AS ENGLAND FEELS . . .

If character is destiny, what is the character of England now? Her present character may well show whether or not her imperial supremacy--which endured from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Elizabeth--can once again be saved in an hour of peril. And on that destiny-of-character may also largely depend, if her supremacy is almost over, what kind of world the U.S. will presently have to cope with. The following dispatch, by one of TIME's correspondents, is an attempt to estimate England's character--her spirit, her feelings, her attitudes--in the cold wet weather of defeat in 1942's beginning. Necessarily there is a large element of individual judgment in any estimate of these very real and important intangibles.

Few Englishmen will ever look back with pleasure to the beginning of 1942. The longest cold spell in a century hung on and on. It would have been dreary enough in any case. The acres of ruins in all the big cities no longer evoked the sense of great battles nobly borne by humble people in their homes and shops.

Now the bombed places have only the forlorn air of neglected vacancy. It is as if in each city some building contractor had sent out his wrecking crews and then had run out of money or had forgotten what it was he had intended to build in the places his crews had wrecked. By far the greater part of each of the cities remains, of course, undamaged. In the wet and grimy streets life goes on, busy and cheerless.

Life for men and women is full of difficulties. And if the difficulties are mostly trivial, they dampen the spirits perhaps even more than splendid trials. Though there has not been a major bombing raid in nearly a year, there is total, blackout every night, everywhere. The first experience of a blackout has its interesting points, but on the 1,001st night it is only a bloody nuisance.

Travel (by day or night) is either impossible or unpleasant--by motor car, impossible for lack of gasoline; by train, crowded, dirty and invariably delayed. Hotels are jampacked. (Soldiers are everywhere, some of them on leave to meet their wives or sweethearts in the provincial cities.) Food, of course, is scarce--not so scarce as to be unhealthy or even a serious problem for ordinary people, but scarce enough so one can never forget the subject (a sliver of butter with each meal; perhaps no butter at all would be easier to bear). As for clothes, English women have never been famous for their chic and now they seem to have abandoned the attempt. Cigarets are really scarce. Movies come at inconvenient times.

The War was not getting on. Indeed, it was going very badly. Singapore fell. It was not merely that Singapore was England's most famous bastion of empire--only slowly did the people comprehend that kind of meaning--but they felt, though no one told them, that Singapore fell without honor. Embattled upon an island thousands of miles from the battlefronts, forty million people felt profoundly unheroic. And only a year ago these same people-soldiers, tradesmen and housewives-had written into the history of a glorious empire its most heroic chapter.

So now, in bleak 1942, they have fallen into habits of worrying and bickering. The worker says that the rich (who are going rapidly bankrupt) are nevertheless too rich. The rich men are mostly extremely gallant and polite, but the less gallant of them say that the worker working 50 or more hours a week is a slacker if occasionally he takes a day off.

During the cold winter there was plenty of coal in the mines of England, but the people had too little coal-partly because the Army, though condemned to do no fighting, would nevertheless not release any soldiers to go back to the mines. Scandals were alleged in the ATS--a magnificent army of women who work as uniformed auxiliaries to the male army. The alleged scandals were trivial or nonexistent. More serious scandals lie in the talk of black markets and in the spectacle of people still sleeping every night in the subway.

The Savior. At this moment one fact is more prominent in their minds than any other. That fact is Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia has saved them. If Russia has not saved them from defeat--no Englishman understands defeat, in any case--at the very least Soviet Russia has removed from above their heads and the cribs of their children the awful scourge of fire from the sky. But it is more than that. Russia has not saved them easily--as a big strong uncle might--as Uncle Sam did, perhaps, in the last war. Russia has saved them only at a cost of terrible death and torture and suffering. But it is even more than that. Russia, it seems, has shown great military capacity and efficiency, while the ineptitude of England has been on various occasions humiliating. And, above all, Russia has shown a greatness and ferocity of will and conviction equal to, if not greater than, the vaunted fanaticism of the Hun. So, for all these reasons, the fact of Russia is most prominent in the minds of Englishmen, and in their emotions, too. In a word, Soviet Russia is immensely popular. By comparison, their cousin country of America is scarcely noticed; at best, America is taken for granted; at worst, they think a good deal less highly of America than of themselves, which is not very highly.

