THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, April 8, 2020 |A
Keeping Calm
And Carrying On
Britain’s War: A New World, 1942-
By Daniel Todman
(Oxford, 953 pages, $39.95)BOOKSHELF| By Alan Allport
A
ll nations have their historical touchstones, to which
they return in times of crisis for reassurance and
inspiration. For the United States and France, there
are the revolutionary moments of 1776 and 1789. The
British, for the past 75 years, have retreated to the
memory of World War II whenever their national way of
life is threatened. The Covid-19 crisis has been no exception.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, recently enjoined
modern Britons to emulate their grandparents’ steadfast-
ness during the Blitz of 1940-41. “Despite the pounding
every night, the rationing, the loss of life,” he said,
“theypulled together in one gigantic national effort.”
These allusions to World War II tend to refer
specifically to its dramatic early years—Britain’s “finest
hour,” in Churchill’s
words—when the nation
stood virtually alone
against Nazi Germany. But
it could be argued that it
is the later period, as
chronicled in the second
and concluding volume of
Daniel Todman’s excellent
history, “Britain’s War: A
New World, 1942-1947,”
which offers the more
pertinent analogy for the
present crisis.
By 1942, Britain, thanks in
part to its alliances with the Soviet
Union and the United States, was no longer
in any immediate danger of invasion or defeat. Hitler’s
bombers had mostly withdrawn from the skies of Western
Europe for the Eastern Front. Although there would be
some deadly bombing raids still to come, as well as attacks
by pilotless V-1 and V-2 rockets in the war’s final months,
British civilians were not exposed to the same degree of
personal danger they had endured in 1940 or 1941. The
sacrifices of the second half of World War II were, for the
British, more prosaic—and, perhaps for that reason, more
challenging. What lay ahead were years of material
shortages, boredom and heavy-handed government
restrictions on personal liberty. For the majority of
Britons, the war after 1942 was a righteous struggle,
but a humdrum one as well.
Churchill’s government, as Mr. Todman describes it in
his meticulously researched and densely detailed history,
managed, by and large, to keep a grip on the nation’s
morale. It did this in part by providing victories, though
they did not come easily at first. The six months that
followed Japan’s entry into the war, in December 1941,
were perhaps the grimmest of the entire conflict for
Britain. The British colonies in East and Southeast Asia,
including Singapore—previously hailed as the “Gibraltar
of the East”—fell with humiliating ease to numerically
inferior Japanese forces. By early summer 1942, the
Royal Navy had lost control of the Indian Ocean for the
first time since the 18th century. A Japanese invasion of
the Indian subcontinent, already seething with anti-
imperial discord, seemed a matter of time.Thousands of miles to the west, Gen. Erwin Rommel’s
Afrika Korps had smashed through British defenses in
Libya and Egypt and was only days from reaching Cairo.
The Axis forces in the Western Desert were held in the
nick of time at a dusty railroad stop in El Alamein, where,
in November 1942, Rommel was decisively beaten. Turning
back the Japanese in the Bay of Bengal took much longer,
and it was not until late 1944 that a modernized, well-
trained and well-equipped British Indian Army invaded
Burma and began advancing along the road to Mandalay.
The Empire east of Suez was reconquered in the final
months of the war, though, as it turned out, to little avail
for the exhausted British: By 1947, when Mr. Todman’s
chronicle concludes, India and Pakistan had already
declared independence, and Burma and Sri Lanka were on
the verge of doing the same.
That this momentous transfer of power went largely
unremarked in Britain itself was, in part, a reflection of
the inward turn that the British had made as a result of
the war. As early as 1940, it was already evident that
national expectations for the postwar settlement would
include an ambitious rethinking of the social and
economic status quo. The wartime emergency had
revealed the inadequacies of the patchwork 1930s health
and welfare safety net, unevenly organized and funded
locally rather than by the central state. The rhetoric of a
“people’s war,” in which all classes would share the
benefits of victory as payment for their common sacrifice,
fostered demands for a more egalitarian future society.
Mr. Todman, a professor of modern history at Queen
Mary University of London, shrewdly observes that it
was by no means inevitable that Britain’s Labour Party
would be the principal electoral beneficiary of this new
progressive mood. Churchill’s enormous personal
popularity remained undiminished at the end of the war.
Most observers, including Labour’s own leadership,
expected that he would win the 1945 general election.
The Conservatives had a better-funded, better-organized
electoral machine, one that had reliably delivered ballot-
box victories throughout the 1930s. But Churchill had
taken little interest in postwar reform during the conflict,
frustrating younger members of his own party who felt
that he was ceding ground to Labour on this vital
political front without a fight.
