Trouble in Paradise (Cont'd)

Under such headlines as "At Last We Have Gotten In First," vastly relieved Londoners read last weekend that the political fire in Iraq, which had threatened the Mosul oil fields and Britain's prestige in the Moslem world, had been smothered, if not extinguished.

When Super-Nationalist Seyid Rashid El-Gailani this month took the Iraqi Premiership by coup d'etat (TIME, April 21), Britain's great fear was that the new Government would let Axis fifth columnists tamper with the Mosul-Haifa pipeline, through which flows part of Britain's oil. If El-Gailani had had any such ideas, the British moved too fast for him. Into Basra harbor last week unexpectedly steamed a British transport and unloaded British Imperial troops, probably from East Africa.

By the British-Iraqi Treaty such an action is perfectly permissible "in the event of the imminent threat of war," and Premier El-Gailani, who had officially come out for the treaty (perhaps without thinking the British could spare the troops), knew it. Best move he could think of was to send a pro-British staff officer hastily to welcome the British commander.

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