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The grave men gathered in the Cabinet room at 10 Downing Street were confronted with a problem unique in the proud history of Britain: they were afraid that Egypt and Israel would stop fighting and peace would break out in the Middle East. All Monday afternoon, as British paratroops ground down on Port Said and a Franco-British fleet hovered off the canal's mouth, Britain's Cabinet debated tensely. One member pointed out that the man who stepped in to referee a fight would hardly be justified in attacking the boxers if they stopped fighting. There was a murmur of uncomfortable assent. But Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden had gone too far to stop now. Only a matter of a few hours, he argued, separated them from full control of the Suez Canal and perhaps the downfall of Egypt's Nasser.
It was a curious position for the man whom the Opposition only ten months before was calling "the boneless wonder," who only 17 months ago had won a triumphal election on a platform of "working for peace." Elegant, unruffled, a good party man, priding himself on the quiet adjustment and the deft compromise, Eden had built a reputation as a diplomatic technician par excellence. But last week the diplomatic technician had plunged recklessly for force, the popular Prime Minister was under a shattering hail of critical fire unequaled in violence since the time of Neville Chamberlain.
War Aims. Within the quiet Cabinet room differences were minimized. Richard Austen Butler, who is in effect deputy premier though his title is only Lord Privy Seal, did not quarrel with the desirability of Eden's objectives in wanting to fight on. But, said "Rab" Butler pointedly, he himself had just made a speech, which he had thought was in line with Eden's views, saying that Britain had intervened in Egypt only to stop the fighting. How could he go back to the House and say now that Britain refused the cease-fire even though the other combatants had stopped? If Britain kept fighting after Egypt and Israel had stopped, he added, the rupture with the U.S. might become irreparable.
On this unresolved note, the Cabinet adjourned. In the House of Commons, the Opposition hammered at the government on the difference between what Eden said and what he did. Eden had said Britain was protecting the canal; but the British broadcasts from Cyprus were telling Egyptians: "You have committed a sin, that is, you placed your confidence in Nasser and his lies." Said Labor's Nye Bevan: "Here you have not a military action to separate Israeli and Egyptian troops. Here you have a declaration of war against the Egyptian government in the most terrible terms."
Laborites charged bitterly that "Russia would not have dared to take this action in Hungary but for the action of this government in Egypt." Eden stood his ground, unyielding, uncommunicative.