THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JANUARY 28th, 1956

NINEPENCE

A ga in s t In f la t io n: Evading the Deeper Reasons The Church in N igeria: Scene of the Royal Visit. By Archbishop David Mathew The Faith o f C a th o lic P o la n d : The Devotion of a Nation. By Auberon Herbert M a lte se Enosis ? II : The Fear of Anti-Clericalism. By John Eppstein M id d le East C on v e r sa t io n s : Behind the Baghdad Pact. By J. E. Alexander Sheila Kaye-Sm ith : An Appreciation. By G. B. Stern “That Great I s le ” : St. Francis of Sales and England. By David Rogers Christian U n i ty and Z e a l : All Sorts to Make a Church. By Mgr. R. A. Knox C r itic s’ Page : Mozart at Covent Garden, by Rosemary Hughes ; Musically Enough, by

Maryvonne Butcher ; Mixed-Up Kids, by J. A . V. Burke B o o k s R e v i e w e d : Selected Letters o f Henry James, edited by Leon Edel ; Men, Women and

Pianos, by Arthur Loesser ; King James VI and I, by D. Harris Willson ; Beau Nash, by Willard Connely ; Our Time is Now, by Mary O’Leary ; A High-Pitched Buzz, by Roger Longrigg ; The Lilac Caprice, by Alberta Murphy ; Rox Hall Illuminated, by Phyllis Paul ; and Visits to Monasteries in the Levant, by Robert Curzon. Reviewed by A. O. J. Cockshut, A. Gregory Murray, O.S.B., R. Arnold Jones, Sir Arnold Lunn, A. C. F.

Beales, Isabel Quigly and John Beckwith.

CYPRUS IN WASHINGTON

W HEN Sir Alan Cunningham unveiled at the week-end in Nairobi the memorial to those o f varied races who died in the last war, and found it necessary to state for what they had fought and died against Italian imperialism, he found the answer in the right to self-determination. Instead o f now being the unconsulted subjects o f a neo-Roman Empire in Africa, they belonged to the British Commonwealth, organised on the principle o f responsible institutions and self-government. This is the principle on which we have chosen to rest our moral case. N o doubt Her Majesty will refer to it as she tours Nigeria. In the end it will prove impossible to make a separate and unique case out o f Cyprus. That we do not intend to do so, that the Minister who said “Never” is a Minister no longer, and that we accept the broad principle, is the first thing that ought to be said.

It was not a well-chosen moment for Sir John Harding to give a “strong-arm” talk on television, implying that the hostility o f the population could be disregarded, as unable to obstruct the efficient functioning o f the island as a military base. The opposite principle was invoked when we withdrew from the Suez Canal, or waived our Treaty Rights to the Irish Ports—that if the local population is hostile, and the hostility is fed all the time by our presence and activity in such bases, it is better to make alternative plans.

In Sir Anthony Eden’s crowded agenda in Washington the Middle East holds a leading place, because American diplomacy can do more than British at the moment in Turkey, to argue that because, having lost the war in 1918, they ceded the sovereignty o f the island at the Treaty o f Lausanne, the British Government is not now free to change its status again. But it is, o f course, the essence of sovereignty that a sovereign Power can transfer its possessions. What the Turks are entitled to ask is that the Turkish Cypriots shall be safeguarded, and that an island so near their coast shall not be fortified against them, or fortified at all, except as a NATO base.

This should not preclude its use for other, but allied, purposes o f British policy in the Middle East. Spokesmen like Sir John Harding weaken the case for overriding the local population when they say that the Chiefs o f Staff want Cyprus not only or mainly for NATO but for the protection o f specifically British interests in the Middle East, as a base from which to send troops to our Arab allies if they should become involved in local conflicts unconnected with any threat from Soviet Russia. That is the kind o f purely military argument which German professional soldiers used to advance for the retention o f other countries, and at which we professed ourselves properly shocked. It is the NATO argument that will have weight at Washington, although the Americans have as much interest as we have in the peace of the Middle East and its fruitful development as the oil flows out and the money flows in. Both the Americans and the Turks need to see Greece continuing as a faithful member o f NATO.