MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD
N ICOLSON ON Saturday last a statement was published on behalf of the British Government explaining the reasons for which this country had been obliged to intervene in Syria and the Lebanon. This statement followed upon the refusal of General de Gaulle's Government to allow certain French officers to accept British decorations at a ceremony which, was to have taken place on the previous Thursday. Although these two events were probably wholly unconnected with each other, yet there will be large sections of opinion in both countries who will imagine that the British statement was in some manner a reply to the French refusal. General de Gaulle's action in forbidding his officers to accept British decorations was an act of deliberate discourtesy and as such will be resented by those British-subjects and French citizens who regard this bickering between Paris and London as unnecessary, undignified and dangerous. The General is a man of wide military experience and acute imagination in all Military matters ; he is a man cast in a heroic mould and one whose personal integrity and high moral ideals render him both the symbol and the inspiration of all that is noblest in his great country ; he is a man of such fanatical patriotism that he 'created an army and .a resistance movement by the very obstinacy of his faith. Nor is he, as some suppose; a man devoid of the more human attributes of humour, civility and charm. His glacial manner ; the rigid set of his neck and 'shoulders ; the authoritative, and sometimes arrogant, tones of his voite are redeemed by the' gentleness of his eyes. He possesses the eyes, the soft and tired eyes, of a -faithful retriever. Yet the charm and essential huinanity of his nature are obscured for many people by the unfortunate fact that, although a man of accomplished if some- what stilted courtesy, he does not possess even ordinary good manners. Again and again has he rebuffed conciliation or chilled friendliness by some sharp gesture of negation or by ignoring with a sudden reprimand the hand held out towards him.
* * * *
We must seek to accept and even to forgive these disadvantages on the part of someone so sensitive and so insensitive, and to curb the irritation that we naturally feel with a temperament which is both thistle and thistledown. It is a temperament which, as not infrequently happens, is soft in the wrong places, and in the wrong places hard ; and in dealing with such temperaments it is advisable to touch gently, feeling carefully for the interstices between the cushion and the pins. It is to be feared that from this point of view the Government statement as published on Saturday was not as tactful as might have been hoped. The aridity of the style in which it was couched was not redeemed by any unguents ; it read, not so much as a conciliatory diplomatic document, but as' a curt and' factual order of the day. And it omitted to mention one of the elements in the situation which, if we an to be logical or even frank, it is surely necessary to explain. It referred to the endorsement on the part of His Majesty's Govern- ment of the proclamation in which General Catroux promised independence to the Levant Republics ; but it did not refer to the passage in that pronouncement in which General Catroux stated that the future relations between France and the -Republics would be governed by a treaty negotiated between them. The implication of this important rider was that France should enter into some form of treaty with Syria and the Lebanon analogous to that which we ourselves concluded with Iraq. It may well be that in endorsing General Catroux's proclamation we" became sponsors for the independence of the Levant Republics ; but the implication at the time was that we should also use our good , offices to secure that the special relationship which France bore towards them, and which our Government have publicly recognised and affirmed, should be embodied in a treaty.
* * * * The debate which took place in the French Consultative Assembly on the subject has made it perfectly clear that the deputies were almost unanimously convinced that we harboured in this matter some deep and sinister designs. Even such well known anglophils as Madame Vienot and M. Maurice Schumann, while absolving from all criticism our present Minister at Damascus, Mr. Terence Shone, took it for granted that the whole situation had arisen owing to the selfish and sinister designs of British agents on the spot. This may strike us as a fantastic supposition on the part of reasonable and friendly people. But it is not sufficient to dismiss these insinuations with a shrug of helpless despair ; we should seek to understand how they can have arisen. Since the days of Richard the Lion Heart the French have always assumed that the Syrian area was a zone of contention between France and Britain. They have memories of Lady Hester Stanhope and Sir Sidney Smith ; and although we know that these two individuals were, for all their merits, irresponsible eccentrics, to the French they appeared as symptoms and indeed as symbols of some British design to acquire a position for ourselves in the lands fringing the Mediterranean. These suspicions were not diminished by the exploits of Colonel T. E. Lawrence or even by the manner in which Syria was liberated from Vichy control. The French argue, with itheir accustomed devastating but misleading logic, that the events of this war, the difficulties to be apprehended in Palestine and elsewhere, the position of the pipe lines and the uncertainty regarding the future of the Straits Convention, must all confirm us in our centuries-old longing to replace France in her special position of Influence in the Levant. And knowing these suspicions, as we ought to have known them, we should have been specially careful to select as our senior and junior representatives in Syria and the Lebanon men who were trained to consider the views_ of the Foreign Office in London rather than those of some local military comMittee. * * * It is probably true, as Madame Vienot said, that the French political officers left behind in Syria after the evacuation of the extreme Vichyssois were not remarkable for their tact, their anglophil sentiments or their sympathies with Arab nationalism. They did not make things easier for their British colleagues. But it is also true that our own officials were for the most part men whose training had been military rather than diplomatic. The professional diplomatist has lived for so long in so many countries, has acquired from long experience such scepticism of all momentary enthusiasms, has become so immune either to the delights of per- sonal vanity or the illusions of personal excitement that he has grown to adopt in such matters a neutral and perhaps a colourless attitude. The professional diplomatist has one great advantage; he has learnt not to identify himself too closely with local dissensions or causes ; the only cause with which he identifies himself is the cause of his own country, and he interprets that cause in terms of "instructions which he receives from the Foreign Office and in accordance with his own trained conception of international values. The amateur diplomatist; on the other hand, tends to take too personal a view of local causes and to forget in his excitement and his zeal those considerations of time and space which govern , true and vital British interests. He does not mean to intrigue ; he merely lacks the necessary reserve.
* * * *
The debate in the Consultative Assembly makes -sad reading. But it contains one element of justified hope. There was apparent throughout the debate a general wish that whatever might have happened in Syria, and however crude and tactless our local methods May have been, it was essential not to allow this unhappy incident to mar the future of Anglo-French relations. It is time that our own press should follow, the excellent example of the Manchester Guardian and preach a similar doctrine. The Arab League possesses, we all know, an enormous nuisance value ; every effort will be made to place our relations with the Arab States upon a firm and friendly footing ; but our entente with France is more than a diplo- matic formula ; it is a physical necessity.
Previous page
