WASHINGTON -- Britain split along three rift lines last week and it's hard to see where they might meet again. Perhaps only an Anglo-American attack on Iraq could unite the nation against such mind-boggling folly and terrifying, costly megalomania.

One part of Britain paraded through the unfamiliar streets of London on Sept. 22. This was the newly formed Countryside Alliance, which claimed 500,000 people walked behind its banners for "Liberty and Livelihood" -- the largest demonstration in London in living memory. The marchers all had an interest in "rural issues."

Its origin was the protest of the rural elite against the threat to ban fox-hunting. Despite the clamor about fox-hunting being an essential part of rural life, I know, having been raised in the country, that many rural people loathe and excoriate fox hunters, whose horses trample their fences, turn rural paths into muddy bogs and ride roughshod over their fields. Most people in the British countryside no longer keep chickens, ducks or any small furry beasts that might tempt a fox, so the latter are not seen as a great menace.