In 1945 the British Labour Party scored its greatest electoral victory. With 393 members returned to the House of Commons it outnumbered the Conservatives by more than two to one, and possessed a majority of 146 over all opposition parties combined. For the first time in its history it could proceed, without fear of defeat in the House, to implement the socialist program whose realization was its primary objective. The series of reforms which Labour enacted during the next six years, including the step-by-step nationalization of 20 percent of British industry and the creation of the National Health Service, marked a sharp departure from the policies of the Conservative-dominated governments of the interwar period. Despite the interventionist policies of Churchill's Coalition Government during World War II, it cannot be supposed that the Conservatives, had they retained power in 1945, would have carried out such extensive social and economic reforms as Labour did. Thus 1945-5 1 generally is considered the period when the Labour Party most clearly put its imprint on British society. Foreign policy, however, was different. Here, with the primary exception of India, which was granted independence in 1947, the government headed by Clement Attlee pursued a course similar to that of the Coalition Government during the war, one which might very likely have been followed in its essentials by the Conservatives. On this point historians are nearly unanimous: Ernest Bevin, Labour's Foreign Secretary, did not believe that substantial agreement with Russia about the shape of the postwar world was possible. His primary goal, shared by most Conservatives, was to convince the Americans that they must step into the power vacuum in Europe and elsewhere created by Britain's declining strength before the Russians did. In this effort Bevin succeeded. The British and American zones in Germany were combined, according to his prescription. Greek