The Fifties

by David Halberstam

On April 26, Radford dined with Churchill. If Radford did not get exactly what he wanted—a British commitment to send troops—he got something more important: a wise lecture on the limits of power from one of the great men of the era who was watching his own nation’s power contract in the twilight of his career. Churchill had begun by talking about the British decision to give up India in 1947. He had been in opposition then, he said, and he had hated the idea of giving up so important a country, one Britain had ruled for 250 years. He had regarded this as one of the most painful decisions of a long career, but he had come to accept it. Radford had to understand this when he viewed the British decision on Indochina. He was asking a nation that had given up the most valuable part of its own empire without firing a shot to fight to preserve French colonialism. That could not be done. The British people, he said, would not accept