Two Rusty Pistols

Arabs and Frenchmen in the Levant were on edge. At a soccer game in Hama an Arab crowd began yelling "Pas de goal" ("Block that kick"). Sensitive Frenchmen thought they heard "A has De Gaulle" ("Down with De Gaulle"). That did it. Rioting spread from Hama to Horns and then to Damascus. The wild Djebel Druse country rose. Last week the trouble between Arabs and Frenchmen in the Levant (TIME, June 4) suddenly became the world's trouble.

Death in Damascus. In all of Syria and Lebanon, the French had only five or six battalions when the riots started. But the French set their hated Senegalese troops to "restoring order" with the utmost violence. By last week Horns, Hama and Aleppo were under control, twelve French soldiers and several hundred Arabs had been killed before, in the words of a French communique, "at Damascus it was necessary to use artillery."

For three days the filthy, ancient city shook as shell after shell poured into some of the most congested areas on earth. Hundreds of Arab dead lay in the bazaars and narrow streets. Shells hit the overstaffed Russian legation, the Syrian Parliament building, the plush Orient Palace Hotel. A U.S.-built Baltimore bomber flew overhead, dropped a few bombs. After the Senegalese had done their work with machineguns and mortars, they pillaged the shops and bazaars, taking radios, scarce food and scarcer clothing.

Pride and Frustration. Then the British moved in. They cut French General Oliva Roget's line of communication with his base at Beirut. Into Damascus clanked a column of Sherman tanks on which Union Jacks had been freshly painted. Up from Cairo flew General Sir Bernard Paget, British commander in chief in the Middle East, who had several hundred thousand men on call. Paget ordered Roget to "cease fire." The Frenchman said that he would not take orders from a Britisher. Paget suggested that Roget call his French superior, General Humbolt, at Beirut. Roget pointed out that the British had cut his telephone line. Paget offered him the use of the British line. Furious, Roget declined.

But he was helpless. British tanks had nuzzled up to the French positions. While the city rang with welcome to the British, and Paget's red, handsome face beamed, Roget angrily ordered his men back to barracks. He raged that the British had shown up only after he had "restored order," and he told a Syrian journalist: "You are replacing the easygoing French with the brutal British." Unimpressed, Syrians killed what stray Frenchmen and Senegalese they could find. After curfew, the humiliated French had to accept British escort to places of safety.

Paget brought General Humbolt up from Beirut to show him what the French Army had done to Damascus. After touring the streets in a British staff car, Humbolt sacked Roget. The Arabs had neither forgotten nor forgiven the shelling of Damascus by the French in 1925. Now they recalled that the French Government removed General Maurice Sarrail for that atrocity--and that the city was shelled again the following year.

Who Won the Crusades? France has long claimed a special position in the Middle East as the protector of Christian minorities.*This traditional "special interest" goes back to the Crusades. At Versailles, after World War I, when France wanted mandates over Syria and Lebanon, French Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon mentioned the Crusades so often that Iraq's late, urbane King Faisal finally mocked: "Pardon me, but which of us won the Crusades?" Nevertheless, in fulfillment of a secret agreement with Britain, France got the mandates.

World War II brought British and Free French entry into the Levant, a French promise of independence to Syria and Lebanon, and finally recognition of their independence by the U.S., Britain, Russia. When the shooting began in Damascus last week, Lebanese and Syrian delegates had equal status with the French at San Francisco.

But the French had not given up. In recent negotiations, they offered a form of independence which would have left their special economic and military rights intact. In the face of certain refusal by the Arabs, the French counted on two hopes: 1) that the British would not dare to encourage Arab independence and thus endanger their own position in the awakening Middle East; 2) that, in one way or another, the Russians would support the French position.

The first hope collapsed with a shattering bang last week when Winston Churchill harshly told General de Gaulle:

"In order to avoid a collision between British and French forces, we request you immediately to order French troops to cease fire and withdraw to their barracks."

In the official translation, Churchill's "request" became requerir ("require"). Wounded to the Gallic quick, De Gaulle looked to the Russians. Only then did he learn that London had received a note from Moscow before Churchill sent him the stinging message. The Moscow note simply declared Russia in on a Middle East settlement, contained no comfort for the French. President Truman, in a separate note, had backed up the British.

France had suffered a diplomatic catastrophe. Cracked Edward Atiyah, London secretary of the recently formed Arab League: "France put all her cards and two rusty pistols on the table."

Personally, De Gaulle had suffered his worst check since the liberation. His cry that British provocateurs had caused the whole thing went almost unheard. In his unceasing efforts to revive France's sense of national grandeur, le Grand Charlie had again shown up his country as a third-rate power. Its prestige in the Arab world was all but gone; its whole empire, already troubled by bloody Arab riots in Algeria, was further shaken.

But neither Britain nor the U.S. had much reason to crow. Their joint policy of cultivating friendship with France, in order to build up a friendly western Europe, had received a grievous setback. Out of the tragedy and stupidity in Damascus, only an ill-assorted pair, the Arab world and the Kremlin, stood to gain.

*Russia, of all nations, was trying to establish for itself a role as protector of Christians in the Middle East. His Beatitude, Alexei, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, who plays ball with ex-Seminarist Stalin, was last week visiting his co-religionists in Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus, Jerusalem, Beirut. Also last week the Lebanese Government announced that it had granted Russia permission to erect a big college outside of Beirut. It will be along the lines of the famed American College there, but will serve "poorer sections of the community."

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