A British aircraft carrier stood at the ready, and a supply fleet of 130,000 tons waited off Southampton to load equipment for the Middle East. Britain's Anthony Eden seemed confronted with the choice of making good on his assiduous saber-rattling or accepting a humiliating backdown. "Will there be war over Suez?" was the question on British minds last week as the Prime Minister stepped to the dispatch box in the House of Commons and faced an aroused Labor Party, vociferously vowing to pluck him bodily from the brink of war.
Eden was calm and forceful. Unknown to the Laborites, he had got...