Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

I had seen dignitaries, industrialists, academics, waiting in the queue at a Palace investiture, with their hands shaking, as though, when they entered into the Presence, they expected some sinister courtier to put out a foot and trip them up. It seemed absurd that Roger should feel as frightened in the shadow of mana . It was easy to feel with him as a detached modern soul — while in fact he concealed a romantic, or better, a superstitious, yearning for an older world. It was not for show, nor for propriety’s sake, that he was a church-goer. When I asked him why he was Conservative, he had given me a rationalization, and a good one; but he had left an obstinate part of his nature out of it. It was not an accident, perhaps, that he married into a family with an historic name: or at least, when he first met Caro, that her name had its own magic for him.

He was fond of laughing off those who were in politics simply for the sake of the charm of government , of the charm of being in the inner circle. Sammikins’ ‘charade’, the charmed circle — people who were lured by it, said Roger, were useless, and he was right. But, for him, there may have been another charm, deeper, subtler, less rational than that.

I felt relieved when he came back from the Palace, looking jaunty again, and produced brisk plans about how we might seduce Lord Lufkin away from the rest of the aircraft industry.

That summer, Roger judged that we were doing a little better than we had calculated. As carefully as a competent Intelligence officer, he was keeping track of his enemies. Not that they were enemies yet, in any personal sense: so far he had fewer of them than most politicians. The ‘enemies’ he watched were those who just because of what they wanted, or because of the forces behind them, could not help trying to stop him.

About those, he was as realistic as a man could be. Yet, like most realistic men, he detested having the hard truth brought to him by another. I had to tell him, early in the scientists’ series of meetings, that Brodzinski was not budging by an inch. It was news we had both feared, but for an afternoon Roger regarded me as though I were an enemy myself.

Soon he was in action again. Before the House rose in July, he had talked to the Party’s defence committee, which meant fifty back-bench Members, some of whom he knew were already disquieted. Right from the beginning, he had made his calculation. He could live with disquiet on the extreme right, in the long run it would boil over: but if he lost the solid centre of his own party, then he was finished. So he talked — in what language I didn’t know, though I could guess — to the respectable county members, the ‘Knights of the Shire’. According to Wyndham, who was moved to unusual lyricism, the meeting went ‘like a dream’.

During August, Roger asked Osbaldiston to convene a group of top civil servants, to get some administrative machinery ready in time for the scientists’ report. Since this was an inter-departmental group, and Rose was the senior member, it met in his room. A vase of chrysanthemums on the desk, as usual, the window open on to the Park, as usual, and as usual Rose welcoming us with a courtesy so exaggerated that it sounded faintly jeering.

‘My dear Douglas, how extremely good of you to spare the time! My dear Lewis, how very good of you to come!’ Since my office was ten yards away, and since the summons was official, it was not in fact a benevolent exertion on my part.

As we sat round the table, Rose’s opposite numbers in the Service departments, Douglas, a Second Secretary from the Treasury, and me, Rose was just perceptibly tart. He didn’t mean this to be a long meeting. He was irritated at having to hold it at all. He did not indulge his mood. He merely said: ‘I take it that we’ve all seen Lewis Eliot’s memorandum on the scientists’ first few meetings, haven’t we? I believe they’ve been instructed to report to your Minister by October, Douglas, or have I got that wrong?’

‘Quite right,’ said Douglas.

‘In that case, I’m obliged to confess that in the meantime, even this distinguished gathering can only hope to produce a marginal result,’ said Rose. ‘We don’t know what they’re going to say. Nor, unless I seriously misjudge our scientific colleagues, do they. All that we can be reasonably certain about, is that they can be relied upon to say several different and probably contradictory, things.’

There were grins. Rose was not alone in that room in having a generalized dislike of scientists.

‘No, Hector, we can go a bit further than that,’ said Douglas, neither piqued nor over-borne. ‘My master isn’t asking you to do anything quite useless.’

‘My dear Douglas, I should be the last person to suggest that your admirable department, or your admirable Minister, could ever ask anyone such a thing.’

Rose found it hard to forget that Douglas had once been a junior civil servant, working under him.

Right,’ said Douglas. I agree we shan’t actually receive the report until October, but—’

‘By the way,’ Rose broke in, getting down to business. ‘I take it there are remote chances we shall get the report by then?’

‘We ought to,’ I said.

‘But before that comes along, we’ve got a pretty shrewd idea what it’s going to say, in general terms? This paper—’ Douglas tapped it — ‘gives us enough. Some of the scientists are producing arguments at one extreme, and some at the other. There’s this chap Brodzinski, and you ought to know that he’s got some backers, who’s trying to push us into investing a very sizeable fraction of our defence budget, and an even higher fraction of our total scientific manpower, on this pet scheme of his. I ought to say, and Lewis will correct me if I’m wrong, that none of the scientists, even those who think he’s a national danger, have ever suggested this scheme is airy-fairy.’

They had studied the first estimates of the cost. Several would have liked to believe in the scheme. They had, though, to shake their heads. The Air Ministry man said his department wished for an opportunity of ‘another look at it’, and Rose said: ‘Of course, my dear Edgar, of course. But I’m afraid we should all be mildly surprised if your ingenious friend can really persuade us that we can afford the unaffordable.’

‘That’s our view,’ said Douglas. ‘It’s just not on.’

Someone, who was taking note of the meeting, wrote a few words. Nothing more formal was said, and there was no formal decision. From that moment, however, it would have been innocent to think that Brodzinski’s scheme stood a good chance.

Douglas said, ‘The other extreme view — and this isn’t such an easy one — is that the country hasn’t got the resources, and won’t have within foreseeable time, to have any genuine kind of independent weapon at all. That is we shan’t be able to make do without borrowing from the Americans: and the scientists think the balance of advantage is for us to be honest and say so, and slide out of the nuclear weapons business as soon as we conveniently can. As I said, this is the other extreme. But I ought to say that it seems to be held by chaps who are usually level-headed, like Francis Getliffe and our scientific adviser, Walter Luke.’

‘No,’ said Rose, ‘this isn’t such an easy one. They know as well as we do that this isn’t just a scientific decision. It’s an economic decision, and, I should have thought, even more a political one.’

Rose was speaking carefully. He knew precisely what Douglas was aiming at. Rose had not yet declared himself, but he was inclined to think that Douglas was right. Not that he liked him. Douglas was tipped to have the final professional success denied to himself, and he was envious. But liking mattered less than one might have thought, in these alliances.