Danger in the Jungle

Britain's bombers over Cairo made the really shocking surprise of the week: Russia's conduct in Hungary was more cruel because bigger in the totals of human slaughter, but it was, after all, in character for Communists. Israel could claim the need to break the menacing circle of declared enemies. France had emotional and strategic reasons for crushing Nasser, to get at the source of supply of the Arab rebels in French North Africa. As for Britain, its justification for aggression against Egypt had to be that a quick war could bring the kind of Middle East solution that diplomacy had failed to achieve.

More than injured pride and frustration had to explain Sir Anthony Eden's ruthless ultimatum and armed attack on Egypt. The justification, feebly put at the outset, but more and more emphatically later, is that Britain had lost faith in the U.N. It had decided to return to the loth century pattern of a big power's imposing peace and demanding of the rest of the world that it accept the result on the grounds that its methods are decisive and its motives high-minded. This classic role of self-appointed proctor of the world was reflected last week by that heroic defender of Empire, Sir Winston Churchill, who proclaimed: "Not for the first time, we have acted independently for the common good." This was a blunt and deep challenge to every 20th century notion of collective security. Britain's case went thus: You must judge our methods by our results.

We hope to crush Nasser without much bloodshed. If we do, we will be rid of an ambitious dictator who not only threatens our oil interests and our Suez Canal status and stings our pride, but with his ambitious Arab nationalism threatens the whole security of European civilization.

Once we show our strength, you will hear less nonsense from the oil-country Arabs, and have less trouble from the Arabs in North Africa. Israel will expand. But if it grows big enough, its Arab neighbors will be unable to challenge it, and there will be peace at last in the Middle East -- the kind of peace the U.N. cannot bring you, because it has become only an echo cham ber of the world's conflicts.

The British method, if brought off quickly, might have had more effect than many men of good will would care to admit. But in the end it encountered overriding objections, and the U.S. gained credit throughout the world for separating itself last week from the conduct of its oldest allies. For as a sovereign remedy, the peace of imposed power takes little account of the cries of the less strong, or the pleas of peoples aspiring to freedom.

A more important objection to Eden's Pax Britannica is that Britain no longer rules the waves, or the air. In a hardhitting attack on Eden's conduct, Opposition Leader Hugh Gaitskell accused Eden of invoking the law of the jungle, and added, "The jungle is a dangerous place where we should realize that there are much more dangerous animals wandering about than Great Britain and France." The knowledge that the Russian bear, stung by his own wounds, might blunder into the Middle East gave pause to everyone--even, in the end, to Anthony Eden and to France's Guy Mollet.

The Example. While the world tried to digest the distressing news from the Middle East, Russia abruptly abandoned its promises of reforms and retreat, and ruthlessly turned to crush Hungary's gallant patriots. With outraged helplessness the world listened to frantic pleas for help.

In urgent matters of self-interest, the Russians need no examples from others to justify their own resort to force. But the aggression in Egypt provided the Russians with what, if it was not a sanction, was at least a cover to allow their brutalities full rein. It was a measure of the betrayal of mankind's best hopes by Britain and France that the embarrassed West could not even cry shame with one voice.

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