 | DOWN A BLIND ALLEY |
| | DOWN A BLIND ALLEY |
WE GAVE a dinner party in Beirut on November 10, '43, in honor of King Peter of Yugoslavia. We couldn't have felt less like giving a dinner party, indeed the events of the past three days were calculated to spoil any mixed party of French, British and Lebanese, for all our bright hopes of happy collaboration with the French had come to nothing. The elections had been held in the summer and ever since then a struggle had been going on between the newly elected Lebanese government and the French, until it had now reached a crisis that threatened the peace of the Levant. The struggle had in fact culminated that morning in an official note to the Lebanese Premier from the French delegation informing him that the invitation to his government to attend the military review next day in celebration of the Armistice of 1918 was withdrawn; his Ministers would not be expected to attend. The diplomatic corps had met on hearing of this and had decided to excuse themselves from the ceremony and IXth Army had taken the same decision.
It wasn't therefore quite the moment to enjoy an evening with the chief French delegate and his wife. But King Peter was staying with them at the Résidence des Pins. He had come up from Cairo on a visit to Monsieur Helleu and it was the British Minister's duty to entertain him, so we had asked the young King and three of his staff, his hosts Monsieur and Madame Helleu, Monsieur Chataigneau, Secretary General of the French delegation, and Madame Chataigneau and the Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Monsieur Tacla and his wife; and because of King Peter we couldn't very well put them off, though none of our guests, with the possible exception of the young King and his staff, could have wanted to come and none I believe, with the same possible exceptions, enjoyed the evening.
I did not, and I knew that B. was very worried for all his affable flow of easy talk at the dinner table. There were signs that I could read, as I watched his face beyond the lighted candles. He was talking to Madame Helleu about Guadeloupe (she came I believe from there) and the south of France, of a villa we had had one summer on the shore beyond Cannes and La Napoule where the red rocks begin. He didn't talk to her about V-----, that I know. For she was a stranger, her fine eyes were cold and inimical. He wouldn't talk to any of these strange French people of the place in France that he had once thought of as his home and where he had learned to speak their exact language more beautifully than they spoke it themselves because his tongue was enamored of its sounds. I don't know that he even thought of the old days at V---- that evening, but I did. I thought of the little chateau by the placid river and of old Anna the cook who made such delicious purée de pommes de terre, and Cousin Gaston in his corduroy jacket and quaint double-peaked cap and then I thought of our house in Paris and the whimsical proud beauties who had floated up the stairs to engage the company in a riot of badinage and fill the rooms with laughter. I could fit Madame Helleu and Madame Chataigneau into neither one nor the other; they were provincial women. Who indeed among all the French we had met in the Levant, with the exception of the Catroux', would have failed to ruin one of our little dinners in Paris when the battle of wits kept the table ringing with shouts and peals of laughter until everyone was talking at once and no one was allowed to finish a sentence? B. and I would end up when they had gone exhausted with too much joyous laughing. They didn't laugh, these French colonials, they sniggered and winked, or they simpered like the Ambassador, Monsieur Helleu, who was gazing at me out of glassy eyes. General de Gaulle had chosen strange people to represent him in the Levant.
No, B. and I were not enjoying our evening nor was Tony, his languid head bent above Madame Helleu's elaborate coiffure expressing the quintessence of boredom, nor Hamish, dear Hamish, who was crimson with suppressed excitement, nor Francis, who was very shocked that the French Ambassador should be tiddly when he arrived at the British Minister's house for dinner. But I may be wrong about Helleu. It is possible, knowing as he did what was going to happen, since he had arranged it all before coming, that he was amused. It may have given General Catroux's small, timid, bibulous successor a certain secret satisfaction to sit at our table and reflect on the surprise in store for us. His very bright red nose twitched. Was it the thought of the Senegalese and the Fusiliers Marins who were ready and awaiting the signal that made it twitch? Perhaps it was the fun of watching Tacla all unconscious of what was to befall him in a few hours. The same may have been true of large, bland, smiling Chataigneau though he denied later any knowledge of what was afoot; but I doubt if their wives were enjoying the joke. Madame Helleu's stately manner was strained, the mask of her make-up threatened to crack, and Madame Chataigneau was quite incomprehensibly vivacious. Habitually so distraite that she seemed not to hear what one said and answered---if she spoke at all---with a remark that made no sort of sense, on this particular evening she made such an unusual effort to be agreeable that I grew more and more uneasy as the evening wore on.
Selim Tacla and gentle Renée his wife were I knew unhappy. They were our friends. B. had a high opinion of Tacla, and I had grown very fond of her. She was a frail little thing, sensitive, intelligent and unassuming. They would both have preferred perhaps not to come. But it was right that he should be there. If the Lebanese government was really a government then some member of that government should be present when we entertained royalty, and Monsieur Tacla could afford to ignore the French insult to his government in this house that was a bit of England. He was doing so very successfully. His fine square face was tranquil, his manner composed. Indeed we were all pretending very adequately that nothing had happened, the room looked nice with all the many candles lighted in the crystal candelabra, King Peter was talking away quite happily and little Helleu was busily drinking champagne with the great ghostly presence of General de Gaulle looming behind him to give him courage.
What had happened had been a series of moves on the part of the Lebanese to achieve the independence that had been promised them and a series of countermoves on the part of the French to checkmate them. The opening had been the elections. General Catroux had been called to Algiers before they took place and had left Monsieur Helleu to see them through. The result had been a great shock to the French and a serious blow to their prestige. For the elections had been free, the great issue had been national independence and an end to French influence as against a treaty with the French and a return to a modified form of the old mandatory system, and the result had been an overwhelming victory for the Nationalist parties both in Syria and the Lebanon.
What made this the more humiliating to the French was the fact that they had taken very energetic measures to influence the elections and had failed. General Catroux had decreed that the voting should be free and by secret ballot, but Monsieur Helleu and his henchman Boegner had not been content to abide by the spirit of this decision. The pro-French clergy had been mobilized, and the sûreté agents had been sent out through the country a week before the election to persuade, threaten and bribe the electors. Rumor was that the French had spent fifty million francs on the campaign; this naturally enough was denied and a story was told in the villages that the British Minister had been seen riding through the mountains on a white horse carrying bags of gold. But what the French could not deny was the fact that their agents had spent the week before the election inciting the people to vote for the French candidates, on polling day had managed to exclude by force in many places, the "watchers" of the Nationalist party and had tampered with the ballot boxes. 'The result in Jebeil, a district to the north of Beirut where Emile Eddé was influential, had been laughable. There were thirty-seven hundred voters in Jebeil and thirty-seven hundred votes had been cast, a 100-per-cent poll with a 90-per-cent pro-French majority. And yet, in spite of these efforts, the French party had failed.
