Her Majesty's U.N. Navy

It was time for the British to pull out of the Suez again.

The second going seemed even more painful than the first last June. Determined to minimize final leavetaking, the British and French dragged their feet on Port Said's waterfront, and overstayed their appointed departure time by at least two days. Bit by grudging bit, they inched back from the canal highway, from the airfield, from the battered city itself, until at last they had handed over all authority to the Swedes, Danes and Norwegians of the U.N. Expeditionary Force. Then the last thousand "beachhead" troops ended the 48-day occupation and marched aboard the ships that had been waiting for them all the time.

With carrier planes circling overhead and ten destroyers guarding their flanks, they sailed slowly north out of the wreck-cluttered harbor and faded into the wintry Mediterranean dusk. The troops themselves were glad to go: it had not been pleasant duty on their sector, crowded in by Egyptians stirred by inflammatory propaganda in Nasser's newspapers.

While the British gave way on one big Suez question, they were busily negotiating with the U.N.'s Dag Hammarskjold on a second: the clearing of the canal. The British wanted the U.N. to use the British 20-ship salvage fleet to clear the remaining 13 wrecks in Port Said harbor, and to help remove wrecks lodged farther south in the canal. The U.N. wanted these ships, especially six lifting craft, but the sticking point was their crews. Nasser refused to contemplate British and French sailors' sailing up and down the canal.

Elementary Values. Contrary to the impassioned feelings of Tory backbenchers, the British Foreign Office decided that there was no use in trying to bludgeon Nasser into making concessions: he had to be brought around slowly and carefully by the U.N. and the U.S. In the midst of the negotiations, blustery First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Hailsham, visiting Port Said, blurted out that no British ships could be employed without British crews. This provoked Nasser and his Foreign Minister into rejecting the idea of using any British ships. In the House of Commons, Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd addressed an implied rebuke to the First Lord of the Admiralty: "I think it would be very much better," said Lloyd, "if this were dealt with on a technical basis."

Taken up technically, the matter proved solvable. The Anglo-French salvage fleet would keep working in the Port Said harbor after the troops left. The ships would be turned over to the U.N., operate under the U.N. flag. Royal Navy officers and men would don civilian clothes "down to cuff links," and all wear U.N. arm bands. The ships would dismantle all guns (a good thing, gruffed Lord Hailsham, "there's nobody there I'd particularly want to salute").

Civilianizing. "What a way to treat the navy!" cried London's jingoist tabloid Daily Sketch. A Daily Mail cartoon showed Admiral Nelson atop his Trafalgar Square roost dressed in top hat, striped trousers and cutaway coat. But Tory anger in Commons was stayed by the realization that Britain could either cooperate or go on cutting off the flow of its lifeblood oil at Suez. Lord Hailsham, quieter in London than he was in Port Said, said: "We will civilianize the whole fleet if necessary."

Apart from ships now finishing the Port Said job, the U.N. has 31 Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Italian, Belgian and German ships available to haul at the 27 wrecks farther south. Still to be negotiated is the question of whether Nasser will let British-manned U.N. salvage vessels move down to help on this job.

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