Sir Anthony’s Public Hell

It is commonplace that, although the English-speaking powers share a historic political and cultural inheritance and mutually guard the opposite shores of the North Atlantic, their interests and policies diverge in other areas, notably East Asia. Equally well known is the fact that on the explosive question of Suez the Atlantic partners temporarily parted company. The chief merit of Sir Anthony Eden’s memoirs, Full Circle (Houghton, $6.95), is that the retired British statesman candidly, reproachfully, sometimes carpingly—and within the narrow range of his own perceptions—discloses the frailty of the alliance at such non-junctures from 1951, when he again became Foreign Secretary, until his tragic collapse into invalidism as Prime Minister early in 1957. The chief demerit of the memoir, the first published volume of what istobea comprehensive review of Sir Anthony’s career, is that Eden demonstrates a lack of insight into the realities behind the Anglo-American divergences.

Sir Anthony’s stout-hearted struggle to recapture England’s imperial thrall by applying the birch to the insolent Gamal Abdel Nasser for his rape of the Suez Canal was, of course, climactic for him and Britain. The enterprise failed, largely because, as Sir Anthony sees it, the United States refused to act “in the spirit of an ally.” The British, French and Israelis, obedient to a decree of the United Nations most sternly invoked by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., allowed the cowering Nasser to escape scot- free with his plunder. There were compensations. The martial Israelis captured and destroyed huge depots of Soviet hardware in the Sinai peninsula. A United Nations force came into being as buffer between Nasser’s Fedayeen raiders and Israeli settlements. Nasser lost a certain face in the Arab community and at Moscow. Yet for Eden’s England there was humiliation, and for that the United States stands to Eden as the villain. The memoir makes public Sir Anthony’s private hell during the searing months of 1956 as the Suez crisis deepened: his frustration with a British public unwilling to resume the imperial posture; a hectoring press; and, even more deeply felt, the progressive disappointments in Washington as the Eisenhower-Dulles attitude slid into neutralism and finally open disavowal. Those were anguished months for a haughtily limited Prime Minister to whom it was not given to see that the Atlantic powers, from much retreating in Asia, had for the moment lost the uncomplicated will to put down upstarts in the putative service of Moscow.

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Forrest Davis

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It is commonplace that, although the English-speaking powers share a historic political and cultural inheritance and mutually guard the opposite shores of the North Atlantic, their interests and policies diverge in other areas, notably East Asia. Equally well known is the fact that on the explosive question of Suez the Atlantic partners temporarily parted company. The chief merit of Sir Anthony Eden’s memoirs, Full Circle (Houghton, $6.95), is that the retired British statesman candidly, reproachfully, sometimes carpingly—and within the narrow range of his own perceptions—discloses the frailty of the alliance at such non-junctures from 1951, when he again became Foreign Secretary, until his tragic collapse into invalidism as Prime Minister early in 1957. The chief demerit of the memoir, the first published volume of what istobea comprehensive review of Sir Anthony’s career, is that Eden demonstrates a lack of insight into the realities behind the Anglo-American divergences.

Sir Anthony’s stout-hearted struggle to recapture England’s imperial thrall by applying the birch to the insolent Gamal Abdel Nasser for his rape of the Suez Canal was, of course, climactic for him and Britain. The enterprise failed, largely because, as Sir Anthony sees it, the United States refused to act “in the spirit of an ally.” The British, French and Israelis, obedient to a decree of the United Nations most sternly invoked by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., allowed the cowering Nasser to escape scot- free with his plunder. There were compensations. The martial Israelis captured and destroyed huge depots of Soviet hardware in the Sinai peninsula. A United Nations force came into being as buffer between Nasser’s Fedayeen raiders and Israeli settlements. Nasser lost a certain face in the Arab community and at Moscow. Yet for Eden’s England there was humiliation, and for that the United States stands to Eden as the villain. The memoir makes public Sir Anthony’s private hell during the searing months of 1956 as the Suez crisis deepened: his frustration with a British public unwilling to resume the imperial posture; a hectoring press; and, even more deeply felt, the progressive disappointments in Washington as the Eisenhower-Dulles attitude slid into neutralism and finally open disavowal. Those were anguished months for a haughtily limited Prime Minister to whom it was not given to see that the Atlantic powers, from much retreating in Asia, had for the moment lost the uncomplicated will to put down upstarts in the putative service of Moscow.