THE TABLET April 27th, 1957. VOL. 209, N o . 6101

TH £ TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840 APRIL 27th, 1957

Published as a. Newspaper

NINEPENCE

Mr Dulles' Dilemma: The Horn of Stability West Germany's New Army : Reluctant Soldiers. By Eugene Hinterhoff The Philippines Revisited: A Catholic Nation in Asia. By William Teeling, M.P. The Rent B i l l : Its Background and Probable Effects Votes for Women: Mr. Roger Fulford’s Historical Study. By Christopher Hollis The Dream in South Bend: Shakespeare in the Middle West. By Robert Speaight Critics* Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess

“ FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE” A RECORD turn-out of cars at Easter, six months after the closing of the Suez Canal, was the reflection in Britain of the oil position in Western Europe as a whole, where requirements are nearly completely met—-well over ninety per cent—and there is very little case for rationing. If precautions are still taken in this country it is largely because of the danger of further interference with the pipelines if the Jordan crisis should lead to fighting with Syrian and Iraqi forces opposed to each other. It is a position very different from, and very much better than, anything Sir Anthony Eden and his colleagues ever suggested was possible if the Canal was out of action for anything like six months, and it indicates very strongly that much the best course the users of the Canal can pursue is to continue to demonstrate to the Egyptian ruler that, whatever they may have been saying last autumn, he does not in fact hold them by the wind-pipe.

their main revenue-producer, and the whole trend of development in the oil-carrying and other trades is to make it no more a monopoly. It should be the policy of the Western European countries to diminish their dependence on the Canal, whatever concessions might be forthcoming now. It is this, not the machinery of the United Nations, which has always been the alternative policy to the abortive idea that the West had a remedy in military force.

It is a good moment for the American Government to report to the Security Council on its Egyptian conversations, for Marshal Bulganin has chosen this time to write a personal letter to Mr. Macmillan about ways of relaxing tension, and one way would be for the Russians in the Security Council to balance their solicitude fo’- Egyptian sovereignty with a solicitude for the interests of those who use the Canal.

The discussions between the American Ambassador and Colonel Nasser have not got very far over the last month, and it is not likely that much will happen at the Security Council. The same basic reason, the intensity of that nationalist feeling which made a military solution an anachronism, also limits the scope of what can be achieved inside the United Nations. The users should not make difficulties about paying the dues in currencies which the Egyptian Government can be sure of handling. It is not reasonable to expect Colonel Nasser to accept payment in sterling which is then blocked in London. What the users are entitled to demand, what was agreed to not only before but after the military operation, is that there shall be some other body than the Egyptian authorities to whom they can take any complaints of excessive charges, and that there shall be some machinery to watch how the Canal is operated, how money is allocated for its maintenance and improvement.

One of the few predictable certainties is that any Egyptian Government — Colonel Nasser's or another — will always be hard driven for money, under constant strong temptation to use all the Canal revenues it can collect, and to use them for other purposes. This is where the Egyptians are vulnerable. They must have their Canal used, for it is

It was presumably because it was intended to publish the news and the general contents of Marshal Bulganin’s letter to the British Prime Minister that the Russians decided last weekend also to publish the personal letters exchanged between Marshal Bulganin and Sir Anthony Eden in September and October last. This decision caused the British Government to upset the normal tranquility of the Easier weekend in Whitehall in a successful bid to beat the Russians by a few hours and publish first. It is not clear what has been gained by this little achievement. It is a good thing that the heads of States should be on such terms that they can write to each other personally, but one of the conditions of this practice is that they shall know that the letters are not going to be published in the immediate future. What the Russians have gained is to show the Arab world that Moscow understands how they feel and what they want, and Marshal Bulganin's letters will read very well in the Middle East—particularly his warning in September of the tremendous damage to the Canal and to the pipe-lines that would be the immediate consequence of military operations by France or Britain, and his prediction that “ all the Arabs would rise in sacred struggle against the foreign invasion: and this means that the material loss, particularly to Britain and France, and, for that matter, for the whole of Europe, would assume immense proportions.”