“Nothing, Dr Markham, is forever,” he said. “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. By the nature of things, however, the artifices of one generation must be supplemented by those of the next. All we can do is try to ensure that our own prevention of evils does not raise up less surmountable problems for those who take our place.
“In a country like England, there is no shortage of wisdom and forethought. There is also no shortage of folly, and even of what may be regarded—if only in its effects—as treason. These qualities are not abstractions. They are manifest in the characters of men. If, from time to time, the Divine Providence gives chances, it is up to us to seize those chances. It is for us to ensure that men such as Harold Macmillan said he wished to raise to greatness shall remain in harmless obscurity.”
Powell sat down again behind his desk. He looked past me at the portrait of Canning, and laughed without any sign of joy. I lit another cigarette and wondered when I could take myself aside for a shot of morphine that would get me through the rest of the day. “Next year,” he struck up again, “or the year after that, we shall stretch forth the hand of renewed friendship across the Atlantic. The Americans may sniff it with hostile suspicion. They may affect to see a few spots on it of their own blood. They will ask by what tune of our own composition they are being called to the dance. But they will allow us to help them through their first and tottering steps. For the moment, things remain exactly as they have been for the past few decades.” He looked at me and past me to the Canning portrait. “The balance of the old world is not yet in need of redress. Until such time as it is, the new world has no need to exist.