Though tanks still peered through the shrubbery in downtown Damascus, Syria was calm. After Gamal Abdel Nasser had resigned himself to Syria's breakaway from the United Arab Republic ("May Allah help beloved Syria"), the world's nations hastened to welcome the newly independent state. In a blaze of flashbulbs and official smiles, U.S. Consul General Ridgway B. Knight drove up to the rose-walled Foreign Office in Damascus last week and presented a note extending formal recognition. Three days earlier, the new regime, coolly and without publicity, accepted Soviet recognition. Said one longtime Western observer: "This is the most pro-Western...
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