THE NATION: Not Lenin but Lucifer

If some bigheaded, bandy-legged, ivy-green men from Mars with a secret weapon and a gripe against Marxists took over Earth, wiped out all the Communists and went home, how would things be? Much better, no doubt. But last week’s news brought wholesome reminders that even if Communism were erased, old Earth would still have plenty of troubles.

The U.S. lived so long with the cold war (and the slight defrosting of Geneva’s elusive spirit) that there was a tendency to forget that trouble began when Lucifer fell, not when Lenin rose. There were some really first-rate messes around the world that could not by any stretch of the and Communist imagination be blamed on the Communists.

Item: Cyprus (pop. 500,000), Venus’ home island, promised to cause almost as much trouble as she had. The British, who run Cyprus, answered the demands of most Cypriots for union with Greece by promising a vague home-rule plan. This enraged the Turkish minority on the island. In sympathy, Turkish mobs rioted in Istanbul, and inflicted damage on their town estimated at ten times the value of the whole island of Cyprus (see FOREIGN NEWS).

Item: The Gaza strip between Israel and Egypt has seen 70 Egyptians and Israelis killed in the latest flare-ups.

Item: Thousands of Suda nese troops, Negroes from southern provinces, mutinied against their Arab officers from the north.

Item: Morocco still boiled, despite French moves to create what they called “a free sovereign state” that would be permanently tied to France by an act of “interdependence.” The toll since Aug. 20: about 3,000 dead, thousands more wounded.

Item: Prosperous as it was, the U.S. was still a long way from solution of its Negro problem (see cover story) and many others.

In short, if the anti-Communist world cleaned itself up, maybe the Communists wouldn’t seem so formidable.