AN ANATOMY OF NEUTRALISM

The attack on U.S. foreign policy by Britain's Tom Driberg, Bevanite Socialist member of Parliament (TIME, Oct. 12), shocked some of Driberg's fellow countrymen as much as it did the Americans for whom it was intended. Malcolm Muggeridge is a onetime leftist turned conservative, a former British newspaper correspondent in Moscow (1932-33) and Washington (1946-48), and currently the highly articulate editor of Punch. Muggeridge's answer to Driberg:

IT would be most unfortunate if Americans were to believe that the views set forth by Mr. Tom Driberg regarding U.S. policy represented, as such, any large body of opinion in this country. If, however, he can scarcely be regarded as in any sense a representative person, the attitude of mind he conveys is decidedly widespread throughout Western Europe. This attitude of mind is usually described as neutralism. It derives from a mixture of wishful thinking, impatience with American diplomatic gaucherie and envy of America's present wealth and power, and sheer inertia following upon four decades of tumultuous upheaval.

The neutralist's case begins with a plausible but, in fact, totally fallacious appreciation of the present world situation, which he presents as two ferocious giants, each of them power drunk, locked in mortal combat. Is it not, then, he asks, the path of caution, and even of benignity, to stand apart from the conflict rather than getting dragged in on one side or the other? Instead of making a costly and perhaps futile contribution to a Western defensive system through NATO, why not disengage, and be ready when a suitable moment arises to act as mediator? It is very much the same sort of attitude as Western European Communists and fellow travelers adopted in 1939, after the conclusion of the Nazi-Soviet pact. There was no point, they argued then, in getting involved in an "imperialist" war. Better stand aside, and in due course social revolution would undo Hitler's conquests. Nor, it is worth recalling, was it the inherent fatuity of this position which led them to change their attitude, but only the march of the Wehrmacht into Russia.

A Fresh Start? What is the point, the neutralist asks, of going into past history--who began the trouble in this place or in that? What matters is the future. Why not, then, make a fresh start under the auspices, in Asia, say, of Mr. Nehru, who has demonstrated his anti-Communism at home by adopting harsh police measures against local Communists, and, at the same time, has managed to keep on good terms with Mao Tse-tung? And in Europe who more fitting than Sir Winston Churchill to meet Malenkov, as he has proposed, and hammer out a modus vivendi between the Communist and non-Communist worlds? This specious reasoning presupposes that the American and Russian systems can be roughly equated. If the political police are vested with undue authority in Russia, so is Senator McCarthy and the FBI in America; if Soviet corrective labor camps are reprehensible, so is discriminatory legislation against Negroes in the Southern states. And so on.

Finally, to circumvent the argument that seeking to appease Malenkov cannot but have the same disastrous consequences as a like effort to appease Hitler had, it is pointed out that, whatever may be thought of Soviet practice, the theory on which it is based is authentically "progressive," and even, in a manner of speaking, "Christian," in the sense that Marxism may be regarded as a kind of "Christian heresy." This ludicrous and wicked proposition was first propounded by Professor Arnold Toynbee, and, not surprisingly, was eagerly taken up by the more earnest and moralistic among Soviet apologists. Future historians are likely to note as an ironical circumstance of this strange time that formulas for justifying some of its most odious and most cruel aspects were provided, more often than not, by minds which prided themselves upon their liberalism and humanity.

A Wrong Reason? To some extent, American policy must be held responsible for the widespread proneness to neutralism on this side of the Atlantic, but not because, as Driberg labors to demonstrate, American policy is brutal and power-seeking; rather the reverse--because it is sentimental and imprecise, because it so often seeks to evade the realities of power in favor of the abstractions of democratic theory. Thus, for instance, if it is assumed that the objectives of American policy are wholly altruistic, it follows that non-Americans who participate in implementing this policy must be wholly virtuous--which, as Euclid says, is absurd. Moreover, since it is the easiest thing in the world to demonstrate that characters like Chiang Kaishek, Syngman Rhee and Bao Dai are, in fact, far from being models of political rectitude, American policy as a whole can readily be discredited with them. How many of the follies or misfortunes of this age are attributable to the practice (to which the "scientific" or materialist mind is particularly prone) of extorting a moral sanction for perfectly legitimate opportunistic practices and associations? It is not entirely fanciful to regard sex as being to the individual what power is to the collectivity. We are all familiar with the miseries and abnormalities of those who try to escape from the harsh realities of the flesh into fantasies of idealized love. Similar miseries and abnormalities are liable to result from a like attempt to escape from the harsh realities of power into fantasies of political idealism.

Bunyan's Way. The imperfection of the instrument does not detract from the nobility of the aim provided its imperfection is recognized and admitted. Many who went on the Crusades were actuated by base motives or were led into ignoble behavior, but the Crusades still remained a noble enterprise. It is the same today. Because Chiang was corrupt, it does not necessarily follow that he must not now be supported; because Rhee can behave like a villain, it does not follow that none of us who were associated with the defense of South Korea may hold up our heads until he has been deposed. If I accept, as millions of other Western Europeans do, that America is destined to be the mainstay of freedom in this null century world, it does not follow that American institutions are perfect, that Americans are invariably well behaved, or that the American way of life is flawless. It only means that in one of the most terrible conflicts in human history, I have chosen my side, as all will have to choose sooner or later, and propose to stick by the side I have chosen through thick & thin, hoping to have sufficient courage hot to lose heart, sufficient sense not to allow myself to be confused or deflected from this purpose, and sufficient faith in the civilization to which I belong, and in the religion on which that civilization is based, to follow Bunyan's advice and endure the hazards and humiliations of the way because of the worth of the destination.

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