South Yorkshire Times, November 20th 1943
Looking For Trouble
There is still a good deal that is not clear about the unrest in the Lebanon, but sufficient is known to reveal the affair in a distinctly unpleasant light. Doubtless the war has many more disagreeable surprises in store for us, and the peace cannot by any stretch of imagination be expected to offer immunity from situations as disconcerting as they will be disturbing.
But to be confronted with a crisis of this kind at a most delicate stage in the war is a problem which the United Nations had every right not to expect. That the difference has been allowed to develop at all is one of the disabilities of democracy which we have to accept with the advantages. Our consciousness that these advantages far outweigh the disadvantages does not, for the time being, mitigate the intense feeling of exasperation which such maladroit incidents provoke, In a vast and cosmopolitan alliance like that of the United Nations there are bound to be considerable potentialities for friction and perhaps misunderstanding, but that does not mean that the partners in this great association of free peoples should precipitate such contretemps by studiously neglecting joint consultation until they are brought face to face with trouble. This apparently is what has happened in the case of the Lebanon, a sufficiently serious omission without the tactless actions which subsequently aggravated the situation from such detail as is available it is plain that the issue is not a simple one.
The basic point is that when the Allies cleared the pro-German Vichy administration out of the Lebanon in 1941 General Catroux as Free French Commander, promised the independence of the country and the promise was countersigned by Great Britain. According to present developments it seems that the Lebanese are proceeding somewhat too hastily along this liberal path for French susceptibilities. The clash of two sensitive temperaments has led to bloodshed when the reasonable necessities of the situation pointed plainly to rational negotiation. The French National Committee perhaps remembering, with characteristic logic, Mr. Churchill’s recent definition of their status as trusteeship argue that they cannot take it on themselves to forego in any final sense French rights; the Lebanese impatiently, and certainly inopportunely, are burning to test the validity of the Atlantic Charter. It Is a dispute which must rejoice the hearts of our enemies and that alone should afford reason enough for its prompt settlement. Such squabbles are luxuries which the Democratic cause can permit itself neither now nor hereafter. In this, as in all other differences of view, the hope of the future rests in a readiness to enter into mutual consultation, without resort to political intransigence on the one hand, or machine guns, curfews and the rest of the ugly accoutrements of force on the other.