Finally, we come to a factor of great importance in molding British attitudes toward the Soviet Union. This is the large group of teachers, writers, editors, movie-directors, and radio and television workers who have been powerfully influenced either by Communism or by the results of a Communist society in the Soviet Union. Proportionately, this group is larger than its counterpart in the United States. It has never been drastically reduced in numbers by the pressure of public opinion. Outside of the "sensitive" departments of government, no great stigma is attached to membership in the Communist Party in Britain. Politically, Britain is deeply and justly concerned with the liberties of the subject. Consequently, any discrimination by the government against Communists evokes the wrath of politicians and public bodies unconnected with Communism. This is true even when the government seeks to eliminate a known Communist from a "sensitive" department. The question is not whether Communism threatens Britain. The British know that it does, and they are prepared to fight it. But Britain's place in world society, it is reasoned, would be threatened even more if the liberties of the subject were endangered. The view that only a truly free society is capable of defeating Communism transcends party lines in Britain. It is important to remember that the powerful influence of Communism on this heterogeneous group has affected it in two ways. Such people as Malcolm Muggeridge, the editor of _Punch_, were once sympathetic to Communism and are now among its best-informed and sharpest critics. In Britain, as in the United States, there are apostates who have turned from Communism and who now attack it. But their attacks, though often brilliant, command less attention in Britain than in the United States. This may be because the British never were so excited about the cold war as we were in the United States (after all, they were grappling with pressing economic problems). It may be because the British have scant respect for those who betray causes and then make money out of it. On the whole, however, the group influenced by the Soviet Union exerts its influence to create friendlier relations between Britain and the Soviet Union. In its attitude toward the United States this group is sensitive, critical, and quite often abysmally ignorant. The virtues and defects of the Soviet Union and the United States thus are weighed in public by an influential group that has already been tremendously impressed either by communism as a political creed or by the industrial, military, or diplomatic achievements of the Soviet state. They are receptive to news of Russia and, in many cases, remarkably uncritical. Indeed, they are generally less skeptical and critical in their approach to the Soviet Union than they are to the problems of Germany or the United States. One of their favorite sayings is "Let's try and keep an open mind about Russia."