Such a time as this of frustration and discontent is perhaps the worst possible time to gauge the true temper of the people. Yet the English people reveal themselves in their talk. What they mostly talk about is, of course, the things near to their lives. There is a notable absence, even in the press, of great debate on the great issues of human destiny. And yet, encouragingly, there is a sense of the fate fulness of the epoch.

It is still the fashion not to talk about "war aims." Nevertheless, in the press and among the people, the talk or bickering about how to get on with the war has become insensibly involved with notion: about how society ought to be organized now and in the future.

In these latter years England has tried to eschew the barren fevers of ideology The England of Baldwin and Chamberlain wished to find practical solutions for deeply practical problems in a world that was tearing itself asunder by bitter and ignoble disputation. Differing in all else from Baldwin and Chamberlain, Churchill was like them in one respect. Since he knew well the viciousness of contemporary "ideologies," Churchill, with profound insight and instinct, had wished to confine England's attention to the supremely practical business of winning a life and death struggle. But ideas and ideologies, good or bad, mean or noble, will not be quiet.

It is difficult to gauge to what extent the people are marshaling their ideas and hopes and wishes. But even though they may use the words sparingly, it is clear that there are two words around which the thought and feeling of England revolves. One word is Socialism. The other is Empire. The English people think they don't want Empire. They may perhaps want Socialism, but actually they have not even begun to imagine what it would be like not to have Empire. In England, Capitalism is not so much despised as it is gradually becoming extinct. The wealth which Englishmen own is shrinking every day. But perhaps the true meaning of Socialism--the Socialism that England is facing--is that poverty loves company.

The Empire. By contrast the contemporary Englishman's ideas about Empire do not spring from the present situation. He has taken the Empire for granted--he has assumed it would always be there. Therefore he has been non-imperialist, which is to say, he did not wish to be bothered with it, either to fight for it or to have it on his conscience.

The one last thing which needed to be done about the Empire had been done: the fortress of Singapore had been completed. Whatever might be the theories of Empire, the Singapore base clearly had to be built, and it was. Only when Singapore fell, only then did Englishmen even begin to think about losing their Empire.

But when Singapore fell, then up loomed India--an invitation to a greater disaster than all the disasters they had yet suffered. And what did they say about India? They said that if the defense of India was endangered because India had not been granted freedom, then they, for their part, had always been in favor of giving freedom to India and why hadn't the Old School Tie attended to this matter long since? It was just another case of the Old School Tie (around the neck, no doubt, of profiteering businessmen) having let the Empire down in this matter, as in all else. Which was probably another reason why they ought to go Socialist, since, if they went Socialist, things might be properly attended to and they would get -L-8 a week and would keep the Empire.

Something like that seems to them the logic of the situation. The logic is derived in part from shocking news--hitherto completely unsuspected in Britain--that the Englishmen in Singapore were all very rich, drank a great deal went to nightclubs and failed to inspire the natives to die for the Empire. The question of whether the natives of Malaya should have been given their freedom had apparently not been brought up. But it was indeed recalled that the Indians had requested freedom some time ago. And it was excessively annoying" to discover that such a simple--and presumably inexpensive gift--had not long since been arranged.

England wished India to have freedom. But what did Englishmen mean by freedom? They tacitly assumed that it meant something like dominion status. And that perhaps was all that India asked. But this spring, if a speculative reporter asked an Englishman whether he was prepared to give India complete freedom, whether he was willing that neither the King-Emperor nor any other Englishman should have any rule or special rights whatever in the subcontinent of India, it was quite apparent that the average Englishman had never even thought of such a thing.

England as a whole simply did not have any serious thought whatever about the Empire. England was unanimously non-imperialist--and unanimously unprepared for the break-up of her Empire.

The Dominions. There is a reason and a great reason for this incoherence--namely, England's experience with the Dominions. By the Statute of Westminster in 1931, Great Britain released the Dominions from virtually all rule by London. Thus, in 1939, none, of the Dominions was bound to join Great Britain in her mortal struggle. And within a few days all of them had joined her. Eire remained aloof. Apparently, when Great Britain declared war on Germany, neither the Government nor the people felt any certainty that the Dominions would come in. The fact that they did join, and the fact that they have contributed generously and gallantly to England's cause, is the most complete vindication of the policy of Empire-without-imperialism. There is perhaps no better example in history of the generous spirit generously rewarded.

