by George Mikes
The change on this matter was as thorough as that in people’s attitude to female nakedness. But at least between the times when a Victorian lady could not be persuaded to show her ankles and the times when a neo-Elizabethan lady could not be persuaded to cover up her breasts, a whole century passed. But it took only a few short years for nations to cover up their colonies with a blush, hide their dominions, apologize humbly for their former mistake of running a disorderly Empire and living on the earnings of its natives. So-called freedom and independence was granted to all and sundry whether they wanted it or not.
No doubt it is the speed with which it happened that has made losing an Empire a bit of a shock. It is like an individual losing a limb. You can’t help getting used to your left foot and you do miss it when you have to part with it. But people react to such a disaster in diverse ways. Some people become bitter and full of hatred and blame others, starting with God, for their misfortune. Others, who have lost a hand, are determined to show that they can become virtuoso piano-players (like Ravel’s famous friend) or become football players without legs (like a young and admirably brave little boy I know). Others despair and come to the conclusion that life is not worth living any more. Others look at their tragedy wisely and realize that the dreadful loss is also – like all losses – a gain: you can discover certain aspects, beauties and values in life which would have remained undiscovered but for your misfortune. If you are wise enough you will accept your limitations and turn to new fields in search of new satisfactions. A legless man may be wiser, more intelligent, better educated, more widely read, a better chess player and a more knowledgeable stamp-collector than a man with two legs; but he will not be able to run faster.
‘How dare you, sir!’
If you want to become a modern Englishman you must make up your mind which of the main groups you wish to join.
1. The Colditz Group. This group holds that Empire or no Empire, we are still Top Nation. We licked those bloody Nazis single handed (except that we did not). Never mind that the pound is slipping, it is Colditz that counts. The German economy may be powerful and we may be beggars or at least borrowers (what’s the difference?) but so what? During the war (which ended over thirty years ago, about the length of time that passed between Napoleon and the Crimean War, another era in history), well, during the war the brilliant British outwitted those dull Germans. The Germans were brutal, coarse, cruel and dimwitted; the British noble, heroic, indomitable and gallant. If you doubt this, read any trashy novel or watch even trashier films on television. You can see two a day. It was our finest hour. We – the Colditz Group – want to live that finest hour forever. Yes we want to escape from something – as everybody in Colditz was always escaping.
2. The Palmerston Group. Or you may maintain – as millions do – that absolutely nothing has, in fact, changed. Queen Victoria is still on the throne, Lord Palmerston is still our Foreign Secretary. Recalcitrant tribal chiefs will be birched and – in the case of grave unrest – gunboats dispatched. Some members of this group may have noticed that we do not have India any more; but we still have Gibraltar, Hong Kong and the Falkland Islands. World-wide responsibilities.
Palmerstonians look down with a superior but condescendingly benevolent smile on all other nations. Foreigners are still funny. The Germans have a silly language, whoever heard of putting the predicate always at the end of the sentence? The Americans are even more laughable – they speak English with an American accent, not in our distinguished Cockney or Geordie.
All is well, really the main problem is to keep poor, sick Albert alive because our good Queen Victoria would be very upset if he died.
Only the British are real people, who can be respected, with a few exceptions who are no good at all:
(a) the working classes;
(b) the lower-middle classes;
(c) business-people, executives and all people in trade;
(d) black people;
(e) brown people;
(f) Jews;
(g) foreigners;
(h) Londoners and other city-dwellers (if you live in the country); and
(i) country bumpkins (if you live in London or another city).
But as all these amount to only 187 per cent of the population, you can justly be proud of your people.
A member of this group once remarked: ‘Running a vast Empire does – inevitably – create arrogance. The Empire is gone; let’s stick to the arrogance. We must keep something.’
3. The Staunch Independents. Very well, say members of this group, we accept reality. But we do not give up our national pride. Running to the International Monetary Fund or the EEC and others for money is undignified. But we accept no conditions. We shall never – never! – allow foreigners to run our economy. They might cure it. Look what these Germans, Swiss, Swedes, etc. did to their own economy.
4. The Little Englander. England is gone. It has become a country of no importance. It is an off-shore island. A new Jamaica. We know it was wrong to rule two-thirds of the world. Our mistake. We do apologize. We’ll never do it again. True, we still have some virtues and assets. We still have some brilliant writers, a magnificent political sense, great courage, tremendous experience, unrivalled skills in some fields but all this is really not our fault. We have not been able to get rid of these virtues quickly enough to fit our new, modest position in the world, but we shall do our best. We shall try to sink lower, difficult though it is, with all our gifts. But we’ll try. We won’t give up. Sorry for being alive.