The French had been, to put it mildly, very stupid. In their eagerness to sway the election they had thrown off all disguise and come out openly against the sovereign rights of the people. And then, realizing in the middle of the campaign what they had done, they had endeavored to confuse the issue by calling the National candidates the British candidates. But again, though the result had evil consequences, they were not what the French expected. The educated classes knew quite well that the British were backing no candidates and interfering in no way with the elections, those among the ignorant villagers who believed that their National candidates were protected by the British did not resent the fact, but they did, on the contrary, identify the British as never before with their own national ambitions.
The part played by the British in this struggle had. been a very plain one. There were British troops everywhere in the country and their presence had given the people courage to vote as they wished. That was all. But the French in their discomfiture could not believe it. How could they believe that this to them weak inferior little race whom they despised would dare to defy them? How could they admit to themselves that they were detested by a large majority of the people even in the Christian Lebanon and their presence in the country resented? 'They couldn't. They do not acknowledge the unpalatable truth to this day. In '43 they chose to believe that the British were at the back of it all, that all this ferment over independence was a deep British scheme and the British Minister, Major General Sir Edward Spears, the biggest schemer of the lot.
We shall see how carefully this idea was cultivated, and how it grew into a legend welcomed with enthusiasm by the French Assembly in Paris in May, 1945. The idea may have been a comfort to the Grand Sérail of Beirut in '43, it may have been a sop to their pride; it didn't get them out of their difficulties. The new Chamber must meet and elect a new President and a new government must be formed, in both countries.
It is the tradition in the Lebanon that the President should be a Christian, the Prime Minister a Moslem, and the various portfolios divided among the Christians, Moslems and Druses so that all three religious faiths should be fairly represented. The tradition was followed; Bechara Khoury, a Maronite, was elected President, Read Sohl, a Moslem, became Prime Minister, Selim Tacla, of the Greek Orthodox Church, Foreign Secretary, and so on. Read Sohl had been sent repeatedly into exile by the French and was well known for his anti-French sentiments, but Tacla was a no less ardent patriot. Indeed it began to look as if these men of different religious faiths, citizens of a country where religion had been such a disruptive influence for so long, represented a people united at last by a powerful sentiment, patriotism.
It was this government and the recently elected Chamber of Deputies who had precipitated the crisis that so disturbed our dinner party on November 10. For on the eighth they had voted unanimously to modify their constitution without French approval. The vote had been understood as, and indeed was, a gesture of defiance but it had surprised no one. Boegner and Monsieur Helleu had foreseen what was going to happen. They had known since the election that the new Chamber was going to be troublesome and Helleu had gone to Algiers the beginning of November presumably to consult the National Committee. He had then sent a telegram from Cairo asking Read Sohl to postpone the sitting of the Chamber until his return, but the Chamber had met, the deputies had voted and Helleu had returned on the ninth to find that the decision to modify the constitution was about to be published in the local press. He, or perhaps it was Boegner, had then acted with decision. Every newspaper office in Beirut was invaded on the afternoon of the tenth by the sûreté, and the newspapers were confiscated. At the same time the invitation to the Lebanese government to attend the military review on the eleventh was withdrawn. The crisis was on as we sat down to dinner.
An interminable evening. B. took Monsieur Helleu off to what we called the green drawing room when the men joined the ladies, and remained closeted with him for what seemed hours. I was left to look after the King and our other guests in the pink drawing room, with Tony, Hamish and Francis to help me. It wasn't easy and it grew no easier as the night wore on. Madame Helleu sat upright and talked a great deal. Madame Chataigneau was vivacious in spasms, Renée Tacla drooped on her chair. I listened with difficulty to the young King's boyish chatter. The servants brought drinks, Tony passed orangeade to the ladies; Hamish took whisky to the men. Francis poked up the fire, threw on more logs; Tacla's face was a document of patient suffering. Monsieur Chataigneau smiled a great many large smiles. Madame Helleu talked about Shakespeare's plays and Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Tony unfolded his long legs and wandered into the great hall that separated us from the green drawing room. It was after midnight. I began to feel very fatigued and signaled to Hamish for a cigarette. He came to my side, gave me a light.
"What," I asked under my breath, "is B. doing? Is he still closeted with the Ambassador?"
"No. They are outside in the hall. They've joined the three Yugoslavs."
"You couldn't, I suppose---"
He looked distressed. "I'm afraid not, Lady Spears."
It was one o'clock when B. and the Ambassador rejoined us and at one-thirty our royal guest at last gave the signal to go.
B. and I accompanied him down to the front hall. Francis offered him a pen and he wrote his name in the guest book. The others did so each in turn, excepting Monsieur and Madame Chataigneau. We noticed afterwards that the Chataigneaus had not written their names. When they had all gone save the two secretaries B. said:
"Well, I'm greatly relieved. Helleu has given me his word of honor that he will do nothing likely to disturb the peace."
The party from the Résidence des Pins must have reached home shortly before two in the morning, the Taclas a little later. At three-thirty Tacla's house was invaded by a company of Fusiliers Marins, he was arrested and carried off. The same thing was happening to the President of the republic and other members of the Lebanese government in their several homes. The Fusiliers Marins dealt with Tacla and Camille Chamoun; Senegalese, commanded by French officers, dealt with the President and the Prime Minister. In Tripoli other troops had arrested Deputy Abdul Hamid Karami. By four in the morning the President and all the government with the exception of Abou Chala, Minister of Justice, who couldn't be found, and the Druse Minister of War had been seized and carried off to Rachaya, an ancient fortress in the mountains.
My bedroom adjoined the green drawing room, there was a glass door between with a curtain across it, and I woke as it seemed to me in the middle of the night to see a light shining through the curtain. "What a bore," I thought, "the servants have forgotten to turn out the lights. Shall I get up? No, I'm too sleepy. What does it matter?" But I did get up and there was B. in his room getting into his clothes. It was five o'clock.
"What has happened?"
