NATO: Voice of Experience

Over the babble in NATO’s halls last week, the dry voice of experience was heard. Sprightly old (just 70) Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery announced that next September he will quit as NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander. “I am pulling out because I am satisfied that the danger of direct attack on NATO countries is now very remote. What might be called the European test match can be postponed indefinitely [although] there may be village cricket elsewhere in the world,” Monty explained. “The 1949 conception of NATO is now too narrow. Its members have got to look outwards at the world and not just inwards at their own parish pumps.”