5. The Mikes Group. Or you can join me. This is what this whole book is about. We will say – and we may be right, or we may be too pessimistic – that nations grow old, just like individuals. They lose their competitive spirit; their ambitions; their virility. In other words, they grow up, become wise, likeable and humane.
If you have to become poor, learn to enjoy your poverty but do not become a showing-off, conceited nouveau pauvre; if you become weak, find new strength in your weakness; if you have to decay, decay with elegance and grace. An ageing gentleman cannot be a great tennis champion, a devastating fast bowler or a record-breaking long-distance runner; on the other hand those loudmouthed, vulgar youths cannot be shrewd, mature and wise old men.
How to Become a Colony
The British are brave people. They can face anything, except reality. You can tell them that they have lost an Empire and that they are slowly sliding out of the first eleven of countries: that is obvious. But you cannot tell them – so don’t – that they are being colonized themselves.
They are being colonized by rival powers. First of all, they seem to have become a colony of Saudi Arabia. Sometimes, looking at certain districts of London, you would think that there can be no more Arabs left in Riyadh. There must be more sheiks in the London casinos than in all of Jeddah. During the hot, long summer of 1976 the country was actually being turned into a desert, with a few oases here and there. We have even got the oil – as befits a country which other countries want to colonize.
The Arab menace, however, is much less serious than it seems. It is true that they buy up half of the country; it is true that they fill the most expensive British nursing homes with patients grand or humble, to such an extent, that in these establishments all notices, menus, etc., are printed in Arabic with an English translation (for the staff). But the Arabs, at least, return to Britain a substantial part of the money they make on their oil. Not so much through the nursing homes – although what they rake in is not inconsiderable – as through the gaming tables. This is fair and decent of them. Whenever they raise the price of their oil by 10 per cent, they also raise their losses on roulette and chemin de fer by the same amount.
The Indians, too, are getting even with the British. Small trade – as a first step – is being taken over by Indians and Pakistanis. In Fulham, where I live, one shop after another has passed into Indian hands: the newsagent’s, the grocer’s, the greengrocer’s, the small post office, the chemist and so on. I am n
ot sure that the Indians were so pleased when we took over their land but I, personally, am delighted by their turning Fulham into an Indian colony, with my television-repairer as its viceroy.
The small, dingy English grocer-shop has become a splendid little supermarket; at the post-office service – and courtesy – have improved beyond recognition; the newsagents – unlike their English predecessors – send me the papers I have ordered and they arrive early in the morning. And the Indians keep their shops open at all the hours when you want to shop, not only at the so-called regular hours when you do not or cannot. The new Indian Empire is heartily welcome, by me at least, but alas there are limits to its expansion. At Earl’s Court – particularly around Gloucester Road – the Indian Empire reaches Arab territory and this Empire is more staunchly defended than ever our Empire was. No question of granting independence to Gloucester Road.
Even the EEC countries are quick to seize their chances. I wrote some years ago that the Common Market ought to beware because Britain is not, in fact, joining Europe but is founding a new Empire. I could not have been more wrong. It is our EEC partners who are colonizing us. Britain is being invaded. The Ministry of Defence keeps a sinister silence about this new invasion which is much more effective than William’s amateurish attempt was in 1066.
Regular hours
Anyone who has eyes, can see what is happening. A large foreign army, broken up into small units, is arriving day after day at Dover and Harwich. They are armed with travellers cheques and foreign currencies with great power of penetration. They bring with them vast shopping bags disguised as motor-cars and shooting brakes. The groups look quite innocent, except that from time to time their eyes roll ferociously and they utter a menacing battle-cry which sounds like: ‘Marks and Spencer! Marks and Spencer!’
There is one great difference between the new invasion and that of William: William’s army has stayed in England for a thousand years and there is little hope that their descendants will ever leave. The new invaders grab their loot and withdraw almost immediately.
Once upon a time it was the British who invaded strange lands and got hold of foreign treasure in exchange for beads and other worthless bric-à-brac. Now it’s our turn to be invaded, and the invaders pay with something called pound sterling which they can pick up on their shores for practically nothing. No doubt the moral is: ‘Plus ça change …’
On Ceasing to be an Island
I could put up with all this. What I cannot bear is our giving up our most sacred heritage. Look what’s happening.
