Out of these Britains have come the machines and the men who have kept the country in business and twice helped to smash the military power of Germany. The steel plants of South Wales, the engineering factories of Birmingham, the banks of London, the shipyards of the Clyde--these are the real modern Britain. They are not so attractive as the old villages sleeping in the afternoon sun. But from the standpoint of Britain, and from that of the United States as well, they are much more satisfying and reassuring than Merrie England. For this is the Great Britain that is not satisfied with the past or the present, that dreams great and necessary dreams of the industrial uses of atomic energy, that strives to expand the three great groups of industry: metals and metal-using, textiles, and chemicals. It is the combination of this Britain and the character of the old England that provides a basis for faith. Is Britain's long and glorious story nearly done? Will the political, technological, and social changes of the first half of the twentieth century--changes in which Britain often pioneered--combine to eliminate Britain as a world power? Is the country's future to be a gradual and comfortable decline into the position of a satellite in an Atlantic system dominated by the United States and Canada? Or will Britain withdraw slowly, under force of circumstance, into the unambitious neutrality of Sweden? These are questions that Britons who care about their country must ask themselves. But because of the confidence that is still so strong in British character, such questions are seldom debated openly. In the spring of 1956, when the leaders of the government and of industry were only too gloomily aware of the magnitude of the problems facing the country in the Middle East, in competitive exporting, in gold and dollar reserves, the British Broadcasting Corporation began a television series, "We, the British," with an inquiry: "Are we in a decline?" No one was greatly excited. This seeming obliviousness to harsh facts, this innate confidence, is one of the most arresting features of the national character. We will encounter it often in this book as we seek answers to the questions about Britain's future. Consideration of Britain in the world today, and especially of her relation to the United States and to the Soviet Union, must take into account the historical fact that the country's present situation is not altogether novel to Britons. For Americans it is unusual, and hence disturbing, to live in the same world with a hostile state--the Soviet Union--that is larger and more populous than their own country. Enmity has burst upon us suddenly in the past. We have been told by generations of immigrants that the whole world loved and admired us. It has taken Americans some time to make the psychological adjustment to the position of world power.