Like It Was: The Diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge
Bright-Holmes, John
LIKE IT WAS: THE DIARIES OF MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE Selected and edited by John Bright-Holmes William Morrow & Co. / $18.00 William H. Nolte L i k e Satan in the Book of Job, Malcolm Muggeridge...
...and then in communion with God, back and forth, ever and again...
...UNITED TECHNOLOGIES THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1982 43...
...As I walked along I tried to concentrate my thoughts on the necessity to escape from self and from the flesh if I was to know God...
...Only a few such men are allotted to each age...
...There was a pause, and then he burst into laughter--Tand pied guilty...
...The need to penetrate enemy defenses...
...If he f r e q u e n t l y etches his miniatures with malice, he never stoops to caricature, and happily he is free of moral indigna42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1982 tion (other than that directed against himself...
...Own wardrol~/glfts...
...When American lives and security interests are at stake, second best isn't good enough...
...9 carriers incapable o f launching powerful attack aircraft...
...The most fascinating entries concern the Writers with whom Muggeridge consorted in his daily rounds as journalist, editor of Punch, and critic at large--such as Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh .(whose absurd snobbishness is duly mocked), George Orwell ("like Don Quixote, very lean and egotistic and honest and foolish"), Anthony Powell and Hugh Kingsmill (two of his closest friends), P.G...
...Muggeridge parted company with the melioristic illusion early o n - - w h i t e padding through the s t r e e t s of Moscow in 1932--and has ever since admonished us to beware of those who preach the utopian gospel...
...If there are dry areas in these diaries, there are still plenty of wateringholes to make the trip enjoyable...
...But it cannot substitute, whatever its quantity, for equipment delivering the greater performance and versatility made possible by electronics and other advanced technologies...
...We must design and build into o u r equipment the highest useful quality and capability that technology can provide...
...though they have never been so deeply imbued in his character as he would have us (or himself) believe...
...A case in point is Churchill, a man whom Muggeridge admired for his stand against the Germans at a time when most Englishmen believed all was lost, including honor...
...YOU CAN LEARN TO MAKE IT HAPPEN IN THE POLITICS PROGRAM CHRISTENDOM COLLEGE Congressman Robert Dornan [R., Calif ] i~ one...
...Even so, that s h o u l d n ' t mean "gold-plating," or overdesigning to deliver unneeded performance at great cost...
...Solidly trained, he bases his political actimty squarely on the natural law...
...The Soviets' military production is awesome...
...For most men of power Muggeridge has nothing but contempt, partly, one suspects, because they bring about change, and usually for the worse, and partly because the movers and shakers of the world are inordinately vain...
...Aware of the enormous disparity between a saint in the fifth century and a knockabout journalist in the twentieth, I still, in utter humility, venture to echo his words...
...and if in his Confessions he calls to mind these cruel corruptions of his soul, it is not for love of them, but rather for love of God's love, and in thankfulness that he has been forgiven...
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...Though the first references to Truman, written when Muggeridge was a Washington correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, are unflattering, some years later, after watching a film about Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, Khrushchev, and others, he "noted that the only authentic human in this menagerie was Harry Truman...
...Don't believe those reviewers who say the best parts of the diaries are the early ones --those written in Moscow or in India in the 1930s...
...On August 22, 1936, he makes this note: " I ' v e just been for a walk...
...They spend 15% o f their gross national product for military purposes, compared with 6~ for the U.S...
...He pays tribute to the eternal paradox in the final moving words of the "Apologia": Even when he was learning vain things, and losing himself among many vanities, St...
...The editor of this family magazine brought us together in Dallas for the purpose of a debate...
...In the face o f such demands, the test o f combat could not be met by planes that are blind in the dark or murk and are armed with visual-range missiles...
...Or are national defense and security better served with fewer units o f equipment t h a t ' s more advanced technologically and provides greater performance and capability...
...Only a few politicians get off lightly--Ernest Bevin for one, and Harry Truman for another...
...Though no one can doubt the sincerity of his constantly renewed, and always fruitless, efforts to escape the Old Adam within and make contact, as he put it,, " w i t h what was outside Time," I for one do not find that aspect of his personality particularly interesting...
...They are unlikely to be suited to the use o f simpler planes...
...But-the reality o f aerial combat is that conditions are generally less than ideal...
...No commentator, excepting only Mencken, has viewed the mass absurdities of this glorious age with more atrabilious eye or described them in more telling and acerbic terms...
...As a s e n s u a l i s t he has always been a backslider, hounded in turn by desire and regret, which at times become indistinguishable one from the other...
...Recalling in the very bitterness of his remembrance his most vicious ways he goes on, no comfort was to be found "save in Thee who teachest by sorrow, and woundest to heal...
...This involves (1) subjection of the self, (2) mastery of the flesh, both of its ills and rapture, (3) absorption in the principle of love, which governs the universe.'" A few lines later he categorically states, "I know that love governs the univ e r s e . " Hardly the views of a skeptic...
...I clearly remember when I first encountered him...
...I t is by now a commonplace among all who know Muggeridge to say that he is one of the most charming and delightful men imaginable...
...At this time, there i s n o way the U.S...
...Wars a r e n ' t always fought from 8 to 5 with crystal skies...
...He is most harsh with those who live in the will rather than the imagination--to use his somewhat vague and even misleading nomenclature...
...r*r am~/bt~,a~a: ~ tm,W's msua tr ~ Bernan~ emaush~: inil~s or name ~ m I , H ~ " brass hardware...