By the time the election was scheduled in the summer
of 1945, the Tories were scrambling to catch up. What is
striking about the manifestos of both parties in that
election is how they promised voters much the same
things—an expanded welfare state, some form of
nationalized health care, security from unemployment.
The difference was that Labour’s leaders seemed to
mean it, whereas to many people Churchill appeared to
be mouthing platitudes he didn’t believe. The Tory leader
remained a far more charismatic, likable politician than
his opposite number, Clement Attlee. But in the end
weary voters opted for substance over style.Mr. Allport is an associate professor of history at
Syracuse University. His next book, “Britain at Bay,”
will be out inNovember.For Britons, material shortages, boredom and
government restrictions on personal liberty
characterized the second half of World War II.A Hostage’s Guide to Isolation
I
spent 45 days in Pakistan
as a hostage of the Taliban
in 2008. A college friend
recently sent a note asking if I
had any suggestions as to how
people can physically and
mentally cope with their coro-
navirus-induced confinement.
Here’s what I told him:
Be calm. Try not to be
afraid.
Set a regimen. Get up early.
Use that time to pray, medi-
tate or exercise.
Don’t eat too much. It will
make you listless. Try not to
sleep during the day. It’s a
form of escape. Don’t live in
the dark. Natural light is best.
We lived in darkness. I was al-
ways seeking the light.
Keep your mind active and,
as best you can, positive. Read
only good books. I know one
hostage who read the Quran.
He isn’t religious but it com-
forted him. I studied Pashtu in
the afternoons for maybe an
hour with my main jailer. It
made my brain work hard and
I felt good afterward, and it
gave him power and made him
feel good and smart and it
brought him closer to me, I
felt, bettering my chances to
stay alive.
In captivity everything be-
comes primal. A hierarchy de-
velops. You become territorial,
no matter how small your cor-
ner. The same, I believe, wouldhappen in a home, even in a
loving family. Don’t seek
power; give it to others if nec-
essary. Be humble. Seek to get
along with everyone, because
everyone is afraid, and when
people are afraid they can be-
come irrational. If you can’t
go to the store and there’s not
enough food, give some of
yours to others. It will draw
you closer, and you will feel
strong.Try to accomplish some-
thing: reading part of a book,
learning new words, even of a
foreign language, doing more
push-ups, playing the piano,
whatever it is, every day. Write
letters. They are more intimate
than emails, and you’ll feel
good. I know of a hostage who
wrote a letter to his parents
before he died. We all have
two lives, he wrote. The sec-
ond one begins when you real-
ize that you only have one.
Help one another and you
will find warmth. I know of a
hostage who became the
leader in a large cell of men
from different counties, be-
cause he helped others, in
part by quiet strength.
Keep a journal. It helps you
free yourself and become re-
laxed. It is a form of therapy.
You will find that you are
stronger than you think.
Shakespeare wrote that “there
is nothing either good or bad,
but thinking makes it so.” Try
to think like this.
Stay away from the com-
puter as much as you can. Iliked being away from the tyr-
anny of emails. It gave me a
sense of freedom.
John McCain said there
were no atheists in the Hanoi
Hilton. They found comfort in
prayer. So did I, and others. It
gave us strength. I know a
hostage, who, in the midst of
a hard moment, forgave his
captors. “I had no choice,” he
said. He knew that if didn’t,
he would suffer in deeper
ways.
I know another hostage
who wanted mainly to talk
about mock executions. It was
the fear of pain that bothered
him most. Above all, don’t be
afraid. It will help you stay
healthy.
In the end you will be
closer than before. You will
become stronger for having
gone through this, and it will
make you feel quietly proud
and, most important, grateful.Mr. van Dyk is author, most
recently, of “The Trade: My
Journey Into the Labyrinth of
Political Kidnapping.”By Jere van Dyk
What I learned
about endurance as
a Taliban prisoner.OPINION
When Don-
ald Trump
says “no-
body saw
this coming,”
he is literally
wrong.
Experts
and the U.S.
government
and the world
at large have
known for centuries global pan-
demics were possible; they’ve
accumulated a great deal of
knowledge in the scientific era
about how such contagions op-
erate. When a new virus
emerges in China, the world al-
ways pays attention because so
many pathogens have sprung
from China.
