THE TABLET November 10t&. 1956. VOL. 208. No, 6011

TH E TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

NOVEMBER 10th. 1956

NINEPENCE

The Agony of Hungary: Unaided Against the Soviet Tanks Cardinal Mindszenty: His Reappearance and Reluctance to Accept Political Leadership Israel’s Campaign: Surrounded but Successful. By Eugene HinterhofT The Voice of Pius XII: Encyclical Letters on Events in the Near East and Hungary Shrewsbury Centenary: A Sacrament in Stone. By Mgr. R. A. Knox Critics’ Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

SANER COUNSELS

'T 'H E news as we write, on Wednesday, is still uncertain about Egyptian and Russian intentions, and we must expect both Powers to seek to take full advantage. Ready as both those countries were to invoke the United Nations against Britain and France, it is very doubtful how far either Colonel Nasser or the Kremlin really want to see an international police force on the Egyptian frontier. The extensive assembling of armaments that has been going on in Egypt, supplied from Communist sources, suggests very different ideas. The depth and extent of Russian interest in Egypt has increased, and is increasing, and will increase as long as the present regime is in power there; and we cannot think that the Anglo-French adventure has not greatly intensified President Nasser’s dependence on Russia and the Russian hold on Egyptian policy. We now have to work inside and through the United Nations, whose vigour and vitality—with the re-election of President Eisenhower—are the most hopeful features of a still dark scene.

When Mr. Ben Gurion, the Israeli Premier, meanwhile declares that no one is going to take away from Israel the great expanse of Egyptian territory that Israel has overrun, he is defying the United N a tio ns; because obviously the Israelis must give up their conquest. They will have much more security for their existence if they accept the authority and discipline of the United Nations. It is a pity that we in Britain cannot very well tell them so ; but the United Nations, and in particular the United States, can.

The best that can be said for the Anglo-Frehch policy is that it roused the United Nations to show so much initiative and promptitude. But that was not the intention or expectation of the French, who do not conceal their mortification at the abandonment of their cherished enterprise to repossess themselves of the property of the Suez Canal Company. “ If it rested with us,” said M. Pineau, “ we should have gone on.” The British Government can choose to say that it has achieved its objective by taking military action on its own. We must expect to hear the Russians making the same claim, that their threat to widen the conflict, and to participate in it, produced a response for which the milder calls of the United Nations would still be waiting.

Last Saturday Sir Anthony Eden stated the conditions on which Britain and France would agree to a cease-fire. It would come when the United Nations sent a police force, and provided that the future of the Canal was included in its terms of reference. A good deal of this has had to be dropped. The more seriously we regard the Russian ambitions in the Middle East—and they must be regarded very seriously—the more closely we must seek to work always with the Americans, on the one hand, and the local countries on the other; and while we hope and believe that the AngloAmerican front can be speedily re-established, in the Middle East and beyond, what we have been so ill advised as to attempt by arms will not be forgotten or forgiven for many a day. until these Moslem peoples wake up to the presence of a greater threat. Living in the past ourselves, we have revivified for them all a past full of memories of domination that they need to forget. The damage to our standing, the strengthening of already strong anti-Western elements as far afield as Pakistan and Indonesia, the hostile moves against our oil supplies in Syria and Saudi Arabia— all these and other signs are a bitter commentary on some of the fatuous optimism that was being expressed during this last week by spokesmen for the Government.

The crisis is still with us, but even if things now go as well as can possibly be expected, and an international police force is organised and accepted, but is not charged to interest itself in the Canal, we believe that more and more, Conservative opinion will settle against the present Cabinet and its Premier, and will find that they gravely and grossly miscalulated over a wide field, to our grievous cost. In the last week there could be heard only too many Conservative voices, of those pleased rather than otherwise at the weakness of the international organisation, from an atavistic idea that we could do better on our own, and showing a cynicism about international undertakings which we must never indulge again. The United Nations is highly imperfect, but it is beyond price, something whose growth in authority and function is the hope of the world. That is understood in this country. Tf the Conservative Party wants to continue to govern, it must find and bring forward men who have not compromised themselves as its present leaders have done.