I have spent the best years of my life becoming a true Englishman and now the whole country is turning alien, lock, stock and barrel. Britain joining Europe was as if the Pope had turned Anglican or Ghadafi had emigrated to Israel and joined a kibbutz. And even that was not all. Decimal currency has come to stay. Where are the glorious days when every wretched foreign visitor was puzzled, foxed and driven to despair when he had to calculate what he’d have left from seven and six after paying six and eleven? Where are the glorious days of the half-crown – the half of a non-existent crown? Why is the guinea dead? What is happening to Fahrenheit – that completely senseless measurement of temperature, invented by an East Prussian but so supremely English? As a system, it was rotten, of course, but that’s not the point. No bloody foreigner could understand it – not even Herr Fahrenheit, I am sure – and that was the glory of it.
I do not mind Britain becoming decadent but I very much mind Britain ceasing to be an island. And that’s what’s happening. Not because of the aeroplane; not because of the speed of communications; not because of the invention of nuclear power; not even because of our being colonized by Arabs, Indians and Europeans. The crunch has come with invasion by the decimal point – by kilos, grams, and millimetres, by a logical, easy system of measurement. This is our final humiliation.
I hate being a prophet of doom but I must speak up. When the furlong, the chain, the rod, pole and perch, the peck, the bushel and the gill are gone, Britain as an island will have disappeared and the country will have become a suburb of Brussels.
Envoi
Let us not get hysterical. What does it matter whether we are colonizing the Punjab or the Punjab is colonizing Fulham? … But, you may ask, if that does not matter, what does?
The virtues the English still possess matter. The tolerance, the courtesy, the still fairly decent table manners, the sly good humour, the passion for queueing, the self-deprecation and dislike of flattery, the cool-headedness (even the cold-bloodedness – there’s something to be said for not making too much of sex), the gift for double-think which makes it possible to foist airfields and motorways onto other people’s doorsteps and refuse to have them on your own … All these virtues, being the result of power and affluence, are as I have said disappearing. But they are disappearing very slowly – slowly enough for me. I am disappearing slowly myself.
Many people are leaving this country: too many strikes, too little public transport, the falling pound and standard of living, the sinking economy, the uncertainty of their children’s future: they want no more of all this. Good luck to them.
I, on the other hand, am going to stay even if Britain becomes a desert island with me as her Robinson Crusoe. That, when I come to think of it, would have considerable advantages. The pound sterling would cease to exist so it could fall no lower. If I were alone, Britain would at last be free of class distinctions – the only way, I am sure, that this could happen. Or is it? As a British subject I could always look down on myself as a former bloody foreigner, and as a former middle-class intellectual I could despise the agricultural labourer I would have to become. Even one man can keep up class-warfare if he’s really determined.
Our sly good humour
Even with other people around I like it here. Not always and not everything. But on the whole I like it here very much. Besides, this country accepted me in my hour of need and I am not abandoning her in her hour of need (although I have a vague suspicion that I am of not too much help). I have changed my country once and this is, I feel, enough for any man for a lifetime. Let England and me decay together. We are both decaying in good company.
Let me say one more thing in conclusion. When I wrote that other little book, thirty years ago, I admired the English enormously but did not like them very much; today I admire them much less but love them much more.
A Letter From André Deutsch
Dear George,
We have been good friends for a very long time. We really met properly here in England, that last summer before the Second World War: when I arrived from Hungary you were already a settled citizen of London. We had known each other in Budapest, of course – but at that time I was still a little boy and you were a grown-up young journalist going out with beautiful actresses, much too sophisticated to talk to your younger brother or to me.
That age-gap closed, but it was not until the summer of 1945 that you did your first good deed for me. I can tell you what you were doing on the Isle of Wight – you and your wife were on holiday there. You rang me and said ‘I have written something. Come for the week-end and read it.’ So I drove down in my battered little Hillman Minx, and there was the manuscript which became How to be an Alien.
I read it at a sitting and naturally loved it, but said that you must write a little more. We agreed that, as you were not well known in England, we would have to find you an illustrator who was famous as well as good. We drew up a list of names, and at its top was the name of a man I have never met, Nicolas Bentley. So it was through you that I met Nick, who became a great friend and my partner – something else to thank you for.
We have published books together now, and it has been great fun, in spite of our many arguments. I have always suspected that there is a little Paul Getty inside you wanting to get out, and I know that the person wanting to get out of me is a down. You and Paul Getty, me and Grock – it sounds an ill-assorted team, but I think that we haven’t done too badly.
&nb
sp; It gives me enormous pleasure to make this one volume of your three famous books about the British. If I am not an inimitable and decadent alien it is not for want of studying the texts, but because I drew out of them their inner meaning as revealed through your present title, and thanks to you, dear friend, have become a true Brit.*
THE BEGINNING
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