4 JANUARY 1957, Page 18

Portrait of the Week

IN THE fortnight that has elapsed since our last review, the weather and a gratifying lull in the maelstrom of inter- national affairs have left plenty of time for an agonis- ing reappraisal of the events of the last six months, and in consequence new develop- ments have a rather more con- sidered look than for some time past.

In the first place the US has re-entered the scene with adumbrations of a so-called Eisenhower doc- trine on the Middle East. This, announced tentatively in the press during one of the President's golfing weekends and with a fan- fare of trumpets by Mr. Dulles on his return, consists of an assurance that the US will accept an increasing responsibility to 'assist the free nations in the Middle East . . . to maintain their freedom and develop their welfare.'

British second thoughts came to their full frui- tion with the final withdrawal of allied forces on December 22, forty-seven days after they first landed in Port Said, to the accompaniment of a few Arab shots but little trouble; over Christmas UN forces were able to turn their attention to the Sinai peninsula, occupying it as the Israeli troops withdrew. The withdrawal and subse- quent relaxation of tension were made more diffi- cult by the shocking murder of Lieut. Moor- house, a British officer who had been kidnapped during a solo visit to the scene of an earlier search. It was reported first that he was alive, then that he would be court-martialled as soon as he was returned, then that he would not, and finally that he had been murdered, dying of suffocation while he was being hidden from search parties.

However, salvage and clearance work under UN has begun, and the Egyptian threat of a claim for damage done in Port Said has been met effec- tively by a counter-claim of compensation for the confiscation of British property.

Another judicious attempt at peacemaking has been Lord Radcliffe's proposals for a constitution for Cyprus, published before Christmas and accepted in full by the Government. They pro- vide, roughly, for a diarchy between a British Governor, responsible, for foreign affairs, defence and internal security, and an elected legislature and Cabinet, responsible for everything else. The Greek Government rejected this scheme as giving too much power to the governor, and Mr. Lennox- Boyd hinted in the House of Commons that par- tition might be the eventual solution. • Other countries have also been having their colonial and racial troubles. In Algiers there have been an assassination and savage riots; in South Africa police fired at a crowd demonstrating against the treason trials; a small victory against racialism has been the ending of segregation on the buses of Montgomery, Alabama.

Nearer home we have witnessed the Saar's union with Western Germany and heard the opinion of OEEC that Mr. Macmillan's free trade plan could be put into practice. The Hungarian Christmas was less bleak than most people had feared. One should perhaps record two pleasantly mild approaches to politics : one the 'bloodless' coups which appear to have displaced the governors of the three main administrative divi- sions of Sumatra, the other the action of the President of Bolivia who has gone on a hunger strike as a protest against his unruly followers; perhaps it was one of them, another Bolivian, who threw a stone at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.

Many years' dreams of a White Christmas at last came true for a lot of English families now busy cursing floods, road blocks and other inconveniences. For the rest we have gone through the usual gamut of holiday emotions—angry at more troubles in Northern Ireland, glad that England won the first Test against South Africa, alarmed that the market is flooded with fake `Dior' bats made in Switzerland, envious of the gentleman who was sold a sheet of unperforated twopenny stamps worth £12,000. Some, too, have been gratified by the New Year Honours List, which includes a barony for Sir Edward Bridges and the OM for Sir John Cockcroft.