rH E TABLET, August 18th, 1u 5fi. Vol. 2PS, Nn, S065

THE iABI i 'l A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

FuMisH«tf as a N rnT rapei

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

AUGUST 18th, 1956

MNEPENCE

The French Interest : The S ah a ra in the A tom ic Age

The Population of the Soviet Union: By k . m . Smogorzewski

Hebridean Holiday : T h e C a th o lic Islands. By G. Scott-M oncrieff

A Surfeit ol. Lampreys : A C a lum ny on H enry T. By Geoffrey de C. P a rm ite r

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

THE PROPER ANSWER

nP'Hb mood in which the British Government enter the

Conference at Lancaster House, as expressed by the Foreign Secretary’s broadcast on Tuesday night, is one which they will not find widely shared by those with whom they ^it down. Mr. Selwyn Lloyd is a newcomer to the Government and so he could say more about and against the vast personal ambitions of President Nasser, quoting from the book Nasser wrote some years ago, without inviting the remark that this was all available and presumably well-known to Sir Anthony Eden when he negotiated the 1954 agreement. President Nasser may be all that Mr. Selwyn Lloyd fears he is, but both the broadcasts of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have left the impression that they are thinking too much about Hitler. There is a radical difference; Hitler was at the head of a large and powerful country, but he enjoyed little outside sympathy; Nasser is at the head of a militarily and economically feeble country, but he and what he stands for enjoy great goodwill in the neighbouring countries. When Mr. Selwyn Lloyd says the eyes of our friends in the Arab world are upon us, he implies they want to see us dealing resolutely with Nasser; we have no better friend than Nuri, the chief minister of Iraq, but he, like our friend the King of Libya, has publicly sided with Nasser on the question of nationalisation. The nationalisation was no doubt as illegal as it was high-handed, but it has not shocked the neighbours and we cannot treat it as we could have treated the closing of the Canal to our ships.

But the British and French can hope for more support in providing now against the future contingency of any arbitrary Egyptian interference or extortion. This will enable them to say it was what they always had in mind. But in actual fact far the best way of ensuring Egyptian good behaviour will be to take care to become less dependent on the Canal, so that the kind of language the Australian Prime Minister has been using—which amounts to assuring President Nasser that he has a stranglehold as have all Arab states from which the oil comes — will obviously with each year that passes cease to reflect the true position. The way to make sure the Canal is kept open and the dues kept competitively low will be to concentrate on other sources of oil and on other routes and larger tankers for Middle East oil. If Sir Anthony Eden and Mr. Menzies are to be taken literally, we have far too many of our eggs jn the Suez basket, in a way which makes it more than ever necessary for the Prime Minister to explain why he was so keen as Foreign Secretary on the 1954 Agreement. It is really no answer for him to say that he then thought differently and more highly of President Nasser, when it was self-evident that Egyptian politics are not stabilised and no-one can tell who will be governing the country even a few years ahead. What we can do and should do is to make it profitable for the Egyptians to behave properly when they have physical control. And one of the main ways of doing that is to diminish our dependence on the Canal. To talk as though we could not live without it, is to invite Major Salem to boast how easily it could be sabotaged.

The most sensible action of the last few days has been the arrangement made with a group of American oil companies to supply Britain and Europe from the Western hemisphere if there is an interruption from the Middle East. To become, and to be seen to be, less dependent on the Suez Canal and the Middle East oil is the surest way of ensuring that both Egypt and the Arab States will want to keep a commercial connection of primary importance to their peoples. Countries like Indonesia which show they are not to be trusted because they repudiate their solemn undertakings must be denied the capital investment, the loans and aid which only the Western world can today and for many years ahead supply. The price of loans for development will have to include a return to the kind of arrangements the Chinese Empire had to accept, with an international body collecting the Customs, and special Consular Courts, not as a return to colonialism but as the only terms on which borrowers who have destroyed their credit can find people to lend to them. In the end. these countries have no monopolies and they need the Western world more than the Western world needs them. When the bills come to be paid, we doubt whether the military activities will not be found to have cost more than the loss we should have incurred by ceasing to use the Canal and using the Cape route until President Nasser made up for his illegality by some effective steps to restore the confidence he has thrown away.

Already large tankers of 45,000 tons going round the Cape can compete with smaller ones going through the Canal. Pipelines are out of favour after the behaviour of the Lebanese in threatening to nationalise the pipeline which runs through their country, and the Arabs closed the one