"A Bas la France!"

In Lebanon, the tiny Arab state and French Mandate on the Mediterranean's eastern shore, the United Nations came up hard against two complex, trouble-packed problems: the demands of Arab peoples for political freedom, and the clash of Western imperialisms in the strategic region of Suez and the Persian Gulf.

The Lebanese--less than a million Moslems and Christians living in a country smaller than Connecticut--had been promised their freedom in 1941, after British and Fighting French ousted a Vichyite administration in Lebanon and the neighboring French Mandate of Syria. U.S. diplomacy and Atlantic Charter propaganda had encouraged the aspirations of some 35,000,000 Arabs in the Middle East. Last September the Lebanese were allowed to elect an ardently nationalist government. Last week their Parliament voted, in effect, to end the mandate, take over full control from French colonial officials. Sensitive Gaullists, feeling their oats and smarting under unsatisfactory relations with Britain and the U.S., cried "plot,", saw the beginning of peril for their empire.

French Putsch. In the Lebanese capital, Beirut, which lies between the bay where St. George slew his dragon and the hills where Solomon got his tall cedars, French officers and helmeted Senegalese soldiers summarily arrested Lebanon's President Bechara El Khoury, Premier Riad Solh and his cabinet ministers. By the day's end, Parliament had been dissolved, a puppet regime led by Francophile ex-President Emile Edde had been installed, newspapers banned, martial law and curfew imposed, troops posted in squares. Having ordered these measures, French Delegate General Jean Helleu leaned back, ready for the worst.

Jean Helleu and his Senegalese did not have to wait long. Angry Arabs, armed with long-hidden rifles, homemade grenades, knives and stones, spewed out upon the streets. The French colonials went into action. Shots were traded, blood spilled. In the Place des Canons--the capital's Times Square--demonstrators cried: "A bas la France!" Nothing so menacing had been heard in the French Levant since 1925-27, when the Druses ran riot.

Arab Protest. None believed that guns were now a sound answer to the Arab nationalists. Lebanese leaders called the French arrests "kidnappings ... insulting to the [nation]."

Egypt's ambitious Anglophile Premier Mustafa El Nahas Pasha, an active champion of an Arab federation, reprimanded Algiers. To captive President Khoury, Egypt's King Farouk sent a message: "We are sure the Lebanese will secure their independence. [They] can depend on our friendship in this critical hour." Syrian, Egyptian and Iraqi Arabs stirred angrily.

The British had enough troops in the Middle East under General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson to hold the lid down; they have been in actual military control of Syria and Lebanon since 1941. They were not averse to a fading of rival French prestige and power in the Arab sphere. But successful revolt in Lebanon might give ideas to the Arabs of British-mandated Transjordan and Palestine, British-allied Iraq and Egypt.

Minister Sir Edward Spears and London's Foreign Office filed stiff complaints with the Gaullists. British and U.S. circles long hostile to General de Gaulle charged that the recalcitrant French leader had botched things in Lebanon, possibly upset the whole balance in the Middle East.

The French kept a tight seat. To Beirut General Charles de Gaulle sent his ace mediator and Moslem expert, General Georges Catroux. In a thinly veiled reference to British imperialists, the French imperialists said: The Levantine Arabs are "under the influence of elements who are not so interested in Lebanon's independence as in pushing France out."

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