CONTEMPORARY NONSENSE
143
people met together to form a branch of a neo-fascist party. The characters
were carefully selected to be representative of the various different groups
and interests thought likely to support fascist movements in contemporary
Britain, and at the end of the scene a leader of the party made a speech in
which he brought together all of the disparate and indeed contemporary
interests and fears of his audience, weaving them neatly into the classic
Nazi conspiracy theory of history. On the page, the scene looked as if it had
been written from a chart, which, as it happens, was the case. But on the
stage, I think what happened was that the recognizability of the characters
in that situation-the draughty hall, the empty seats, the feed-back micro–
phone, the echoing silences and agonizing crossed purposes-gave flesh
and substance to my analysis of their actual and subsequent behaviour, and
the hopes and fears of the real people portrayed combined with the hopes
and fears of the real people watching to create a genuinely mutual under–
standing of why they came and why they stayed, which it is the unique
capacity of the theatre to create.
David Edgar, "Viewpoint: politics and per–
formance,"
Times Literary Supplement,
September 10, 1982
He Kept
His
Thoughts to Himself
THE EISENHOWER DIARIES.
More conservative than his politics.
$19.95
advertisement of the Conservative Book Club
The Libyan Model
Ernest van den Haag's proposal for an American Foreign Legion
("An American Foreign Legion?" Fall 1981) is a fine example of the crea–
tivity automatically rejected by decadent polities (and politicians) as
"unthinkable," "unacceptable," and so on . Contrary to the usual reaction
I get when I try this idea on unsuspecting friends, a Foreign Legion would
be squarely in American traditions. It would rescue the tradition of volun–
tarism, always awkward to reconcile with periodic conscription. It would
integrate it with the tradition of immigration, sustained and indeed
strengthened in recent years without much obvious regard for national wel–
fare or interest. And it would provide a refuge for the principle of merit,
currently endangered for domestic political reasons.
Foreign Legions are not as rare as is generally believed. Currently the
