UNITED AGAINST NASSER
By DARSIE GILLIE Paris IT is difficult to remember any occasion on which the French press (with the exception of the Communists) has been unanimous as it is today in demanding a vigorous Western counter-stroke to Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal. No doubt the moment you go on to discuss what the reply should be, differences arise. No doubt too the fact that the country is already plunged deep into the holiday season means that reaction comes almost exclusively from the politically minded, unhampered by the hesitations of those who wake up to great issues only when they are thrust violently upon their attention. None the less the phenomenon is remarkable and important.
At first sight 'Suez' would not seem an issue to unite French- men, for the word is primarily to French ears a valuable and safe investment, a hall-mark of the well-established family. something that you may hope to inherit from a maiden aunt. No word sums up better bourgeois security and ease to those who do not enjoy these things. The Suez Canal Company's board of directors embodies the powers that every Socialist and many Frenchmen much farther to the Right would like to see curbed if not dethroned. Although in his first remarks M. Pineau referred to 'spoliation,' that is not the aspect of the question that unites Frenchmen. Even the question of free communication at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, impor- tant though it is to France, would not explain the strength of conviction about this issue. What France feels to be at stake is the hope of a solution of her North African problems which would leave her any place on the south shore of the Mediter- ranean—or indeed ultimately in Africa. For long Frenchmen have felt that they were fighting Nasser in Algeria and that in Tunisia and Morocco the problem has been to reach agreement with those nationalists who wish to reject the domination of Cairo. French unanimity is based on a conviction that if Nasser gets away with it, the vigour of the rebellion in Algeria will double and the moderate Nationalists in Tunis and Rabat will have to identify themselves with the extremists in order to retain any support.
Both those Frenchmen who monotonously reiterate that only by showing 'character' can anything be saved in North Africa and those who recommended from the start the policy of con- ciliation in Tunisia and Morocco and who would now like to see negotiations in Algeria are convinced that the prospects of success now depend upon whether Nasser will be able to cele- brate a triumph in a few weeks' time or whether he will have been taught a lesson. It is for that reason that the Socialists in the Cabinet are united, both those who have supported the tough policy of M. Lacoste and those who have criticised it. France is now making big sacrifices in the hope of creating a situation in which the two million Europeans in the Maghreb can continue to live there and her vast West African territories can remain in close political association with France. The exploitation of the mineral wealth of the Sahara has become one of the great hopes of France's future. It is the general belief that if Nasser can tear up treaties with the West and decide for himself the future of a canal which Britain has hitherto been prepared to defend with all her resources, then nothing can stop a landslip destroying the basis of all Western activities in the Moslem world.
It is in this sense that the word 'Munich' is being used. No one thinks of Nasser and Egypt as comparable with Hitler and Germany. but they do think of the present leaders of the West as perhaps comparable with those of 1938. The danger is not aggression but anarchy. At the same time that the French are profoundly impressed with this danger they also feel hope that at last a more effective solidarity might be created between Britain and France with regard to Moslem problems. The long history of Franco-British rivalry and dissension in this matter looks more than ever pain- fully foolish. How France would rejoice today if the Union Jack were still flying in the Suez Canal zone. Surely Britain can now appreciate that France's interests in North and West Africa are also to an important extent hers? M. Mollet's speech on Monday to the French parliamentary press indicated that in his mind all forms of Western solidarity—common action now in Egypt, NATO, the expansion of the six-power European structure to cover atomic energy and a common market— hang together, but France's commitments in North Africa have meant that at this juncture her energies are being concentrated there to such an extent that her contribution elsewhere must be restricted and her power of argument ther'efore the more limited.
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