For a man who vigorously opposes all kinds of tyranny, Bevan has been rather slow to criticize the tyranny of the secret police in the Soviet Union or the ruthless methods of those Communists who have won control of some British unions. There is in Bevan, as in all successful politicians--Roosevelt and Churchill are the best-known examples in our day--a streak of toughness verging on cruelty. This may explain his apparent tolerance of some of the excesses of totalitarian nations. Again, as some of his followers explain, Nye expects everyone to realize that such tyrannies are culpable and to understand him well enough to know that he would never give them the slightest support. Or, they suggest, Bevan takes such a comprehensive view of world affairs and has such a glittering vision of man's goals that he has no time to concentrate on minor atrocities. Perhaps, but the excuse is not good enough. The great leaders of Western democracy have been those who never lost the capacity for anger and action against tyranny whether it was exercised by a police sergeant or by a dictator. Bevan has made a career of leading the extreme left wing in British politics since 1945. He is sixty this year. If he is to attain power, he must do so soon. How great is his following? What forces does he represent? The most vocal of the Bevanites are those in the constituency labor parties. If you wish to taste the old evangelical flavor of socialism, you will find it among them. Here are the angry young men in flannel shirts, red ties, and tweed jackets, the stoutish young women whose hair is never quite right and who wear heavy glasses. They are eternally upset about something; they don't think any government, Labor or Conservative, moves fast enough. They pronounce the word "comrades," with which laborites start all their speeches to their own associates, as though they meant it. The majority are strongly impressed by what has happened--or, rather, by what they have been told has happened--in Russia. You can get more misinformation about the Soviet Union in a half-hour of their conversation than from a dozen Soviet propaganda publications. For in their case the Russian propaganda has been adulterated with their own wishes and dreams. Some of them have been members of the Communist Party in Britain. Others have flirted with it. My own impression is that most of them rejected the discipline of the Communists and that, although they do not want to be Communists, they have no objection to working with the Communist Party to attain their ends. They know very little about the history of the Social Democrats in Eastern Europe who thought in 1945 that they too could work with the Communists.