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of the Beitish roling class for relnctant betrayal and polite self-preservation. Effortiesaly be played the parts which the Establishment could recognise - for was be pot born and trained into the Establishment? Efforticasly he copied its attitudes, caught its diffident stamumer, its hesitant arrogance, effort- lesaly he took. bis place in it nameless hegemony. So well imdeed did he per- ferve it. neture that years later, when the security services and the Press came to suspect bon for what be was, Philby was able to rally the Establish- ment to his side and manoeuvre it mrto protecting him as ig own. It is, I am sure, part of the ambi- valence of Philby's position chat he pever altogether took leave of the world he foreswore. He enjoyed the Establishment; be enjoyed its camara- warmth, its comforting distaste for intellectual pyrotechnics, to the very people he deceived Hence, perhaps, his extraordingry reluctance wo defect to Russia; bence his confcssion abroad; hence his long and perilous hesitation in Beirut. Kim was homesick Even Banner be nheeeinn ip net GOW LD WiGsconW, G15 GCScasiGo 3 not with Russia, bur with England. Kim loved the absert pareni best; and even though he had marked down the parent authority of England as his lifelong enemy, Kim Philby never guite absolved if from irc parental duty quute 2582 Biro fs pero: oy to protect. And I think there was even & moment - ii is pari of cracking up — when Philby wanted to be discovered and punished for what be had donc; and that moment also came in che last days in Beirut. mother. We may assume that a man of his father’s \emoperament would not iolerate a worn of sny force. Certainly ip the Arab world where they were at hone, there wes not much doabt where women stood. Later Philby’s own attitude to women recalls the ambivalence of those days: the mother-goddess of Kipling mingied unhappily with the mindless, curtained amenity of Arab life. “I crust have women,” said John Gay, “nothing tmbends the mind like them.” Women were also his secret audi- ence. He used them as he used society; he performed, danced, phantasised with them, begged their approbation, used them as a response for his histri- onic talents, as a consolation for a manhood haunted by his father’s ghost. When they came too close, he punished them or sent them away, either as unsatisfactory mother-figures or the spent instruments of his expres- sion. Sometimes they were the actual currency in which be paid old scores or satisfied his oreacherous impulse. Burt whatever they were, they were second to that one elected mother who held iis heart: Russia (As the authoes repeatedly demon- strate, Philby was not political animal We do not find him plunged into an agony of doubt during the Stalin, purges, the Doctors’ Phot, the Hungarian revolution. I cannox relate the crises in his personal life to crises within the Communist world: this was Mother Russia was the boy’s absolute. We can only speculate about his Tnotive, and we can only guess st the scope of his deceit. Did Philby initiate the operations he betreyed? Did he propose the Albanian infijtracions in which be sent agents to their deaths? We knew barely che tiniest par of the havoc he caused; the codes, the men, the strategies, the techniques, the policies be betrayed. We shall get tite help from either side m working out that bill. Some Intelligence secrets, as I said elsewherc, are known in any capital of Europe, but they are still too hot for the uaxpeyer. For those who enjoy tortuous srarilatinn thoes ie ae inreiosine speculation, there is ome intriguing | coincidence. Sikorsky, whose assas- sination Rolf Hochbuth notoriously attributes to Winston Churchill, rook off from Gibraltar on July 4, 1943. Ar that time Kim Philby was in charge of $08. counter-Intelligence emerations — counter-In ence operations m the Iberian peninsula. ff Sikorsky was essessinated, is it conceivable that Philby planned the operation on behalf i thas, the believed: be Deceit was Philby’s bife’s work; decen, as I understand it, his nature. “T have come home,” he said in Moe cow, Philby has no bome, no woman, no faith. Behind the political label, behind the inbred upper-class arro- gance, the taste for adventure, lies the self-hate of a vain misfi for whom nothing will ever be worthy of his loyalty. Ln the last instance, Philby is driven by the incurable drug of deceit itself, It comes as no surprise that, safely arnnved in the land of his dreams, the old deceiver stretches out his fingers once more and steals the only thing left to steal: the wife of Donald Maclean. If Philby's relationship w the Establishment was ambivalent and paradoxical, the relationship of the Establishment to Philby affords an even sicher study in English attirudes. It is a considerable and original virtue of this book that it treats the British Secret Services for what they sure]y are: microcosms of the British con- dition, of our social attitudes and vanitics. In this sense, the book is a milestone in che Englishman's educa- ton of himself. We can never again ea suppose that Intelligence is a world populated by peopk we have not mei or known. The spy world revealed was in the world of capital that SLS. bad its traditional heart, in the preser- vation of trade routes, in the defence bere is not a Nibelungeniand shrouded | of foreign investment and colonial im dhe covering mist of Gothic con- spiracy and high national affairs; it is peopled by men snd women as sus- ceptible as the rest of us to 2elf- delusion. Iu borders spill over into almost every area of our public life; iis viabiliry depends upon our tolerance, upep our money abd to a sizeable Every government department, like every business, parliament, schoo! or profession, carries its fair share of the world’s idiots. There has never been any reason to suppose that the Secret Service should be absolved from this responsibilicy. Indeed, it is probably the one point on which e- Intelligence officers, of whatever uationality, are agreed: we had our clowns. Bur the presence of such é noi blind us into thinking Philby survived by area fools of { people who were fool: [ee ed preias evertheless, there are plenty of ex- ternal ressons whe icthg: Toesons Way S.LS. and the Security Service moediate post-war years when Philby cod his preates: damace, in a nmtetry en _ it ell ee poor way, The five years between 1944 and 1949 sew the greatest historical failure and the greatest historical rever- Sdlpf all time. Soldiers who had fought at Bastogne were now required to fight London were now required w defend Berlin. In Germany inelf there were those who were taking away aad thoee who were handing back, there were those who spoke of the allies and no longer meant the Russians, those who spoke of the enemy ahd no longer meant the Germans. Simultancously, the petriotism which had kept us afloat for six years was suffering a healthy recession. ‘The dons, artists and inteliectuals who had swollen the ranks of §.L5. and engin- eered its greatest triumphs, returned with the rest of us co cultivate their old professions aad enjoy the fruits of the peace they had won. As a sociery, we had resolutely lived without ideo- logical doubt for six years; we were constipated with slogans, archaisms and compromise. Everything pointed to a gentle, pragmatic form of inter- nstional Socialism. Instead, we were called upon to march in a new crusade. Inevitably, §.LS. was to recruit against the trend, If che prevailing political sentiment of the nation was vaguely Leftist, the posture and tradi- ton of S.LS.- as well as it. present role — were frankly anti-Bolshevis, I : | wealth; in the protection of ‘ordered society’. In re-discovering this rradi- tion, and bringing to it the new tech- niques and brutalities it had learned in the war, S.L5. was hardly likely to win the bearts of the intellectuals whose wit bad once saved it from disband- content to leave ‘the leadernhip as ir stood. The cloth-cap social democrat, far more than the capitalist, is the rworn enemy of Communism. There is no sign, m the account given here, that Attlee tried to put a Socialist spin on our intelligence effort. Let 5-15. expand, be seems to have said; in the Right are united. os The irony goes further. ‘The more eeeithe joel a OM, eee | ae We aad tetninigy am forme, ward pocus of the spy workl When the Bins iz deene the ehaclescn, wank L eVg 16 Ging, tat Ciieitens Cand mi. is to this daft fast-talking charm-sellers that Guy Burgess, incidestally, belonged. I do ot think that 5.1.5. can be biamed for employing Philby in the fire place; it is nothing short of incredibles the: ther kept him op after 1944. By 1945 at the latest the recruinnent policy of S.LS. had pur loyaige dbove imtelti- The inf fact ‘of by’s con- tinued employment afte? this date is ee that S.LS, qilite clearly identified olees with loyalty. Yet this too illustrates snotber pomt that must be made sbout the collective mentality of professional Jotelligence men: they think they know the score. Wholly taken up with meni, they are naturally incapabic of comprehending ideology, however it wes born, as a serious motivating force in people of their own class. This absence of ideological fuss is called common sense, and is the first ‘quali- fication of recruitment. would not merely defend the tradi- onal decencies of our vociety; it would embody them. Within its own walls, its clubs and country Bouses, in whispered Juncheous with its secular contacts, it would enshrine the mysti- cal entity of a vanishing England. Here at least, whatever went on in the” big world outside, Englend’s flower would be cherished “The Empire may be crumbling: but within our secret élite, the clean-limbed tradition of English power would survive. We Believe in nothing but ourselves.” bk was the kind of music Kim -> Soe, |