The present British interest in Communist China is largely commercial. No one entertains the happy belief that the Communist regime can be overthrown--certainly not by Chiang and his aging forces. What the British want from Comrade Mao is more trade. If they get it and trade expands, the process will reflect not a national attraction to Communism but a restatement of the familiar British position that theirs is a trading nation which, in its present circumstances, must find commerce where it can. There would be no great opposition to China's entry into the United Nations. Again, this would not reflect admiration for communism. For many reasons the British doubt the effectiveness of the United Nations. One reason is that a nation of over 500,000,000 people has no representation in the UN's councils. The relationship between the French and the British is a fascinating one. For nearly a thousand years these two peoples have faced each other across the channel. During that period, in Britain at least, there has developed a curious love-hate relationship. By turns loving, exasperated, and enraged, the British think of the French as a man might think of an affectionate but wayward mistress. In June of 1940, when the world between the wars was being shaken to bits, the fall of France shocked and saddened the British as did no other event of those terrible days. I remember that while waiting in the Foreign Office, the morning after my return from France, I saw an elderly official, a man with a brittle, cynical mind, walk down the corridor with tears streaming down his face. There was no recrimination. All he could say was: "Those poor people--God, how they must be suffering!" Few enemy actions during the war distressed the British as much as the decision to attack the French fleet at Oran. Few post-war diplomatic achievements gave them more pleasure than the re-establishment of the old alliance with France. The rise and fall of French governments, the convulsions of French politicians are watched in Britain sometimes with anger and harsh words but never without an underlying sympathy. Perhaps because of the alliance in two world wars or perhaps because France offers such a complete change from their own islands, the British know France very well, far better than they know the United States or some nations of the Commonwealth. This is true of all classes of Britons. The elderly doctor or retired officer of the middle classes will spend his holidays at an obscure resort on the coast of Brittany. Before the war a Continental holiday was one of the indications of middle-class status. Today the Continental holiday is within the financial reach of the working class. The conductor on the bus I sometimes take to work was full of his plans this spring for "me and the missus" to motorcycle from Boulogne to the Riviera. Thousands like him tour France in buses or spend vacations not in Blackpool but in a French seaside resort.