THU TABLET September 1st. 1956. VOL. 20R. No. 6067

Published as a Newspaper

TH E TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

SEPTEMBER 1st. 1956

NINEPENCE

CARDINAL GRIFFIN The Panegyric preached by the Archbishop of Birmingham The Rogito and an account of the lying-in-state and Requiem

Soviet Union and Disarmament: An Approach in Rome

A Death in Isinailia : Part of the Anglo-Egyptian Background. By David Walker

Critics’ Columns : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess *

TWO GROUPS AND NASSER

'T 'H ERE are some indications that President Nasser recog-

nises that it is one thing to nationalise the Suez Canal Company and quite another to command the services of its technicians. In a country in a legal state of war with a neighbour, with the Government wielding powers that enable it to arrest and intern or expel at will, the idea of becoming the paid servant of the Egyptian State is not one that immediately and obviously recommends itself to those servants of the Company who are not Egyptians.

When he meets Mr. Menzies, President Nasser has two groups to reassure : the customers whom the Menzies Committee represent, and the employees. The reassurance given to the customer countries, if it is something real, will also greatly help to reassure the uneasy servants of the old Company. If they can be satisfied, that will have a very good effect on the minds of shipowners the world over, men who are not thinking politically but practically, and are seeing the wisdom of so rearranging their business as not to be too dependent on a system that may so easily break down, not from malevolence but from inefficiency. This must be the world’s answer to the Russian propaganda which Mr. Dulles has been denouncing, a propaganda which is trying to stiffen Egypt into intransigent insistence on running the ¿anal with no more than a formal and powerless advisory board of the customer powers.

If President Nasser is wise, he will be satisfied with a formal recognition of Egyptian ownership, and transfer the actual running of the canal to an international body, for the sake of the good revenues Egypt could then expect. But there is such a big difference between Egyptian representation and rights on such a body, and international representation on an Egyptian governing authority.

We hope no more is going to be heard about force, which is not the proper or appropriate remedy in this case, but that it will be made quietly but abundantly clear that President Nasser has rudely shaken world confidence, and unless he can steady it, he will find he is progressively damaging what could easily be an immense asset to Egypt, and could easily become hardly an asset at all.

dependent on foreign skill, and the determination to train Egyptian nationals for all the essential work, and then in a year or two suddenly to get rid of the foreigners. With an all Egyptian staff amenable to the stern discipline of his State, fearing him and not the international authority, that authority would find itself without power. For this reason, the Menzies Committee must press for such a degree of management as will let the authority engage a mixed staff and protect them; and in the measure in which this is or is not secured, can there be confidence, instead of progressive talk about building the tankers of a 100,000 tons, three times the size of the largest that can use the Canal. No Progress in Cyprus

The Greek and Cypriot reaction to the publication of the Grivas diary implicating Archbishop Makarios in the terrorist campaign, suggests that it has only increased his stature among his countrymen and in Greece. He is seen as an even more resolute and active patriot than they had given him credit for being. They are not shocked. As the Daily Telegraph well observed on Tuesday, this is the tradition of the people who lived under the Ottoman Turk, grouped round their Bishops, who were held answerable for their conduct. As they are not shocked, they need not also deny the authenticity of the diary, although that can be done with some plausibility. It will be said that when the Archbishop was suddenly arrested and deported those who did not respect his person presumably did not respect his papers; and presumably also found nothing. Only now, when reasons are urgently needed to justify his continued exile, is this document produced. Those who do not know the handwriting of Grivas, or what sort of man he is, have no means of judging from internal evidence whether this is his work or not. They can believe what they prefer to on authority. We doubt whether the Colonial Secretary can do more than accept the judgment of others that this has been a genuine find, and not bought from someone well aware of the kind of writing that would be most appreciated and most highly valued by the Government. What is important for the future is to avoid the widening of the gulf whereby what is only patriotism to one side is only crime to the other.

We must not expect a quick and lasting solution to something which is the expression of a fundamental cleavage of outlook. Very likely President Nasser will temporise for the moment, in order to keep the Canal functioning, but with an inner sense of intense mortification that he should be

The Irish would not have removed themselves politically so far from their neighbour and natural associate, but for the executions of 1916. A trial of Archbishop Makarios for being accessory to murder might be good in law, and might