The Slender Margin of Safety

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SPEAKING at a meeting of Young Conservatives in London this fall, I said that the free world was confused and in considerable danger--greater danger, as I believed, than at any time since 1939. Events since that date have reinforced this warning. The West is not doing well in the cold war because fundamentally it is not united. It has a common purpose, but no common plan. The initiative is too often with the Communist powers. It is true that they do not always use it intelligently, but we should not take too much comfort from that. News of failures on the part of Communist governments does not reach their peoples in the form and with the consequences applicable in Western countries. The Communist sapping and mining will go on, and the frontal attack upon us will be repeated.

The margin of safety is now slender. The West has not the defense in depth which it had even in the darkest days of the war. In 1940, when Hitler's forces had swept through Europe past the Channel ports to the Atlantic Ocean, Britain and its Commonwealth partners stood apparently alone. I write "apparently" because westward there was still a mighty power, its faith and its resources unimpaired. Today, the reserves are all engaged, some perhaps not to the best advantage. The free nations have to think and work much more closely together, and do it soon, or the free world will lose out. To be aware of this danger is not to suggest that it need be accepted; but to understand the nature of our peril is a necessary preliminary to meeting it. The purpose of this article is to consider how such a state of affairs has come about and what we can do to mend it.

The death of Stalin marked the end of an era. For a time it seemed as if it would also mark the dawn of a new hope. Stalin's rule had been cautious, powerful and ruthless. Under his direction the alliance of the Second World War became the calculated antagonism of the cold war. When that rule ended, it was uncertain for a while what manner of men would follow him, and momentary optimism was strengthened by events. The most important of these was the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Austria in the summer of 1955, the only concession of real significance made by the Communist powers since the war. It might have heralded other changes, since the stationing of troops in Hungary, for instance, had been accepted by Russia's wartime allies only while Hungary was the corridor to occupied Austria...