The Two Pressures

The scene shifted to Cairo. There two men, by ordinary reckoning relatively minor contenders, met in the center of the ring with all the world looking on. Australia's white-haired Robert Gordon Menzies, assured and sagacious, faced Egypt's young Gamal Abdel Nasser, clever and ambitious. The stakes were high, the din was deafening and the outcome uncertain.

Superficially the odds favored Nasser. The Suez Canal was his to have and hold, and any challenger would have to wrest it from him. But Menzies too had sources of strength. His five-nation committee represented 18 nations who between them account for 95% of the Suez Canal traffic. And he had pressures to bring to bear which might make even an impetuous strongman hesitate.

The pressures were of two kinds and represented two different lines of philosophy (thus all the confusion in last week's headlines). The proposal Menzies put before Nasser was basically that of the U.S., which spoke for those who saw Nasser as a proud man, and sought to formulate a control plan for the Suez in such a disarming way that he could accept it. The French and British, on the other hand, seemed to size up Nasser as a power-minded man who, far from being scared off by the threat of force, had to be confronted with it in order to be brought around.

Gentle Him. When Nasser agreed to listen to the Menzies mission, both President Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles praised him for making a "contribution." When Nasser protested at Ike's reference to the canal as "internationalized by the Treaty of 1888," the President replied in his most conciliatory tones that he was not challenging Egypt's nationalization of the canal company. Dulles, talking to reporters, pointedly omitted using the 18-nation plan's term "international operation" of Suez, which the Egyptians have said they would never accept. By thinking of the problem not in "these great slogans" but in its "detailed ingredients" and "concrete practical things" needed for "impartial, competent and efficient operation of the canal," said Dulles, "then I think the matter should be soluble." No one suggested that New York City was "internationalized" because the U.N. was established there, said Dulles, but neither would the U.S. want to mess around with the practical business of maintaining, policing and regulating traffic in Dag Hammarskjold's headquarters.

Rough Him. While the U.S. won the support of many Asian nations with this discreet sort of approach (and thus saved the British and French from being isolated as two saber-rattling imperialists), the British and French continued to build up pressures to make sure that Nasser takes no new act against their vital interests in the area. The British announced that they had underestimated the deterrent value of the parachute battalions they posted to Cyprus last winter and were accordingly beefing up the eastern Mediterranean garrison to three-division strength. Gibraltar was stripped of its infantry, Malta's harbor and airfield were jammed with Cyprus-bound ships and planes. "To insure, in case of need, the protection of French nationals and their interests in the eastern Mediterranean," the French announced last week that they had obtained permission to land forces temporarily at Cyprus.

The first thousand airborne infantry hit Cyprus by week's end and others were to follow in eight transport vessels from Algiers and Marseilles. An armored division, one of three standing by to move from Algeria, whiled away its time painting its tanks sand yellow. "Precautionary measures," explained Paris and London. Said the newspaper Le Monde: "It is not yet time for the cannons to speak. It is being proved only that they are ready to do so." But the Illustrated London News's respected military expert, Captain Cyril Falls, went ahead and outlined a possible three-point program: first, demonstration, which presumably is what is going on now; next, blockade; and finally, the use of force, preferably against some one objective such as the port of Alexandria.

These were not the only forms of pressure forming around Nasser. He was being advised by Nehru not to reject any reasonable proposal. He was also getting advice from the Russians, but had to consider that such advice is something like what the spider said to the fly. For all Nasser's heroic front, his is neither a stable nor an experienced regime, and it is showing distinct signs of a case of jitters in the face of the Western reaction to his seizure of Suez. The pressures, as Nasser knows, are only beginning to build up.

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