Correspondents' Correspondence Shifting 'Statesman'

...The New Statesman has certainly been successful When Kingsley Martin took over m 1931, it had some 5,000 readers, when he retired 30 years later, the circulation was nearing 100,000, approximately one-third outside Britain Unlike most Left-wing publications, it did not suffer from a lack of advertising, for it possessed too many upper-income subscribers Though the main push forward took place before and during the War, until the late '60s it had kept up its momentum, and surveys showed that the chief characteristic of the New Statesman reader was his solid loyalty to the journal A university student, once hooked, was likely to become an addict for the rest of his life, a quality any editor would envy...

...Campbell gave two main ieasons for the board's decision first, that circulation had fallen from 90,000 to 70,000 during Crossman's brief period at the helm, and second, that this state of affairs was chiefly due to his having made the journal far too "political " Furthermore, it was felt that Crossman had deserted the old Kingsley Martin tradition of not allowing the paper to speak for any one faction of the Labor party, of encouraging a good mix of politics, literature, and the arts, and maintaining such beloved features as "This England," the weekend competition, and what used to be known as "middles"-pieces that could be as nonpolitical as they cared, provided they made entertaining reading...

...After the 1970 elections, having decided to "give up his political career," Richard Crossman took over from Paul Johnson Most people (myself included) predicted that if anyone could infuse new life and energy into the weekly, it would be Crossman Yet a year and a half later the paper's chairman, Lord Campbell, invited him to breakfast and informed him that the board had met while he was away sick and voted to terminate his editorship forthwith...

...Some may find it strange that a weekly founded in 1913 by George Bernard Shaw, Beatrice Potter and Sidney James Webb to propagate Socialism should have just fired its editor for being too political, too much of a Socialist Surely, that is how Crossman himself sees it, and probably most of his staff, as well as a great many of his readers But I think Crossman's approach was based on a false premise In my own opinion (and I worked a few years on the arts side of the paper, for whatever that is worth), the New Statesman never was Socialist, and it would be cutting its own throat if it ever became so...

...Insofar as it was once a Fabian organ, it represented the intellectual right of the Labor party-The ancestors of the Roy Jenkinses and Anthony Croslands of today In fact, Martin presided over a fusion of three distinct weeklies during the early '30s, the others being the Nation and the Weekend Review, both traditional intellectual-liberal papers The New Statesman's absorption of the Nation, the literary organ of Bloomsbury, gave it great esthetic prestige and the person of John May-nard Keynes as chairman The addition of the Liberal-Labor readers also swung the pendulum still further to the Right and toward "literariness ". The genius of Martin was that he intuitively appreciated this shift Despite his holding views much further to the Left, being pro-Popular Front and at times indistinguishable from the fellow travelers, he was careful not to disturb the New Statesman's balance Indeed, there was always an element of blarney in the journal's "Socialism " It was never as Socialist as it appeared, and the argument has been made that many of its readers were not Socialists at all, but simply bought the paper because its literature and arts sections were so very good...

...Though every culture has its own illogical scale of values, to the foreign correspondent who comes back every few years to a graying New World, America's standards appear to change with illogical rapidity This is true m foreign affairs no less than m domestic matters, as the Administration's sudden reversal of its policies toward China and India brought home to a startled world this past year But it is in regard to Africa that I have come to know best how partisan caprice back m Washington has triumphed over traditional diplomatic consistency...

...African Reflections Washington -Upon returning from Africa a few weeks ago, one of my first visits was to the Eye Research Foundation o Bethesda, where a specialist spent nearly an hour examining my youngest son's long-sighted left eye and devising a correction treatment The bill $20 A few days later, the television went on the blink and a local repair service sent a youth around to change some parts The bill $63, including $40 for 15 minutes "service time " Maybe in Peking, or somewhere, they charge the same rates for screwdriver twiddling as tor open-heart surgery, or vice versa But here it seems the economic system has recognized that while many people might hesitate to be operated on, precious few would delay having their TV repaired...

...Besides failing to find the right mix for this readership, Crossman was notoriously rough with his staff and, though in many ways a most likable and generous man, he was far more doctrinaire and bullyish than Martin could ever have been I would argue that Crossman, now 64, older than Martin when he was more or less forced into resignation, had the bad luck of starting too late It is an open secret that he expected to follow Martin into the editorship during the mid-'50s And no one doubts that at 45 he would have contrived to carry the paper with him in a style that he was unable to emulate when he finally did get the chance to take over...

...Just over a decade ago, Julius Holmes was recommending university courses on Africa for young and mid-career Foreign Service officers Ambitious men with a diplomatic vocation volunteered to forego the bright lights of Rome and Brussels and specialize in the "hardship posts" of Barbary and beyond Today these men are being punished by premature retirement or demotion to State Department time-serving cul-de-sacs At USIA, Frank Shakespeare has bluntly declared that service "behind the Curtain" is the key to advancement A friend of mine who recently advertised a public relations job received 26 applications from USIA "Third World" specialists who had read the writing on the wall...

...Anthony Howe, the 38-year-old former Washington correspondent for the London Observer who last month was appointed editor of the New Statesman, bears little resemblance to the man he replaced It remains to be seen, of course, whether he will be able to accomplish the task that the board has set out for him to bring the paper back to where it stood 20 years ago, when it was perhaps the best written, most lively and amusing, if also the most wayward, of Left-wing publications -John Mander...

...Today, Crossman is bound to seem a product of the '30s to the younger generation He probably does not realize that from 1964-70, while he was sitting in the chambers of the mighty, the whole complex of Left-wing politics was undergoing a profound change I am not suggesting he should have swung the paper over to the New Left That would have been a sure recipe for disaster Yet could one expect a past leader of the House of Commons (and a very good one, too) to realize how deeply a younger generation is disillusioned with parliamentary forms and yearns for some kind of direct action...

...What is most disturbing in all this is how Africanized America is becoming politically The trends toward centralizing power, bypassing the popular will, emasculating legislatures, and the sudden switches of attitude and policy are all characteristic of underdeveloped ministates, the only missing element is the recurrent coup d'etat The major political problem in Africa is that government is dominated by personalities rather than institutions In seemingly abandoning the philosophies that gave life to its institutions, and thus putting a premium on personalities-even when the elders of the tribe are cold and humorless men -America appears to be following the example of the same Third World it once promised to lead into modernization -Russell Warren Howe...

...Shifting 'Statesman' London-Richard Crossman's dismissal from the editorship of the New Statesman may not rank in news value with the Olympic Games, the American primaries, or the ever compelling topic of pollution But it has its own significance-not least, I dare say to those readers of The New Leader who may also happen to follow the British weekly...

...Because of the presbyterian way the U S budget is organized, too, a sudden opportunity to open an American library in Cracow can only be seized if one is closed down elsewhere, the loser is almost certain to be some Third World capital Yet would a library really do more for the U S m Cracow than in Bujumbura...

...Africanists at State fulminate because their former colleague, Marshall Wright, whom Henry Kissinger uses to keep the continent on a back burner, has no African experience African ambassadors ask friends if they should bypass State, and if so, how One envoy, just back from consultations in Africa, lamented "My minister asked 'Have you seen Kissinger?' and I answered 'Yes, in the elevator ' " All one can tell these officials is that if a Democrat wins in November, or in 1976, long-term planning may once again apply to other aspects of foreign policy besides military preparedness...