"The President has been arrested and taken off to the mountains. It was done with the greatest brutality. Young Bechara Khoury came to tell me. He is in the drawing room."
"I'd better get dressed."
"Yes, I've sent for Dan and have put in a call for Dick Casey. You might ring Robin, will you, while I'm dressing? Just ask for the duty officer at the mission, and he'll put you through."
I took up the phone by his bed. B. went on talking. "Colonel Isham is coming down from IXth Army; there'll be others; we'll want breakfast---coffee anyhow."
Robin's voice was sleepy when I got through to him.
"I'm calling for the general, Robin. There's trouble. He'd like you to come round as quickly as possible."
"Right. Give me ten minutes to get on some clothes."
B. was putting on his shoes. "According to young Khoury all the government has been arrested. At the President's the Senegalese arrived armed with loaded revolvers and fixed bayonets, disarmed the Lebanese guard, broke down the front door and burst into the daughter's room. She's thirteen---she was asleep. They tore her mosquito net down with their bayonets and demanded where her father was. He was in bed of course. He and his wife share a room. They hauled him out of bed, watched him while he got dressed, gave him no time to pack a bag, and hustled him down the front steps. They had seized young Khoury and locked him in the guardroom, calling him 'son of a dog,' 'son of an Englishman,' but one of them let him out as the President was being hustled down the outside stairs. 'Let him see the cad,' was the pleasant remark. Then they took him off to the sûreté who let him go and he came straight here."
B. tied his shoelaces and got up. "The boy fell into my mosquito net in the dark. I couldn't think what it was. Then I turned on the light. There was blood on his face." He hurried out.
It was morning so I opened the shutters, had a quick bath and got dressed. Bechara Khoury isn't a strong man. He is heavy and rather feeble physically. The thought of him in the hands of black troops wasn't pleasant.
By seven o'clock the house was like a railway station; officers from IXth Army and the Spears Mission, bishops of the Maronite Church and the Greek Orthodox, Deputies, press---not the French press of course---only the Arabic. No Frenchmen darkened our doors that day. Dan was there by six. Robin soon after. George Wadsworth, American Minister, was among the earliest. Wadir, our excellent butler, had organized breakfast by six-thirty in the dining room. Coffee, bread and butter, eggs---but not many took time to sit down to it, so we carried coffee through to Mr. Wadsworth, who was writing a dispatch in one room, to Dan taking down Haliel's story in another. The Archbishop of Beirut, Monseigneur Khoury, marched in at seven-thirty to say, "I have come in the name of all the Christians in the Lebanon to demand British armed intervention." Then the Grand Mufti came, then Abou Chala and Emir Arslan, the two Ministers who had not been arrested ---very excited they were---so were most people. Secretaries were running back and forth summoning B. or Dan or Robin to the telephone. Cairo came through, then Jerusalem and Damascus, then Cairo again, and every now and then there would be a roar of bombers flying over the house.
Zelfa Chamoun walked quietly in soon after seven, very smart in white linen, her fair hair smooth, her sweet mouth faintly outlined with lipstick; she looked charming, as if she hadn't a care in the world.
"Have they got Camille?"
"Oh yes." She gave a little laugh. "The Fusiliers Marins were with us at three but the officer was quite nice about it. He told Camille to pack warm clothes for a long stay in a cold climate. I only came to ask the general's advice. Can I see him?"
"Of course. There he is in the corner with Mr. Wadsworth."
B. had caught sight of the pretty creature and came forward.
"I came to ask you," she said to him, "if I should call out the people of the mountain---they are all armed and ready---or if I should wait."
B. was I think even in the midst of the turmoil a little taken aback by this, but he didn't hesitate.
"Wait, Zelfa. My advice to you is to do nothing."
"All right," she said, and went away, walking lightly, as she had come.
I didn't hear what had happened at Read Sohl's until later. They live in the Moslem quarter, some distance away; and no one came to tell us perhaps because there was no one left in the flat but the Prime Minister's young wife and his mother and his four little girls and the servants. It was only next day that Madame Sohl went to B.'s office to ask him to intervene. She is a strict Moslem and comes of a good family, the Jabris. They are big landowners in Aleppo and I believe very wealthy; swells in fact in the Arab world. Madame Sohl never goes out unveiled and never receives her husband's friends. But she hired a carriage and drove with her mother-in-law to the mission. Lifting her veil when she was shown into B.'s office, she told him in broken French how black troops had burst into her bedroom and found her in bed with her husband. There was a French officer with them and when Sohl had been dragged off to prison he had ordered her to unlock all her cupboards, and the troops had searched the flat. Madame Sohl is young and pretty with a round fair face, an Anglo-Saxon type. She told her story with anger, her checks flushed, while the old lady, who can speak only Arabic and Turkish, sat patiently watching B.'s face and nodding her heavy head. B. says that he reassured them as best he could and conducted them down the many stairs to their carriage. There was a corporal at a desk on each landing and officers were hurrying up and down. When Madame Sohl came out of B.'s office and saw the corporal she made a quick movement to lower her veil, then tossed it back again and walked unveiled down the stairs. It was a compliment to the British and a sign of confidence that cost her an effort.
The Jesuits made libidinous fun of the whole affair, in a scurrilous French paper that appeared that evening. I was told on good authority that the article had been written by a French priest. It was difficult to understand why the Grand Sérail allowed such rubbish to be printed. The story of how a high-born Moslem lady's bedroom was invaded by black troops under the command of a French officer was not likely to raise their prestige in the Moslem world.
We turned on the radio at eight o'clock and heard a voice oozing with malignant venom. It was Monsieur Helleu announcing that he had abrogated the Lebanese constitution, dismissed the Chamber, arrested the government and appointed Emile Eddé as head of the Lebanese State.
It occurred to me half an hour later that Madame Bechara Khoury must be very unhappy and that it would be a kindness to go and see her. I can caught B. coming out of his study and asked him what he thought. "A very good idea. Go by all means."
The Becharas' house was only a few hundred yards down the hill from ours, but he told me to go in his car and asked Francis to see that his flags were on it. They would be a protection, he said, if there was trouble in the streets. There was no trouble that morning; the news hadn't yet got about the town; I could have walked quite easily; but I was glad to have Corporal Stephenson, B.'s devoted and reliable driver, with me, for as we turned the President's corner a truck came rushing down the street full of Fusiliers Marins with machine guns trained on the street and they looked unpleasantly excited as they dashed past.