...Felt enormously drawn to him...
...Better leave such fabulous voyagings to the professional philosophers, who invariably make such journeys seem not worth taking...
...Nonetheless, he was appalled by Churchill's sentimentality and vaingloriousness...
...Augustine of Hyppo writes, God disciplit{ed him and forgave him...
...In his "Apologia Pro Diario Suo," which prefaces Like I t Was, Muggeridge insists that the diarist is a true child of the twentieth century-that is, a man of skeptical mind and sensual disposition, brought up to believe that a peaceful world of prosperity and brotherhood lay just around the corner...
...can match the Soviet Union in quantity o f weaponry...
...His skepticism and sensuality have remained intact...
...His longing to "know God," which has been with him from the earliest years, is every bit as sensual as his indulgence in fleshly concerns...
...The truth is that Muggeridge, like most other scanners of Heaven and searchers for Truth, only succeeds in s t r e n g t h e n i n g my conviction that such capitalized abstractions are beyond the ken of mortal men...
...Adverse weather...
...of the participants in the Potitz~s Program at Christendom...
...Such equipment is necessarily more costly, for the same reason that a 10-speed bike costs more than a 3-speeder...
...What prevented him from throwing himself prematurely into the arms of God is unknown, but one might assume he was saved in part by the very restlessness that has followed him everywhere and even into his patriarchal years--and, no less, by his sense of humor which has enabled him--nay, compelled him--to laugh at the unlimited folly of our species...
...In Defense of Quality C onsiderations of the federal budget, when they get around to defense spending, t e n d t o reignite the debate over quality versus quantity in military hardware...
...Write fro" f. _9 I~ ~1 gmbspnm~a~maeemamo'seaw, se~c~,~on l ; # . f . J of smashing British brzce~lexclllng Amerlcan J~'~i / 1 , J suspe.aer~, BERNARDO 2400 ~a~hlnm', # IOB~ (T|, 14oust, TX T'ZO9~ in the world...
...Last year they built five times as many fighters and fighter-bombers as the U.S., seven times as many armored-personnel carriers, five times as many tanks, three times as many ICBMs...
...And he delighted in Churchill's "rich humour"--all in all, "a sublime buffoon who combines Falstaff and Henry V." (He frequently defines people according to their resemblance to characters from literature...
...Within the funding available for defense procurement, is the nation better o f f buylng larger numbers o f simpler aircraft, missiles, tanks, and ships...
...Wodehouse, Max Beerbohm, et al...
...Of a sensualist perhaps, but not of a skeptic...
...During our unstructured and rather rambling discourse I asked him, in response to just what sonority I don't recall, if he could say that in his literary life he had never sacrificed sense for a melodious phrase...
...The advocates o f quantity argue that sheer numbers count for more in combat than the quality o f the hardware...
...Austere weaponry certainly has a place in America's defense arsenal...
...What about nighttime operations...
...Similar failings apply to ground-based and seagoing equipment t h a t ' s simpler in design and ability and hence less costly: * tanks too lightly armoredto stand up to the pounding of enemy fire...
...The recorded conCOMING NF T MONTH TOM WOLFE on High Life / Low Life versation With such men reveals them, if nor in the altogether, at least in an unbuttoned state...
...18.00 William H. Nolte L i k e Satan in the Book of Job, Malcolm Muggeridge has spent his days among us going to and fro in the world and up and down in it...
...9 submarines without the range and endurance provided .by nuclear propulsion...
...What these missions require are highperformance aircraft equipped with electronics to see and sense things their crews cannot, and weapons that can find and destroy targets even when they're shrouded in darkness or clouds...
...After the War he records a conversation with Montgomery, who despised Churchill for fiaving asked to address the officers of the 21st Army Group on the eve of D-Day and then bursting into tears when Mont-,/ forbade it...
...Take fighter aircraft as an example...
...To be sure, there are combat arenas where large numbers o f less advanced fighters could deliver better results than smaller numbers o f more sophisticated and expensive planes...
...It is much less this Pilgrim's Progress toward the Light that lifts our livers and makes us bray hosanna than it is the pictures he draws of other wayfarers who cross his path, either in person or in books, along the road...
...I stood in awe of him then, and / stand in awe of him now...
...Such a comment, of course, tells us more about the diarist than it does about the people in the film...
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...The central flaw in this contention is that lowtechnology weaponry in many cases cannot do the job in our high-technology times...
...But unlike that illustrious Angel, Muggeridge has never found himself at home William H. Nolte is C. Wallace Martin Professor o f English at the University o f South Carolina...
...Where we must excel is in quality...
...It is the Self which he has f o r e v e r sought in vain to lose, now amidst the vanities of the world Do you want to see limitations on "Big Government...
...9 ships lacking electronic brains, eyes, and ears for long-range surveillance and strike...
...I t ' s a perfect morning...
...Indeed, as this selection from his diaries--covering the years from 1932 to 1962--shows, he has always considered himself a stranger among men, so much so that he frequently thought of popping off early...
...The best are those that are the least self-conscious--and best of all, the ones with hughter in them...
...The following day he notes " t h a t there is really nothing for me to undertake but the mystic's long and arduous journey...
...Bullish on Braces?.'~.~ ~ ' s ~ t - ~ m~Wck mo Zxa~'r,m~r, tws...
Vol. 15 • June 1982 • No. 6
