A Weakness for Bugbears
pERHAPS it is because we are a maritime nation that we so seldom look at an atlas. From the huge land-masses, swarming with intransigent foreigners, we avert our eyes until events force newspaper editors to show us where all the ominous place-names in the headlines actually belong. But these editors prudently assume that an ordinary, plain map will convey almost nothing to our geography-proof minds, so they have recourse to a sort of strip-cartography. Arrows the size of lugworms writhe all over the place. Legends like TANKS MASS HERE, FRONTIER CLOSED, and JETS STRIKE, often accom- panied by little drawings of tanks or barbed-wire or explo- sions, obliterate hundreds of squfare miles of territory. If the newspaper has a particularly intrepid correspondent, space has to be found for things like WHERE BURSBY RAN GAUNTLET (see p. 2, col. 4.); and sometimes a small photograph of Bursby's face blots out the mountainous regions in the north- east corner of the map where nothing has happened so far.
This kindergarten method of presentation is meant to make the map, and the situation, easier to understand; but I often wonder whether this object is achieve& Because we never look at an atlas, we have only a vague idea where the places on the map are in relation to other plaCes; and knowing where Bursby was, or thought he was, yesterday does not materially strengthen'our grasp on the realities of the situation.
Ohr indifference, as a nation, to geographical facts is one of the mainstays of a gullibility which expresses itself in two different and sharply contrasting ways. On the one hand it underwrites a belief that some unwelcome development is out of the question; on the other it enables us with an equal facility to accept the existence of a threat which a moment's • thought and a glance at the atlas would show to be chimerical. Which way it works seems to depend largely on who thought of the threat first—we, or the other side. If we took it at some stage into account and dismissed it, it is written off for good. If the enemy puts it into our minds, our scepticism is atrophied and we are convinced that there must be something in it.
For fifty years before the last war the Government of India devoted immense effort to fortifying the North-West Frontier. Even when Japan began to show her hand in the Thirties the idea that India might be threatened from the east took root in nobody's mind, because it had long been accepted that Modern armies could not advance without proper roads, and the British, with devilish cunning, had refrained from building any roads connecting Burma with India. Concrete continued to pour into the Khyber, just as the guns of Singapore con- tinued .to point the wrong way. It was not until the Japanese Were at the gates of India that we realised that our strategy had been fallacious, and that mountains and forests were no more impassable in Asia than in the Ardennes.
To me the it's-simply-not-on-old-boy school of thought, which here suffered a reverse, is less interesting than its more visionary counterpart, whose credulity has in recent weeks stood the Russians in good stead. In Russia, we were told the other day, 50,000 volunteers were standing by for Egypt, and so were a quarter of a million more in China. Last week's New Statesman revealed that 50.000 lion-hearted Indonesians had 'registered as wanting to fight on Egypt's side. . . . The Chief Nawab of Baluchistan, Mr. Bugti, offered the services of his tribesmen.' With Russian help (the New Statesman thought) this 'embryonic International Brigade . . . could have driven us out of the whole Middle East.' Well, could it? Let us take the Russians, as the most likely starters and the best-trained troops, first. Fifty thousand men is the equiva- lent of three Russian divisions, with a Force Headquarters and various oddments thrown in. In order to reach Egyptian territory this sizeable body of men would have to be flown a minimum distance of 1,000 miles from Russian air bases in Trans-Caucasia; they would presumably be able to stage in Syria if they needed to. An airlift involving three divisions is quite an undertaking; its duration would be governed, not by the number of transport- aircraft available, but by the capacity of the terminal airfields and the efficiency of the staffs controlling arrangements for GCA, unloading, refuelling and other administrative processes. I should be greatly surprised to learn that the whole transaction (including the concentration of the force in South Russia) could be completed in less than a month; I would expect it in practice to take longer.
* * I should not personally care to be in command of this strong Russian advance guard. Though I might be only nominally subordinate to Colonel Nasser—I would, of course, be much senior to him in rank—I would be dependent on him for a great many of my needs. My. only vehicles would be jeeps, and I would not have many of those; in the way of guns I would have nothing heavier than field artillery, and nothing of my own to move these guns and their ammunition about with. I would rely on the Egyptians (who are not a satellite State) for rations and accommodation.
After my three divisions had landed, the air-lift would have to go on for several weeks before our ammunition and equip- ment were brought up to a scale which would make active operations possible; and I would be uneasily aware that, if I embarked on active operations, the Egyptian airfields through which I received all my essential supplies might at any moment get the treatment meted out at an earlier stage to other Egyptian airfields.
I would, no doubt, be uplifted by the thought of those torch- bearers of Asian solidarity, Mr. Kingsley Martin's 50,000 Indonesians and Mr.• Bugti's scarcely numerable tribesmen, winging their. way towards me in Rtissian aircraft; but as I watched the day-long shuttle-service of ropey Egyptian lorries rumbling between my lines and the busy airfields, I do not think that I would sincerely look forward to sharing my supply lines with a quarter of a million Chinese. I might even find myself wishing that someone in the Kremlin had looked at
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