There was no crowd in front of the President's house, only a small group of men and women standing quietly by the gate. The gate is on the street, and inside the gate a path leads to two flights of stone steps that curve up to the front door. The living rooms are all on the first floor as in many Lebanese houses, high above the court and the garden. Behind the house and overlooking it are the Senegalese barracks and I noticed as I walked up the path that there were tirailleurs on the roof of the barracks with rifles, but nothing happened and I went up the steps.
Haliel came down then to meet me and took me through the hall that was full of people, very quiet and frightened, into a sitting room where his mother was surrounded by her relations. She came forward and took both my hands and held them tight while she tried to speak, but at first she couldn't. It wasn't until the servant brought coffee that she could tell me about the morning, and while we sat there, people kept peeping at us through the door and I heard voices saying, "It's Lady Spears. Look. Lady Spears has come," as if my coming was something wonderful.
I stayed, I suppose, about half an hour and when I got up to go, she was very much moved and they all clustered round, so pathetically, asking if I could only bring some assurance that the President wouldn't be harmed, that I said I would come again next day and bring any news there was.
I had forgotten what importance the people of the East attach to visits, but I thought of this as I went home and of the difference between these sheltered women and my girls away off in the desert. Well, if my small friendly gesture meant so much to them, why should I not repeat it? 'There was nothing I could do at home. I might call perhaps on Renée Tacla, and Zelfa. And that is how it came about that I spent the ten days of the crisis going to see my Lebanese friends and brought down on myself by so doing some of the hatred that the French were pouring out on my husband. For General de Lavallade and his troops didn't like my driving through the streets, flying the British flag.
The streets were theirs. They had cleared them, they had captured them, they had driven the women and children off them with their machine guns; even the disdainful camels disappeared. And they patrolled the pleasant winding ways with their flowering gardens in great trucks full of armed black men, and if a crowd gathered anywhere, in the Place des Canons or the Place de l'Etoile or outside the Spears Mission, they fired into the crowd and if there were children about and they got shot or crushed under the wheels of tanks, Tant pis, it was their fault and they were canaille anyhow, dogs to be run over, as a French general put it to me long after. Des chiens à écraser ("Lebanese dogs") was a favorite phrase with the French I met in the Levant.
But the women of Beirut were too much for them, the gentle, timid women who belonged to the veiled East after all rather than to the blatant West. Frail little Evelyn Bustros came out, holding her white head high, and marched behind Zelfa Chamoun and Klodagh Tabet across the Place des Canons and down the Rue Clemenceau to the Spears Mission, and Najala Zemeddine, who is a Druse, and Addoura Beyhoum and Jenna Najar, who are Moslems, and Anna Tabet of course and Renée Tacla inevitably and her mother and many others from the aristocratic Sursock quarter, who had looked to France as the pattern of all culture for so long. They started from Zelfa's house, a small group, away the other side of the town and as they passed down the streets other groups joined them; and then women who saw them from the windows came running down, and there were many Moslems among. them; Moslems, Druses, Christians, Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, even Presbyterians---Zelfa and Klodagh are Presbyterians---they were all out that day, and they numbered hundreds when they reached the Place des Canons and the gendarmes couldn't stop them and the gallant troops who had captured the town dared not shoot them down. They made their way to the British and the American Ministers and to the consuls of Egypt and Turkey and Irak and to the house of the Grand Mufti. They went three times on three different days through the town to ask that their cause be put fairly before the governments of these countries; and the gendarmes hustled them and tried to bar the way, but when the French ordered the gendarmes to turn the water hoses on them the gendarmes refused---so only the students (mostly from the American University) were shot down and some friends of the President's wife when they went to see her and some children.
One small boy was shot dead in the Place des Canons because he was pulling down a photograph of General de Gaulle, and some children were crushed by French tanks in Tripoli and others were killed and wounded at Sidon, I saw them afterwards in the British hospital---a little girl died who had been shot through the stomach---but there were not many dead. The total casualties among the Lebanese I believe were eighty dead and wounded. It was not, you observe, a big affair, our crisis, it didn't compare with what happened in Syria two years later. And if Emile Eddé, the ten-day Quisling drove through the streets with a tank and an armed lorry and armed motorcyclists as escort, it seems excessive by way of protection. But what interests me most as I think of those days is the behavior of the women. For they surprised me. Not Zelfa and Klodagh. I would have expected them to be tough. They were made of the same stuff as Dorea and Barbara and T. W. But Renée and the little old lady, Evelyn Bustros and the others from the quartier Sursock, they were essentially timid women, sensitive and very modest, who shrank from publicity. It cost them something to go out into the streets and make a public spectacle of themselves. Nor could they know that the black troops bearing down on them in their great trucks wouldn't shoot. You may say they achieved nothing, that the governments of the great powers took no notice, that even at G.H.Q. Cairo they were considered a nuisance or perhaps a joke. Who can tell? I know they achieved one thing and I believe that although the first fine frenzy has dwindled it will last. They achieved national unity, they brought to birth a united spirit, and I do not think it will be easy to snuff it out.
THE crisis lasted ten days. At the end of ten days the French were obliged to give in, bring back their prisoners from the mountains and reinstate the government. The Lebanese people had defeated General de Gaulle, but neither De Gaulle in Algiers, nor General Chadebeck de Lavallade, in command of the troops in the Levant, nor even the reasonable French officers with whom I have been able to discuss the matter since, can bring themselves to believe this; they prefer to believe that they were defeated by the British Minister.
I like the truth. I like to get at it and I like to tell it. I have stuck to it in this narrative and I mean to tell it now in so far as I am able. Not the whole truth of the Lebanese crisis, for I don't know it. I didn't see the telegrams, was never shown any secret dispatches. B. was very strict about this. If we were alone of an evening he would come home from his office with a bag full of official papers and would deal with them after dinner while I read a book or fiddled with the wireless. Sometimes he would look up over his spectacles and say, "Would you like to see this?" and hand me a folder marked "Most Secret" and it would be a résumé of the radio news for the past fortnight.
