The Strange British Mood

In London last week an earsplitting verbal thunderstorm played about the grey but unbowed head of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, first Viscount of El Alamein. Monty had decided to fly off to Moscow to see Khrushchev. In almost unanimous disapproval, the British press made it plain that it thought Monty would somehow foul up the summit conference. "The idea of you having a heart-to-heart talk with Khrushchev gives us the collywobbles," cried the Laborite Daily Herald. The Daily Sketch had some advice "to an old and meddling soldier: FADE AWAY." In just as unseasonably warm tones, the British press has been lecturing Adenauer, De Gaulle or any U.S. Senator who has anything harsh to say about Russia, as if to speak firmly were to jeopardize the chances of negotiation and peace. London's popular press presents the Berlin crisis not as a struggle between Russia and the West, but between a peace-loving Macmillan and an obstinate Eisenhower (whom former Punch Editor Malcolm Muggeridge last week described as the "poor, meandering old President") and inflexible old men in France and Germany. Fortnight ago, when NATO's General Lauris Norstad temperately pointed out the dangers to the West of military disengagement in Central Europe, London's pro-Labor Daily Mirror exploded with a frontpage blast headlined MEDDLING AMERICAN GENERALS. Bawled the Mirror: "Marshal Stalin (who was not even a real general) died in 1953. Now there is a new menace --the loudmouthed American generals."

Britain, in the spring of 1959, is in a strange mood. Some critics too hurriedly raised the old cry of appeasement, leading the Spectator to retort waspishly: "For the Germans, of all people, to accuse Mr. Macmillan of wanting to do another 'Munich' is a little indelicate." Munich is obviously not the right word. But Britain--public, press and government--is plainly at odds with its allies. It lives on greater hopes and conjures up greater fears.

An Excess of Fears. In Washington last month, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan startled a group of U.S. Senators by declaring: "I cannot go to the Queen and ask for approval of the evacuation of millions, many of them children, to far places of the Commonwealth until I have exhausted every other possibility."

For the Englishman of the Nuclear Age, convinced that Britain is "a one-shot target," war is so fearful a prospect that it is unthinkable. "There have been a good number of plans for what we should do in an atomic war," says a former British government official. "They all add up to the impossibility of engaging in one."

To most Englishmen, Berlin is a piece of real estate inhabited by people whom it will take the British a long time to learn to love. When pollsters asked Britons if they would fight for Berlin, a thumping 74% said no (but 54% were convinced that Russia would not fight over Berlin, either). Presumably no German, Frenchman or American is any more eager than the Briton to be annihilated, but others were not making so much of the dangers, as justification for a need to reach agreements with Khrushchev.

An Excess of Hopes. At the time of Khrushchev's toothache snub of Harold Macmillan (TIME, March 9), worried British officials made it plain in press briefings that Khrushchev was not interested at all in German reunification, and barely curious about British talk of reducing troop strength in Europe. But ever since then, Harold Macmillan has floated one trial balloon after another about what arms bargains might be struck with the Russians. And when these notions have been shot down by Britain's partners, much of the British press has reacted as if Macmillan and Khrushchev had a workable peace formula that Britain's allies were systematically sabotaging.

After his Moscow trip, Macmillan first talked of "disengagement,"' then softened this to the possibility of a "thinning out" of troops, then of a "freeze" at existing levels, and currently the fashionable word is a "ceiling" on troop strengths. But rather than having specific proposals, Macmillan seems simply eager to have something to talk about, and to be convinced that talking is all to the good. He has even begun to speak of a "re-occurring summit''--a kind of periodically assembled global board of directors.

Macmillan is speaking simple truth when he angrily denies he is an appeaser, and insists that he has no intention of surrendering vital Western positions to Russia. But he is readier than others to meet Khrushchev's demand for a de facto recognition of Communist East Germany, provided that West Berlin's freedom is preserved. And the fact remains that Britain, more than any other Western power, is convinced that its hopes for the future rest on early termination of the cold war.

An Excess of Orders. Stripped of the bulk of its empire, economically and physically sapped by two wars, Britain looks for a way out of its troubles, and finds less room than most for maneuver. As its new budget shows (see below), Britain is more prosperous than at any other time since World War II. Never have more people owned their own homes; there are waiting lists for cars, tailors cannot get enough cutters to meet the tremendous demand for new suits, bookings for expensive continental holidays are the highest ever. Only in the past four years have the British enjoyed the kind of widely distributed prosperity that the U.S. has enjoyed for 15, and after ration-book austerity, the heady delights of TV sets, washers and new cars are an intoxicating experience.

But British prosperity in 1959 is still a near thing, maintained only by rigid economic controls, and it could be destroyed at almost any moment by a shift in international trade patterns. To the hard-pressed British taxpayer, the $4.2 billion a year spent on defense represents capital that, if the cold war ended, Britain could devote to the investment on which its economic future depends.

All these factors helped to explain Britain's singular preoccupation last week with the need, and the expectancy, of bringing off fruitful negotiations at the summit. Other NATO partners were prepared to talk at the summit, but -- thanks largely to Khrushchev's retreat from his original "either or" ultimatum -- were in no mood to yield easily. No longer so fearful that a real ultimatum showdown with Russia was at hand, they felt less need to make a parade of unreal unanimity.

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