THE TABLET September 29th, 1956. VOL. 208. No. 6071

Published as a Newspaper

THE TABLET

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

SEPTEMBER 29th, 1956

NINEPENCE

Western Example: What Asia has Learnt and can Learn

The Pastoral Liturgy: The International Congress at Assisi. By Illtud Evans. OP.

Christianity and the Oriental Cultures: II: By Christopher Dawson

Belloc Between School and University : From the Biography by Robert Speaight

Passage from Anglicanism: A Chapter of Autobiography. By Hugh Ross Williamson

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

AT THE UNITED NATIONS

'T'iHE decision of the British Government to take its case against the Egyptian Government to the United Nations without further delay is a welcome one—the more so as the Prime Minister, when he addressed the House of Commons, gave the impression that he was opposed to doing so at the present moment, so that the Yorkshire Post, which supports him all too uncritically, was arguing on Monday that there was no difference between the Prime Minister and Sir Lionel Heald. The speech of the ex-Attorney-General was described as that of a lawyer whose first thoughts were always to have recourse to the proper channel, while Sir Anthony Eden, it was argued, being a politician and not a lawyer, was a better judge of times and seasons. The truth is that the Government are doing what Sir Lionel Heald, with a good deal of Conservative Party support as well as Opposition support, thought should be done. Sir Anthony Eden, as thè Sunday Express has been explaining to its readers, has a Conservative Party Conference in mid-October, some three weeks before the American presidential election, and so he and Mr. Dulles cannot be expected to see eye to eye. But Sir Anthony Eden will be in a better position to face his party whatever happens at the United Nations.

It is easy for Mr. Selwyn Lloyd to claim that 75 per cent of the electorate support the Government’s policy, when the Government keep it so carefully nebulous what their policy is. To hear Ministers today is to gather a very different impression from that given by Mr. Dulles, talking in the United States, and saying frankly that war had been considered, but that it had seemed likely to be the kind of war in which, after initial success, Britain and France would have been, in his words, “ bogged down,” in the kind of guerilla and sabotage warfare that, as the French found in Indo-China, there is no way of bringing to an end.

If there is a good deal of support in the United Nations for the demand of which Britain and France have made themselves the spokesmen, that something that matters so much to so many nations should be internationally administered, that will strengthen the case for such control, and can be fairly represented as a positive gain. If, on the other hand, the majority of nations support, as they well may, the rights of Governments to nationalise what they please, as an essential attribute of sovereignty, that will enable the Prime ' Minister to tell his followers that he had left the United Nations alone for two months because he knew very well that there was little satisfaction to be expected there. But he will, at any rate, have ensured that the country has acted correctly, which, as one of the leading founders of the United Nations, Britain has a particular obligation to do.

The Government will be able to claim that there is no longer unrestricted control by one Government if some body is created of a kind advocated by the Spanish Foreign Minister a t the first Lancaster House Conference—a body with an Egyptian President and members, as well as representatives of other countries. This was a proposal little liked at the time, because it did not meet what was felt to be the other necessity of proving to the Middle East and Africa that President Nasser had brought humiliation on himself. It is the belief that this is essential, that he is a megalomaniacal dictator and must be stopped as it were in 1936 and not in 1939, that creates the great difficulty for the would-be bridge-builders like Mr. Menon, who want to save everybody’s face, but President Nasser’s much more than Sir Anthony Eden's or M. Mollet’s. Whatever be thought of the policy of proving that high-handedness does not pay, it is something entirely distinct from safeguarding the Canal for all its customers: and it seems probable that before very long a choice will have to be made as to which of the two policies it is more important to pursue.

If the adhesions, qualified as they are, to SCUA, the Suez Canal Users’ Association, represent a diplomatic success for Britain and France, President Nasser, now also invoking the Security Council of the United Nations, has had his diplomatic success with the declaration of solidarity with Egypt signed by Iraq and Saudi Arabia. These are two of the richest oil-bearing countries in the Middle East—countries sensitive about the rights of sovereignty, whose rulers have been quick to see the implications that, if it could be right for the ultimate consumers to keep troops safeguarding the Canal, the same logic would entitle the same consumers to keep troops or airfields safeguarding the oil-wells and the pipe-lines. This would be a reversion to an earlier pattern of control, in which native populations played a very un­