there are those on the one hand who say , absolutely not . people would panic and start pulling the communication cord . they might even surge up the corridors and try to get on the engine themselves , whereupon the whole vehicle would be brought into greater peril than ever . leave the men on the engine alone . with a large hatful of luck they might get us somewhere without a smash-up . and if not , well , that just goes to show that journeying through the world is a hazardous business and it is a mistake to look for too much security . the people who take this view exist everywhere - in communist countries no less than in others . it was one of the reasons why Stalin got left on the engine a long time after he was visibly unfit to run the train . others , and they , too , exist in millions everywhere , are all for spreading the dire news among the passengers as speedily as possible . they think these unfortunates have the right at least to know what is going on up there at the head of the train . some of them think that just spreading that news , and pointing with derision at the way the driver is acting , is all that they can usefully do . they are satirical and unconstructive . they admit they probably could not operate the engine any better themselves , while claiming as credit to themselves that at least they are not even pretending to . some others are firm in the belief that once the passengers know what is happening they will somehow find ways and means to avert the threatened catastrophe - perhaps , somewhere in the second class coaches , there are some real engineers . these call themselves democrats , but as they have never yet got full control of the footplate , nobody knows what their large claims amount to . what arouses the indignation of the honest satirist is not , unless the man is a prig , the fact that people in positions of power or influence behave idiotically , or even that they behave wickedly . it is that they conspire successfully to impose upon the public a picture of themselves as so very , very deep-thinking , sagacious , honest and well-intentioned . you can not satirize a man who says I &apos;m in it for the money , and that &apos;s all about it . you even feel no inclination to do so . in the 1930s it was easier , or perhaps simply more stimulating , to satirize the leaders of the British government than to go to work on Hitler or Mussolini . for these latter , at least in the eyes of other peoples than their own , were creatures who roared out in public their bestial thoughts and intentions . Hitler in particular , because he had the enthusiastic support and spiritual concurrence of the vast majority of Germans , had no need of that hypocrisy which Wilde described as the tribute vice pays to virtue . he said he was going to persecute and murder the Jews , and no sooner was it said than it was done . he proclaimed his delinquent &apos;s contempt for civilization , and , to ensure that nobody misunderstood him , organized such f&amp;ecirc;tes and galas as the burning of the books . he lied certainly - lied continuously . but his lying was of a special kind - it did not , and could not by him have been expected to , deceive anyone who did not secretly wish to be deceived . in this he resembled the great confidence tricksters . the confidence tricksters , it seems , consider it axiomatic that no wholly honest man can be regarded as a likely victim of the confidence trick . it is not the mere fools that the confidence men successfully delude . it is , in their pregnant phrase , the larceny in the blood of the victim which results in his victimization . and that was how Hitler operated - exploiting and using as his leverage the larceny in the blood of innumerable politicians in every country who wanted to believe that here was a man who really had found a way of making diamonds out of plastics ; a way , that is to say , of making a quick profit out of an illicit sale of the western soul . you can not satirize a confidence trickster - the best you can do is expose him , send for the police . but when you find a respectable citizen - the victim - who , beneath his air of solid good sense and goodwill is secretly hoping to turn a dishonest political profit by getting a flashy-looking collection of goods labelled peace or security or the end of bolshevism for some minimal down-payment in the way of a betrayal of the Jews , or the sacrifice of a couple of small nations , then you have a subject which invites and excites the attention of the satirist . the satirist , as I have remarked , is certainly among those who can not bear that the passengers should be left for a moment longer in ignorance of the incompetence of malignancy of the engine driver . he is also likely to feel that having done that much his particular function has been accomplished , and he is not apt to pay much heed to those who keep asking him for his solution . he will reply that while he may , in some other capacity - as , say , a voter or a magistrate or trade union secretary - feel able and bound to propose and work towards solutions , as a satirist that is not his job . myself , I hold this to be a self-evident truth . and having , during the early 1950s , had some particular opportunities of watching at close range the way the wheels of neo-Elizabethan Britain went round , together with the very great advantage of viewing the whole box of tricks in the perspective of Ireland , I was more than happy to find myself suddenly and , for me , startlingly in close collaboration with a man whom , for many years , I had learned to regard as an incarnation of the devil . 