The Fifties

by David Halberstam

His xenophobia seemed on occasion like a caricature. He did not like Europe, which he regarded as a lesser continent, populated with people significantly greedier and more materialistic than Americans. It was a place, he noted, where everyone always seemed to want to go to war. But as much as he disliked Europe, he disliked England even more, not just merely because he thought it a snobbish and foppish place, but because he was sure that the entire American foreign service was filled with Anglophiles eager to serve England’s purpose rather than that of their own citizens. The British were not only perfidious (with the Americans their favorite dupes), they worked hand in hand with the Soviets. A typical Trib cartoon of the postwar era showed Clement Atlee, the British prime minister, with an exhausted and somewhat witless Uncle Sam and Atlee saying, “Let’s bribe Stalin with your two billion atomic bomb so Russia will let England rule Europe with the five billions you’re going to lend us without interest.”