THE TABLET June 21st, 195S. VOL. 211. No. 6161
TH E TABLET
Published as a Newspaper
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER’& REVIEW
Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria
FOUNDED IN 1840
JUNE 21st, 195 8
NINEPENCE
Engulfing the Grammar School: The Labour Party’s New Tack
The Turkish Insistence: Any Solution for Cyprus? By Eugene HintcrholT
Patriarch and President in Lebanon: Not yet Confessional Conflict
Russian Offensive in Africa: Penetration by Stages: II. By Czeslaw Jesman
The Holiness of John Henry Newman: The Enquiry Opens in Birmingham American Journey: Hollywood to Chicago. By Sir Shane Leslie
Brussels Film Festival: Expo Experiences. By Maryvonne Butcher
Critics' Columns : Notebook : Book Reviews : Letters : Chess
BRINGING IN NATO
JT is doubtful if the Government were well advised to announce in advance that, whatever their reception, they will go ahead with their latest proposals for Cyprus, proposals whose character is broadly known from Greece and Turkey even though we write before they have been announced in Parliament. We print elsewhere an article by a correspondent fresh from Turkey.
Each country is vying with the other in efforts to impress Great Britain with the depth and violence of its emotions. Yet both countries have been, and should still be, particular friends of Britain, and both have the strongest interests in common in the strength of NATO in their exposed part of the world. Both have let Cyprus loom altogether too large and out of proportion, and it seems unfortunately only too clear that it has been the more liberal approach of Sir Hugh Foot that has made the Turks react so violently, from fear that concessions were about to be made to the Greek Cypriot majority. The Turks were happier to see a military Governor. At the very last moment, NATO, through its SecretaryGeneral, M. Spaak, is trying to exert a pacifying influence ; and if NATO has any success the Government here will be hard put to it to explain why NATO was not brought in much earlier. We believe there has been a bad time-lag in appraising what British strategical needs really are, not what they were, or seemed to be, four, three or two years ago.
The only good that is likely to come out of the proposals which have just been announced is that they will be a further stage in treating Cyprus as a matter of foreign rather than of colonial policy. It becomes increasingly clear every time eminent soldiers give their reasons why the British Government needs to hold on to the island, that they are reasons which lose their validity year by year as the Middle East changes in complexion.
In 1954 Cyprus was the alternative to the Suez Canal base, the place from which, as the Suez rebels in Parliament were assured, Britain could at any time go back on to the Canal. That is said no longer. Then it was said that from Cyprus Jordan and the Lebanon could be protected. But it is now clear that, if the Lebanese Government calls for help, that help takes the form of American armaments. Jordan, since it was merged with Iraq, is no longer a country which the British think of as a small country on whose doorstep they should wait ready to help. The arrival of British troops in Jordan has long since been wisely ruled out as certain to do more harm than good to our long-term interests.
What remains as the point of Cyprus ? There are the large NATO purposes, though here it is obvious that what NATO strategy requires is the continued presence inside NATO of Turkey and Greece, the availability of their harbours and airfields. The military are then reduced to their last argument which is that some £30m. have been spent on airfields and other installations on the island. But this in itself is plainly quite inadequate as a reason for spending further tens of millions in remaining there.
The one great serious argument for Britain continuing is the attitude of the Greeks and Turks, their failure to find any common ground, the confidence each expresses that the other country can be forced to submit to the Greek or the Turkish solution. But it is galling that Britain
