thrust upon him.

The welfare state is here. But Britain is having a hard time paying for it, and it will become harder. Since neither defense costs nor welfare costs can be pared much more, taxes cannot be cut. There is only one way Britain can reduce this dangerous burden--its economy must expand. That is the only way that the Americans have found to meet the costs of government. They have expanded their economy so that these costs weigh less heavily upon it. If Britain is to maintain and expand the welfare state, argues Macmillan, it must do the same--and it will do so only if it is recognized that this period calls for emphasis on opportunity. A Britain that will realize that will drive ahead with new confidence in itself. It will be a better partner.

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