Suez Reappraised
Thomas, Norman
Suez Reappraised Suez and After: year of crisis, by Michael Adams. Beacon Press. 225 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by Norman Thomas Of necessity every worthwhile book about the Middle East and its...
...Adams concludes that Arabs are or have been "dreamers of great dreams which they have seldom the patience or the practical ability to carry into effect...
...If, as I heard in Egypt, it was British intelligence which led Eden to believe that Nasser could be easily supplanted by a man more friendly to the West, British intelligence was terribly mistaken...
...The Arab case is presented fairly, not eulogistically...
...It might have dragged in Russian "volunteers" with a danger of changing a local into a world war...
...individualists all and yet so easily the dupes of an idea, the slaves of a cheap slogan...
...Adams has been the well-qualified correspondent of the Manchester Guardian...
...But a reviewer of opposite conviction would be hard put to challenge seriously what Adams says...
...Adams found in the events he recorded plenty of reasons for critical judgment of all parties concerned in the tangle of Middle Eastern affairs, but his criticism is understanding and balanced...
...First, it is a wholesome answer to the growing tendency in America to believe that President Eisenhower should have allowed the Israeli, French, and British to proceed with their attack on Egypt...
...It is vivid...
...It gives the emotional setting of certain events in the time they occurred but it does not give an orderly, rounded, historical survey of them...
...This, in conjunction with our support of the Bagdad Pact, has tended to alienate Arabs who believe we are trying to divide Arab brothers...
...Hence it may be in order for this reviewer to say that it strengthens and confirms convictions he had already formed before he read Adams' careful record of events and his discerning interpretation of them...
...Second, Adams' account shows how unsatisfactory has been the working of the Eisenhower doctrine...
...Suez built up Nasser in the whole Arab world...
...Two things give present importance to this book...
...Printed in italics between these reprinted reports are excellent statements giving them continuity and explaining some of the events to which they refer...
...Recently at a conference an American expert on the Middle East was asked, "Could anyone be worse than Nasser...
...To have done so would have meant the virtual death of the U.N...
...This method has disadvantages as well as advantages in portrayal of a situation...
...My own observation in the Middle East supports this judgment...
...Reviewed by Norman Thomas Of necessity every worthwhile book about the Middle East and its problems must be regarded as controversial and so must a review of it...
...His book is made up of a selection of his acute on-the-spot reports to his paper during this "year of crisis...
...The method of the book is interesting...
...Nasser, for example, does not emerge as a Middle Eastern Abraham Lincoln because he is definitely not a Hitler, a Mussolini, or a Stalin...
...His reply was succinct, "Yes, his successor...
...as a force for peace...
...It certainly would have made the whole Middle East one great Algeria as against the West...
Vol. 22 • September 1958 • No. 9
