An ironic and most tragic phase of the extended inquest over Nationalist China’s demise and the part we played in it is that the Middle East is being lost the same tragic way.

While the awful potentialities of the incipient holy war should be getting skilled and undivided attention, members of Congress have haggled for months with State Department personnel over what Henry Wallace or Professor Lattimore may have said or meant back in 1949. [Truman’s Vice President and scholar Owen Lattimore] While the best State Department brains should have been dealing with the crises in Iran, Egypt, Pakistan and so forth, they have been busy trying to prove they never even considered recognizing the Chinese Communist government two years ago.

We don’t pretend to know the answers to the extremely complicated, explosive situation in the Near East, but we think it will be catastrophic if the facts have to wait for a political post mortem a few years hence before a decision is made as to proper policy.

The violent Moslem upheaval, under way from the East Indies to Morocco, is part of the historic developments unfolding in most backward parts of the world. Except for Pakistan, however, Moslem nationalistic pressures appear more political than religious. Nations everywhere are awakening and demanding their “rights.” Poverty and ignorance play a big part in putting in power the fanatics with desperate programs. Nationalism even splits religions. The tenuous state of the Arab League has shown that. Nationalism of the Moslem states is related with that of India, Indo-China and China only as part of a vast intercontinental revolt of the “have nots” against the “haves,” a throwing off of colonialism’s yokes.

Divisions and tensions between western countries stand in the way of securing peace and stability. The British and French are rivals in the Levant. The French accuse the British of encouraging Arab nationalism in France’s North African colonies. Turkey, a shining spot in the otherwise dismal picture, is chiefly Moslem, but occupies an anomalous position. Turkey has cooperated extensively with the west and has maintained an independent course in the United Nations. This makes Turkey suspect among the Arab states. Israel, with its modern, well-trained army, is technically at war with her Arab neighbors, whose indignation is traceable in part to failure to solve the Arab problem when Israel was created.

Perhaps United Nations trusteeship would save the Suez Canal and the Sudan from becoming easy pickings for the Communists, but the U.N. is crippled with divisions and feuds and its prestige is at low ebb. Weak, spiteful Iran thumbed its nose at the United Nations.

The United States, which has no record of colonialism in the east, has a historic opportunity to bring some kind of order out of the Middle Eastern chaos. The undertaking currently seems next to impossible. The primary sin of our country in 1949-50 was lack of effective leadership, not procommunism. Lack of effective leadership is still our primary sin. And as long as Washington remains more concerned about the policy of two years ago than today’s policy, there is little hope.