London Letter
D
EAR EDITORS,
I am beginning to think that it was a mistake on ·your part to ask
an ex-journalist turned novelist to write this London Letter. A letter
of this kind should be a lively medley of fact and comment, steeped in
local color, spiced with political gossip and literary chit-chat. The pres–
ent letter for example should have for its main theme that storm in a
tea-cup caused by
Keep L eft ,
the pamphlet of the Labor Rebels (Cross–
man, Foot, Mikardo,
et al.)
;
the riposte of the Executive; and some
intelligent comment on the annual Labor Party Conference which, as I
am writing, is assembled at Margate. But, though I have tried, I am
unable to defend myself against a desperate feeling of the futility and
irrelevance of all this; against the conviction that whatever is said at
Margate or at the foreign affairs debate in the Commons, or at UNO
or UNESCO, has damned little to do with the fate of this country and
Europe and the world in general. Once, in the prison of Sevilla, I over–
heard two guards arguing about whether a condemned man who had
fallen ill with appendicitis should
be
given a milk diet or not; that is
the feeling of nightmare against which I am battling in vain.
It
seems that, just as certain antinomies of ,pure reasoning cannot
be solved, there are antinomies of political reasoning equally insoluble.
In the normal course of life moral and political dilemmas occur in such
a diluted state that, helped by habit and convention, we do not even
realize having made an implicit choice. But in the decisive moments in
the history of individuals and nations, the dilemma presents itself in an
undiluted and explicit form. In the case of this country, the dilemma
is of course between East and West, capitalist democracy or state–
capitalist totalitarianism, America and Russia. To you, this is obvious.
To the people in this country, it is not. They still believe that it is pos–
sible to escape the horns. Hence that touch of futility and staleness
about all recent political discussions, whether they refer to Henry
Wallace's visit, or Keep Left, or the sick man of the Kremlin.
To embark on a tirade against British complacency, escapism,
ostrich policy, the philosophy of muddling through, would mean begging
the question. For me, a continental socialist living in England, the choice
is easy and obvious. For you, ditto. There is no need for me to recapitu-
