THE NATIONS: Not Since Andy Jackson . ..

When Britain’s new ambassador to the U.S., Sir Oliver Franks, arrived in Washington last week, he expressed the customary sentiments about happy relations between the two countries. The sunny platitudes, however, were clouded by two facts. For one thing, Lulu, the Frankses’ cherished family cat, was missing—it had somehow disappeared during the crossing, and was still missing when the Franks disembarked from the Queen Elizabeth. For another thing, U.S.-British relations had suddenly become anything but happy. Said one responsible Briton last week: “President Truman has antagonized our Foreign Office more completely than any American since Andrew Jackson.”*

The great cousins of the Western world, on whose solidarity that world’s future so heavily depended, were divided by an issue which seemed to possess an almost infinite capacity for generating bitterness—Palestine.

Ernie Explodes. One day last week, U.S. Ambassador Lewis Douglas called on Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin; what he had to say was brutally simple. President Harry Truman had recognized the State of Israel (that neither George Marshall nor Lew Douglas himself was particularly happy about their boss’s sudden step was another matter). Now the U.S. expected from Britain, if not Israel’s recognition, at least a stoppage of aid to the Arabs. Lew Douglas added that, unless the British complied, Marshall Plan allocations to Britain might run into trouble in Congress.

Ernie Bevin exploded. He said in effect that he was sick & tired of U.S. pressure; Britain was treaty-bound to help Arab states, and good relations with the Moslem Middle East were as vital for U.S. security as they were for Britain’s. But when Bevin calmed down he sent new instructions to Britain’s Sir Alexander Cadogan at Lake Success: London would stop arms shipments to Arab states, provided the Security Council called for a general arms embargo which would prevent other nations, as well, from shipping arms and men to Palestine. The British also called for a four-week Arab-Jewish truce.

Russia’s Andrei Gromyko, looking grimmer than usual in a pair of dark glasses, proposed a different plan—an immediate, unconditional cease-fire order which would in effect brand the Arabs as aggressors. Amid cheers from the spectators’ gallery, U.S. Delegate Warren Austin sided with Russia. It was only after the Russian motion had been voted down by the Council that the U.S. switched its support to the British proposal. Ernie Bevin’s formula thus became the basis last week of U.N.’s latest approach to a Palestine solution.

War by Proxy? But Bevin, and a good many plain Britons who had hoped they had heard the last of the Palestine mess, were sputtering through a chain reaction of anger. Wrote London’s News Chronicle: “If President Truman would take a long, long voyage far out into the sea and speak to no one, there might be some hope of reaching an agreement . . .” Britain’s sober Economist pointed a grimmer lesson: “If it [the crisis] is allowed to develop unchecked, the Americans will raise their arms embargo in order to supply the Jews with weapons; and if Britain continues to fulfill its contracts to the Arabs . . . Britain and America will in effect be fighting each other by proxy . . .”

The Cheshire grin hanging over the whole scene was Joseph Stalin’s. Russia sent a diplomatic mission to Israel (the first to the new state). Some observers feared that, in a pinch, Israeli extremists might ask for Russian aid, invite a chunk of the Red Army into the Middle East. It would probably not come to that. But by week’s end, U.S. and British diplomats could not be sure that they had healed the U.S.-British rift.

Moreover, the Cunard White Star Lines announced that, despite intensive search, they had been unable to find Ambassador Franks’s Lulu.

* Who, among other things, once executed two British subjects for stirring up Florida Indians.