But perhaps it was not enough to leave the Dominions to shift for themselves in the loose bonds of Empire. Strong, vigorous, constructive, collaborative policies might have been undertaken to develop the strength of all the vast territories inhabited by the white man under British rule. This was not done. Perhaps it could not be done.

The cry had indeed been raised in the years between the wars, by a few men--Lord Beaverbrook, for example--that Great Britain should place less emphasis on its European connection and more on its Imperial. If Britain had to deal with Europe, said they, she should do so as an Empire; not as an island kingdom. Simply in terms of the flow of capital, Britain had put too much of her waning capital outside the Empire and too little into building up the Dominions. And the Dominions themselves were equally, or more greatly, at fault. They tried to "stabilize" themselves--in the fatal worldwide mood of fixed prices and fixed hours--instead of vigorously expanding themselves throughout the vast real estate which God and their fathers had given them.

The English people themselves are principally to blame for the weakness of their Empire. The English people blame their various rulers--including the Old School Tie. But the average Englishman has for a decade or two exhibited an almost total lack of interest--even a lack of ordinary curiosity--in great affairs of Empire. He and his countrymen had an Empire--and they were just plain not interested. That, perhaps, is the whole truth, as nearly as it can be stated in one sentence.

Between the wars, the English wished no ill to any other people--not even to the Germans or the Russians. (At their most venomous, they wished only that Hitler and Stalin might each some day slip on a banana peel and be indefinitely hospitalized.) They wished peace--they even wished it passionately. They were most serious about the League of Nations. They wished that other people would behave themselves decently--they themselves tried to be decent, even in a black-bottom age. And when in 1941 an American Ambassador said, "You are ro decent," it touched them to the point of silent tears. To be sure they had, for the most part, turned away from Christianity--their churches were not full--but more than any other people in the world, they hoped they were, at heart, a Christian people. And when King George V had his Jubilee in 1935, the English people were, without the slightest doubt, the happiest civilized people in an unhappy world.

And they were totally unheroic. They wanted no bloody heroes. They wanted no war--wanted no more to be conquerors. No more parades. And when war came in 1939, it was the policy of the Government and the people that there should be no bands marching down the street--and there were none--and that the war should be fought without hatred. All this comported with the most decent sentiments of decent people everywhere.

Yet now the English themselves are more than a little angry at themselves--or angry, at any rate, at their scapegoats. They are not even proud of their Empire.

The people of England are not even aware of the mere lawyer's brief for the splendid achievements of their ancestors in India. They do not know, or apparently care, that only under England did India ever achieve unity, only under England a century of peace, only under England a glimmering of constitutional law and even-handed justice.

The Work. Tested by the two words, Socialism and Empire, the mood of England appears to be uncertain and unclear. Meanwhile, whatever England is or is not thinking about the larger issues of her destiny, there is no doubt about what she is doing. England is working hard--very hard. Englishmen complain among themselves that they are not working as hard as they might. Nevertheless, women in the factories, hundreds of thousands of them, women in the uniformed services, hundreds of thousands of them, testify at every turn to the tremendous mobilization of the human power of Great Britain.

And great though the effort is in field and factory and in the offices it is secondary to the energy with which England's Army is training itself and straining itself toward wherever opportunity may offer. English soldiers are praying--and wishing--for a fight. And every hour of day or night England's fighters in the air and on the sea are in fact fighting inviting for themselves every possible death that might be profitable for King and Country.

In many groups, and particularly among the younger men, there is, above all, the determination that England shall become terribly practical and terribly competent. Some say: "We must be and become rough and tough." Some say: "We want bad men," adding, deceptively: "We have been too decent." This expresses a rising mood in England--to be realistic, rough, tough, terribly competent, more terrible than the Russians or the Germans or the Japanese.

Rough for what purpose? For the purpose of being worse and more terrible gangsters than have yet appeared on the world's scene? Obviously not--but they have not yet articulated an answer. Willing and eager to die--but for what? Their answer is still not formulated, but you encounter it especially among the serious young men of England--including nine out of ten who have come from the schools that have the ties. They have a certainty that a man must have something greater than himself to live for.

London's Economist may have been speaking for them when it wrote last month:

"It is a Prophet that is needed, not a revolutionary; a Spokesman, not a dictator. The need is . . . to translate into a burning faith the inarticulate beliefs of a people that is as great and as creative as ever it was. The need is not for a break with the past, but for a return to the native tradition of clear thinking and courage, of lucidity and daring, of bold action for moderate ends."

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