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# 14-00000revealed nt, et leol aquivient He officially rejected MIlR's violence, yet he never permitted the Artury to root out theit para-military grous When they stigmatised his land-reform programme as "inadequate" and seized hundreds of farrns at gun-point he rebuked them in occasional spoocha but did nothing to reverse their actions. Wien Uey hi-jacked lorry-loads of valuable manufactures, to raise funds by selling them on: the black market, he rarely tried to redress the i crime. The Left-said this was because the MIR truly represented "the People" against whom Allende dared not act. But the truth, I fear, was more squalid For one thing, the MIR had close friends in the Socialist Party and in Allende's own entourage whom the President did not want to oflend. For another, as long as their activities did not actually split the Popular Unity coalition, it was often convenient to see them pushing along the revolution by unconstitutional means while Allende denounced them in his role as a constitutionalist.It was not as if Allende was unable to deal with the MIR when he had to. For example, when a Mirita force blockaded the Philips television-factory in Santiago in 1973 after an unsuccessful attempt to hi-jack a lorry-load of TV sets, they were allowed by the Government to remain urmolested for ten days, although a: police post was just across the road. Yet when diplomatic representations were made by the Dutch chargé d'affaires with the hint that his country's financial aid might have to be recon-1 sidered if this harassment of a Dutch enterprise: continued, the Miristas were hustled away without a shot in 24 hours.A SIMILAR EQUIVOCATION Was evident in Allende's adoption of a personal arned bodyguard-the first in memory to accompany a Chilean President. It is true that the extreme Right in Chile was quick to threaten violence as a response to Allende's proclaimed revolution, and Allende himself always maintained that he needed pro-tection. But right-wing para-military groups were never as big or as highly organised as those on the Left; and, in any case, the proper reaction of a constitutionally-minded President would surely bave been to call upon his state security forces to protect him.Instead, Aliende formed a personal unit, known as "the Group of Friends of the Pro-sident" Trained, armed, and partly manned by "Cubans, it was led by known revolutionaries, sympathetic to the MIR, including Alleade's son-in-law. The existence of such a group at the very centre of the State was not merely a pro-vocation to the established security forces and an affront to Chilean tradition, it was also an implied rejection of the principle of constitutional rule.DOUBTS ABOUT the real depth of Allende's con-stitutionalism were raised also by his personal history and his language, both of which suggested a romantic attachiuncat o violence. He was, after all, a founder and first president of the Latin American Solidarity Organisation, created in Havana in the 1960s and dedicated to the encouragement of arined insurrection throughout the continent. He promised to "palet Santiago with blood" in 1970 if Congress Ceclined to ratify his clection as President, and he repeatedly tried to intimidate the opposition, inside and outside Congress, with the threat of civil war. These were not the actions or the sentiments of a man dedicated to constitutional change, except as a matter of expediency.On the other hand, it was hard to see Allende as a genuine revolutionary. He never looked anything but the complete bourgeois gentleman. A bon viveur, Corid but well-groomed, a snappy dresser, with a twinkling eye for the ladies and a: good deal of personal charm, his strongest political card was his skill in tactical manoeuvre. But as a strategist, a thinker, a man with a real message, he was unconvincing. Towards the end, as he appeared with increasing frequency on the presidential balcony in Santiago to address chanting crowds of his supporters with revolutionary platitudes, he seemed to me to lose all contact with reality, to have become an actor in love with his revolutionary part rather than a serious leader who knew where he was going.IN RETROSPECT, I am inclined to think this was always the truth of the matter with Allende. Basically, he was a political romantic, dealing in sensations rather than sense. He enjoyed his hour upon the stage but he never properly assessed the forces he was dealing with, either for or against him. He raised expectations on his owa side without commanding the means to satisfy them, and he encouraged opposition on the other side by his use of a revolutionary rhetoric whose threats he also could not fultil.At best he was muddle-headed; and time may show that he was deliberately deceitful. Certainly he managed to deceive a lot of people, including himself. But in the end reality taught its own, hard lessons. That you can't be a denocrat and a revolutionary at least, not in a society that is already admittedly democratic. That you can't be anti-American and expect the Americans to help you. That you can't pose as the people's leader and kick most people in the teeth. That you can't conscript soldiers into politics and expect them to remain apolitical. That you can't have inflation roaring out of sight and maintain a base for social welfare. That, in short, the real world is not Cloud-cuckoo-land. Down here, you just can't have your cake and eat itIt is sad that such elementary lessons should have to be taught yet again at such tragic cost in Chile. But it is alarming that so many people elsewhere should evidently fail to grasp that they are the lessons.34