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Front Seat. When Macmillan elevated Home from Commonwealth Relations to the Foreign Office last July, the Laborite Daily Mirror called it "the most reckless political appointment since the Roman Emperor Caligula made his favorite horse a consul." Home admitted wistfully that "one would have to have the hide of a rhinoceros not to be affected by the criticism." But he defended his apprenticeship for the job. "After all, for five years it was my job to explain foreign policy to the Commonwealth." Officials used to his rather dour predecessor, Selwyn Lloyd, were charmed by Home's wit and informality (Home rides up front in official cars, putting the Scotland Yard man in the back). His subordinates were also surprised at his grasp of the issues.
"I have some very clear ideas," says Home. "The main one is security," which Britain can achieve, he believes, only "by making and keeping friends"—notably the U.S. Where Macmillan likes to emphasize the possibilities of negotiating with the Russians, Home warns that Communism is "an international and militant crusade. As long as Communism deals in subversion, aggression and domination, the relations between East and West, must be considered principally in the context of power." It is just such a cold assessment of power that led Home to favor backing down on Laos—he calculates that a war there would sap the West and leave it ill-prepared to meet a crisis in Europe.
Last week, to his Chicago audience, Home stoutly defended British colonialism, which "since the war has established ten fully independent nations in Asia and Africa. In the next generation, if we are given time—and I say this pointedly in the United States—it will be responsible for the first nonracial societies in Africa." He warned that the U.S. should not judge Britain by the ban-the-bombers, "a few whose minds are as fluffy as their beards." He added: "Do not be misled into thinking us soft. Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers. The memorial to him in London is a railway station called Waterloo. Shopkeepers we may be, but neither our principles nor our alliances are for sale."