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Lost Opportunity. To a Rhodesian government that had snatched its independence and refused to budge during more than a year of negotiations, such terms seemed stiff indeed. Although Smith signed the document, he made it clear that this did not indicate the approval of his government. Sure enough, after a ten-hour Cabinet session in Salisbury, Smith emerged to inform a cheering crowd of whites that the document had been rejected. "The Rhodesian government is prepared to accept the constitutional proposals," he said, but to accept the British terms for an interim government would amount to "unconditional and abject surrender." Smith accused Britain of trying to install a "Quisling government" that "would not be responsible to the people of Rhodesia. There would be no domestic leadership in Rhodesia. A tough British proconsul supported by British troops and Whitehall administrators would be placed in charge, and the Rhodesia we know today would be doomed."
Wilson thought otherwise. "It was a generous settlement we offered Rhodesia," he told a nationwide television audience. "Never in my lifetime has Britain been prepared to offer independence to a country before it had reached the stage of majority rule. In the long history of lost opportunities, I find it hard to discover one more tragic than that which Mr. Smith rejected."
No Force. An opportunity had been lost all right, but there was room for argument whether it had been lost by Smith—or by Wilson himself. Although the British demands fell somewhat short of "abject surrender," they were unrealistically harsh, especially in view of the fact that Smith had yielded on the major issue—eventual black rule—that had caused his regime to break away from Britain in the first place. They were the sort of terms that can be imposed only with a much bigger stick than Britain has been able to wield against Rhodesia.
In the 13 months since the Rhodesian rebellion, Wilson has been high in dudgeon but low in bludgeon. According to London's Sunday Times, he lost whatever chance he had to bring Rhodesia to heel when he "took the basic decision never to use force in Rhodesia." His economic sanctions, designed to topple the Smith government, have backfired. True, Rhodesian exports have declined and gasoline is rationed, but the pain is not severe. Factories affected by the embargo have begun to produce other goods. Far from turning Rhodesia's whites against Smith, the sanctions solidified his position as their leader against a hostile world.
Export Boycott. Nor were the "mandatory" sanctions that Foreign Secretary Brown proposed to the Security Council last week likely to be much more successful. What Britain was asking for was an international boycott of Rhodesian exports, and the boycott could hardly be expected to be effective without the cooperation of Rhodesia's good neighbor, South Africa, which has already made it clear that it will not go along.