GREAT BRITAIN: The Art of the Practical

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No less important to Britain's future, however, are such social goals as the Tory program to step up slum clearance and rehouse a million more Britons by 1965. For Harold Macmillan, such programs are both ethical and practical imperatives. As he sees it, the guiding principle of Tory democracy must be that laid down by his favorite predecessor, Benjamin Disraeli: "To elevate the condition of the people." It is by elevating the condition of the people that Macmillan has led the British electorate steadily away from the sterile socialist doctrines that once threatened to emasculate the free economy that is Britain's best hope for the future. In an electorate whose workers have become middleclass, said Macmillan in a TV victory speech last week, "the class war is obsolete." Then, with that faintly superior smile, he added: "Nowadays it is ungrammatical but true to say that 'us' are 'they' and 'they' are 'us.' "