Reluctant Withdrawal

"In a few weeks' time this country is going to wake up to the fact that we have marched into Egypt, marched out of Egypt, caused the canal to be blocked, stopped our oil, made every Arab in the world into an enemy, opened the Middle East to Russian penetration, split the Commonwealth, quarreled with the Americans, ruined ourselves--all for nothing."

Britain's Tories might not much admire the man who said these words, leftist Laborite John Strachey, but they could not ignore some of his home truths. Last week the Tory cabinet assembled to hear the report of Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, just back from the U.S. Lloyd had no good news. The U.S. still refused to arrange for emergency oil supplies until the British and French at least announced plans for withdrawal from Suez. After two hours' discussion, the Cabinet made the inevitable reluctant decision: Britain would withdraw. Significantly, in all the week's painful decisions, Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden in faraway Jamaica was reportedly consulted not once.

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