Trevor-Roper had worked alongside H. A. R. ‘Kim’ Philby (1911–88) in MI6 during the war. He liked Philby and admired his abilities. In 1951 Philby was forced to resign from MI6, following the revelation that his associates Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean had been spying for the Soviet Union, but he managed to avoid arrest. In 1955 he was named as the ‘Third Man’ in the House of Commons, but cleared by the Foreign Secretary, Harold Macmillan. Soon afterwards Philby was re-hired by his former employers on a covert freelance basis, as Trevor-Roper’s friend Dick White was appalled to discover when he took over as its chief (‘C’) in 1956. In March 1957 Trevor-Roper spent some days touring the remote northern part of Iran with Philby. Six years later Philby fled to Moscow from Beirut, where the Foreign Office had arranged for him to work as The Observer’s correspondent. In 1968, in response to Philby’s memoir My Silent War, Trevor-Roper published an essay about him in Encounter, which was later expanded into a small volume. Philby sent congratulations (dated 30 April 1968) from a postbox address in Moscow. ‘My dear T-R,’ the letter began, ‘I am delighted to see from your photograph in Le Figaro of April 1 that you seem to be growing younger with the passing years.’ The letter continued in the same friendly tone, and ended with a sentimental postscript. ‘I am grateful for the chance that enabled us to fight together, for a time at least, on the same side.’ It seems probable that Trevor-Roper consulted White about this response, which may never have been sent. The letter was typed, unlike Trevor-Roper’s other personal correspondence, which was almost always handwritten. Perhaps this was so that a carbon copy could be made.
Chiefswood, Melrose
My dear Kim,
Ought I to answer your letter of 30 April? Perhaps not. But I hate to leave letters unanswered (though I often take a long time to answer them). I must admit that I enjoy hearing from you, even across the vast intermediate gulf which now separates us: a gulf now, alas, not merely physical. I always enjoyed your company, always look back on it with pleasure, and I appreciate your remark that you would enjoy a long discussion with me now. But if we had few serious discussions in the past, how could we possibly have any in the future? Discussion needs common ground on which to stand, how deep down soever it may lie; and where could we find such ground now? Probe as I may in search of it, the solid rock which I once imagined proves but a continuation of the spongy quagmire of double-spoken words; and in that quagmire we would surely founder.
You justify the treachery, the hypocrisy, the purges of the Stalinist period as a mere temporary phase, a necessary form of Caesarian surgery without which the next stage of progress cannot begin. I’m afraid I cannot accept such apocalyptic reasoning, nor could I find any basis for discussion with anyone who could seriously argue that Chamberlainism was an immutable, permanent ‘evil’, justifying total repudiation, while Stalinism was a temporary necessity, deserving permanent, unqualified support.
You note that I ‘abhor treason’; but ‘what is treason?’ you gaily ask, and, like jesting Pilate, do not wait for an answer. I would agree with you, I think, in rejecting conventional definitions. To serve a foreign power, even to spy for a foreign power, does not seem to me necessarily treason. It depends on the foreign power, and the conditions of service. At most, it is mere political treason. But to serve unconditionally, to equate truth with the reason of state of any power, that to me is treason of the mind; and to make this surrender to a form of power that is cynical, inhuman, murderous, that to me is treason of the heart also.
Since you are now a public figure, you will not expect to be immune from public criticism, and I send you, in return for your letter, an essay in which I have sought to correct some of your public critics.1 As you will see, if you read it, on a superficial level we often agree, and where we disagree, on that level, we could argue; but at a profounder level I could no more argue with you than with an unrepentant French agent of Himmler, who also regarded the murder of a few millions as the necessary surgery which would make possible a new millennium. I regret this, because I like to recall, and would like to resume, our old convivial conversations, whether over my claret (now happily matured) or your Georgian champagne.1
I agree with you about long-term psychology (I use the term ‘schizophrenia’ as a metaphor only),2 but I think you are wrong in your evaluation of D.G.W.3
yours ever
Hugh