On the same day the White
House’s Peter Navarro was
writing a now-famous memo
alluding to a 1% chance that
the Wuhan virus could spark a
global catastrophe, I published
a column pointing to China’s
suspected connection to previ-
ous pandemics as devastating
as 1918’s and as modest as
1957’s. I knew no more than
anybody else and could only
speculate that the observed
mortality rate (then about 3%)
was overstated because of
many unobserved infections,
which also made it likely the
Wuhan virus was already
spreading world-wide.
There will be much to criti-
cize about the Trump admin-
istration’s response, just as
we can never forgive FDR’s
baiting of Japan with embar-
goes while leaving the fleet
bottled up in Pearl Harbor,
Trump Is Not the Virus
Kennedy’s actions at the Bay
of Pigs, Johnson’s in the
Tonkin Gulf. In the midst a
global flu pandemic that was
particularly fatal to young
adults, Wilson sent packed
troop ships to intervene in
World War I. If Truman had
let Stalin know the U.S. was
prepared to spend 36,
lives and threaten nuclear
war over South Korea, the Ko-
rean War never would have
happened.
I could go on. Mr. Trump is
the worst president we’ve
ever had, just like some of the
best presidents we’ve ever
had.
But from the bottom of my
heart, let me point out how
genuinely worthless some
journalists are as thinkers and
critics when they venture be-
yond their job of getting
quotes and facts right. The
media is staffed with people
for whom the hindsight fallacy
is not a fallacy; it’s their mé-
tier. (You can see the same af-
ter every stock market crash;
whoever was predicting a
crash at the time—and some-
body always was—is accorded
seer status.)
A pandemic is always po-
tentially around the corner
thanks to natural selection, but
when one will actually arrive
is a known unknown. Yes, ev-
erything could have been done
by the Trump administration
faster and sooner. That’s par
for the course for the U.S. gov-
ernment, unfortunately (see:
history). Mr. Trump’s own
“messaging” (which in the
meta world of journalists ismore important than any con-
crete reality) has been its typi-
cal mess when the president is
ad libbing. It is also low-conse-
quence no matter how much
the media tries to make it high
consequence.
For what it’s worth, my as-
sessment of the Trump politi-
cal character: Its defining fea-
ture is his colossal and
thorough cynicism about the
game of politics and the peo-
ple who play it. When hehears himself called a racist or
a traitor he rolls his eyes and
thinks: I can play this game
better than these schlemiels
because I don’t deceive myself
about the moral character of
what I’m doing.
And guess what? He has a
point. I might even say he’s
the moral superior of some of
his critics.
In the Columbia Journalism
Review, a writer recently criti-
cized MSNBC not for opposing
Mr. Trump reflexively but for
doing so stupidly—in ways
that have benefited Mr. Trump.
It’s a line of inquiry that de-
serves to be pursued.
Our world reveals itself
through paradoxes. A presi-
dent who does a fair impres-
sion of Pinocchio has been the
vehicle for exposing the me-dia’s own mendacity. A presi-
dent rightly criticized for traf-
ficking in conspiracy theories
was the victim of one him-
self—and not promoted by a
solitary guy with a Twitter ac-
count, but by the nation’s me-
dia, law enforcement and po-
litical institutions.
Which brings us to the
Democratic front-runner. If
Democrats are the party of
government (and GOP the
party of the private sector),
the virus convinced many
Democratic voters the time
wasn’t right for a gadfly like
Bernie Sanders. But millions
of voters have also had their
faith in government severely
tested by the Russia collusion
hoax, which Democrats could
know by removing their fin-
gers from their ears. A joking
rejection last month by a Bi-
den campaign official of an
endorsement from James
Comey was probably worth
10,000 votes to Joe Biden. I’m
not kidding.
Mr. Biden, who has strug-
gled to seem commanding,
could earn a million more by
kicking to the curb Adam
Schiff’s attempt to reclothe
himself as chief inquisitor of
Trump’s coronavirus response.
Talk about everything chang-
ing except somebody’s way of
thinking: The public wants ac-
tive, competent government.
It doesn’t want the deep state.
It doesn’t want the pathologi-
cally careerist partisanship of
someone last seen promoting
lies even after he knew they
were lies and knew they were
damaging the country.Democrats might win
if they recognize their
role in the distrust-of-
government epidemic.BUSINESS
WORLD
By Holman W.
Jenkins, Jr.
With Covid-
patients over-
whelming U.S.
hospitals, it
might seem
off-key, verg-
ing on inde-
cent, to ex-
plore the
political con-
sequences of
this catastro-
phe. But in just seven months,
we will hold what many Ameri-
cans regard as the most impor-
tant national election in their
lifetimes. What is happening
now is bound to affect what
will happen then. It’s early, but
we can begin to draw some in-
ferences from the evidence we
are accumulating.
