The Declining Self-Confidence of the Super-Powers

Abstract

Y, 0OU may remember that when Flora Poste, in Cold Comfort Farm, was summoning up strength to deal with her Aunt Ada Doom, she read again and again in the Higher Common Sense of the Abbe Fausse-Maigre 'the chapter on Preparing the Mind for the Twin Invasion by Prudence and Daring in Dealing with Substances not Included in the Outline'.1 I only wish that, in dealing with our subject, I too could have read the Higher Common Sense of the Abbd Fausse-Maigre. For I feel very much like a Mannerist painter, the traditional frame of whose canvas cannot contain his whole picture. True, all the old elements of reality are still there, and as vigorous as ever. His art is still fundamentally figurative in the old way, but here a form is absurdly elongated, there a familiar face has an unnatural pallor and, above all, the extremities of limbs spill out of the canvas altogether. Many small things, in other words, are quite new, and their importance cannot be estimated. Some of these 'substances not included in the outline' make it much more doubtful whether an imperial Power can any longer mobilise its own people and resources for imperial purposes. Nationalism, certainly, remains very strong indeed, stronger for instance than Communism. We cannot doubt that nations will still fight for their independence and territorial integrity, even for the liberation of 'irredentas ' on their borders. But what about putting our troops in Berlin, Saigon, Prague or Singapore, where nationalism is only indirectly involved? For how long in this permissive and cynical age will any people have the moral self-confidence to do such things? Self-confidence is the key. An imperialist government has to feel a great historic righteousness about what it does, and the citizens of its core nationality must share much of this feeling. There must of course be adequate numbers of people, and an adequately productive economy; but the will to mobilise, and the willingness to be mobilised, are far more important, and since men are moral beings that will rests upon self -righteousness. Now it is obvious that this self-righteousness and this will have fallen in Britain to levels so low that we have become almost quite