LONDON LETTER
139
whether
we
lived ori them; and affirmative answers met with frank
incredulity or a polite smile, implying that I was trying to sell British
propaganda. But there was also a curious resentment, betraying some
half-conscious national guilt complex, compensated for by deprecation
of the priggish virtues and lack of
debrouillardise
of the British. But,
of course, not all Frenchmen have the knack of
debrouillardise-so
much the worse for these. As some public figure said: two thirds of
France live in the jungle, the remaining third in the desert.
I repeat-and the fact is publicly admitted by the more sincere
French politicians-that all this is due not to economic, but to political
and moral causes. Medicine had to recognize that there are functional
disorders without demonstrable structural defects, and social science will
probably arrive at similar conclusions. Meanwhile I submit the matter
for discussion in your symposium on the future of socialism.
To return to this island of Virtue and Gloom: if you reverse the
present condition of France, then you get roughly the idea of the present
condition of England. From the economic point of view, England
emerged from the war practically bankrupt; but at the first postwar
elections it recorded the sanest vote of its history; and public morale,
in accepting continued rationing and austerity, proved almost depress–
ingly sound and firm. (I say depressingly, because this patient acceptance
is not so much based on farsightedness and voluntary sacrifice, as on
resignation, puritan tradition, and lack of
joie de vivre.
The people
in the suburbs and working-class districts accept the bad life because
they have never tasted the good life; there is probably more rejoicing
in heaven about one repentant French black marketeer than about ten
British Ministry of Food Inspectors.) Still, one can't have it both ways,
and the English chose the hard and sound one. In France, the contrast
between rich and poor has become sharply accentuated since the war;
here nobody starves and nobody gets a decent steak. This is meant
literally: even in London's top luxury restaurants food is much poorer,
both in quality and quantity, than in the average French bistro. The
black market here is insignificant, and though scarce goods are kept
under the counter for old customers, they are sold at regulation price
and it is quite impossible for instance to buy a packet of cigarettes by
offering more-while in France any amount can be had by paying
four times the official price.
In short, the socialist era in Britain started by a general leveling
down of the living standard-precisely as the stupidest critics of socialist
theory had predicted. Needless to say that this is not the Government's
fault, but the aftermath of war and of decades of capitalist misman–
agement (of the coal mines for instance). Needless to say, too, that
this is cold comfort in an English winter marked by coal cuts, gas cuts,
ration cuts, cigarette shortage, beer shortage, and by the dull, monoto-
