THE TABLET Tune 28th; 1958. VOL. 211, N o . 6162

THE TABLET

Published as a N ew spaper

A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER ’& REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

JUNE 28th, 1958

N1NEPENCE

'Ai ter the Murders : President Eisenhower’s Strange Judgment

Sett-Coniidenee in Poland: Holding the Rceent Gains

Report from Lebanon : The View of the Melkite Patriarch

Christian and Moslem: A Cardinal Looks at a Mosque. By Edwin Ryan

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

THE LURE OF BRINKMANSHIP

“TOOTHING but disaster” was the phrase used on Wed

1 nesday both by The Times Special Correspondent in the Lebanon, and the Manchester Guardian’s leading article to describe what would be the effect of any direct Anglo-American military intervention to prop up President Chamoun of the Lebanon. It is an all too apt summing up. This is an essay in Brinkmanship towards which Mr. Dulles seems to be venturing, on the analogy of Korea and American F ar Eastern policy. But the Middle Eastern situation is radically different, because the Arab world remains uncommitted. In the F a r East men like Chiang Kai-shek and Syngman Rhee are the open and avowed allies of the United States, as otherwise they would be engulfed by Communist power, and have no other choice. But Mr. Dulles should not look on President Chamoun’s predicament as in any way parallel. Those who are opposing him are not Communists. We printed last week the trenchant statements against the President from the Maronite Patriarch, and more in the same vein from the Melkite Patriarch appears this week. It is an internal opposition, not Communist-inspired, and only a part of it comes from Moslems who would like to merge the Lebanon in a United A rab Republic.

It would be much better if British and American statesmen—particularly American at this time—made it very plain that the West is not hostile to the idea of Arab unity. The Americans have continually and rightly, ever since the end of the war, urged unity on the peoples of Europe, because it is to the common interest that Europe should be strong in face of the monolithic unity maintained by the Soviet Empire. The same consideration is equally valid for the Middle East, that the more united the Arabs are, with close economic ties with the West, the less scope will there be for Soviet manoeuvres. Where the Russians have gained a foothold, it has always been because of mistakes in British, French or American diplomacy, primarily the attempt to maintain this or that vestige of the old political domination. As long as the Arab people feel that their independence has not been genuinely and fully conceded by us, and is only really respected as they want it to be by the Russians, they will be under continual tem ptation to accept Russian help, and will not always use long enough spoons.

Every time British Ministers insist that a base is still needed in Cyprus for purposes other than those covered by NATO, they are telling the A rab world that a t the back of their minds they still harbour ideas of military intervention in the Middle East, for there1is no other part of the world for which Cyprus is relevant. Yet the nature of our interests in the Arab world is such that military intervention is bound to be what the Italians describe in one useful word as contraproducente, or, as we have to say more cumberously, having the opposite effect to that intended. Our interests are that the Arabs shall not become the allies or satellites of the Soviet Union, and that our oil companies shall continue to draw and deliver the o i l ; and neither of these overriding interests can be secured by force, though both will came naturally, unless we still try to behave as we could twenty years ago.

The British Government’s plan for Cyprus has on the whole been received quietly in the island, as it deserved to be, for it is a patently sincere attem pt to lower passions and persuade the different parties to approach the business of living together in a mature way, such as alone is worthy of old peoples. But the competition in vehement statement goes on in Athens and Ankara, and the Greek Foreign Minister, M. Averoff, does not hesitate to threaten that a furious Greece will retreat into neutrality “ or worse,” and by that he means to threaten that the country which Britain and America did so much to save from Communism and set on its feet at the end of the war has forgotten all about that now, and can only think about Cyprus. Yet this is a very recent Greek enthusiasm, and, to do justice to it, the Greek Government now seems primarily anxious to start some different kind of discussion, to stave off partition and to keep Turkey out of the deliberations. There is an anger directed against Turkey because the