9 . I think it was a few months after the wind-up of seven days that I got a letter in Youghal which surprised me not a little , for it was an invitation to write an article for Punch . not only that , but it was signed by my friend Anthony Powell who , it astonishingly appeared , had become Punch &apos;s literary editor . a pleasure of living in Ireland is that you can , so to speak , turn England on or off as desired , and at that time , having been a little soured of London by the seven days episode , I had turned it off altogether and become absorbed in whatever I was doing at the time . I had thus had no knowledge of the volcanic disturbance which started to shake Bouverie Street with the appointment of Malcolm Muggeridge as editor of that publication . furthermore , had I heard this bit of news it would certainly not have occurred to me that it boded me any particular good . true , I had no intention of writing for Punch , but if I had , the appointment of Mr Muggeridge would have seemed to me to rule out any possibility of successfully so doing . for although we had never actually met I had hated him for years . those were , of course , principally my communist years when Malcolm Muggeridge had great prominence in our rogues &apos; gallery of men who , for example , had gone to Moscow to bless and stayed to curse ; of hardened , obstinate and vicious enemies of truth and progress ; of particularly able , and , therefore , particularly detestable and dangerous journalistic and literary swordsmen in ranks of wickedness and reaction . nor was conflict with Muggeridge in those days restricted to the battle of the typewriters . for he was often deadly active in the affairs of the national union of journalists - his activity always directed towards frustrating or defeating some vital activity of our own . at that time the national union of journalists was as a running sore to the anti-communists of the T.U.C . for the London branch , being by far the largest in the union , was at most times able to play a preponderant part in framing the policies of the union as a whole , and the London branch , in its turn , was for long periods at a time , dominated by the communists for the sufficient reasons , first , that the communists were united in pursuit of various objectives whereas the anti-communists were in general united only in their anti-communism , and secondly , that the communists were the only people who held it as a holy though often irksome duty to attend the branch meetings . ( these were usually held on Saturday afternoons at the St Bride &apos;s Institute , in one of the lanes just south of Fleet Street . there are not many drearier meeting halls in that part of London , which is saying a good deal , and in any case Fleet Street on any Saturday afternoon is one of the dreariest places anywhere . add to this that I personally detest meetings and speeches , and all the business of resolutions and points of order . naturally , I am entirely aware that all this is of the absolutely indispensable essence of democracy , and that when you attend such meetings you are seeing and taking part in the true life and work of democracy . all the same , I wished profoundly that it were possible for me personally not to have to do that thing . ) more than once it had happened to me that my reason for asking to be excused attendance at St Bride &apos;s on a given Saturday afternoon had been accepted as valid by the communist party leaders , and then , just as I was rejoicing over such a release , the word would come that Malcolm Muggeridge was going to attend that particular meeting , was going to launch some major attack ; in consequence all leave was cancelled , no excuses for non-attendance were any longer to be deemed valid . on such Saturdays I looked upon that man with more than ordinary political hostility . I humanly loathed him . in a paradoxical manner he represented all those disciplines of communism and democracy which I had always found excessively irksome . he embodied for the moment everything that could make life vexatious , particularly on a Saturday afternoon in the desert parts of London . knowing nothing of his appointment to the editorship , I was still bewildered by the presence in the literary chair of Anthony Powell who I had known since Oxford and whose novels , with their exquisite sinuosities and profound risibility had enchanted me for years . what , I had to ask myself , in God &apos;s name was he doing in that gal&amp;egrave;re ? and what , admitting that he personally was aboard the sluggish old hulk , on earth made him suppose that my presence would be welcome ? just making the matter more mysterious was a note in his letter - he was asking for an article about Ireland - saying that he would like the piece to be somewhat astringent . if he were simply trying to do me a good turn by arranging for me to get a small piece of money out of Punch , surely , knowing my general line of literary brew , he would instead have put in some cautionary note urging me to draw it mild ? I certainly needed the small piece of money , so I wrote the piece , signing it discreetly J.H - initials of James Helvick , under which name I then principally wrote . within an hour or so of the earliest time the piece could have reached Bouverie Street from Youghal , I had a telegram from Anthony Powell offering hearty congratulations upon it , but asking had I any objection to signing in full . I wired back to say he could certainly sign it James Helvick . to this the response was equally prompt , and its contents made me ask myself whether Tony had gone actually off his head . for it emphatically urged me to sign Claud Cockburn . resignedly , I telegraphed back that it was all right with me if he insisted . but to myself I thought that this bit of b&amp;ecirc;tise must inevitably mark the end of my connection with Punch - surely it ought to have been obvious to Tony that nobody in authority there was going to have a person with my sort of reputation writing articles - astringent at that - in their paper ? 