The national attitude ranges from tolerance to affection. I do not believe, however, that the British respect the French as they do the Germans or the Russians. The mutiny in the French Army in 1917, the catastrophe of 1940, the Anglophobia of the Vichy government ended, probably permanently, popular British reliance on France as a powerful ally in world affairs. When the Suez crisis arose in 1956 and the governments of Sir Anthony Eden and Guy Mollet hastened to reinvigorate the alliance, their efforts awoke little response in Britain. "Now that we're in this thing, we have to go on and win it," a friend said. "But think of being in it with the French, especially these French--Mollet, Pineau, and Bouges-Manoury." He made a sound more customary in Ebbets Field than in a London club. The British are amused by the French (the French, of course, are even more amused by the British). Sometimes it seems that every Englishman of a certain age and financial position has his own "secret" village where the Hotel de la Poste provides a good dinner for five hundred francs. Britons have great knowledge and affection for France born of contact in two wars, but they do not rely on the French. For other reasons the British hesitate to rely on the Germans. Two generations of Britons have learned that the Germans are a tough, resolute, and courageous people, characteristics admired in Britain. But the British groups devoted to furthering friendship between the two peoples are fighting a losing battle. There is among all classes in Britain an underlying distaste for the Germans. This feeling is not often expressed, but it is there, as it is in most countries in Western Europe. The attitude is a factor in the relationship between Western Europe and the key question facing the continent as a whole: Germany's ultimate reunification. The Germans, a singularly obtuse people in judging the reasons for foreign attitudes toward Germany, are inclined to believe that British mistrust is tied to the two world wars and the decline of British power. This is inaccurate. British mistrust and dislike of Germany have political rather than military roots. Both the Kaiser's imperialism of 1914 and Nazi imperialism in 1939 were seen not as overwhelming threats to Britain alone but as dangers to the democratic system of the West under which she had flourished. The horrors of the concentration camps, the solemn lunacies of Hitler and his court, the death of personal and political liberty--all these were factors more important than military posturing. Finally, the British do not consider the Germans politically stable, and they are suspicious--perhaps too much so--of German ambitions and intentions.