Portrait of the Week
THE past week has constituted something of a lull at the centre of the Suez storm. The arrival of United Nations forces on the Canal and the talks of Mr. Hammarskjold with Colonel Nasser seem to have had a soothing effect. It would be rash, though, to assume that all is over. Outstanding difficulties are : Egyptian doubts about Canadian representa- tion in the UN forces—they look too much like British; British doubts on whether UN technicians are well qualified to remove the obstructions in the Canal which have now been discovered to number forty-nine; and general doubts on the size of the force to be left permanently by the UN on the Canal—Colonel Nasser pressing for the fewest and Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, who has been in New York for talks, for the largest number possible. In the meantime British and French troops remain in position—slightly precariously since a break in the Sweet Water Canal made water supplies in Port Said scarce. Calm at the centre of the crisis has not prevented the ripples spreading in widening circles. The results of the sabotage of the main oil pipe-line in Syria have now been assessed, and it is reported that six months of repair work will be needed to get it going again. In America reports of British, French and Israeli collusion are being widely believed. In Moscow Mr. Khrush- chev has kept up the barrage of abuse, causing the Western diplomats to walk out of receptions on successive nights.
At home the Prime Minister has been forced to follow the advice of his doctors and take a holiday to eradicate signs of acute strain. Mr. Stanley Evans, MP, has also fallen by the wayside, forced by his constituency party to resign after he sided with the Government on Suez. The largest class of sufferers have been road-users, who have found petrol hard to come by. They are to be further chastened next month by the introduction of petrol rationing which will restrict them to about fifty miles of motoring a week.
News from Eastern Europe has again been equivocal. On the credit side we can count the resistance of workers in Hungary to all blandishments and force that can be applied by the Russians and the puppet government. The enormous sums collected here by the Lord Mayor's relief fund and the arrival of the first refugees at London airport have also been encourag- ing. Mr. Nehru has at last, after a good deal of pressure, deplored Russian intervention. Western observers have also been pleased with the text of a speech made a fortnight ago by Marshal Tito in which he says that Russian intervention was a mistake, and comments in passing that the 'personality cult' was a result of the Soviet system rather than that of any individual, a remark which has earned him a sharp rap from Pravda. His arrest of a former Yugoslav Stalinist and leader, Mr. Djilas, will not have soothed tempers. Against all this must be set the continued deportation of large numbers of Hungarian rebels to Russia. Mr. Gomulka's visit to Moscow seems to have been reasonably satisfactory to both sides, and the immediate future of Poland is to be 'independence' under the watchful eye of the Soviet army. Russia has exploded another nuclear weapon and proposed 'summit' talks to discuss disarmament. Their proposals include a modification of Presi- dent Eisenhower's 'open skies' suggestion, but it would only cover a thousand-mile-wide tract of Europe. Further reper- cussions of the Hungarian affair have been the defection of more members of the British Communist Party, the resignation of the Daily Worker's correspondent in Hungary, and the refusal of dockers here to load exports into Russian ships. Mr. Molotov has made a big come-back as Minister of State Control. Other home affairs have again failed to grip the attention. The Government held Chester though its majority dropped by 5,000. The Homicide Bill got an unopposed second reading, though a group of Conservative Members propose to amend it to include poisoners among those liable to the death penalty. A Shops Bill is to curtail shop-opening by an hour, and the Commons have been discussing rents.
Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Miller have left us; there has been a total eclipse of the moon. The MCC team continues its triumphs in South Africa and the Duke of Edinburgh has arrived in Australia and opened the sixteenth Olympic Games of the modern era at Melbourne on Thursday.
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