The gradual reduction of the Senator's importance and power pleased the British. This was not because he had been a good deal less than friendly in his comments about them--they are not markedly sensitive to foreign criticism. The reason was that many Britons saw in the methods of Senator McCarthy and some of his associates a threat to the heritage of individual liberty and equal justice under the law and, ultimately, to the democratic government that is the common ground on which the alliance is based. The scars McCarthyism left on British popular opinion are deep. Months after the Senator's star had faded, many people were only too ready to believe that terror still reigned in the United States and to discount the presence of a large body of moderate opinion that strongly disapproved of extremism either of the left or of the right. McCarthyism, of course, was a godsend to the British communists in their efforts to turn the working class and the intellectuals against the United States. They exploited his methods and his speeches to frighten those who doubted the strength of American democracy. Their propaganda was directed chiefly at the industrial workers, whose good will the United States needs in Britain and, indeed, everywhere in the world. This, said the Communists, is fascism. This, they said, is what we warned you would happen in the United States. Look, they said, here's an elderly general as President and McCarthy running the country. Doesn't it remind you of Hindenburg and Hitler? they asked. What freedom would you have, they inquired, in a country where McCarthy considers socialists the same as communists? How long would your trade-union organization last? This may sound absurd to Americans, but it was dreadfully important, and it can become dreadfully important again. Senator McCarthy did the good name of the United States more harm in Britain than anyone else in this century. McCarthy did not have many friends in Britain. But it is symptomatic of the importance attached to good relations between the two countries by Britons that at the height of the anti-McCarthy uproar some Englishmen attempted to point out that after all there were other forces in the United States and that the wild pictures of fascism rampant in Washington painted by left-wing journalists were, to put it mildly, slightly exaggerated.