"MR. CLARKE -- CALL IN THE BOYS"

In 1960, the American presidential election was in November, as usual. My building in Cambridge had a television set, a rarity in those days, and I invited some twenty friends of mine for breakfast to follow the American election. I remember the landlord woke me up around five o'clock saying Kennedy was leading. Like many elections, they played back events of the campaign, usually trying to pick something colorful and telling about what the winning candidate was saying.

Kennedy was attacked for three things: being Catholic, being the son of Joseph Kennedy and rich, and being young. Kennedy was forty-four years old. The response from Kennedy, or rather from Kennedy's speechwriter, Theodore Sorenson, whom I later got to know in America, was vitriolic. Kennedy intelligently stated as an orator that if fourteen years in Congress is not enough, if two and a half years of active service in the Pacific is not enough, then Thomas Jefferson should not have been able to write the declaration of independence and Christopher Columbus should have been prohibited from discovering America.

From 1960 to 2005, forty-five years later, this memory comes back when some of the colorful and important names are mentioned in the press. Also, I left England and established myself in the United States. I had family in London. My two uncles were well-known businessmen. One owned the whole chain of Chelsea Flour Mills and a cousin of mine married into the Lang family. So as a former Hungarian refugee, I was related to the late Sir Maurice Lang, director of the Bank of England.

Later on I purchased in 1976 ten percent of the Merchant Bank of Keyser-Ullman. I got to know Lonhro, Sir Edward du Cann, Lord Duncan Sands, and had several tape-recorded interviews with Sir Roy Walensky in Africa. My first encounter with British politicians was on the Queen Elizabeth when I was going to the United States as a student, and I met Edward Heath, and at a New Year's party I danced with Olivia de Haviland. This was my first introduction to British politics, and I must admit I started to see the advantage of being excellent and knowing people who at least dance well.

Now, at the age of sixty-seven, when I look back on the progress of the United Kingdom, it is one of the most startling industrial and financial evolutions. The various conservative governments after 1960 have created a strong pound, have created a strong pound that imposed on the U.S. dollar and the Euro, retained England's independence, accelerated its industrial and commercial development. If I may say so, in 1960 England was still trying to prove itself in what's called the Special Relationship with the United States. Prime Minister Macmillan met President Kennedy on these matters a few times, and meanwhile the younger politicians, politicians who are today sixty-five years old, created the Special Independence for England which transformed London, the most glittering city in Europe, and an independent British foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East and in the Far East.

The Special Independence shows itself more than anywhere else in the city of London, in currency trading, in the stock markets, and its monetary ties with the rest of the world. Nowhere does it show that England needs a Dutch uncle, that British reserves are not adequate or at least as adequate than any other European country in the current century.

This progress was partially engineered by Kenneth Clarke as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and partially by his colleagues in the various conservative governments. I would like to say in this article that England is no longer the old man of Europe or the sick man of Europe as it was called in my time. Neither is Kenneth Clarke to be labeled the old man of the city of London or the Conservative Party, as he is known to his friends and associates alike. His age hurts any individual to perform? Well, let's go through a few pieces of history. George Clemenceau was prime minister at the age of eighty. He stopped smoking for the benefit of his health and played tennis. Take Clemenceau out and Dreyfus would still be in Devil's Island and France could have lost the first World War.

Take Churchill out at the age of sixty-five. One of my favorite movies at home is "The Finest Hour". It says, and I replay it again and again and again. On May 10, 1940, the year Kenneth Clarke was born -- I was born in 1938 and I don't feel older than he is -- Hitler broke through Holland and Belgium. The British government collapsed and the sixty-five year-old Winston Churchill became prime minister.

I still get up at five in the morning, and if I'm a little bit depressed I plug in the television and play that part. "When the British government collapsed, the sixty-five year-old Winston Churchill became prime minister."

Not only that. Churchill was appointed by the king around 6:30 in the evening of May 10. By eight o'clock that night, one of his oldest and most trusted friends. Lord Beaverbrook who was definitely over sixty-five, was on his way to the Minister of Aircraft Production and in two months British aircraft production doubled.

