Portrait of the Week
ENGLAND has kept the Ashes, but Great Britain seems to have lost the Suez Canal for the moment These were the two news items that dominated the headlines over the Past week. At Old Trafford records were broken by Laker to allow his side to win by an innings and 170 runs, and, though there has been some slight unpleasantness about the state of the Wicket, there does not seem much doubt, by and large, that England's bowling was good and Australia's batting bad. A much stickier wicket was the Suez Canal Zone, which was the Scene of the Egyptian nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company, which Colonel Nasser announced this last week— apparently as a sort of reprisal for the refusal of Britain and America to guarantee the funds for the Aswan Dam scheme. In his speech the Egyptian Prime Minister said that the dam would be built on the skulls of the Egyptian workers who had died digging the canal—an unpleasant metaphor whose effect was not lost on at least one leader-writer, since the Spanish Falangist paper Arriba, commenting gleefully on the nationalisation, said that he should have added the five thousand Egyptians who died during the struggle for liberation from the British.
Elsewhere in the Western world reactions were hostile— Particularly in France, where the threat to Suez Canal shares strikes at the pocket of a large section of the French bourgeoisie. M. Pineau, the French' Foreign Minister, has been conferring in London with Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, who has succeeded in im- Pressing the Tory Party by his attitude in this crisis, and with Mr. Robert Murphy, who has just been replaced by his chief, Mr. Dulles. There is still some doubt about the eventual out- come of the London talks, but no other development in foreign Policy has had Great Britain so united since the end of the war. Colonel Nasser's pledge to honour Egypt's obligations cuts very little ice beside his vituperative speeches and the utter- ances of Cairo radio.
While all this has been going on the old familiar foreign faces have still been present on the international scene. Cyprus has seen another burst of terrorism with yet more extensive powers being taken by the Government to assist police action. In Burma there has been a false alarm about a Chinese invasion of the northern provinces. In reality it seems that this was no more than a pursuit into Burmese territory by troops and police of Kuomintang supporters—serious enough, of course, but not quite so serious as invasion. An atomic agreement has been signed between Britain and Germany providing for the supply of atomic reactors to the latter for peaceful purposes. Mr. Stassen has taken a month's leave of absence to carry on his fight against Mr. Nixon's candidature for the Vice-Presidency, while, on the Democrat side, Senator Kefauver has withdrawn his candidacy for the Presidential nomination, a move which should make Mr. Adlai Stevenson a certainty. Meanwhile the tactics adopted by President Eisenhower's doctors have been sharply criticised in the Atlantic Monthly by Dr. David Rutstein of the Harvard Medical School. Agreement has been reached in the American steel strike. Greece and Yugoslavia have been holding conversations on the island of Corfu. The Polish Communist Party has said that its role in the state ought to be that of a guide or adviser rather than of a state within a state. announced the stabilisation of prices in a large range of their products. A White Paper just published proposes the creation of two local government commissions for England and Wales, so that the structure of local government may be constantly under review. The Commons debate on defence was over- shadowed by the Suez Canal issue and did not produce anything startlingly new.
Apart from the Test Match, British pride has been soothed by six out of the eight first cars at Le Mans being British. The Italian liner Andrea Doria sank in the Atlantic after being in collision with the Swedish liner Stockholm. Thirty-seven of the passengers are still unaccounted for, and, as usual with this sort of happening, there are widely conflicting accounts of how the crew of the Andrea Doria behaved. In Great Britain there has been torrential rain and flooding at points as far apart as Kent and Northern Scotland. Louis Raemakers, the Dutch cartoonist who became famous during the First World War for his savage portrayal of the 'German occupation of Belgium, has died. Mr. Onassis is to have the monopoly of Greek air lines, while Mr. Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian scientist, has shown how the old inhabitants of Easter Island lifted their giant stone statues into position.
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