1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

situation, particularly, attitudes towards Central Europe. There were questions about
McCarthy, and some of them were – the initial set – were obviously intended to prove
how much I knew about the world in general. That part went quickly, and then they went
into really deep questions about the sense of purpose and the breadth of our foreign
policy. I found the exam a wonderful experience. The examiners, I thought, were very
civilized serious people.
Q: I might just point out, when I started this oral history program back in ’85, I wrote to
George Kennan saying, “I was trying to start up an oral history program, what do you
think of it?” And his advice was kind of parallel to yours. “Well probably not a good
idea, but if you do, only interview the right people.”
MILLER: He’s a wonderful skeptic.
Q: He really is. Let me just flip this.
[END SIDE]
Q: While you were at Oxford, did you have the Burgess, Maclean and some other things
happen, because this was throwing a different light on the Oxford experience, actually
going back to the ‘30s and all that. Was this something that was …
MILLER: No, not at all. No, the revelation of this group of spies comes some years later,
I think.
Q: Maybe he came a little later.
MILLER: I think the sense of common purpose, I found in England was powerful. There
was also great fatigue from the destruction of the previous war as well as the uplifting
united effort of rebuilding. When I was at Oxford, food was still being rationed, as you
may recall. Butter, for example, even the dons had a little plastic container with their own
butter served along with the gleaming silver of high table. There would be several dinners
a week with whale meat as the main course. Many of the dishes were, because of the
shortage of normal supplies of beef and pork, were of rabbit and game, but not much of it.
There was a shortage of coal, so it was very cold. We wore overcoats to dinner all the
time in winter. Gasoline was still short, and the evidence of the war was still there –
rubble, in the street, damaged buildings. Certainly in travels on the continent we saw the
effect of bomb damage everywhere.
Q: Did you ever by any chance run across the Inklings and Tolkien?
MILLER: I knew them all through C. S. Lewis. Tolkien, I knew, because I took his
courses.
Q: I was going to say you would have. What was that, which courses?
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