The second attitude is a growing determination to face up to the national danger. Successive governments have attempted to drive home the lesson that Britain's economic peril is very real and that it is not a transient matter; that exports and dollar balances and internal consumption will be matters of great importance for years to come. As the memories of pre-war Britain fade, and as a new generation that has never experienced the national economic security of imperial Britain gains power, awareness of the nation's real problems should take hold. And because the British are a sensible people bountifully endowed with courage and resource, they should be able to meet and defeat the problems. But at the moment the percentage of those who understand the national position is too small. They must eternally contend against two psychological factors in working-class opinion which we have already encountered. One is the political lethargy of the new industrial worker who, after centuries of shameful treatment, has emerged into the sunlight of full employment, adequate housing, high wages, strong industrial organization, political representation, amusements, clothes and food that for decades have been out of the reach of Britain's masses. This new working class has shown itself capable of great self-sacrifice on behalf of its class interests and, let us never forget, on behalf of its country in the last fifty years. But now, having reached the home of its dreams, it has hung a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the gate. Apparently it has done with sacrifice and realism. To a certain extent this attitude is encouraged by the big national newspapers. The emphasis on sport, crime, the royal family, and the trivia of international affairs leaves inadequate space for the grim realities of the long politico-economic struggle with Russia, and the new working class remains uninformed about its real problems. A Prime Minister or a Chancellor of the Exchequer may expound the realities of the national position in a speech, but if people are not interested enough to listen or to read, what good does it do? Such a state of mind in an important section of the populace seriously impedes national progress. When dollar contracts are lost because of union squabbles there is something radically wrong with the leadership exercised by the trade unions. Would the contracts be lost, one wonders, if the union leaders had given their followers a clear explanation of the importance of such contracts not only to one factory in one industry but to the entire nation? Admittedly, there are plenty of others in Britain who do not understand the importance of the economic situation or the changes that have taken place. But the attitude of a retired colonel in Bedford or a stout matron in Wimbledon is not so important to the nation's welfare as that of the members of the working class.