World: COMMON SENSE & CORONETS

“I can’t get my tongue around other people’s words and phrases,” Lord Home once explained. It is just as well. The Prime Minister writes or ad libs his own speeches, and though they give cautious bureaucrats the shudders, Lord Home’s own sparkling words are full of candor, common sense, eloquence.

On National Aims: “When paleolithic man lived on lizards, he had two jobs: to provide security for his family and food for them to eat. Things haven’t changed much. The basic objective of our foreign policy is to provide security and food with which to feed ourselves.”

On Negotiating with Russia: “I believe there may be just room to coexist if we reply to Russia’s Jekyll and Hyde performance with a certain duality of our own. We must expose and frustrate the conspirator and negotiate with the patriot. If Mr. Khrushchev is sending a genuine olive branch, then he will find I am perfectly capable of sitting on the branch with him and cooing like a dove.”

On “Softness” Toward Communism: “We do not always choose to express our opposition to Communism in the military context. That would be much too simple an answer, but we see the challenge clearly and the need to meet it all along the line. So do not be misled into thinking us soft. Some of our enemies made that mistake. Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers. The memorial to him in London is a railway station called Waterloo. Shopkeepers we may be, but neither our principles nor our alliances are for sale.”

On the Cold War: “We must not give ground anywhere. Does that mean that we should never be able to improve our chances of living together with Russia or engineering better relations? I could not accept that pessimistic conclusion. The impact of education and science is inevitably working a social change in the Soviet Union. A revolution started 40 years ago cannot maintain its momentum for ever. In spite of all setbacks, we must persevere. Today we keep the peace by the balance of terror—because that is what life is. But we must work to wards keeping the peace by reason—because that is what life ought to be.”

On Communist Goals: “Their aim is to overthrow the way of life free men have chosen for themselves and substitute their own. Their tactics are to undermine, harry and probe weaknesses everywhere, backing up if necessary their probes with force. Today it is the Congo, Laos, Tibet and Cuba. Tomorrow it will be another selection. That is what Mr. Khrushchev calls peaceful coexistence. There is very little peaceful about it except that, with luck, the guns don’t fire.”

On the U.S.: “Those who can accuse the Americans of being warlike are those who either do not know them or who find the Americans’ championship of liberty astride their path of ambition. The only people who can accuse the Americans of being imperialists are those who are significantly deficient in humor.”

On Alliances: “Internationally, Britain’s strength rests upon a tripod of the Commonwealth, Europe, and the Atlantic Alliance. But a tripod is a particularly uncomfortable seat if one leg is shorter and weaker than the other, and so it must be the positive purpose of our foreign policy to strengthen all three.”

On the United Nations: “This concentration on ‘colonialism’ has led to the adoption of a double standard of behavior by many of the newly elected countries. Russia’s empire is occupied by military force and ruled by fear. By contrast, the British record is one which has freed 600 million people in 15 years. The U.N. members know that to be true, but they seldom condemn the Russians and constantly harass us. Is there growing up, almost imperceptibly, a code of behavior where there is one rule for the bully who deals in fear and another for the democracies, because their stock in trade is reason and compromise?”

On Countries Not Paying U.N. Dues: “Somewhat back in history, the cry was raised not far from here: ‘No taxation without representation.’ I am going to turn that around and suggest that there should be no representation without taxation.”

On Personal Diplomacy: “This business of perambulation! Why employ intelligent and highly paid ambassadors and then go and do their work for them? You don’t buy a canary and sing yourself. I therefore give notice that I shall go on strike and sit more in the control tower—just in time to avoid visiting a foreign secretary in the moon.”

On the Rule of Law: “Some people are suspicious of law and order, as though the rule of law was a mere trick to freeze the status quo. It is quite the opposite. Its observance is the sine qua non of peaceful change. The rule of law is a lesson learned from centuries of human experience, from many mistakes and much suffering. It amounts simply to this: that only by submitting ourselves to obey the law can we reconcile conflicting ambitions and serve the interests of mankind as a whole. Without the rule of law we destroy one another.”