Such assurances made little headway. Many Britons, as I have said, discerned in the Senator a threat to the basic liberties of the American people and hence to the health of the alliance. Many more were profoundly ignorant of the real situation in the United States largely because they are profoundly ignorant of the American system of government and how it works. There was, finally, the extreme sensitivity of the British working class to anything that its members consider to be capitalist reactionary action. In Britain the memories of the fight against an organized and powerful reactionary group for the rights of labor are vivid. As we have seen, they are nourished by the speeches of Labor propagandists and politicians. There is also a strong flavor of internationalism within the Labor movement. Given these factors, it was easy enough for many thousands of working-class people to believe that McCarthy represented the same forces they had seen arise in Italy, Germany, and Spain to impoverish labor and smash the power of the unions. This group paid little attention to--if, indeed, it even heard--the arguments of Americans and Britons that, while McCarthy was deplorable, some measures had to be taken against Communist espionage in the United States. Such arguments were drowned in the uproar raised by the left wing in Britain over the plight of some poor devil of a schoolteacher who had been a member of the Communist Party for a few months fifteen years ago and who now was being put through the wringer by Senator McCarthy and his fellow primitives. Finally, the British public as a whole--and particularly the British working class--was not so aroused emotionally by the cold war as Americans were, and there was far less hatred and fear of the Soviet Union. American critics of Britain have suggested that if the United Kingdom had been as deeply involved militarily in Korea as the United States was, this attitude toward the Communist bloc would have hardened. I doubt it. The British are accustomed to casualties from wars in far-off places. They do get angry and excited about casualties among their troops from terrorism. The hanging of two British noncommissioned officers by Jewish terrorists in Palestine during the troubles there produced more public bitterness and animosity than did the grievous casualties suffered by the Gloucestershire Regiment in its long, valiant stand against the Chinese in Korea.