And if I did know all about everything, how could I or anyone assess the part he played in the shaping of the fate of the Lebanon? Its future is linked now with the whole Arab world, but it is not yet sealed. The people of that small beautiful country are not free from interference in their home affairs. They have acquired a part of their sovereign rights but the French are still clinging to their privileged position in the land. Messrs. Helleu, Boegner, Baelen and De Lavallade are gone. There was a great French house cleaning after the affair of November '43 but other officials came in their place. General Bénèt took possession of the Résidence des Pins, Count Ostrorogue became very busy at the Grand Sérail, and the troops? Well, the local troops have been handed over at last, but the French troops have not yet gone. Indeed other and more French units were landed in Beirut Harbor in 1945 with what results the C. in C. Middle East knows only too well. It was in Damascus this time that trouble arose, such serious trouble that a British armored division had to come up from Egypt, and the French Army in Syria had to be escorted out of the country under British protection. France nevertheless is still hoping to regain her lost prestige in the Levant. General de Gaulle is a powerful man and very tenacious. He resigned the other day and disclaimed further responsibility for his country but he achieved a part of his purpose and had time before he left office to tell the French people that they had won the war. There was a great day in Paris when he walked down the Champs Elysées with the British Prime Minister amid cheering throngs, all cinema audiences will know how wonderful it was, but no one knows what they said to each other. It seems hardly possible that they should have mentioned, on such an occasion, the affairs of the little Levant States, or that tiresome question of a treaty between them and the French, and yet there is an understanding of some sort between Great Britain and France concerning these countries; and we seem to have come to it without consulting them. Why not? In London you hear people say, "France is a great country; she proved a broken reed in '39 and has been greatly weakened since by the German occupation, but we must lean on her all the same. The Lebanon is small and of no consequence. The Arabs? Who cares for the Arabs?" But the Arabs of Syria and the Lebanon have not yet given in. B. and I assisted at the beginning only of a struggle that is still going on and for which he is still being held accountable by the French and some of those who call themselves the friends of the French.
It is true that he championed the people of the Lebanon against the French in the crisis of November '43. It is true that in Syria, as in the Lebanon, their leaders and many simple obscure people came to him for help and advice, and he did help them and his advice always was to keep quiet, refrain from violence, have confidence that the British government would stand by its guarantee. That after all was the crux of the business. He was acting for England. He was upholding the justice of the Arab cause, not for their sakes but for our own. The prestige of Great Britain and her good name throughout the Arab world was at stake. If there are those in Whitehall who think this is of little consequence, it didn't appear so to the men on the spot. For the British Minister in the Lebanon there was no choice, nor was there any dissenting voice that I know of anywhere among the high British officials in the Middle East. Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran were all of one mind. The French in Beirut had precipitated a crisis that left no excuse for hesitation. The British Minister in Beirut happened to be a man of great determination, capable of making quick decisions, and incapable of asking himself whether or not he would get into trouble for doing his duty; he acted instantly with energy and decision.
They said, afterwards, the people of the country, that he had saved them, that had he not been there, the government would not have been reinstated, but I believe that he saved the French from the worst consequences of their own folly and the Levant from much bloodshed. And in my own mind, I am persuaded that his greatest achievement was to have convinced the French, before it was too late, that they must give way.
Not the French in the Levant. They had quite lost their heads. It was useless to attempt to reason with Helleu or De Lavallade or the saturnine Boegner. We never had a squeak out of Helleu after his broadcast on the morning of the eleventh. The impression was that he had gone into hiding with a bottle of whisky. De Lavallade, who seemed to have acted in the belief that the French were alone in the Lebanon, did keep in touch with IXth Army when he found the British were interested in what was going on, but he was a singularly obtuse and humorless man. Had he had a sense of humor, he wouldn't have placed two baby tanks at the end of the tramway that led to the racecourse and the French Residency, nor have given Emile Eddé such a formidable escort of tanks, armed trucks and motorcyclists to take him to his office in the Petit Sérail. Very few of the people in the town were armed, they made no attempt to attack any French barracks or residence. They closed their shops and went on strike. Large crowds gathered in the public squares to be dispersed by the machine guns of the Fusiliers Marins. Men and boys in the crowd tore down some pictures of General de Gaulle and set fire to a number of French trucks and armored cars; that was the sum of their violence, unless one counts as violence the action of the young women who forced their way through the cordon of gendarmes when they marched to the Spears Mission in a deputation.
General de Lavallade would answer to this perhaps that the mob would have attacked the French barracks had it not been for the measures he took to prevent them; that a display of force was necessary. But neither Helleu nor De Lavallade nor Emile Eddé would seem to have been in danger of their lives from Zelfa Chamoun and Klodagh Tabet and little Madame Bustros. Nor was it the impressiveness of French military might that kept the crowds within bounds. It was, as I remember, a posse of British mounted police walking their horses through the town who restored quiet when the shouting grew too loud; and it was almost all shouting. Had the Druses come down from the mountains the affair might have taken a different turn, but they didn't. They threatened to do so more than once during the ten days. Again and again word would reach the British Legation that they were about to move. Once I remember a messenger came at three in the afternoon to say that the Druses were marching on Beirut at five. Each time B. was able to stop them. They accepted his advice and refrained from action, the bloodshed of 1925 was not repeated and that of 1945 in Damascus, which was coming, was averted for the time being.
No, the French representatives in the Levant were not reasonable men. But they were after all only agents of the Defense Committee in Algiers. Monsieur Helleu had received his instructions and had made a sad mess of trying to carry them out, but the fact that he was acting on instructions received was clear. Though an effort was made by Algiers later to disclaim responsibility there was little doubt as to where the responsibility lay. Indeed the miserable little man on the spot had made great play on the eleventh with a telegram approving his conduct from General de Gaulle, he waved it before the eyes of the press like a banner. There were even some who said afterwards that the whole affair had been a struggle between two strong men, De Gaulle and the British Minister in Beirut. That is as may be. No one could deny that these two who had once worked hand in hand together were now arraigned as opponents. With De Gaulle determined to set his foot on the neck of the Levant regardless of all promises of independence, and Spears equally determined that his country should not break its word, there was no denying that a battle was joined. One or the other had to give in and a liaison officer had to be found so that Algiers and Beirut could talk to one another. Algiers meant the Committee of National Defense with De Gaulle and Giraud as joint heads, but it was already De Gaulle in reality, and General Catroux was the man chosen to represent him. Beirut meant the British Minister to the Levant States and the Minister of State in the Middle East; so Cairo took a hand. B. had telephoned Dick Casey at once on the morning of the eleventh. He arrived the next day, stayed twenty-four hours, then General Catroux turned up and went back to report to his obstinate chief. Then they both were with us again. There was a great deal of coming and going during that brief ten days. Many conferences took place in B.'s study behind closed doors. I didn't hear what was said. I would watch the cars draw up from the drawing room window, see Dan arrive with arms full of papers, and Hutchins perhaps or Tony or Hamish or Colonel Furlong from the consulate. Then the guard would present arms and Francis would run down the steps and General Catroux would get out of his car and take the salute, and his slight weary figure would disappear into the house, and I would be left to twiddle my thumbs until at three perhaps B. and Dick would be ready for lunch; or if it was evening, we would sit down to dinner with luck by ten, and Dick would tell me something, possibly, of what at had transpired and I would try to piece together from the fragments of their talk how things were going.
