Parenthetically, it might be remembered that when the British Indian army, which served with the British Army in India, existed, and when the Royal Navy had the strength and facilities to take it where it was needed, there was peace between Suez and Singapore. The British are proud rather than defensive about their record in India. Even the anti-colonialists of the Labor Party note that free India and Pakistan operate under British political and legal forms. Most of them, even those who knew the country well, regarded withdrawal as inevitable after World War II. But it will take more proof than Mr. Nehru is prepared to offer to convince many Britons with roots in India that the people are happier, that justice is universal, that corruption is declining. This attitude galls the Indians and their friends, who never liked the British much. But in the great days of empire the British didn't care about being liked. This is a significant difference between the American and British approaches to responsibility and leadership in international affairs. The American visitor abroad worries about whether he and his country are liked by the French or the Egyptians or the Indonesians. The Briton, when the Empire's sun was at the zenith, never gave a damn. What he wanted was respect, which he regarded as about as much as a representative of a powerful nation could win from the nationals of a less powerful nation under economic, political, or military obligation. "We ran that district with three officials, some Indian civil servants, the police, and their white officers, and we ran it damned well," an official recalled. "There were some troops up the line, but we never needed them. When we made a decision or gave a judgment, we adhered to it. We made no distinction between Moslem and Hindu. There was justice and peace. No, of course they weren't free. They weren't ready to govern themselves. And d'you think they'd have traded those conditions for freedom and communal rioting?" I asked the official the population of the district. "Three, three and a half million," he said. The loss of India and Burma under the first Socialist administration and the consequent decline of British power thus constituted a severe psychological shock to the middle class that had ruled Britain during the last century of British administration in India. Later we shall see the difference it made in Britain's international position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Here we are concerned with the effect upon British society at home.