Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1943. THE LEBANON CRISIS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 64, Issue 32, 17 November 1943, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1943. THE LEBANON CRISIS.

Trouble has again broken out in Syria and Lebanon, countries that from their geographical position have always been turbulent. At the cross roads of Europe, Asia and Africa, they are populated by a distracting variety of races of different religions. The very situation that creates the tendency to restlessness invests the area with an international importance. So the difference between the theoretically sovereign and independent Lebanese Government and the French National Committee, which has exercised administrative control since the Allied occupation in 1941, at once attracts the interest of outside parties. The British Minister to Syria and Lebanon (Major-General Spears) has protested to the French authorities against their forceful actions against the Lebanese Government. He does so in the name of Britain, as the guarantor of Lebanese independence. If .this were not a sufficient test of the statesmanship of the French President, General de Gaulle, the Egyptian Prime Minister (Nalias Pasha) has also protested. As well as speaking for Egypt, he purports to express the sense of outrage of all Arab countries, stretching from Morocco to the Persian Gulf. Neither can the interests of neighbouring Turkey nor of Russia be entirely divorced from this Middle Eastern imbroglio. Even in the Kaiser’s day Germany stirred up sti'ife in Syria and with propaganda exploited thoroughly by Goebbels there can be litle doubt that enemy influence was a factor in creating the present position.