So my story of our little crisis is not the whole story, it is only my own very scrappy view of the happenings. I will tell it briefly as I wrote it down at the time in my diary.
11 P.M. November 11th, '43. The town quiet this morning but some disorder in the streets later. All shops were closed, all civil telephones cut off. The consulate is completely isolated, even their military line, and all newspapers have been seized save the two controlled by the French.
Went to see Zelfa Chamoun this afternoon. Her house was thronged. She and Klodagh very quiet but getting impatient. Klodagh said, "It seems to us about time to call out our people. The general wants us to keep quiet, but we feel we've had about enough." A man rushed in just then very pale and breathless to say that there had been shooting at the President's house and that the outside stairs were streaming with blood. This caused such consternation and excitement that I thought I'd better go and see if it was true. Found it was so. Blood had trickled down both sides of the double stairway and along the path to the gate. A large crowd had gathered since my morning visit, not violent, rather scared. There were shouts of "Vive l'Angleterre," "Vive le Général Spears," as I went in, and much applause. Very embarrassing. Madame Bechara was evidently frightened. Emile Eddé had passed with his armed escort, and the troops in the lorry had fired on the crowd. Then the Senegalese stationed on the roof of the barracks overlooking the house had joined in and begun firing at the front door and the windows. Three Lebanese had been wounded at the top of the steps and one Frenchman killed. As the Lebanese gendarmerie have all been disarmed Madame Bechara cannot appeal to them for protection. The French are the only people who could give protection and it is the French who are doing the shooting.
I asked her if she would like a British guard for the night or would she prefer to come to us. She said she would do whatever the general thought best. Went to the office to consult B. who said a British guard was impossible but by all means to take her and the children for the night. So I went back and brought them here.
November 12th. Four children were shot today on their way to school, by Senegalese. I believe they threw stones. Radio Levant (Beirut station) gives an official denial by the French that they have employed any colored troops. Civil telephones still not working. All classes at the American University have been suspended.
The Bechara family have gone home.
Bombers continue to fly low over the town and Sholto Douglas has sent a message that these Blenheims were not given to the French for the purpose of terrifying the population and that if this happens again he will cut off supplies.
Forgot to mention that the whole town is plastered with photographs of Stalin and De Gaulle, the two heads side by side as if taken together. They are separate photographs but are pasted on the walls and boardings as if each pair was one of two buddies posing together before the camera. They were put up all over the town during the night of the arrests.
Went to Zelfa again today and Renée. They all ask me for news and I have none. I go to see Madame Bechara Khoury every day as she is very anxious about the President. I ask B. each morning what I can say to reassure her. He always says the same thing. "Tell her not to worry, that they won't harm the President and it is going to be all right."
13th. French troops fired on a deputation of students outside the Spears Mission this morning wounding six. B. was out when it happened.
14th. Dick Casey arrived yesterday at four and left at noon today. He had interviews with a number of people including the Grand Mufti and the archbishop. He is backing B. up to the hilt and I gather from what they let drop that London is reacting strongly for once. Interesting to note how jealous Casey, the Australian, is for the good name of Great Britain. Winston himself couldn't be more enraged at the suggestion that we should condone the monstrous behavior of our allies, not that anyone has suggested such a thing.
Have just heard that De Lavallade is in Cairo and has declared at a press conference that everything is under control here, order established, Beirut perfectly quiet, that there have been no casualties and has repeated that the French have employed no black troops at any time!
15th. Called on Madame Read Sohl this afternoon in the Moslem quarter. A fringe of people on both sides of the street clapped when they saw the Union Jack on the car and gathered, it seemed, round the door, after I went in. Howells was driving and a lance corporal of the British military police had been given me as escort. Madame Sohl's flat is on the second floor. My lance corporal came up with me, closing the iron door in the street after us. The rooms were full of women and children, only one man, the Iraqi Minister. Madame Sohl introduced her mother-in-law, her sister, her four little girls---the oldest is nine the youngest two---and took me through the crowd of women to an inner drawing room behind glass doors. The lance corporal waited outside the flat on the landing. We had been sitting for about five minutes when shooting began in the street and he rushed in saying, "Don't be alarmed, my lady, it's only some French troops in lorries, firing at the crowd."
"But why, Corporal? What troops?"
"I don't know, my lady, but there seem to be five lorry loads. There's a French officer with them---a major."
Panic among the women and children. Some of the children started to cry. I said I had better go, that I was so sorry if I was the cause of this. But Madame Sohl said I must stay for coffee, and as the sound of firing had stopped, I stayed another ten minutes and drank my coffee to the muffled sobs and whimpering of children. Very worried at the idea that people might have been killed or hurt because of me, but furious to think that the French were trying to drive me off the streets. There were three tanks drawn up across the street on the left of the entrance when I went down. A French officer with four stripes was standing a little way off opposite the door and a cordon of black troops was holding the crowd back at a distance of about a hundred yards. Howells was waiting, he'd been sitting quietly in the car all this time.
I asked him if he was all right. He said, "Quite all right, my lady. 'The only thing that worried me was that the people came rushing to the car when the firing started, they swarmed all over it."
"Why did they do that?"
"For protection, because of the flags." He nodded toward the two small Union jacks. "I thought they'd break the springs of the car."
"Well, we'll go home now, please."
'The French officer with the four stripes kept his distance while this was going on, the crowd was watching, perfectly quiet, behind the cordon of troops. Howells pointed in his direction. "He has given me orders," Howells said, "not to drive back the way we came, but to take the Rue Bastia because it is guarded by French troops."
