THE TABLET June 15th, 1957. VOL. 209, No. 6108

th c" B: :::t A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Published as a Nèwspapcr

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

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JUNE 15 th, 1957

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NINEPENCE

The Church and Politics in Germany: Episcopal Interventions and Political Replies | Workers as Owners ! Social Experiments in Germany and Austria 1Grammar or Secondary Modern ? : An Unnecessary Antithesis. By Edward Burrows Gesla Dei per Caicos t Britain and the Lay Apostolate. By Lance Wright Films at Cork I The Enterprise of An Tostal. By J. A. V. Burke

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

THE CHRISTIAN ENCLAVE

'T 'H E elections which began last Sunday in the Lebanon. A with a handsome victory in the first round for the Eisenhower Doctrine, are of interest not so much because of doubt about their outcome but because the political system of that country is organised according to religious beliefs instead of according to political parties. Those who make the fundamental mistake of supposing that the Middle East is more interested in politics than in religion cannot do better than study the Lebanese electoral system. The seats now being filled are distributed on a regional basis, but the elected deputies primarily represent their religions, and not the regions. It can be argued, perhaps, that sometimes they do not represent religions so much as races, but in any event it is clear that political parties, in the nature of the system, can play only a secondary part.

There are now sixty-six seats in the Lebanese Assembly,' the number having been increased in April from forty-four. Of these, twenty must be held by Maronites, Catholics whose liturgical language is Arabic and who are the most characteristic element in the Lebanese population. Twentysix must be held by Moslems—fourteen Sunni and twelve Shi’ite s ; seven by Greek Orthodox, four by Druses, four by Catholics of the Greek rite, three by Armenian Orthodox and one by an Armenian Catholic. One other seat is reserved for a representative of other religious confessions; there is no provision for unbelievers. Government and Opposition lists of candidates must follow a prescribed balance between the religious confessions in each electoral district. It is far from easy for politicians to fit in their plans with these requirements, to find followers of the right confessions at the right time, and the present choice is a simple one between a Government that looks to the West and an Opposition “ National Front ” that looks to Colonel Nasser and his Syrian friends and enjoys the encouragement of the Soviet Union.

There are other Arab extremists as well as Colonel Nasser and his supporters in Syria who resent the Lebanon as a Christian enclave in the Moslem world, made independent of Syria by the French only to preserve a Christian majority. That majority is only a very slender one : and it is unlikely to exist much longer, since the Moslem population is growing much more rapidly ; some say that if there was another census now it would be found that the

Christian majority had already disappeared. The President of the Republic has at present to be a Christian, although the Prime Minister has to be a Sunni Moslem ; and the chief political interest of these elections is that it will fall to the new Assembly to choose a new President. Many Moslems dislike the idea of an Arab Republic that is committed to a Christian President, and only the much greater hostility to the Jewish enclave of Israel obscures their hostility to the Christian enclave to the North.

There are fewer than a million and a half people in the Lebanon, but the election that began a week ago, when a third of the Assembly’s seats were filled in Beirut and the South, is to be continued not only tomorrow but on the remaining two Sundays of June ; and the reason for dragging them on so long is that there is only a small body of trustworthy police who can be relied upon to defend the secrecy of the ballot, maintain order and protect the voters against intimidation. The police have to perform these duties in four areas successively, moving from one to another. But this means that the excitement is long drawn out, and that those who have been so busy dispensing bribes from the large sums provided for that purpose by Egypt and the Soviet Union will intensify their efforts as the month goes on if the voting has not been going the way they want it, or if purchasable fringes of the politically uncommitted have not been bothering to vote at all. Almost half those entitled to vote last Sunday failed to do so. If the police guard the secrecy of the polling-booths successfully, then a man can pocket his bribe and go and vote in a different sense to that demanded ; but the main recipients of bribes are those who would otherwise not vote ’at all, and are indifferently open to do what they are paid to do.

Despite all this, there is little prospect that the Government will be displaced. The first results have been two to one in the Government’s favour. The interest of the Lebanon, a country that lives by commerce, is plain enough, and few rational Lebanese want to see their country throw in its lot with the precarious Government of Syria or an Egyptian Government that is increasingly disliked in the Arab countries. The real point of the intervention was not so much to affect the course of the election as to prevent it from being held at a l l ; and the bid for this was made