THE TABLET March 23rd, 1957. VOL. 209, No. 6096

! : E T A B L WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Newspaper

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MARCH 23rd, 1957

N1NEPENCE

The Ultimate Employer : What T rade Unionists Forget

Dr. Toynbee s Turning Away : Changed Views. By Christopher Dawson

Peril in the Holy Places : Alarm s and Apprehensions at Qumran and Jericho

The Bible in Lent Î I I I : “ Leave Thy Country.” By Leonard Johnston

SPRING BOOK SUPPLEMENT Reviews by D.W., Christopher Hollis, Anthony Bertram, René Hague, Adrian Morey, O.S.B., Michael Derrick,

A. Gregory Murray, O.S.B., Desmond Schlegel, O.S.B., D. J. B. Hawkins, John Smith, Frank Littler,

E. W. Martin, Rosemary Hughes, Gordon Albion, C. A. Burland, J. Lewis May,

P. R. Bardell, R. H. Westwatcr and J. J. Curie

RESTORING THE ALLIANCE

DRESIDENT EISENHOWER goes to Bermuda with a good deal of criticism following him from the American Senate, from men who say he and Mr. Dulles should have done more for Israel. It is very tempting for American Senators and Congressmen, and for American ¡newspapers, to take the pro-Israel line and please the American Zionists who are all the time demanding their support. But this is to repeat the errors of the Roosevelt and Truman eras, and to forget that, if the Jews are more important in America, the Arabs are very much more important in the Middle East. We hope that Mr. Macmillan and Mr. Selwyn Lloyd are not remembering in Bermuda all the bad advice that M. Mollet and M. Pineau gave them in Paris, where there is now virtually an alliance between France and Israel, from which the Americans, like ourselves, must keep away.

President Eisenhower and Mr. Dulles deserve great credit for one thing at any rate, which puts them much ahead of their British critics. They have come to understand that what was done, and done mainly by President Truman, to support the invention and imposition of the State of Israel cannot be treated as something settled and over, just because it happened from seven to ten years ago, and ended with the new State safely, as it seemed, entrenched in the United Nations. The Americans are now casting about for ways of putting right what they did then, regarding the preservation of the Moslem Middle East for the anti-Communist world as a matter of such vast importance that it can no longer be handled in the way most convenient to Congressmen and others anxious to stand well with the Jewish vote in American politics. They have recognised the uselessness of starting from the assumption, which the Arabs repudiate, that what was done a few years ago must now be regarded as part of the settled historical, and almost natural, order.

Ultimately there can be very little doubt of what the broad character of a peaceful and progressive settlement, if it should be achieved, would be. The lifting of the economic blockade, the acceptance of Jewish brains and skill as a positive contribution to the development of the Middle East, would only come about because the State of Israel had become again a Jewish National Home, whose extent was settled. The student mobs shouting against Ben Gurion in the Jewish part of Jerusalem show how much the heady wine of nationalism is still present, and that it will be easier to build United Europe than a united Middle East. A confederation inside which Jews and Christian Arabs would be able to feel any more secure than they do today is not as yet in sight. But in these days things move so quickly that that is not the hopeless statement it would have been in quieter and slower times. Western statesmen will do well to keep these possibilities before their minds; they will save them from such barren polemics as some of the British newspapers are all the time indulging in against the American Government on behalf of the State of Israel.

The increase in the private petrol ration, although still quite inadequate for private needs, is the most welcome practical proof, after the Canal has been blocked for eight months, that a great deal of the language of the leading Ministers of the Crown last August was over-pitched. The present supplies have'not been helped by any particular forethought, and it would be a different story again in a few years’ lime with more large tankers. What is essential is not the Canal but the oil, which means that we must not indulge in policies which cause Arab nationalists, in Syria or anywhere else, to sabotage oil pipes, not minding how they ruin themselves provided they can injure us.

The Anglo-Jordanian Treaty has been signed, and marks the end of a great experiment, our attempt to transform our Transjo-danian mandate into a friendly Arab Kingdom, one taking our money and our advice, giving us bases, letting us command its principal troops. The wave of Arab nationalism, intensified by the presence of hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees, made it impossible for the friends of theBritish connection to stand their ground. The Treaty has