Take out Ronald Reagan. At the age of seventy, he became President of the United States. Had he abdicated, of course, George Bush would have never become president. George Bush, Sr. today is eighty years old and he is a public servant. If Reagan had not been president, he would not have been able to fight the Cold War and call Russia, who created the Cold War, as nothing but a giant misunderstanding. Instead of Reagan, some humorous statement would have been made by Jimmy Carter, whose principal weapon of fighting the Russians was prohibiting American sportsmen from attending the Olympics. Granted, people who go to the Olympics are young people. But people who fight the Cold War bring along their sixty, seventy years of life experience for the benefit of their party, for the benefit of the country, for the benefit of civilization.

Lastly, I would like to mention a Hungarian who was not sixty, who was not seventy, but who was eighty when he helped President Reagan develop Star Wars. A friend of mine, Ambassador Andrew Simony, always mentioned that the eighty year-old nuclear physicist Andrew Teller single-handedly overthrew communism. I must happily say that I met the professor, I met Mrs. Teller, and I don't think Mrs. Teller for a single minute or a single occasion said to her husband, Andrew, you are eighty years old, just stop. She gave him coffee. I have seen this scene in Palo Alto.

Kenneth Clarke if he becomes prime minister will have to cope with the most important issues of the day. But in the commodity decades, our financial matters, international financial matters are to be handled in the city of London. How to create equilibrium when the world's middle-class population explodes, when demand for goods and commodities increases, when we have to keep a financial structure which is stable, and we cannot have the financial structure upset by terrorism. His task will be a task for Winston Churchill. Our time is what he called the gathering storm, the monetary problems which are attacking the world every day. It requires knowledge, experience, wisdom and energy.

I think Mr. Clarke has all of these, but he also has the determination coupled with life experience of a sixty-five year-old man who is dedicated the same way as Churchill was dedicated to England's Finest Hour.

I have a specific suggestion, and I talk of experience. I have twenty Hungarian friends all from the same private school in Budapest. All left in 1956, some to America, some to England, some to Scandinavia, and some to Switzerland. A few years ago we formed a group. We meet once a year.

We talk often to one another. We keep in touch. And not yet but we are willing to help one another in the future. I have various plans to form a joint savings account. But in any case today there is a spiritual relationship between us and I frankly feel I have gained twenty new brothers.

If I were Kenneth Clarke or his close friend, I would Call in the Boys. Call in the boys who remember Kenneth Clarke from Cambridge -- and they are all sixty-five or older. Call in the boys with whom he became friendly in his hectic political and business career, and let them form a special relationship with a new leader. It would be remarkable for the world to see that if they elect a new leader on his merits, at his age, with his program, there may be two, three, four hundred so-called friends who would be ready to work twelve to fourteen hours for the success of Kenneth Clarke's administration. Call in the boys. The boys have energy, knowledge, experience, but what they would show to the British people and to the world that in a lifetime of sixty-five years, Kenneth Clarke made friends. I am one of them.

Let me quote one of the most memorable moments of my life. I met Bert Walker, president of Stiefel, a New York Stock Exchange listed brokerage company. I wrote a report. We invested money and we did very well with Stiefel. The relationship started in 1996, and in the following year Mr. Walker, now Ambassador of the United States in Hungary, invited my wife and me to a dinner in St. Louis for the honor of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. Mr. Walker is the first cousin of both President Bush and President George W. Bush.

Historians will remember that the first meeting between President Reagan and Gorbachev was in Geneva, and President Reagan delivered a so-called monologue and started to say to Gorbachev, let me explain to you, Michael, why we don't trust you. The conversation turned lighter when Gorbachev inquired about Reagan's famous movie, "Bedtime for Bonzo". About a decade has passed and Gorbachev was the guest of honor of Mr. Walker in St. Louis.

As I watched the two of them, they are both now seventy-seven, both active, definitely active, I realized that I'm looking at two old friends. I have seen with my own eyes what I called History, that people today who have knowledge, experience and determination to improve the life of this world, eventually became friends and helped one another in realizing that the 21st century will not be the war of the century.

We have tremendous challenges. If you are a citizen of London, you know it better than many people. But to solve any of the problems, you need experience and people with friendships. These are the leaders whom we need, England needs, Europe needs, and, in fact, the world needs.

(Article 7- posted September 12, 2005)

e-mail: mlikar@aol.com

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