As the magnitude of the
pandemic became evident, the
president enjoyed a “Trump
bump.” Approval of his han-
dling of the crisis rose, as did
his overall job approval. It
would have been surprising if
it had not; every national cri-
sis in memory has evoked a
“rally around the flag” re-
sponse.
But the bump is already
beginning to fade. In the polls
conducted during the final
week of March, the presi-
dent’s job approval averaged
47% while his disapproval
rate stood at 50%. In the polls
conducted during the first
week of April, his job ap-
proval had fallen to an aver-
age of 44% while disapproval
rose to 52%.
Although a causal link is
hard to establish, President
Trump’s receding job approval
coincides with increased skep-
ticism about his handling of
The ‘Trump Bump’ Is Already Over
the Covid-19 outbreak. Three
surveys conducted in mid-
March found an average of
55% of Americans approving
of his management of the gov-
ernment’s response. By con-
trast, four surveys conducted
during the past week showed
approval declining to an aver-
age of just 47%. There is no
way of predicting whether
this decline will continue and
as yet no evidence that the
Covid-19 crisis has improved
the president’s standing in the
general election face-off with
Joe Biden, either nationally or
in key swing states.
We can say with greater
confidence that the epidemic
has disrupted Mr. Trump’s
general-election strategy. He
had planned to organize his
campaign around two themes:
a strong economy and a cri-
tique of the Democratic Party
for allegedly embracing “so-
cialism.” No doubt his cam-
paign would have fashioned
its own version of Ronald
Reagan’s “Morning in Amer-
ica” advertisement with its fa-
mous concluding line, “Why
would we ever want to return
to where we were, less than
four short years ago?” And it
would have done its best to
equate Joe Biden’s preferred
policies with those of Bernie
Sanders and the Squad.
In today’s radically trans-
formed circumstances, neither
of these themes is likely to
work. The president will have
to hope that by Election Day
the economy will be in recov-
ery from a historically sharp
downturn—and that the people
will give him credit for the im-
provement rather than holdinghim responsible for the de-
cline. Although this is possible,
it is hard to find a precedent—
not to mention that few econo-
mists expect a classic “V-
shaped” recovery.
As for socialism: No Senate
Republican voted against the
$2.2 trillion Phase 3 rescue
bill, an unprecedented expan-
sion of government’s cost and
reach. As it turns out, thereare few libertarians in eco-
nomic foxholes. Mr. Trump
has invoked the measures of
war socialism, forcing General
Motors and 3M under the De-
fense Production Act to accel-
erate plans to convert their
assembly lines to health-
equipment production.
Matt Schlapp of the Ameri-
can Conservative Union de-
scribes the aid package as res-
titution. “The conservative
principle,” he insists, is that
“when government takes your
property and economic rights,
they are obligated to come up
with a financial settlement.”
Who knew that the Fifth
Amendment leads down the
primrose path to what the tea
party not long ago regarded
as the everlasting bonfire?
Could Covid-19, like the
Great Depression, force a fun-
damental reassessment of the
role of government? Perhaps.
But it was not the election of1932 that made the New Deal
the new baseline of American
politics. It was the 1936 elec-
tion, in which the people
judged President Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s programs to be
successful and rewarded him
with what was then the big-
gest landslide ever.
Early signs suggest that
the implementation of the
Cares Act will be hampered,
perhaps undermined, by the
lack of administrative capac-
ity at the federal level and,
for programs such as unem-
ployment insurance, at the
state level as well. If the pub-
lic’s perception of the presi-
dent’s performance on the
health and economic fronts is
negative enough to defeat him
in November, the next admin-
istration will be challenged to
prove that it can do better.
This will require reforming
and reinvesting in long-ne-
glected public institutions,
never an easy sell.
One big change in the po-
litical climate is clear: Already
on the defensive, globalization
has suffered another blow. De-
pending on complex supply
chains for equipment and
medicines essential for the
nation’s health care has come
to appear unsafe and irre-
sponsible. Mr. Trump and for-
mer Vice President Biden will
be asked to offer plans for
bringing production of these
vital materials back home,
and to answer a simple ques-
tion: Why have administra-
tions of both political parties
kept our Strategic Petroleum
Reserve full while allowing
our strategic health reserve to
languish?And Covid-19 has cost
the president two
major arguments
for his re-election.POLITICS
& IDEAS
By William
A. Galston