Charles Snow - The Light and the Dark

As he presided over the dinner, his manners were pleasant, sometimes rather over-elaborate. He was the son of a bank clerk and in his rush to power he had, as it were, invented a form of manners for himself. And he showed one aching cavity of a man who had worked unremittingly hard, who had attained great responsibility early, who had never had time to play. He was getting married in a month, and he talked about it with the naïve exaggerated trenchancy of a very young man. He was a little afraid.

I thought that he knew nothing of women. It flashed out once that he envied Roy his loves. As a rule, his attitude to Roy was comradely, half-contemptuous, half-admiring. He had a kind of amused wonder that Roy showed no taste for place or glory. With pressing friendliness, he wanted Roy to cut a figure in the limelight. If nowhere else, then he should get all the academic honours — and Schäder asked Ammatter sharply when the university would do something for Roy.

Dinner went on. Schäder passed some elaborate compliments to Joan: he was interested, hotly interested like a young man, in her feeling for Roy. Then he called himself back to duty, and addressed me: “Roy has told me, Mr Eliot, that you are what we call a social democrat?”

“Yes.”

Schäder was regarding me intently with large eyes in which there showed abnormally little white: they were eyes dominating, pertinacious, astute. He grinned.

“We found here that the social democrats gave us little trouble. We thought they were nice harmless people.”

“Yes,” I said. “We noticed that.”

Roy spoke to Schäder.

“Don’t think that Eliot is always orthodox and harmless. His politics are the only burgerlich thing about him. I can never understand why he should be such an old burger about politics. Safe in the middle of the road.”

“I am sure,” said Schäder with firm politeness, “that I shall find much in common with Mr Eliot.”

It was clear that I had to do the talking. Eggar was too cautious to enter the contest; he made an attempt to steer us away to placid subjects, such as the Davis Cup. Roy gave him a smile of extreme diablerie, as though whispering the letters “CMG”. It was left to me to stand against Schäder, and in fact I was glad to. It was a relief after the day with Roy. I was completely in control of my temper now. Joan was an ally, backing me up staunchly at each turn of the conflict. I had never felt her approve of me before.

First Schäder tried me out by reflecting on the machinery of government. What did I think about the way governments must develop — not morally, that should not enter between us, said Schäder, but technically? Did I realise the difference that organised science must mean? Two hundred years ago determined citizens with muskets were almost as good as the King’s armies. Now the apparatus is so much more complex. A central government which can rely on its armed forces is able to stay in power forever. “So far as I can see, Mr Eliot, revolution is impossible from now on — unless it starts among those who hold the power. Will you tell me if I am wrong?”

I thought he was right, appallingly right: it was one of the sinister facts of the twentieth century scene. He went on to tell me his views about what the central government could and must control, and how it must operate. He knew it inside out; there was no more sign of the young man unaccustomed to society, timid with women; he was a born manager of men, and he had already had years of experience. Although he was a minister, he did much work that in England would have been done by his permanent secretary: as a matter of fact, he seemed to do a considerable amount of actual executive work, which in an English department would never have reached the higher civil servants, let alone the minister. It had its disadvantages, but I thought it gave him a closer feel of his job. He ran his department rather as an acquaintance of mine, a gifted English industrialist, ran his business. It was the general practice of the régime; sometimes it made for confusion, particularly (as Schäder straightforwardly admitted) when the party officials he had introduced as his own staff got across the old, regular, German civil service. He made another admission: they were finding it hard to collect enough men who could be trained into administrators, high or low. “That may set a limit to the work a government can do, Mr Eliot. And we are an efficient race. If you plan your society, you will find this difficulty much greater — for you educate such a small fraction of your population. Also, forgive me, I do not think you are very efficient.”

“We’re not so stupid as we look,” I said.

Schäder looked at me, and laughed. He went on questioning me, stating his experience on the technique of government — the mechanical technique, the paper work, the files, the use of men.

He was being very patient in coming to his point. At last he knew enough about me. He said: “Tell me, Mr Eliot, what is to cause war between your country and mine? You are not the man to give me hypocritical reasons. Do you think you will fight for the balance of power?”

I waited for a second.

“I think we should,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes.

“That is interesting. You cannot keep the balance of power forever. Why should you trouble—”

“No one is fit to be trusted with power,” I said. I was replying to Roy, as well as to him. “No one. I should not like to see your party in charge of Europe, Dr Schäder. I should not like to see any group of men in charge — not me or my friends or anyone else. Any man who has lived at all knows the follies and wickedness he’s capable of. If he does not know it, he is not fit to govern others. And if he does know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to decide a single human fate. I am not speaking of you specially, you understand: I should say exactly the same of myself.”

Our eyes met. I was certain, as one can be certain in a duel across the table, that for the first time he took me seriously.

“You do not think highly of men, Mr Eliot.”

“I am one,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. He got back to his own ground, telling me that he did not suppose my countrymen shared my rather “unusual reasons” for believing in the balance of power. I was taking up the attack now, and replied that men’s instincts were often wiser than their words.

“So you think, if we become too powerful, you will go to war with us?”

I could see nothing at that table but Roy’s face, grave and stricken. During this debate he had been silent. He sat there before my eyes, listening for what I was bound to say.

“I think we shall,” I said.

“You are not a united country, Mr Eliot. Many people in England would not agree with you?”

He was accurate, but I did not answer. I said: “They hope it will not be necessary.”

“Yes,” said Roy in a passionate whisper. “They hope that.” Joan was staring at him with love and horror, praying that he would not say too much.

“We all hope that,” she said, in a voice that was deep with yearning for him. “But you’ve not been in England much lately. Opinion is changing. I must tell you about it — perhaps on the way home?”

“You must,” said Roy with a spark of irony. But he had responded to her; for a moment she had reached him.

“Will they not do more than hope?” said Schäder.

“It depends on you,” said Joan quickly.

“Will they not do more than hope?” Schäder repeated to Roy.

“Some will,” said Roy clearly.

Joan was still staring at him, as though she were guarding him from danger.

Eggar intervened, in a cheerful companionable tone: “There is all the good will in the world—”