This Is London!

In the old World War II headquarters of the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Forces in Bushey Park, England--it is now a schoolroom--a plaque was unveiled one day last week that read: "A great man passed this way in defense of freedom. He showed the capacity for making great nations march together more truly united than ever before." Elsewhere in Britain, however, Dwight D. Eisenhower and his countrymen were having an unusually rough time of it. The stately Times feared "a Britain united in anti-Americanism--and there is a growing danger of this . . ." The less stately Sunday Times talked of "the present rigorously anti-British policies of President Eisenhower," and added: "A belief is spreading that American policy is controlled by the oil lobby." The Daily Mail's cartoonist depicted Ike skulking away from a wall upon which he had scrawled BRITISH GO HOME !

Heading the parade, Lord Beaverbrook's Sunday Express opened its columns to an anti-U.S. Laborite M.P., who wrote: "America is using Suez to do to Britain what Russia is doing to Hungary . . . The role assigned to us by Mr. Dulles is no more than that of a satellite."

Overt & Covert. Much of the uproar, as the U.S. duly noted and compensated for, was due to the fact that the politicians caught in the bloody draggle of Suez needed a scapegoat. Much of it reflected a last wild try to wreak a change in the U.S.'s stand against British-French-Israeli aggression in Suez. "If we all get hot enough under the collar," said the Daily Sketch, "the warmth of the conflict may perhaps penetrate the icy coldness and hostility in Washington."

Much more subtly, the Foreign Office stylists reflected the same line as they maneuvered overtly and covertly around the world. In Manhattan, British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd held confidential briefings for selected British, European and U.S. diplomatic correspondents (periodicals critical of the Suez policy, such as the Economist and the Observer, were not invited), in which he suggested that 1) the U.S. appeared to be willing to throw down the British alliance for the Arab-Asians; 2) British diplomats were having trouble getting to see U.S. diplomats, 3) the U.S. was threatening the British economy by not sending over U.S. oil until the British announced plans to quit Suez.

Willing Scapegoat. In Washington, British Ambassador Sir Harold Caccia had a confidential dinner with selected Washington pundits at the home of the Washington Post and Times Herald's Chalmers Roberts. There he confidentially criticized Dulles, explained that if Britain had not consulted the U.S. about the invasion of Egypt, Dulles had not consulted Britain on canceling the offer to build Egypt's Aswan High Dam. (The facts: Britain got one day's advance warning that the U.S. was considering cancellation; in any event, Britain had long been urging the U.S. to get tough with Nasser.) And in London last week nobody was more surprised than New York Herald Tribune Correspondent Don Cook when the Foreign Office's august Permanent Undersecretary, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, whisked him aside during a party to propound that unless the U.S. went along with the British on Suez, the Eden government would fall, and there would have to be elections in January; the implication was that anti-Americans of the right or left would pick up more power.

Actually, Washington did not object too much to being the scapegoat if that would help solve the crisis. By week's end the uproar, beneath its superficial abusiveness, was in fact creating fresh evidence that the character and vitality of the U.S.'s No. 1 ally was plainly not moribund. Many thoughtful Britons, in debating the crisis internally, had reasoned their way through the confusion to a new understanding of Britain's basic instincts for law and order. And in doing so they were once again in tune with that once-honored Freeman of the City of London, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who before heading south to Augusta last week, gave evidence that he was very much still in tune with them. "I am determined that with this out of the way," said Ike, meaning Suez, "our friendships are going to be stronger than ever if I can bring it about."

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