There will be other differences in foreign policy between the two countries, for differences are inevitable in the relationship between two parliamentary democracies. Indeed, they are a strength. It is because the British are an independent, outspoken, hard-headed people that they are good allies. It is because British governments think for themselves and enjoy the services of an experienced, incorruptible, intelligent civil service that their support is welcome and necessary in the contest with the East. And we know--at least, we should know--that if the worst comes the British are stout fighters, ready, once every effort to preserve peace has failed, to fight with all they have and are. I carry with me as a talisman the memory of a conversation at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe, during the darkest days of the war in Korea. An American general officer, a man of the highest professional qualifications, suggested to a small, intimate group that, with more and more American power diverted to the Far East, the Russians might jump in Europe. "It will be pretty tough for you people," he told a British lieutenant colonel, an amiable, rather rakish character. "They'll offer you a chance of getting out. If you don't take it, they'll tell you they'll blow London and half a dozen other cities off the map. They'll probably tell the French the same sort of thing. What do you think your people will do?" "What do you think we'll do?" the lieutenant colonel answered. "We'll tell them to go to hell." Beneath the political bickering, the unrelenting self-criticism, the pessimism there exists now, as there did in 1940, a fiery spirit. The British will never be vassals. Nor will they ever be easy allies. But if this alliance fails, there is little left on which an enduring peace can be built. [Illustration] X. _The British Economy and Its Problems_ _Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery._ CHARLES DICKENS _It would be madness to let the purposes or the methods of private enterprise set the habits of the age of atomic energy._ HAROLD LASKI [Illustration] We must now take a closer look at the British economy as it is today. This is a big subject, one well worth a long book. It is my purpose in this informal estimate of our ally to sketch the fundamentals of the present economic situation and to deal briefly with some of the factors in it. Earlier we have encountered the Trades Union Congress and the emergence of a new working class. We have seen that Britain is changing behind the mask of tradition. In this chapter we will see that the change in the national economy is progressing perhaps even more rapidly than the change in the structure of society and politics. And, of course, all three changes are closely related and interdependent.