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Cambridge Five Spy Ring — Part 31
Page 38
38 / 121
be avenger stole
upon the citadel
and destroyed it from
withm. Yet both the
avenger and the citadel
wert largely creations of
the samé historical con-
dition. The avenger was
the son of a British Raj; the citade! was
dedicated to the preservation of British
power; both had been displaced by the
evancscence of the Empire. The sven-
ty was ap embittered solitary with the
arrogance of a man familiar with
the terrain of personal philosophies :
the Arabian deserm. He would root
out the old fort with the mdifference
of the timeless wind, the cunning of
the Levantine and the amoral loyalty
of Kipling's chosen boy; yet he was
still one of them, at war with his own
shadow. The avenger would desmoy
the past; the citadel would preserve it.
Yet it was a past they had in common.
In the unequal duel berwern Kim
Philby and the British Secret Service,
a new dimension is added ro the rela-
Honship between the privileged
Englishman and the institution which
be collectively comprises. Let anyone
who derides the notion of the Estab-
lishment read this book.
I sit back now, the manuscript put
away, and reach for the apt phrases of
outrage. But none of us is yet equal
fo the dimensions of this scandsf Like
8 great novel, and an unfinithed onc at
that, the story of Kim Philby bves on
in us: it conveys not merely a sense of
Participation but of authorship. Scll,
listening to our own judgments we can
discern in ourselves the social artirudes
and opinions which account as much
for Philby’s survival 2s for his deter-
mination to destroy us. Hardly s war
was shed for George Blake: Blake was
half 2 foreigner and half a jew.
‘Vassall wes an upstart, Burgess and
Macican were psychiatric mists. But
Philby, am aggressive, upper-class
enemy, was of cur blood and bhunied
with our pack; to the very end, be
expected and received the indulgence
owing to his moderation, good breed-
ing and boyish, flirtatious charm. In
Our very notion of the ‘Thirties Spies’
there is an implicit confession of weak-
ness. "Fhe Thirtics,’ we sey, “The
Thirties” were the last lot to care; as if
we were 20 fer pest the neck of our
fo WEEE SO iar past ihe pear of Sur
fational and emotional energy that
neither the grouse-moor complacency
of Macmillan nor the Pygmy grandeur
of Wilson could stir us into becoming
petence, Io am uncomfortably cop-
scious, inddentally, of the ‘we’:
Philby’s is one of those casca which
This is the introduction specially
The Spy who Betrayed a Generatio
force us to defime our own place in
society. I suppose by ‘we’ J mean the
work) w which I myself vaguely
jectual. Philby’s world, but mdoors.
This book is massively incompiete,
as the authors are the first to edmit.
We sbould never forge: the gaps. In
this most Marzian of novels, where
thesis and antithesis are endemic to
alike, it is arguable that even the prin-
cipal character is still missing. In the,
lives of Burgess, Maclean and Philby
shadow : never once do we set his face
or consciously bear his name. He is
the Soviet recruiter. For these men
were recruited. By whom? Between
the ages of 19 and 2], it seems, these
children of Cambridge were recog-
nised, courted and consciously seduced
into a lifetime of deceit. By whom?
As they grew to manhood, and the
youthful dream of an adventurous
crusade gave way to the tedium and
fears of criminal betrayal, who sus
tained them in their faith? Who aer-
viced them, paid them? Who trained,
welfared, consoled and commanded
them? Who kept them in play and
taught them the clandestine arts?
Whom did Philby mect and when?
What were the methods of com
tounication? Was. Philby s Photo-
grapher,'s radio operatg did be yely
on the Pelmanism if namesake?
Did Philby in tum recruit others?
Did he run them? This was his secret
life; it is a secret etill, The street
corner, the hurried handover in the
cab, the timed dialogue from kiosk to
kiosk, those were the moments when
the hunter was hunted, and we know
tothing of them at all.
When a boy of 20 gives himself
body and mind to « country be bas
Tee eee oe ee A Le LA
LF = | FIR, BO Bt) BCD as AAS
not deeply studied, to s régime which
wwful purges, was a peril w serve;
when be remains actively faithful two
tha: decision for over 30 years, cheat-
ing, betraying end occasionally killing,
surely we roust speculate on the nature
of his master; no novitiate can last
indefinitely without a confessing
father. He understood us better than
we understood ourselves: was he our
feeenreermen > He
countryman? He
gentlemen: was be himself a gentic-
man? He recruited only from Cam-
bridge: was be a Cambridge man? Al
three recruits would travel far on the
reputations of their families alouc: was
be too a man of social influence?
recruited only
rocruuteé
on by John le Carré for Philby:
, Bruce Page, David Leitch, and
be did nothing which at that time was
against the Law of the land.
whoever he was? Or are there, atoong
the surviving contemporarics of Bur-
gets, Maclean and Philby, men whom
he unsuccessfully approeched? This
is but one of numberiess questions
provoked by this brilliant but neces-
sarily imcomplete account of the
Paley story. Philby may wish to
enlighten us but probably never will:
the Russian apparatus of bureaucratic
sanction is even more lugubrious than
our own: and though be is avid for
praise, be is not yet ready to redefect.
