EGYPT

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28167, 4 January 1957, Page 2

EGYPT

Sir, —“Dyer’s Pass Road” neatly sums up the case against Britain, though the more impartial judgment of history may dispute his conclusions. One point already calls for cautious challenge. (We English must be cautious above everything.) If Britain is now regarded as a second-class power, even temporarily, it is because she could not withstand the collusion of the two greatest powerblocs in opposing her. Not for the first time has American idealism defeated its wider purpose. As a writer once said about his piano-playing, “It is grandiose in conception, but a little blurred in execution.” The League of Nations was conceived by President Wilson, but hardly conducted in operation to world peace. President Roosevelt at Yalta blandly bestowed on Russia the right to wreck every Western policy by the use of the veto, and President Eisenhower has nicely rounded off these achievements by humiliating *his country’s best friend.—Yours, etc., I.S.T. January 3, 1957.

Sir, —If, as your correspondent, “Dyer’s Pass Road,” appears to assume, Great Britain becomes a “second-rate nation” as a result of recent events, it will, I suggest, be largely on account of the very second-rate type of loyalty (happily rare in New Zealand) accorded her by certain of her kin< of which your correspondent seems to provide such a regrettable example.—Yours, etc., T M.T. January 3, 1957.