72
DIANA TRILLING
Christine Keeler had on one occasion been asked to obtain military
information for the Russians from Britain's Minister of War. But
there was never the slightest evidence that Profumo had betrayed
his office or country, or even been tempted to. All the Labour party
had against the Macmillan government in the scandal was that
Profumo had been in a position to divulge his secrets to the enemy
had he wished to, and that the Prime Minister had perhaps failed
properly to guard against this potential security risk. But even
Profumo's vulnerability might well have been assessed differently
than it was; for does sexual intimacy in our times, when we are so
busy bemoaning our sexual casualness, really denote so drastic a
loss of self-control that it risks a man's ability to hold on to top–
secret information? Surely the view of sexual passion that was
implicit in the Labour party's fear for British security suggests not
our own day but the day of the silent film, when a man in the
throes of desire was a man crazed by lust, ready to give or tell
all
to sate his desperate appetite.
Here, again, Mr. Wilson must dimly have perceived the ana–
chronism in which he had become entrapped: he directed his fire
against Macmillan's careless handling of security rather than against
the risks to which Profumo had exposed himself. But without ex–
empting Macmillan from the charge of inadequate caution in security
matters, we can yet find much to marvel at in the Labour party's
anxiety about this aspect of the national interest. We are moved
to ask when it became so vital a concern of Mr. Wilson to secure us
against Communism and to caution us in our dealings with Com–
munists? Would the party and persons who were so alarmed about
Profumo's &haring a mistress with a Russian officer now be prepared
to say exactly where they draw the line on fraternization with Com–
munists? Should the security services rouse up the Prime Minister
as soon as two men, an Englishman and a Russian, even an English
public official and a Russian diplomat, sit down to bridge together?
Or should they wait until it is not cards but cocktails that make
the social occasion? Or is the national interest perhaps secure so
long as friendliness stops short of the bedroom? From America, and
in dull logic, we might even inquire whether the Profumo case doesn't
force the enlightened English who assumed that anyone singled out
by McCarthy was naturally blameless to make their own equation,
