Political Simoon

A political simoon swept the Levant. In Beirut and Damascus the bazaars seethed. Shops were shut, transport suspended. Students marched defiantly through streets emptied of everything but aloof camels. In their barracks, sullen French troops waited tensely, side by side with nervous French civilians.

The French troops were the storm center. Seldom had France so crudely alienated its 4,000,000 sensitive Syrian and Lebanese subjects as when the cruiser Jeanne d'Arc slid into Beirut harbor last month to land a thousand Senegalese soldiers. Instantly Syrians and Lebanese saw a threat to the independence they had long been clamoring for. The fuse sputtered.

On V-E day came the explosion. In Damascus and Aleppo anti-French riots broke out. Scores of people were killed or injured. In Beirut French shops were burned. (British stores in the same blocks were spared). Strikes spread, markets closed. Nervously, the French explained that the Senegalese had arrived because the Levant was now a French redeploying area for the Far Eastern war. Cried The Lebanon's Premier Abdul Hamid Keramy: "The French think that with their armies they can deprive us of our independence. . . . They can cut off our heads and destroy us, but they cannot touch our independence. . . ."

Conscription & Credits. The Syrians reacted even more violently. Parliament ordered the conscription of all men between the ages of 18 and 60 for the Syrian national guard. It also voted immediate credits to increase the Syrian gendarmerie by 5,000 men. Both states abruptly broke off negotiations with France. Later there was bloody street fighting between French and Syrians in Hama. (In his Damascus home President Shukri el-Kuwatly, in bed with an intestinal ulcer, suffered a serious relapse and had to have blood transfusions.)

To the aid of Syria and The Lebanon rushed the new Pan-Arab League. An emergency meeting was called for early June to decide what to do.

France remained impassive. Without abrogating its League of Nations mandate, France had recognized the de facto independence of the Levant states in the dark days of 1943. Now, the Quai d'Orsay wished to buttress its position with a treaty of alliance and friendship giving France strategic rights (air fields in Syria, naval bases in The Lebanon), economic privileges (preferential tariff treatment), cultural advantages (French to be a compulsory school language). The Lebanese and Syrians are willing to compromise only on the first point.

France or the Arabs? Which side--France or the Arabs--would Great Britain, the No. 1 Near East power, support? Until 1943, she had encouraged Syrians and Lebanese to break their French ties. Last year Britain changed her mind, reportedly because of the growing strength of Russia. Last week, the British Foreign Office, in one of its rare public statements, simultaneously "regretted" the French troop transfer and the Pan-Arab League's attitude. To both parties Britain offered her good offices as mediator. Neither accepted.

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