Young Mr. Kennedy
BROGAN, D. W.
Young Mr. Kennedy WHY ENGLAND SLEPT By John F. Kennedy Wilfred Funk. 252 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by D. W. BROGAN Professor of Political Science, Cambridge University; author, "The American...
...There was, in fact, more critical opposition to the policy of the Baldwin-Chamberlain governments than Kennedy suggested...
...Inside the Labor party, for example, Hugh Dalton preached good sense long before it became official party policy...
...Before the last war, the English were in the same state of complacency as Americans are at the present time...
...I myself, for example, was able to write again and again in the New Statesman against the avowed policy of that paper, which was dictated by the brilliant but profoundly unwise John Maynard Keynes...
...And I think one is entitled to hold the government of a country to a more strict account than the opposition...
...But how long would the run be...
...When he wrote this book, young Mr...
...From that point on, war seemed to me inevitable and the effects on the various alliances, (e.g., the FrancoBelgian defense arrangements) were dramatic and disastrous...
...I do not mean to suggest, though, that he has the temperament or basic stupidity of either of these statesmen...
...As Kennedy pointed out in 1940, everybody in Britain was more or less to blame...
...The American people have got to be told, as the British people ought to have been told in 1939, that they are faced with a very difficult situation which cannot be conjured away by a slogan like "Peace in Our Time" or its opposite number, "Don't Negotiate with the Commies...
...His father was Ambassador to London, and Kennedy had the additional advantage of an inside view...
...But it would be absurd to pretend that it has been republished simply because it is a good book...
...author, "The American Character" This extremely intelligent book by an extremely intelligent young man was written at a moment when the problems of Why England Slept and the survival of England were of the highest urgency...
...Certainly, the British opposition, Labor and Liberal, was almost as silly as the Government in the late 1930s...
...All he did was once correct and improve my Latin grammar...
...One is reminded in this connection of Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior": Who when brought Among the tasks of real life hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought...
...Of course, the run is much shorter now, in the days of atomic warfare, than it was in 1940...
...In the long run, Kennedy argued, democracy is not only more humane, but actually more efficient...
...Yet I think he overdid his charity toward the BaldwinChamberlain administrations simply because they were the Government...
...True, the main organized opposition was that of Winston Churchill, but he was not so isolated a figure as Kennedy indicated...
...He had a distinguished academic career at Harvard behind him, and he had been a pupil of Harold Laski at the London School of Economics...
...They had been given, in Roman terms, the charge "that no harm befall the republic...
...Indeed, some of his views on the role of business in such a situation could be used against him now by defenders of the American "free enterprise" system...
...It is as unjust to blame the disastrous situation in which the British found themselves in 1940 on Baldwin and Chamberlain as it is to blame the depression of 1929 on Herbert Hoover—a parallel which the young Kennedy himself used...
...We know for instance, that Lord Swinton and Sir Thomas Inskip, unimpressive figures as they were, have one great claim to public respect: They refused to accept the dogmatic doctrine that "the bomber must get through" and began to provide air-raid precautions (ARP) and, more important, to provide the fighter planes which saved Britain in the autumn of 1940...
...It has been republished because the author is now President of the United States...
...I also had a free hand in writing against the policy of appeasement in the pages of the Spectator...
...For one thing, Kennedy's own war experience should tell him that life is not so simple and cannot be manipulated so easily as Baldwin and Chamberlain thought...
...Kingsley Martin, then editor of the New Statesman, never suppressed anything I wanted to write...
...This does not necessarily mean education for war...
...He saw clearly that war was imposed on the British government and that Chamberlain and Baldwin prepared slowly and inadequately for the ordeal which was about to befall them...
...Of course, we now know some things that Kennedy could not have known at the time...
...Some Labor leaders of that time, particularly Lord Clement Attlee and Lord Herbert Morrison, know and admit this now...
...British dissidents from official policy in the late '30s were not silenced...
...His publishers have not proof-read very well, however...
...It is obvious, too that many of the judgments made by Kennedy in 1940 are still valid today...
...But it does mean education into the realities of the world situation in which a given state has to live...
...Most of the problems that the young Kennedy saw being handled with varying success by Baldwin and Chamberlain, President Kennedy now must handle himself...
...Still, Why England Slept, conveys admirably and—considering its author's youth—with acute critical penetration, the atmosphere of the age in which Britain was led to the edge of disaster...
...But this is probably too much to hope for...
...But Kennedy did not represent quite fairly the British public's reactions to this new crisis...
...Perhaps Kennedy will reread his book...
...It seems odd that so acute an observer of the British—and of the European—scene as Kennedy showed himself to be, devoted so little space to what was, in my opinion, the turning point in the prewar history of Europe: the unopposed German reoccupation of the Rhineland...
...Yet he failed to note, for example, the way in which the New Statesman was an open forum for a discussion of all these questions...
...Yet, although a young man's impatience at such obvious imbecility is sometimes revealed, this is an understanding book...
...Kennedy realized how hard it was to get a democracy —and, above all, a capitalist democracy—to prepare for war...
...Nevertheless, as an examination of the problem of preparing for possible war in peacetime, Why England Slept, extremely valuable in 1940, remains so today...
...In 1940, the book was candid and acute, and thus valuable in itself...
...Reading through the book, partly for the light it casts on the English situation of near disaster in 1940, but much more for the light it casts on the author, one is struck by the objectivity young Kennedy displayed (and one cannot help speculating about whether President Kennedy remains as objective and lucid as young Kennedy was...
...This remarkable work proves that the leadership of a democracy is a very difficult job, much more difficult than leadership in a dictatorial regime can ever be...
...Kennedy had exceptional advantages...
...Surely, the basic lesson of this book is that a democracy can be organized for effective defense only if it is properly educated to the realities of its own situation...
...Even that highly intelligent body to which I belong, the Liberal party, did not show much more sense than any other group...
...In 1940, Kennedy thought neither Neville Chamberlain nor Stanley Baldwin had any notion of the kind of crisis they had to face and he made an intelligent and independent analysis of the problem of turning a democracy into an effective warmaking society...
...And the Daily Telegraph, showing unwonted courage and independence, printed the letters and protests which the Times, under its worst editor, Geoffrey Dawson, refused to publish...
...if so, he is sure to suffer anguish at the thought that he is in a position very much like that of Baldwin and Chamberlain...
...What form did this lucidity take...
...He pointedly quoted the complacent nonsense not only of the London Times, but of what was and is the most intelligent journal in the world, the Economist...
...Again and again, he noted various things that ought to have been done, but could not be done given the two conditioning factors of political democracy and capitalist organization...
...But one of the most interesting things about Why England Slept is that Kennedy seems to have been very little affected by his father's views or by the views of his father's friends, notably Neville Chamberlain...
...But the main historical point of this book is one with which, on the whole, I agree...
...He observed how foolish the Economist was and how quickly, once the truth had penetrated the higher powers, it changed its line...
...If President Kennedy rereads his book—and I hope he will do so—he should act on his own lesson...
...But it is astonishing how accurate Kennedy was, given the necessary limitations of his knowledge...
...It is to be hoped that the numerous vociferous Senators and generals who are blasting off all the time will possibly reflect on the complicated problems which Why England Slept illustrates...
Vol. 44 • December 1961 • No. 39
