The attacks on British policies and British public figures by Americans disturb those who are concerned with the future of the alliance. I do not think that the effect of these upon the general public is so great as is generally believed. Some newspapers feature reports of these attacks and reply in editorials that are stately or bad-tempered according to the character of the newspaper. The attacks themselves, however, do not produce excessive anger among ordinary people. To repeat, the British are not sensitive to foreign criticism. One reason is that they retain a considerable measure of confidence in the rightness, even the righteousness, of their own position--a characteristic that has galled Americans and others for years. (Incidentally, it is a characteristic they have passed on to the Indians. Mr. Nehru in his high-minded inability to see any point of view but his own is not unlike the late Neville Chamberlain.) A second reason is that this generation of Britons has been insulted by experts. Secretary of State Dulles, Senators McCarthy, Knowland, and Dirksen can say some pretty harsh things. But, compared to what the British have heard about themselves from the late Dr. Göbbels or the various Vilification Editors of _Pravda_ or _Izvestia_, American criticisms are as lemonade is to vodka. Mr. Dulles's unpopularity among the British results not from his taste for inept phrases but from the belief widely held among leading politicians and senior civil servants that on two occasions--the formation of the South East Asia Treaty Organization and the negotiations with Britain after Egypt had seized control of the Suez Canal--he told them one thing and did another. Such beliefs strongly held by responsible people trickle downward. This evaluation of Mr. Dulles's diplomacy is one cause for British worry about the United States's leadership of the free world. The idea that the British do not accept the transfer of power westward across the Atlantic is superficial. They may not like it, but they do accept it. Yet the idea has great vigor. An American editor of the highest intelligence once said: "These people will never get used to our being in the number-one position!" I think they _are_ used to it. But acceptance has not ended their doubts and criticisms about how we exercise the tremendous power that is ours, or their resentment of United States suggestions that Britain is finished and no longer counts in the councils of the West. The British do not mind when Senator Knowland accuses them of feeding military matériel to the Communist Chinese. They do mind when in an international crisis the State Department treats Britain as though she were on the same level as Greece.