Plan for Cyprus
By PETER BENENSON Nicosia T is eight long months since Eoka called the I truce and Makarios was freed. Since then the British Government has reappraised its strategic policy, announced the establishment of new bases in Kenya and Aden and started to with- draw combat troops. A succession of MPs have flitted through across the stage, most of them uttering dire warnings of impending disaster. Sir John Harding has flown home to his Dorset farm, delivering a Parthian shot at the Communist menace, which his administration latterly did so little to discourage. With one exception, no one has offered a straw of hope to either Greeks or Turks on this sad island, which already 120 years ago Byron called 'the ravaged isle.'
The exception was Labour's promise of self- determination. Small wonder that in this atmo- sphere of despair the words of Barbara Castle's declaration are annotated as frequently as Messianic passages in the Old Testament. Less wonder, the bewildered anguish of the Greek Cypriots when Labour MPs, both at home and visiting the island,, seek to rub away a comma or dot a missing I.'
If only those who seek to give advice to the Greeks could understand the political signifi- cance of words to this people of so ancient and lucid a language. Phrases become shibboleths, single words can unlock doors and others fasten gates. To use the expression 'condemnation of violence' marks the speaker as an enemy, however friendly his intentions. If only Sir Hugh Foot could realise the searing wound inflicted by his innocent use of this expression in a chance interview given in Jamaica. And if only the British Government could make up its mind— if visiting Ministers came, not to inspect bat- talions, but to talk to the Greeks, how much blood would have been saved. Yet how can they talk politics when the Cabinet has still no plan, no policy, no nothing? In this archetypical vacuum of declining t m- pire, Britons must not be surprised to be told that the United States of America has silently, but inevitably, replaced the United Kingdom as the arbiter of destiny. Thus it was in Palestine, in Iran and latterly in the Arabia,n peninsula. Today eyes are not turned to London, but to New York and to Washington. The, identity of the United States Consul-General is at least as im- portant as that of the new Governor.
Yet the United States has no more of a decided policy than has Her Majesty's. Government. The reasons are, however, different. While the British Cabinet is without impetus or ideas, President Eisenhower is faced with the choice of conflicting policies sponsored by the State. Department, the War Department, the oil companies and the Greek-American minority. Truer words were rarely spoken in jest : the real partition of Cyprus runs along the line of the River Potomac divid- ing the State from the War Department. The diplomats are wisely pressing for a quick settle- ment to bring stability to the north-eastern corner .of the Mediterranean, to close one of the many fissures in NATO.
The Turkish Government is also milling around in the morass of indecision. The policy of parti- tion, encouraged by Mr. Lennox-Boyd during his visit to Ankara last December and since then in the Commons by his talk of 'self-determination for each community,' has led Menderes out on to a limb. Everyone with knowledge of the island, from Sir John Harding downwards, now knows that partition, apart from being politically ex- plosive, is economically impracticable. Yet Men- deres cannot in his own political environment agree to anything that might look like a Greek victory.
Only the Greek Government has any firm policy, and that is to seek an early settlement, Faced with an Opposition ready to take advan- tage from any apparent weakness, Mr. Karaman- lis's field for manoeuvre is circumscribed. He can accept any solution which is publicly agreed by Archbishop Makarios. The Ethnarch, despite all that has been said and published against him, is still more moderate and certainly more placable than any Greek leader on the island. He has again made it clear, as he did in the negotiations with The result is that American newspaper readers are far better served than we are with comment. But this is not to say that the columnists' standard is high. Perhaps four or five dome in what might be called the Lippmann bracket; thereafter the slide down to the Westbrook Pegler level is rapid.
Nor do the columnists have the influence they had (or appeared from reports to have) a few years back. The only one now at all feared is Drew Pearson. Pearson's method is to skim the scum from second-hand conversations and from anonymous letters written by disgruntled civil servants, add some speculation of his own, and print it as fact. When he is right the effect is disconcerting; still more so, sometimes, when he is wrong.
But aside from an occasional lucky strike, Pearson's stuff is feeble, his views adolescent and his writing . . . well, here is the start of one of his columns recently : In any 'reappraisal' of American foreign policy, no matter how 'agonising,' we have to face the fact that the Near East today is the most explosive area in the world. Anything can happen there. When and if it happens, the, flame could reduce the world to a cinder.
Although it is rarely as fourth form as this, the level of writing in the American press is generally low. The uplift columns are particu- larly dreadful, with Norman Vincent Peale's evangelistic coueism perhaps the worst. And the gossip columns are more impressive for their naivete than for their spite; Louella Parsons's
TO MAKE A FRIEND
I was amused to see, in one of her columns, an attack on the British press for printing that picture of Jayne Mansfield taken from behind. It is, of course, an angle from which a gossip vendor would herself bejustifiably anxious npt to be taken, particularly if she happened to be stoop- ing to look through some keyhole.
But to the general reader, as distinct from the journalist, the most striking feature of the Ameri- can newspapers remains their size. And thereby hangs a moral. They are big not because of readers' avidity, which I would judge to be much less than here, but because of advertisers. A small paper like the Rocky Mountain News, with a circulation of not much more than 100,000, was extension of ribbon development. Colorade Springs, for example, has only 50,000-odd inhali tants; but it has 300 motels. We stayed at a couple of them, quickly finding that the glossier ones (which tend to shun the word 'motel') are not necessarily the best. Our Louisville motel had swimming pool, dance band and all : and air' conditioned rooms. But the conditioned air ■Nas hot—far too hot for European tastes; as the windows did not open, it was a choice between sweating and suffocating. And though the walls were soundproofed, the plumbing was not. Every tap turned on, every chain pulled, caused roe berations; the water system volleyed and the dered into the small hours and again at dawn.
In putting up shopping centres, the shop an° space is now a secondary consideration. It needs to be surrounded with four or five times 115 acreage of parking facilities. Following the sue' cess of drive-in cinemas, drive-in restaurants have sprung up everywhere : you park beside a coo' traption which looks like a dumb-waiter, with 3 telephone attached, ring through your order and eat in the car. There are drive-in laundries, where you can throw out the week's washing much 39 a train throws out mail bags; and auto-barks' where you drive up to cashiers operating from little booths, like those at the entrance to the Mersey Tunnel. In Kentucky we even saw drive' in whisky stalls, advertising, in huge neon sign'' 'Whiskey by the Glass!' To order by the glass is still considered rather cissy in Kentucky.
Previous page
