UN “Operation Smash”

As it says in Holy Scripture, “Would that mine enemy would write a book.” We must all be very grateful to Dr. Conor Cruise O’Brien, who has indeed written a book, a whale of a book called To Katanga and Back, about what happened to him in the Congo and why he unleashed the little “September war.” He deserves our gratitude for many reasons but, first, for his extraordinary frankness both about himself and about the United Nations.

He makes no secret of his bias. He is, he says, “temperamentally not much inclined to ‘letting the Tory dogs have the best of it,’ even momentarily.” He doubts whether he “would feel less free in the Soviet Union than in South Africa, or Portugal, or Spain, or French Algeria, or Guatemala, or Southern Rhodesia.” Even those of us who were most puzzled by his behavior found it difficult to credit the suggestion that he was really seeing the Congo in terms of Irish partition with the British Government as a familiar villain; but, so help me, it now appears to be true.

AL

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Anthony Lejeune

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As it says in Holy Scripture, “Would that mine enemy would write a book.” We must all be very grateful to Dr. Conor Cruise O’Brien, who has indeed written a book, a whale of a book called To Katanga and Back, about what happened to him in the Congo and why he unleashed the little “September war.” He deserves our gratitude for many reasons but, first, for his extraordinary frankness both about himself and about the United Nations.

He makes no secret of his bias. He is, he says, “temperamentally not much inclined to ‘letting the Tory dogs have the best of it,’ even momentarily.” He doubts whether he “would feel less free in the Soviet Union than in South Africa, or Portugal, or Spain, or French Algeria, or Guatemala, or Southern Rhodesia.” Even those of us who were most puzzled by his behavior found it difficult to credit the suggestion that he was really seeing the Congo in terms of Irish partition with the British Government as a familiar villain; but, so help me, it now appears to be true.