It is only natural that Belgians should be angry with Britain and America for failing to support them over the Congo in the Security Council. Belgian opinion and certain French newspapers have bitterly accused Britain of disloyalty to a Nato ally.
The Nato treaty, at American insistence, explicitly excluded the colonial possessions of its members from the terms of guarantee. It would be as well for any power with interests in Africa to know there is no possibility of America or Britain giving her aid if she becomes involved in a colonial war.
The question arises whether Britain (and America) as allies of Belgium should not have at least abstained in the vote which called for the speedy removal of all Belgians from all of the Congo. This is a mixed question of loyalty and expediency and ignores the fact that the Belgian attitude was indefensibly wrong.
The peace of Africa depends primarily on the United Nations. It is of crucial importance to the western alliance, no less than to Africans themselves, that the United Nations should succeed in bringing back order to the Congo.
Talking point
There is a great need in the cinema for truthfulness, for truth that is not necessarily sordid, and not necessarily downbeat. I cannot help feeling that the stories of inarticulate people are not less interesting than a contrived narrative that exists only in one articulate man’s imagination.
Director John Cassavetes on his improvisational film Shadows
Key quote
“A comic fantasy written with a freshness, a sense of timing and a conscientious attention to structure that writers one-third of Mr Wodehouse’s age, and 30 times as ambitious, might justly envy.”
Kingsley Amis on PG Wodehouse’s new novel, Jeeves in the Offing