I said, "Nonsense. I won't be told by any French officer what street I am to take. We'll go back the way we came."
The tanks were supposed to barricade the road but they weren't staggered, there was room to pass, so we slipped past their noses and drove home as we had come. It appears that the officer in question had offered five Syrian pounds each to some boys in the crowd (street urchins) if they would throw stones and spit at me when I came out. They refused the money. 'The oldest of the group has been to the mission with Klodagh and signed a written statement to this effect and Howells said when B. questioned him that he had seen the Frenchman offering the boys money but hadn't known what it was for. The purpose of the maneuver is obvious. If the little creatures had spat at me and thrown stones the crowd would have gone for them, the Senegalese would have intervened, there would have been a fine mess and De Lavallade would have complained that I had caused a riot.
Final episode of the day was what looked like an attempt on B.'s life tonight just outside this house. He was on his way home, the car was held up by a French airman who brandished a loaded revolver through the window. If he meant to shoot he didn't have time. B.'s military. policeman was very quick, disarmed the man---the gun had five rounds---and marched him off to police headquarters.
November 17th. Fighting has broken out in the mountains. 'The French sent troops and tanks to arrest the two Lebanese Ministers who are still at liberty in the Druse country and they defended themselves.
General Catroux arrived yesterday and moved into the house next door to Donna Maria, in the quartier Sursock. Why not the Résidence des Pins? It looks like a snub of Helleu. He, Catroux, is downstairs at this moment.
18th. Catroux wouldn't budge. He was taken aback it seems when B. asked to see the prisoners, then refused saying, "Unless I am allowed to arrange this matter in my own way General de Gaulle will withdraw all his people from the Lebanon." Not a very powerful threat since a great many would welcome such a move as the best possible solution, but neither Catroux nor De Gaulle seem able to understand how detested their people are in the country, nor can they believe that we are not trying to drive them out. Robin Hutchins tells me that De Gaulle complained to him last year in London about the Spears Mission, saying that it was usurping the functions of the Grand Sérail. Robin had been appointed as head of our military section, had been taken to see De Gaulle before leaving for Beirut and instead of a formal interview had been treated to an angry harangue. What business, De Gaulle asked, had the British to guarantee the independence of the Levant States? And when Robin answered, "I thought we had conquered the country together," De Gaulle replied, "That has nothing to do with the question. It is we the French who have given them their freedom, and it is for us alone to judge when they are fit to receive it."
Dick is coming back tomorrow to meet Catroux. The feeling here is that if the French don't give in and let the government out of prison, there will be the kind of trouble that cannot be quelled by a posse of British mounted police. The Damascus government has remained aloof up till now, but it can't do so much longer, and Iraq, Egypt and Transjordan are all watching.
The one good thing is that we now have some troops in the country. The Rifle Brigade has come up from Egypt and other units, even some Shermans. They are camped outside on the golf course and along the shore. Beirut is out of bounds to British troops, except for the guard on this house and the mission, but the people know they are here.
Very pleasant I must admit to have two British soldiers on guard with tommy-guns at our front door instead of the usual Palestinian Arab in his sentry box. Great comfort when the Rifle Brigade took over, even though those rosy-cheeked boys tramp over the flower beds and make a mess of the garden. They can do what they like, bless their hearts, just so long as I hear their young cockney voices outside my window. I suppose I've been under more of a strain than I thought, or I wouldn't have felt choky at the sight of their smart green berets when they came marching in.
Saturday 20th. Long meeting downstairs in B.'s study between Catroux, Dick Casey and B. I am supposed to know nothing about what transpired and I don't know much. B. is very cagey indeed, but I can't help forming my own impressions, and they are that De Gaulle is obstinate, Catroux playing for time and the local French in a very ugly mood indeed, so ugly that they have turned on Catroux for carrying on any negotiations whatever, or even consenting to discuss the matter with us. Their attitude only bears out what I felt about them when we first came two years ago. Peace in this country is vital to us because of the war but it is of no importance to them since they are not interested in the war, only in French prestige and their own pleasant billets. Men like Montclar would like nothing better than to see the whole of the Levant go up in flames. They are spoiling for a fight here. They would love to let their guns loose on this town. That we should stand in their way maddens them.
Sunday, 21st. Catroux came again yesterday morning. The interview I gather was more hopeful. Catroux has been visiting all sections of the community, Maronite Patriarch, Grand Mufti etc., and seems to be impressed by the strong feeling in the country. He looks dead-beat and very depressed. Perhaps he knows by now that the French must give way.
The latest French propaganda brought by a gossip from Algiers is that General Spears is no longer in office, "ne signe plus son courrier," and that the army commander has taken over.
Am told by another of my spies that Colonel Oliva-Roget came over from Damascus to see the Ministers in their mountain fortress and begged them weeping to save the prestige of "La France," and save them, the French, from IXth Army.
What a man! When we lunched with him a year ago in Suedia he talked to me of nothing but his mother, who is in France, how he missed her. He is old and I should think a dyspeptic and a neurasthenic with an Oedipus complex.
November 22nd. Very trying day yesterday. Spent almost all day alone and took several baths. A lot of coming and going downstairs, servants very excited as they'd seen ammunition being issued to our riflemen in the back yard. Lieutenant Easten, who is in command of our guard and is staying in the house, seemed to think something was going to happen, then all orders were canceled. B. very nervy, so I fear things are going wrong. This can only mean that the F.O. is getting cold feet, as the people here, the Lebanese, are standing firm and are keeping quiet. They are keeping quiet because they count on H.M.G. and on B. to see things through, for no other reason. If B. by any chance were obliged to let them down, he would of course resign. And then what? But I can't believe it will come to that.
III November 22nd. All over. The President and the Ministers are back; the government is reinstated; Emile Eddé they say has fled to the mountains. Very noisy morning. Shooting, shouting and singing came up from the direction of the President's house but B. didn't want me to go out so I didn't learn until lunchtime that it was all by way of rejoicing.
Visited Madame Bechara Khoury at four. A dense crowd blocked the street but the gendarmes made way for the car when they saw the flags. House packed, but I was taken through to Madame B. K., who said she would never forget what I had done for them all. I admire her. She has shown great steadfastness of purpose. She was really afraid they would kill Bechara, but told me repeatedly during these days that she would rather anything than he should give in and consent to a compromise. There was a possible compromise it seems on the basis of a French offer to release the Ministers but not reinstate the government. None would accept.
