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pursue a course of
self-indulgence,
making its single goal the material
ease and comfort of its own citi–
zens. But the interna! moral soft–
ness that will be engendered will in
the long term bring it to disaster.
America did not becom e great
through softness and self-indul–
gence."
Not at all! As her unstinting sac–
ri fice in World Wa r
li
and the
nobl e generosity of the Berlín Air–
lift underlined. Yet the Amer ica of
the 1950s worried historian George
F. Kennan:
" If you ask me whether a coun–
t ry with
no highly deve/oped sense
of national purpose,
with the over–
whelming accent on personal com–
fort, with
insufficient social disci–
p line
even to keep its major indus–
tries functioni ng ... , has good
chances over the long run of com–
peting with a powerful, serious and
disciplined society such as that of
the Soviet Union, 1 rnust say that
the answer is ' no. ' "
In 1953 Britai n's g reat wartime
leader Winston Churc hill , then
serving his people for the second
time as Prime Minister, p.ublished
a bitter warning in his
Tríumph
and Tragedy,
the concl uding vol–
ume on World War 11 . Churchill's
theme for the work: " How the
G reat Democracies Tri umphed ,
and So Were Able to Resume the
Follies Which Had So Nearly Cost
Them Their Life."
Churchill's ch illing bl ast at
Anglo-American lassitude in the
face of mortal danger met little
response from nations then abou t to
embark upon the greatest consum–
er binge in thei r histories. Especial–
ly Britain, which suffered painful
adjustments in the postwar period
(meat was s t ill rationed up to
1953). Ahead was the fren e tic
amuent decade of the 1960s, the
decisive decade
in the postwar his–
tory of America and Britain.
The Aging Lion
" Britain's most valuable asset had
always been the
character
of her
pcople," lamented Paul Enzig in
Britain's Crisis in the Sixties.
"They were as public-spirited as
any nation. Unfortunately today
the behavior that was the exception
(in 1945) has become the rule,
wh ile the attitude that was the rule
June
1985
has now become the rare excep–
tion."
What happened to Britain in the
1960s? In many ways she was reap–
ing the whirlwind , s till paying out
the penalties of the Second World
War. Six war years had badly eroded
family ties
and
discipline.
Before
that , the vaunted British Establish–
ment had stumbled badly in World
War
l.
It
needed the support of the
working classes to lead Britain to
victory in 1945. The s tage was thus
set for radical change.
The Suez debacle of 1956, the
Pro fumo political sex
sca ndal of the early
1960s, the rise of the
"swinging England" men–
tality and "Beatlemania,"
the orientation o f the
Labour governments of
the 1960s, a ll this re–
flected a Britain churning
in transition. The Estab–
lishment-oriented , steely
character that got Britain
through the 1940s and
early 'SOs was being chal–
lenged by the exciting
"classless," affiuent gen–
eration of the ' 60s.
in a North America restless and
di ssatisfied with the fruit s of
affluence- precisely as President
Eisenhower had predicted.
The Hapless Giant
1n 1964 the United States Supreme
Court authorized sweeping Civi l
Rights legislation, inaugurating a
national debate about " r ights" that
has not abated. That same year the
U.S. Congress permitted Presidcnt
Lyndon Johnson to step up the war
in Vietnam. Two ominous events,
as it turned out. American aut hor
As millions of young ·
Britons " turned on" and
tuned ou t in the late
1960s, gambling, the pub
and the "telly" seemed to
hypnotize their fathers,
those wbo had held the
fort so admirably against
fascism in 1940.
Watching a nation em–
barked on th e unco n–
scious commitment to liv–
ing "smaller than life,"
column ist Bernard Levin
sadl y prophesied the tur–
bulent 1970s in Britain:
April 2, 1948-Pianes forming first group to carry
emergency food supplies to Berlin residents are
unloaded a t Tempelhof airport after ftight from
Frankfurt in the American occupa tion zone.
German personnel unload the Air Force C-47
Dakotas. Airlift a rose from attempt by Soviet
Union to force the Western powers to abandon
their post-World War 11 rights in West Berlin.
"She rose again and
again to her feet, only to fall as
often as she rose. The consequence
was that she became dazed, and
frequently, on rising began to go
backwards under the impression
that she was going fo rwards; in
time things grew even worse, and
she began to lose all sense of which
was which."
But the sex, drugs and vulgarity
that began to waft across the Atlan–
tic on wings of song ("We were the
Trojan horse," said Beatle George
Harrison) found a ready response
J ames Michener, as William Man–
chester later recorded in
The Glory
and the Dream,
had perceptively
foreseen that the American style of
war in the postwar period would
soon have fatal consequences:
"Starting with the Korean War
in 1950," he wrote, "our nation
developed a
seductive
and
immora/
doctrine
a bou t wh ich 1 ha ve
become increasingly dubious. The
mis taken doctrine was this: that we
could wage with our left hand a war
in which a few men chosen at ran-
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