Facades of East and West

Accompanied by the ballyhoo of Press and BBC fanworship. Sir Anthony Eden flew across the world to act as trouble-shooter in the Far East, although patently there was nothing to be accomplished at Bangkok which could not much more quietly be tackled at his Foreign Office desk.

These peripatectic glamour-boys, by flitting here, there and everywhere over the earth's surface, are a positive menace. Their incessant flights and conferences do more than anything else to keep mankind tense and bothered, while they never achieve Success except by surrendering to the Communist Empire what is not theirs to give.

If the British Government thought a diplomatic triumph could thereby be secured, it would act completely out of character if it did not offer Malaya and Hong Kong to the beasts of prey.

At Bangkok, where the busy-bodies gathered, the major fear was that having no sop to throw to the Chinese Cerberus, Eden would—with Cabinet blessing—offer to internationalise Britain's few remaining Far Eastern possessions by permitting Seato bases to be set up in Hong Kong and Singapore.