THE NATIONS: Much That Is Enviable

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Great empires, like old soldiers, never die; they just fade away. Britain's legacy, like Rome's, will cling for centuries to history's pages, shaping men and events. Yet to all empires comes a day of which it can be said: "At this point the scepter had passed to other hands." That day came last week to Britain.

Earth to Earth. Victory in two desperate wars had bled Britain white. For years both the wise and the merely smart had been pointing to signs of Britain's decline. The loosening bonds of empire, the "austerity" (that dignified synonym for poverty) ; the defensive tension in foreign policy were old symptoms of what was happening. But it took the coal crisis (see FOREIGN NEWS) to bring home to the world the fact that decline had reached the Empire's heart.

Britain's power had grown out of the coal seams of Wales and Yorkshire and Durham. In the same seams her power was exhausted. A British miner produced less than a third as much as a U.S. miner. The reasons why he would not greatly improve his rate of productivity were partly technical and geological; more importantly, they were social and political. The British miner and his fellow, the factory worker (and their bosses), were not looking ahead with much hope. The Government, on which workers and bosses had leaned more & more heavily in recent decades, was dedicated to planning. But because it would not or could not enforce its plans upon labor (a la Moscow), the planning was unreal.

Britain's "manpower shortage" was another way of saying that Britain's democratic socialism had found no way of getting men to work where they did not want to work, or. of acquiring new and better machines to do their work for them. The "manpower shortage" was also a reflection of the cruel overlap between the old responsibilities of empire and the newly limited capabilities of an impoverished country. In the week of the coal crisis, Britain's Government decided to maintain its armed forces at over a million men. Many (including the Communists) had urged Britain to abandon her commitments in Greece, Palestine and elsewhere, and to cut her Army to the bone. The Times of London replied: "A nation which lives by overseas trade and which, however grievous its present distress, yet possesses and controls much that is enviable cannot afford remedies of this kind."

To Newcastle. Americans had smugly recognized that Britain's decline must be accompanied by U.S. political expansion into some areas; but this expansion had been visualized in the painless future. The coal crisis in Britain brought U.S. responsibility much nearer for a host of immediate world problems. President Truman offered to send Britain coal; Attlee declined coals for Newcastle, giving a reason that reminded Americans of what it means to have worldwide responsibility. Attlee said continental Europe needed the U.S. coal more than Britain.

That kind of long-range thinking lay behind the familiar symbol of British world leadership—the Houses of Parliament with the coal barges coming up the Thames (see cut). The old landmark of worldwide organization was fading. Was the U.S. ready to take its place?