On to the Showdown

September has been a cruel month for modern Europe. In September 1938 there was Munich. In September 1939, World War II. In September 1940, the Luftwaffe and the Battle of Britain. Now another September had come and with it talk of war and a crisis pertinent to the survival of Britain and France as great powers.

In Europe last week there was far greater concern than in the U.S. that the Suez crisis might lead to shooting and war. The French were united as at no time since World War II in demanding Nasser's destruction and thereby, they hoped, reversing the decay of their position in North Africa. The British, while speaking more softly, were moving divisions and insisting through stiffened upper lips on their right and need to fight as a last resort against the loss of their irreplaceable strategic and material stake in the Middle East. As NATO met last week in Paris to contemplate the crisis that enfolds it by enfolding its two major European partners, Belgium's Foreign Minister Paul Henri Spaak, a peace-loving if fiery statesman, said roundly that in his view the British and French had no alternative to risking force if they wished to safeguard their vital interests.

Even those Western Europeans who shrank from the possible consequences of the British and French "precautionary measures" took the possibilities of war seriously. Bonn, averse to any interruption of West Germany's $450 million trade with the Middle East, stood opposed to forceful action yet reported gloomily that the British and French seemed in dead earnest about closing in on Nasser. Italy sent Ambassador Giovanni Fornari flying to Cairo with an urgent appeal to Nasser to soften his stand, sweetened it with a hint of big Italian construction help (FIAT) on the Aswan Dam.

Outwardly, Egypt's Nasser and his countrymen acted as though they did not believe their antagonists' threats. In their hearts, however, they could not be sure that one misstep, one clumsy, maneuver, even one ship accident in the Suez ("Remember the Maine!") would not bring on the guns of Britain and France.

It was in this ominous atmosphere that diplomacy still prevailed.

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