They weren't brutalized in their fortress but it can't have been very pleasant locked up in a room with windows painted over so they couldn't see out. The only news of what was happening they got from the servants who cooked and served their meals. Camille makes a joke of it all but is boiling. Karami had the worst of it as they hit him with the butt end of a rifle, didn't give him time when they arrested him to get dressed or collect his teeth and he left them behind in Tripoli. Poor Karami. He is a grand old chap, looks like an Irishman. I can see him with his white hair in disorder, arriving at the mountain prison in pajamas.
These people are so much more like us than anyone in England imagines. Their Arabic names make them seem strange to those who don't know them. Now I feel that I do know many of them and I find that they have the same emotional reactions, the same ideas about decency that I have. I understand them in fact better than I understand most Britishers. They are gay, spontaneous, sensitive and quick, where the British are solemn, phlegmatic and have their sensibility under such control that they are about as vibrant as blocks of wood.
It is all over, but our troubles and theirs have only begun.
The local French have learned nothing. They cannot admit that they have brought all this on themselves by their own folly. So they blame B. for everything. To say that it was all Spears's doing is too easy, it lets them out too beautifully at the moment, but it is bound to make trouble for them in the future.
One thing seems certain, they will never forgive B. and it appears that they are nearly as bitter about Catroux. He is probably the only Frenchman in the country who has arrived at a fair estimate of the situation and understood that for his people there were only two alternatives, give in or clear out, lock, stock and barrel. He chose to give in, and having made his choice he has taken pains to let it be clearly known. There is no ambiguity about it. The surrender is complete. He has published a statement undertaking that all powers shall be handed to the local government on a progressive plan, including the control of the troops on a basis to be negotiated.
This is good, and it was necessary, but he is not happy about it. How can he be? He has handled a very disagreeable job with great ability, has saved a remnant of French prestige and will receive no thanks from De Gaulle, while his compatriots on the spot declare that he has sold the pass.
November 23rd. B. came in just now to say that Catroux had sent a message warning him that there was a plot among some of the French here to bump them both off.
Incredible as it seems, they are already talking at the Grand Sérail about a treaty, the famous treaty that was the issue in the elections. The poor old President has scarcely had time to embrace his children, the Ministers have only been home for twenty-four hours and their jailers suggest that they should now sign a treaty recognizing their privileged position in the country.
November 29th. A general purge has followed the return of the government.
Helleu, Boegner, Baelen and Gautier have gone. De Lavallade is going. What is to come of it all? This is a backwater now. The war has moved away. All the big issues are being decided elsewhere. No one at home is interested in the Arabs. B. will get no thanks, whatever happens, for what he has done here?---and the French of course, here and in Algiers, are out for his blood.
Does it matter? Does he mind? No, not really. But he did love France, and when France went back on us, there was De Gaulle and the Free French, but now De Gaulle has done this and there is no one.
A question had been nagging at my mind for some days. I could avoid it no longer. It demanded an answer. What was I going to do about the hospital? I had equipped the hospital and given it to the Free French. It seemed at the moment a very strange thing to have done, but I had done it and I was still its honorary head. It bore my name--or more exactly, the name of the British Minister in Beirut. Could I go on with it? Did I want to? Wouldn't it be better to sever my connection with the French forces?
If I did, what became of the girls and the F.A.U. boys? The boys might carry on with the colonel, so would some of the girls perhaps. One couldn't tell what they would do. On the other hand the colonel might not want to keep them. Many of the old members had gone, but Biddy, Rachel and Iris had come out at my request, as had Jocelyn. And what of Dorea? I hadn't seen her for nearly three years, but she was there, holding down the London end, staunch, steady as a rock, she had just sent out two new nurses. She believed in the unit, so did half a million people in America. Leslie Benson sent them bulletins. The Hadfield-Spears Hospital was becoming a legend....
I was wretched. I worried and argued it out with myself day after day. How could I go on working for the French? 'The French as I had come to know them in the Levant weren't worth it. And they hated us. Our friends left us in no doubt about it. They were carrying on a whispering campaign against my husband. The whispers said that De Gaulle had asked for his recall, that he had already been recalled, that his successor was on the way out, that the Spears Mission was about to close down. All the gossips of Beirut were buzzing with malicious rumor. As for myself, when a friend pointed out at the Grand Sérail that I might have been shot the day they sent a military force to lay siege to Madame Read Sohl's house, the answer was that it would have been a very good thing if Lady Spears had been killed.
I went for a walk and thought about this. One Frenchman, perhaps several, wished me dead. More than a few were out for B.'s blood, and De Gaulle was most certainly among them. But I was head of a unit in the Free French forces. It didn't make sense.
Then a letter came from Colonel Vernier asking me when I meant to rejoin them. All was well, but they missed me. Mike was a great help, but the new nurses were making things difficult for Jean. They complained that they had come out to go to the front and were nowhere near the front since it had moved to Italy. He had explained that he couldn't arrange the war to suit them, but he felt the need of my support. He quite understood that my husband needed me and that I had many duties but he hoped the general would allow me to come. There had been some gossip about the events in Beirut but he had put a stop to it. He knew that the general was a true friend of France, and sent him his hommages.
I took B. the letter and put him my problem.
"What shall I do, B.?"
"Stick to it of course."
"You mean go back as if nothing had happened?"
"Certainly."
"But the French are so horrid here. I do so despise them."
"You always said the fighting troops were quite different from this lot."
"They are."
"Well then?" He was annoyed. He hates indecision.
"But De Gaulle? How can I go on working for De Gaulle?"
"You aren't doing it for him. Your hospital wasn't a personal gift to De Gaulle. It's your contribution to the war effort. And the war is still on."
"But it is you I'm thinking of." I suppose I looked what I felt, miserably undecided, for he grew angry and spoke with emphasis.
"What De Gaulle thinks of me and what I think of him has nothing to do with the hospital. You can't let down those girls, and you can't let down Colonel Vernier."
"They could get on quite well without me."
"That's possible, but if you severed your connection with the unit because of what has happened here, they would suffer for it. Make no mistake about that." He frowned, seemed plunged suddenly deep in thought but when he looked up, he spoke lightly as if with a certain disdain for all these complications. "It would be très peu élégant," he said, "to plaquer the Free French Division, just now. After all, I was instrumental in forming it."