1W, TABLET» August I t , 1056. VOL. 208. N<\ 6064

T i i e ' “' ; ;•r A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

FOUNDED IN 1840

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

AUGUST 11th, 1956

NINEPENCE

The Moslem. World: The Suez Canal as a Symbol

What the Turks are Thinking: Suez, Cyprus and the Baghdad Pact. By Derek Patmore

Ml'. Strachey’s Conservatism: “ Contemporary Capitalism.” By Christopher Hollis

Mare Germanieum: Impressions of a Holiday in Italy. By Axel Heyst

Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

THE WAR OF NASSER’S CHEEK

IA7E hope the Prime Minister is glancing these days at the picture in No. 10 of one of his wiser predecessors, Sir Robert Walpole. It was Walpole who used some words— “ They are ringing the bells, but soon they will be wringing their hands,” of the war of Jenkin’s Ear — which are as relevant for the war of Nasser’s Cheek. Britain’s chief friend in the Middle East is Iraq, but its strong pro-British Minister, M. Nuri, spoke immediately in favour of Egypt’s right to nationalise any property inside Egypt’s boundaries, in a way that shows that Britain and France, in their first excitement, took up the wrong ground, where they are not finding a great deal of support. Mr. Dulles says rather hesitantly that Britain and France may be right to use force, because President Nasser used force against the Suez Canal Company. This doctrine was received very half-heartedly by the Latin American Governments, to whom he was talking, none of whom were prepared to think that, if they for reasons of national policy took over an oil or fruit company, that would justify the arrival of American Marines. Like the Red Queen, who cried before she was hurt, instead of after, the British and French Governments have behaved as though the Canal was already being denied to their shipping, or they were being grotesquely overcharged. If either of these things happened they would have a far greater unanimity of other countries behind them.

Calmer counsels are beginning to prevail. A fortnight ago. in the first shock of the news of President Nasser’s coup, the British and French, their politicians, newspapers and public opinion, reacted violently. To the French Nasser has long been a formidable enemy, and Egypt the centre for a continual hostile propaganda against the French in North Africa, and it has been a mortification to the French that they were being left so very much alone in their efforts to preserve something of their Algerian possessions. Britain and, even more markedly, the United States were not prepared to show solidarity with France when such solidarity might compromise the elaborate and difficult game both countries were playing, in very imperfect unison with each other, in Egypt and the rest of the Moslem world.

The French had no reason to minimise the sense of crisis, even if the Suez Canal Company did not have its seat in Paris and the Canal rank as a great French achievement. If Britain and France reacted as no other peoples in the world have reacted, the reasons are historical as well as practical.

The fact remains that capitalist and investing Powers like Britain and France, nations to whom foreign trade is of great importance, have the strongest interest in discouraging everywhere the idea of force, and in setting a pre-eminent example in relying upon international machinery, legal or diplomatic.

There has been a very general and quite natural hesitation among the countrie invited to be in London by August 16th, precisely because the announcement of the Conference was associated with military and naval gestures, the dignified European equivalent of the war-whoops and gesticulating spears of more primitive peoples when excited and alarmed. Something very parallel happened nearly sixty years ago when President Kruger asserted local sovereign rights against the Uitlanders. He was thought to be acting greedily, meanly, unjustly-, and he and his people paid for it by having their countries annexed. But the business of annexing them involved the use of half a million British troops, and half a century later can be seen to have been a great mistake, for the conquered neither accepted incorporation nor forgot nor forgave.

Those who are invited to a Conference in London naturally want to know to what they are being asked to make themselves party. Is it to the drawing up of conditions which the Egyptian Government must accept on pain of seeing the Canal Zone reoccupied, but this time not only by Britain but by forces representing many countries? If the Conference is intended to give moral authority to military action, it would be well in Britain to recognise the extreme sensitiveness that exists almost universally about national sovereignty. Most of the countries whose participation we are inviting regard this as fundamental to their existence. It is the corner-stone of the United Nations, the great protection against aggressive Empire building.

It was unfortunate that the well-known American commentators, the Allsop brothers, wrote a sentence widely quoted in Britain by the excited advocates of an immediate display of force. The Allsop brothers wrote that if Britain quietly acquiesced it would mark the end of Britain as a great Power. But that phrase, “ a great Power,” needs to be understood very differently today compared with forty years ago.

American participation in World War I and the proclamation of Woodrow Wilson’s democratic ideology marked the