THE TABLET January 5th. 1957. VOL. 209. No. 60S5

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Eccl-esia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JANUARY 5th, 1957

NINEPENCE

The Quickening of Consciences : W hat Mankind Owes to the Hungarians

Pope PiuS XII O i l the United Nations l The Christmas Message to the World

The Political Future : Constituency Associations and Policy. By Christopher Hollis

A \ ear for Guy JYIoIiet • Government from Weakness in France

Round About''a Burning Tree : On a Welsh Anthology. By David Jones

\ loleut e in Ireland \ Cardinal D Alton's Words and the Bishops’ Condemnation

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

THE EISENHOWER DOCTRINE

1 AfHAT has been immediately tiled “ the Eisenhiwer * u Doctrine ”—provoking all kinds of not very apt omparisons with the Monroe Doctrine, with which it ha not very much in common except that both were first femulated as warnings to the Russians—contains two elenents. One is that the United States shall pour dollars inti the Middle East on such a scale as to out-bid the Russiais in the competition for Arab favour; a plan which perhapsmisjudges the imoortance of industrial and technical prpress in Arab aspirations. The other is a proposal that Ameican military support shall be pledged to any Middle Eatern country which, having suffered aggression, should asl for it. The weakness of this part of the doctrine is that itpresupposes that formal aggression in the Middle East is 'hat the Russians are contemplating, when the indications are that they are very content with the progress they hav so far made in penetration facilitated not by their own theats of force but by what they describe and the Arabs rgard as other people's threats. The plan for pouring in hunceds of millions of dollars can only too easily be representd to the Arabs as imperialism in the classic Marxist sense, here, it can be said, are the Americans, who only yesterday vere claiming to disaporove of imperialism and colonialism, arid incurring the indignation of the British and French on bat account, suddenly turning round, lining up alongside the British and French, dropping the mask and revealing thtntselves as only anxious that European interests shall be protected. How important those interests are has been strikingly shown bv the confusion caused in this country by even a oartial and temporary interruption in the supply of Middle Eastern oil. What the Russians want in the Middle East is not a finger on the trigger but a hand on tie stopcock, to turn off the oil at will. If the United Staes Congress allows the Eisenhower doctrine to be implem;nted— which is by no means certain—the Russians will sinply say that this is protection of the British and Western European economies.

Already the only Middle Eastern State which is Slowing any particular pleasure at the prospect is Israel. It 5 wellknown that the Israeli Government never professed much belief in the Tripartite Declaration of seven years ago, by which the United States, Britain and France undertook to go to the aid of any victim of aggression in the Middle East. The Eisenhower doctrine is welcomed in Israel because it seems to offer new hoDe of survival. The United States bears a large part of the responsibility for ever bringing that State into existence in the middle of the Arab world; here, it seems, is a recognition of that responsibility. So also it must seem to the Arabs; and this line of argument also, we may be sure, will be exploited by Moscow to the full.

The Tripartite Declaration was a brief and loosely worded document, signed rather unwillingly seven years ago; its application turns on what is taken as aggression in a setting in which aggression is particularly difficult to define. It is very much a matter of subjective choice, at what point in the whole unhappy history of the forty years since the Balfour Declaration aggressions and counter-aggressions began.

The Jews can say that the British went to Palestine by right of conquest, taking it from the Turks who had declared war against them; that the Arabs had lived for centuries in lowly subjection to the long decadent Ottoman power, and did not free themselves, but only helped in an operation which was a British military achievement; that the Arabs then manifested such hostility to the Jewish National Home that they brought the State of Israel cm themselves; that of course its creation involved a miss exodus of Arabs, who could not be tolerated, as potential fifth-columnists in so small a State; and that now the Arab world should leave them alone, should accept their as a fact, make peace with them and trade with them, tie Jews for their part being ready for both peace and trade

The Arabs accept none of this. To them what has happened is as simple as it is infuriating and humiliati'g; that in one part of the Arab world new-comers have appeared and have driven out the local Arab population, an* taken over their land; that the Arabs have been the victimrof an aggression committed for the sake of Lebensraum, >uch as in any