MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THE actions and pronouncements of the French National Com- mittee offer reasonable hope that the Lebanese crisis is on the way to being solved. Much credit is due to General Catrottic, to Mr. Casey, to Mr. Harold Macmillan and to the National Com- mittee for the spirit of co-operation and the speed with which they have coped with a situation of the greatest complexity and danger. It is to be hoped that the Lebanese nationalists, whether Druse or Maronite, will show equal realism and good sense. It is to be hoped also that this sudden thunder-storm which crashed into the sultry atmosphere of local Anglo-French relations will have done something to ease strained nerves and to cool angered suspicions. The French are somewhat bewildered by the storm of indignation which the action of Monsieur Helleu has aroused. It may well be that Riad es-Solh and his companions sought to confront M. Helleu with an accomplished fact upon his return from Algiers; it may well be that they hoped to exert unjustified pressure upon the French authorities by profiting from the presence of British forces in their midst ; yet for M. Helleu to arrest the President and the Ministers without consultation, either with his superiors or with the representatives of his Allies, was an act of grave in- temperance. There can be little to add to the admirable summary of the situation contained in the leading article in last week's Spectator. Yet I should wish, now that the storm has somewhat subsided, to add two things. The first is that it is now apparent that M. Helleu acted on his own initiative and in disregard of the instructions which he had received both from the National Com- mittee and from General de Gaulle himself. And the second is that British public opinion might seem in this matter to have been ignorant of, or indifferent to, the opinions and the feelings of France. It would be a grave error to concentrate our attention solely upon Algiers, or to imagine that such a thing as French opinion does not exist. On the contrary, the people of occupied France are vividly aware of everything that happens in the liberated territories of Africa, and follow with tense anxiety the attitude adopted by Russia, the United States or ourselves in all questions affecting French prestige or French sovereignty. * * * * We should remember, for instance, that the Syrian area has always proved a focus of infection, even of poison, in Anglo-French relations. The misunderstandings which arose after the last war owing to the MacMahon letters, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the activities of Colonel Lawrence, and the deposition of the Emir Feisal did as much as anything else to shatter Anglo-French co- operation during the vital years which followed the Treaty of Versailles. The French are by nature a sceptical and even suspicious race, and have always been apt to attribute to British statesmen motives and purposes which our rulers are in fact too vague to possess. Most Frenchmea are convinced that Lawrence's dream of a vast Arab Federation under British influence is a dream which successive British Governments have adopted as a secret policy. "Chaque Anglais," say the French of Syria, " se croit un petit Lawrence." And they point to our oil interests, our Palestinian problems, our invasion of Syria and our insistence on Lebanese independence as proof positive of what they feel. The unanimous outcry which arose on the occasion of the Beirut episodes will have confirmed their suspicions. They do not know, they cannot believe, that our policy is as empirical as it is.
* * * It might have been more tactful also had we all remembered that the last time the French people, through their Parliament, had occasion to pronounce on this problem they voted against Lebanese independence. The Statute of Liberation drafted by Monsieur Vienot (at that time Under Secretary in the Leon Blum Cabinet) was not ratified by the French Chamber. It is possible, it is even probable, that were the French people to be consulted on the matter today they would endorse Monsieur Vienot's original pro- posals. But their acceptance of such a liberal solution will not be
rendered easier by the fact that its critics will now argue that it was imposed in circumstanzes damaging to French prestige. The French, moreover, are a logical race and may point out that it is inconsistent of us to contend, at one moment, that the National Committee cannot be regarded as possessing sovereign powers and at the next moment to expect them to commit so extreme an act of sovereignty as the abandonment, on behalf of the French Republic, of a mandate entrusted to it by the League of Nations.
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It may be argued that these legalistic points, these points of prestige, have no validity in the midst of a war of liberation. Yet in dealing with a legalistic nation, and one that has suffered agonising blows to its prestige, such points should at least be borne in mind. More important than such disregard, however, is the fact that we in this country appear to have forgotten the immense and ancient ties of sentiment which attach the French to Syria and the Lebanon. Some of our newspapers have written as if the French were causing trouble about a mere slice of mandated territory acquired as part of the spoils from the First German War. Yet, in fact, France's connexions with, and feelings for, the Lebanon are infinitely more ancient, far more sentimental, than any bonds which may bind, or have bound, us, let us say, to Tanganyika Territory or to Iraq. It was Charlemagne himself who laid the foundations of the Frankish Protectorate and who received from Harm-el-Rashid the keys df the Holy Places. The leaders of the First Crusade were not Germans or English, but Godefroy de Bouillon, Robert de Normandie and Raymond de Toulouse ; the history of their crusade was written under the proud title of Gesta. Francorum. The city of Beirut was included in the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem and the first Christian families to settle in the Lebanpn bore the French names of Puy-Laurent and de Larminat. The Crusader castles which give such point to that lovely scenery are rightly regarded as master- pieces of French mediaeval architecture—"Ces revenants," Tharaud calls them, "ces grands fantomes de noire fiodalite." It was St. Louis himself who on May 21st, 1250, addressed to the Emir of the Maronites a proclamation assuring him that his people would be regarded "as part of the French nation" and would forever be piotected by the might of France. These assurances were repeated by Francis I, by Louis XIV in 1649, by Louis XV, by the Republic and by Napoleon. And when in 186o Napoleon III renewed the tradition by sending General Beaufort and an army to Beirut to protect the Maronifes against the Druses, the whole of France burst into the song of "Partant pour la Syrie." It is not, therefore, merely some mandate of the League of Nations which the National Com- mittee are surrendering ; they are abandoning one of the most ancient, one of the most sentimental, of all French traditions. It would be fitting were we to remember that the sacrifice which they are making is both difficult and deep. .
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This tradition of a long and loving connexion between France and the Lebanon lasted well into the present century. Even in my own memory, French diplomatists and consuls who visited the Lebanon would on their arrival (and much to their embarrassment) be met- by Maronite bishops and sprinkled with holy water and drenched in incense. These memories, these old affections, persist. Nor is it only of Charlemagne, of St. Louis, of Francis I that the French think when they think of the Lebanon ; they also think of Lamartine and Renan and Gerard de Nerval. For them the Lebanon will always recall the legend of the troubadour joffroy Rudd, Prince de Blaye, who fell in love with Melissinde, to princesse lointaine, and journeyed as a pilgrim to Tripoli bnly to die in her arms. "Yamais," wrote the troubadour, "d'amour je nt jouirai, si je ne jouis de cet amour loin min." Much of this old Lebanese legend lingers in the mind of the French. It would be a mistake to interpret their attitude as based solely on prestige or power politics. We should tread lightly, since we are treading on their dreams.
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