Played Out?

Ever since the sun began to set on the British Empire, Britons have been acutely sensitive about their diminishing role in world affairs. Last week they were especially upset by a twist to the lion's tail administered by none other than former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Gooderham Acheson. In a speech at West Point, Acheson bluntly appraised Berlin, NATO, and the Common Market. But Britain drew his sharpest words.

"Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role," Acheson said.

"The attempt to play a separate power role apart from Europe, a role based on a 'special relationship' with the U.S. and on being the head of a 'commonwealth' which has no political structure, unity, or strength--this role is about played out. Great Britain, attempting to work alone and to be a broker between the United States and Russia, has seemed to conduct policy as weak as its military power."

From Britain came a mighty roar. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan suggested that Acheson "has fallen into an error which has been made by quite a lot of people in the course of the last 400 years, including Philip of Spain, Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler." The Daily Mirror noted that Britain had been "written off" by another American in 1940 -- "the rich, fainthearted Mr. Joseph Kennedy, Ambassador to the Court of St. James's in the days of Dunkirk." The Manchester Guardian was less imperious --and more candid: "A former American Secretary of State who looks like an Englishman, but who happens to be a foreigner, voiced opinions which Englishmen only admit in the privacy of their clubs."

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