Letters to the Editor
The Suez Crisis Professor D. W. Brogan, Grace Graham, Shane Leslie Conscience and Constituents Nigel Nicolson, MP Hungary Zoltan Szabo Burgess on Pharos Guy Burgess THE SUEZ CRISIS
SIR,—I always read Mr. Charles Curran with interest and often with profit. Today I have read him with deep alarm. 'Opinions at Westminster' (by which I presume Con- servative opinions at Westminster are meant) are, I learn, 'agreed that the difficul- ties that undoubtedly exist in Anglo- American relations must be attributed not to the United States Government but to the professional diplomats of the State Department.' This consoling thought is nonsense, and dangerous nonsense. The immediate 'difficulties,' as Mr. Curran moderately puts it, owe their existence not to any rank in the State Department, but to the policies of the British and French Governments. That many or most foreign service officers of the Department of State think that Franco-British policy has been suicidally silly, as well as uncandid, is no doubt true. The same opinion, 1 am reliably informed (as reliably as Mr. Curran, that is), is prevalent in the Foreign Office and at the Quai d'Orsay.
The grounds of the 'difficulties,' the word is comically inadequate, are not to be found in the attitude of American diplo- matists, but in the attitude of the American people and of the Eisenhower administra- tion. If we treat the question as being a mere matter of sulks and misunderstanding, to be cleared up by a frank man-to-man talk between the President and the Prime Minister or by a broadcast (perhaps spon- sored by M r. Don Iddon) which will cure the 'American people of their foolish illusions about our policy, we are simply going to magnify troubles which are serious enough already.
A very important part of the American people, a section normally friendly to us and trusting in us, has suffered a blow which it will take a long time to get over. It will not, I fear, get over it as long as the present Prime Minister is in office. It is true that there are people, or rather were people, who would have swallowed their moral disapproval if we had brought off our coup against Nasser. (If anybody in America believes the story of mere 'police action,' let him stand up and be counted.) But it has not succeeded. There were Americans, especially in the armed services, who would have willingly bowed before a fait accompli, who could see the possible wisdom of acting with the Arab States on the principle of 'oderint dum metuant.' They note, however, that we have managed to acquire the odium without inspiring the fear, These 'realists' will be caustically realist in their assessment of the incompe- tence of the Suez expedition.
They will not be the only Americans who will be sceptical of our competence. If we take the line that we are the wise, experi- enced, competent handlers of the delicate problems presented by the combination of Arab nationalism, the creation of Israel and the fundamental economic importance of the oil supplies in Islamic countries, normally routed through the Suez Canal, the more sophisticated Americans will, like Al Smith, 'look at the record' and contrast the present attitude of British policy with the Prime Minister's speech at the Guildhall last year. 'Who would replace Nasser if you did over- throw hihi?' I was asked in New York two months ago. (No one doubted that the mili- tary build-up in Cyprus was being made with the object of taking the first occasion—or excuse—to topple over the Egyptian dictator.) Not having thought of it, I could not, like Lord, Killearn, put my hopes in a revived Wafd. I innocently thought that Egyptian Tamman' was dead. There is, as far as I can judge, no American belief in our competence to handle the Near Eastern situation. Is this sairprising? Sermons, lec- tures, pleas will not be listened to—as Mr. Robert Casey has just, uncomfortably but not surprisingly, learned in Washington.
It is perhaps necessary to add that Americans who talk and think this way are, as a rule, fully aware that their own Government has a lot to answer for. They remember, to go no farther back, the joy with which Time magazine celebrated Mr. Dulles's pulling the rug from under Colonel Nasser as a 'calculated risk.' Time, whose memory Is even worse than that of the Daily Express, is now busy telling the Americans of the flood of cables, phone calls, memos, papers that the State Depart- ment is: producing and handling. It has yet to learn that in foreign policy, automation is no substitute for thought=and appropriate action. And it is to be hoped that when Mr. Dulles is fit enough to set in train one of his famous 'agonising reappraisals,' that he will begin by re- appraising himself, try to discover why he is disliked and distrusted and try to remember that not all the tampering with the official records of the State Department can make the outside world as forgetful as Time magazine.
But our business is with our own situa- tion. Those who, like Mr. Curran, imagine that we, by our rashness, have shown our power of independent action, are living in a dream world. Each week that passes will bring serious and painful disillusionment to the MPs and others who share Mr. Curran's views. The cost of the Eden policy will visibly mount and the temptation for the Conservative Central Office to seek a scapegoat anywhere but in the right quar- ters, 10 Downing Street (and the Hotel Matignon), will increase. It will have to be resisted. The United States may act like a banker who must save a borrower because his overdraft is so great, but it will probably not do it amiably. The Eisenhower admin- istration will, I hope, not merely give a lead but take a lead—and that means a lead, not the consultation between equals that it was still possible to hope for two months ago. '
These are very unpalatable truths for all of us. They are especially unpalatable truths for active Conservative politicians whose anxieties I can understand if not share. I have not voted for a Labour candi- date since 1929 and it is a real if minor grievance that I may be forced to do so at the next election. I shall, like many others, be forced to do so if the Conserva- tive Party still goes on pretending that the Eden-Mollet policy has been a 'success,' and if the Conservative Party is still under the desperately dangerous illusions that Mr. Curran so candidly reports.—Yours faithfully, Peterhouse, Cambridge
D. W. BROGAN
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