THE TABLET August 24th. 1957. VOL. 210. No. 6118

THE TABLET

Published as a Newspaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

AUGUST 24th, 1957

NINEPENCE

The Moral of Oman: The Advantage of Publicity

Conversations in Moscow: “ Do You Believe in God?” By Katherine Hunter Blair

Conversations in Syria: “ How Strong is the R e g im e ? ” By J. E. Alexander

Off Jagan’s Fork: British Guiana A fter the Elections. By Paul Crane, S.J.

Art at the Edinburgh Festival : A Monet Exhibition. By George Scotl-Moncrieff

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

TIRED OF FORKING OUT

r FH E House of Representatives has thrown ou"t the plans of President Eisenhower’s administration by making an unexpected and substantial cut of five hundred million dollars, about a sixth of the appropriation asked for as aid to foreign countries. The administration have argued and pleaded that this is far more economical for the American taxpayer than the alternative of larger armed forces and more American boys drafted to serve in various parts of the world, some of them far from salubrious. Congressmen arc expressing a widespread feeling among the American public that American aid is coming to be looked on abroad too much as part of the natural order of things.

When the administration justifies the aid as in the interests of the givers, a form of national defence, it takes away by that argument the claim, that would otherwise be incontrovertible, on the gratitude of the recipients. The American public is not asked to look on the aid as a great moral gesture, putting America far ahead of other countries in the disinterested use of riches. It is asked to approve of a practical national policy, and it has grown sceptical whether advantage is not being taken, as the representatives of one country after another explain how very much help they need if they are not to be lost to the free world, and added to the menacing empire of Moscow.

There is a good deal of scepticism about these appeals, and a feeling that not only are the recipients not grateful. but that if the aid ever stops they become more antiAmerican than they would have been if they had never received it. The late W. K. Haselden, the cartoonist, once drew a cartoon of the people next door who begin by borrowing the lawn-mower, and end by requesting their patient neighbours to make wills in their favour leaving them everything, and then commit suicide.

Both in Asia and the near East there can be encountered a very unadmirable mentality of young nationalists, who demand that the older and richer countries shall help them lavishly, and also expect them not to mind being continually insulted while the process is going on. The politicians of these countries have a very keen sense of their own dependence on the electorates behind them. They will explain privately that it is a matter of political survival for them to show themselves anti-Western and truculently independent, because the simple crowds whose cheers they need do not understand anything else. But they never thing that American administrations are also dependent on an electorate, and that by the American constitution the elected legislature has to give its consent to these American benefactions. The setback of the present cuts may have a salutary effect if it is properly publicised in the receiving countries. Moscow’s Friends in Syria

Army coups in Syria are nothing new. They have continually recurred, giving proof of the instability which has afflicted Syria, as it has Jordan, from the beginning of their short histories as independent countries, after their very long history as parts of the Ottoman Empire and a quarter of a century or so under the tutelage of Britain and France. Their frontiers are neither geographical nor historical, but result from decisions made by British or French Governments in their period as holders of the mandates which followed the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire. Now the President of the Republic has fled to Egypt, and avowedly and wholeheartedly proRussian officers are in control of the Army and of the Government. This has provoked immediate alarm among the Turks, Syria’s northern neighbours, and has increased the normal disquiet with which both the Lebanon and Israel have long viewed Syrian activities.

The Russian promises of arms are nothing new, and natural enough, for the Russians want to have at least one Arab country as close to them as Iraq is to Britain. They have discovered that their influence in Egypt rests on showing a more meticulous regard for the sensitivities of Egyptian nationalism than the British and French, and even the Americans, have found it easy to show. This means being content to acquire influence very gradually, to be satisfied for the time being to be used as a fulcrum or counterpoise to enable the Egyptians to show the West that it is not necessarily dependent on their support and