I do not much believe in the poli-
neal motive of Kim Philby; but I am
sure that the British Secret Service kept
it alive as po other environment could
have done. The British Intelligenc:
world described bere is apolitical.
Once entered, it provides oo further
opportunity for spiritual development.
The door that clanged behind the new
entrant protected him as much free
Aumscif as from reality. Philby, once
employed, met spies, conundrums,
technique; be had said goodbye to
controversy. Such political opinions
as sustained him were the opinions of
his childhood. The cleaner air of the
outside world would have blown them
sway in a year. Instead, be took into
thy soundless shrine of the secret
the formed j of bis
iar ania a ee al
memories of ‘his father, Vienna and
Spain, and from there on, simply
ceased to develop. He was left with a
handful of clichés whose application
had ceased in 1931. Similarly, the
would long have passed for idiotic in
the outside world; in the secret world
it passed for real. Thus, in the same
secret place, under the same secret
wee the eee AF Li. ok.
WA, LAle SLL US AL quarry
were sheltered from the changing
frosts of reality. Citadel and avenger,
both unnaturally protected, were fight-
ing out the battles of the thirties. For
this reason, the early life of Kim
Philby i2 doubly important: al} Kim's
life was early.
uplicity for Kim Philby
was something of
a family tradition.
However Philby
reacted to his
eminently disteste-
ful father, whether
be wished to destroy
or outshine him, of merely to follow
in his footsteps, be could hardly fail,
in the outposts where they lived,
inherit many of his characteristic, A
little king in bis desert palaces, S1 John
The fnemy within!
Phillip Knightley, a 312-page examination of the whole intriguing story. Publishée tomorrow ly André Deutsch at
30s., it is the Book Society Choice for March, in Britain, and Book of the Month Club choice in the United States
FosEiahpeshad SFEESEGAy RecA RE SSEEEACE RSE cP RRUT APE EREEARERE
tempt for his superiors in London;
the loyalties be preached were at beat
dynastic; st worm they constinmed
a doctrine of militant arrogance. St
John hintec!f was a man of unrecon-
ciled and wilful paradox, be wes an
empire man, o decider, a builder, a
collector of intelligence in the best
Lawrence mystic, a solitary adventurer
capable of violence and rapacity. He
wes also a salesman, dealing in con-
the reat. Metapborically, St John was
the man who brought Cadillacs to the
reverse market, be sald off oi] conces-
sions to the Americans, =
From bis father, Kim acquired the
neo-Fascist instincts of a slightly
berserk English gentleman; from bis
father, the Establishment’s easy trick
dressing them in the ciothes of a
higher cause; from his father the car-
tographer’s memory; for be no more
forgot a word or a gesture than another
man forgot the way bome; from his
father the scholar’s perception which
enabled him to keep track of his own
complicated treachery. And he could
hardly fail, when his father delivered
him over to the Establishment for his
education, to-fec] alrcady thet be was
trained in the y camp. Like
Kipling’s boy, one feels, he was already
waiting for the cal]: “Ji was intrigue,
of course — he knew that much, he had
known ali evil since he could speak —
but what he loved was the game for
its own sake-the stealthy prowl
through the dark gullies and lanes . . .”
1 dream in mad moments - but
anything is possible between those two
~ that St John recruited his own son
for service aguing the “missionaries
a ee er es costes erent
re WaHe men of BMH Gipet: ,
against the soh town-dwellers of
Whitehall ignorant of real men’s ways.
He did not, of course; but if Be had
laboured all his life to create in Kim
the irresistible chemistry of the boy's
later betrayal, be could aot have donc
much more. Kim prowled the edges
of the Establishment as his namesake
stalked the back-streets of Lahore: “in
headlong flight from bousetop to
housetop under cover of the hot dark”.
For the Philbvs strode from meak to
tt 2aluvye silos Ae Pe
peak, and fools lived in the valley.
Through his father, moreover,
as a spy: a0 cforticss faniliariry with
the quarry. Through his father, and the
education which his father gave him,
be experienced both as a victim and
asa practitioner the capacity 3)» [21 ¢
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