THE TABLET March 30th, 1957. VOL. 209, No. 6097

Published as a Newspaper

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

MARCH 30th, 1957

N1NEPENCE

Wages and Inflation: Outrunning Productivity I lie European Market : Background to the New Treaty. By John Dingle Prospero S View: The Religious Opportunities of Television. By llltud Evans, O.P. How Olir Ancestors Lía ed : Wages and Prices in the Past. By Colin Clark Boredom and Survival: Mr. Russell Kirk's Conservatism. By Christopher Hollis The Bible in Lent: IV: “ The Land that I shall Show Thee.” By Leonard Johnston

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

A LONG WAY TO GO

TN the joint communiqué at the close of the Bermuda talks

President Eisenhower and Mr. Macmillan said they “ recognised their responsibility to seek to co-ordinate their foreign policies, in the interests of peace with justice.” The operative word is “ seek,” and it can be a long search, not made easier by being undertaken in the face of large bodies of opinion in both countries which do not want coordination and think their country can do better on its own. Mr. Dulles in Washington has given the impression that there is not very much progress to report. There is some recognition that it is Arab and Egyptian nationalism, rather than the direct threat of Soviet imperialism, that is implicit in the proposal to construct another and larger pipe-line to bring oil from the Mosul field in the north of Iraq across Turkey to an outlet in the Levant. This would not be a sensible thing to do if the danger of war with the Soviet Union was judged to be a near one. It is extremely sensible, as is the construction of larger tankers, as a way of convincing Colonel Nasser that, however we roared last August, he does not hold Britain by the wind-pipe.

probability is that the Eisenhower Doctrine will not meet with very much success among people who in their present mood are much more interested in status than prosperity. This is a main reason why all the emphasis has to be on the commercial relationship which we have with those peoples as customers for their oil and potential users of the Suez Canal, if we consider that Canal to offer us a safe apd commodious means of communication.

Obviously the sanction we possess and can impose is to boycott the Canal, not to try to force our way through on our own terms of payment. In this matter of dues it had been agreed by last October what sort of division there should be between the claims for maintenance and improvement, which must come first, and the balance which the Egyptian Government can then spend as it chooses. To work out some arrangement which meets Egyptian sensitiveness about sovereignty, while making sure that enough money is kept clear of the hungry Egyptian Treasury and reserved for the service of the Canal, should not prove very difficult, since the Egyptians are interested in a procedure and the Canal users in a financial reality.

The rulers in the Kremlin have made it very plain that they greatly dislike, among other recent happenings, the acceptance of American aid by the Arab countries. The American decision to adhere to the Baghdad Pact as a military alliance will corroborate the Russian view that the Americans are going to attempt what the British had finally to give up as a failure, the policy of making satellites out of Egypt and the Arabs. The Communist reply to the Americans will be what it was to the British, to associate with the most violent nationalists, to behave like them and encourage them, to make them feel that they are still held in scorn as peoples to be run in harness and coerced if they show any desire to choose their own route for themselves.

All this propaganda was so immensely strengthened by what the British and. French did last November that the Americans still have to make it very plain that their policy is their own, and that we have not sent them in to bat on our side after throwing away our own wicket. The strong

It is likely to be very much more difficult to extort concessions for the State of Israel, when those concessions can be seen as limiting Egyptian, or Saudi Arabian, sovereignty in order to make life easier for their enemy. The Western Powers still need to make much more allowance in their thinking for the genuine apprehension of the Arab world lest the State of Israel that is on the map at the present moment is in reality a bridge-head and a beginning. The policy which brought that State into being ten years ago envisaged something very much larger and stronger, if not quite from the Nile to the Euphrates, though there were exuberant Zionists who thought and talked of that. There are still such elements in Israel, now in violent opposition to Mr. Ben Gurion because he has taken care to keep on the right side of the United States.

Mr. Dulles clings to the United Nations in a way that is found very trying in this country, by a people who have inherited a long legal tradition and know that the General Assembly as it is today has hardly any claim to be con­