LETTER FROM ENGLAND
179
Russians. The other development is the growth of anti-American feeling,
together with increased .American control over British policy. The popular
attitude towards America has I believe changed in the last few months,
and I will return to this in a moment. Meanwhile the growing suspicion
that we may all have underrated the strength of Capitalism and that the
Right may, after all, be able to win the war off its own bat without
resorting to any radical change, is very depressing to anyone who thinks.
Cynicism about "after the war" is widespread, and the "we're all in it
together" feeling of 1940 has faded away. The great political topic of
the
last few weeks has been the Beveridge report on Social Security.
People seem to feel that this very moderate measure of reform is almost
too good to be true. Except for the tiny interested minority, everyone
is
pro-Beveridge-including leftwing papers which a few years ago would
have denounced such a scheme as semi-fascist-and at the same time no
one believes that Beveridge's plan will actually be adopted. The usual
opinion is that "they"
(~he
Government) will make a pretence of accept·
ing the Beveridge Report and then simply let it drop. The sense of
impotence seems to be growing and is reflected in the lower and lower
voting figures at by-elections. The last public demonstrations of · any
magnitude were those demanding a Second Front in the late summer.
No demonstrations against the Darlan deal, though disapproval of it
was
almost general; nor over the India business, though, again, popular
feeling is pro-Congress. The extreme Left still tends to be defeatist,
except as regards the Russian front, and at each stage of the African
campaign its press has clung almost desperately to a pessimistic inter·
pretation of events. I think it is worth noting that the military experts
favoured by the Left are all of them defeatist, and haven't suffered in
reputation when their gloomy prophecies are falsified, any more than
the cheery optimists favoured by the Right. However, this comes partly
from jealousy and "opposition mentality": few people now really believe
in a German victory. As to the real moral of the last three years-that
the Right has more guts and ability than the Left-no one will face
up
to it.
Now a word about Anglo-American relations. In an earlier letter
I tried to indicate very briefly the various currents of pro· and anti·
American feeling in this country. Since then there has been an obvious
growth of animosity against America, and this now extends to people
who were previously pro-American, such as the literary intelligentsia.
It
is
important to realise that for about fifteen years Britain has differed
from most countries in having no nationalist intelligentsia worth speaking
of. The average English intellectual is anti-British, and though chiefly
worshipping the USSR has also tended to look on America as being not
only more efficient and up-to-date than Britain, but more genuinely demo·
eratic. During the period 1935-9 the Left intelligentsia were taken in to
a llll'Jirising extent by the "anti-fascist" antics in which so many Ameri·
CID
newspapers indulged. There was also a tendency to crouch cui·
