THE TABLET September 15th, 1956, VOL. 208, No. 6069

Published as a Newspaper

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

SEPTEMBER 15th, 1956

NINEPENCE

Unacknowledged Issue l Control of the Canal and Control of Egypt

Christianity and the Orient: Oriental Nationalism : II. By Christopher Dawson

Religious Sociology: A Congress a t Louvain. By Michael P. Fogarty

Eight Years at Pluscarden: An Octave of Restoration. By S. G. A. Luff.

“ I D o B e l i e v e T h e m ” : W hat are the Canonical Scriptures? By R. C. Fuller

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

EGYPT AND AFRICA

,T ' |HERE will, declared the Prime Minister in the House of

Commons on Wednesday, be no “ policy of abject appeasement ” this time. The leit motiv of his speech was to compare Colonel Nasser with Hitler, which Colonel Nasser may well have found rather flattering. On every ground a more apt comparison, if comparisons must be made, would be with Mussolini. The turning-point in Sir Anthony Eden's career was his resignation in 1938, in protest against the appeasement of Mussolini. If he had not then resigned it is unlikely that he would be Prime Minister today; he would probably be an eider statesman in the House of Lords. But he did resign then, and now there is no need to do so. Now that finest hour can be lived again; there will be no appeasement this time. But we can only expect that the “ Users’ Association ” which the Prime Minister announced will quite soon find ground for complaint. The intimation from the Suez Canal Company that pilots can feel at liberty to leave their work was hardly in the best tradition of public service, and may well lead to such a slowing-dov?n of traffic that the British and French will be able to say. that they have no option but to intervene in order to restore normal conditions. Perhaps that is what is intended.

There are plenty of people to develop the not very profitable comparisons between the circumstances of twenty years ago and those of today; yet if the lessons from the ’thirties are in the air, one lesson above all the others that should be borne in mind is that, Mussolini, who was for very good reasons strongly anti-German down to 1934, maintaining Austrian independence against Germany as a strong Italian interest, was becoming a partner to the Axis two years later. He had as much reason to be anxious about becoming the junior ally of Germany as Colonel Nasser now has about becoming the junior ally of Russia; but he took the risk as the most effective answer open to him when he had by illegality and bragadoccio aroused the contemptuous hostility of Britain. It was not the result he wanted, and it helped to bring on the second world war. Similarly, anything that will make Russia the chief friend and protector of Egypt both in the Moslem world and^in Africa will increase the danger of a third.

Colonel Nasser’s original announcement that he would nationalise the Suez Canal came just after his failure to obtain Western capital for the desired Aswan Dam, and was made possible by the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty and the consequent British withdrawal from the Canal Zone. So much of the background is well enough understood. But too little attention has been paid to the fact that it also followed a volte face in the previously critical Soviet policy towards Egypt, and towards Colonel Nasser in particular, and the beginning of an entirely new campaign of Soviet penetration in Africa. We in this country have tended to see Egypt exclusively as part of the Middle East, and have not paid enough attention to the fact that it is also part of Africa, where the Egyptians also have aspirations.

When M. Khrushchev remarked the other day that if Egypt should have to fight a war he did not think he would be able to prevent Soviet volunteers from going to fight on the Egyptian side, he was hoping, it is certain, for grateful applause not only in Egypt but further afield in Africa as well. It is safe to say that he would very much like, if the arrangements could be made, to repeat in Africa the highly successful tour which he made in South-East Asia with Marshal Bulganin in the last weeks of last year. Meanwhile, one of the chief marks of M. Shepilov as a Foreign Minister is his dedication to “ anti-imperialism ” in both Asia and Africa. The campaign has developed faster in Asia than in Africa, but the propaganda lines expounded at Bandung were addressed equally to Africa.

The French have been and remain determined to humiliate and if necessary to overthrow Colonel Nasser because they think of Cairo as the centre of Moslem defiance in Algeria. But in the colonial territories south of the Sahara no similar unrest has yet developed. Tts stimulation is a task which lies ahead for the Communists, and it is made easier by the “ tough ” Anglo-French attitude to the Egyptians. We wonder whether these considerations were sufficiently pondered in the very brief time in which the decision to be “ tough ” was taken. The impression given was that there was all too little consideration of the repercussions in either Asia or Africa, and that when the Asian countries one by one declared their support for Colonel Nasser—including, even the Government of Iraq, whose sovereign was at the time enjoying the hospitality of the