Western Europe was not impressed by the statesmanship of Mr. Dulles at two serious crises: one arising from the possibility of Western military intervention in Indochina, and the other emerging after the collapse of the European Defense Community. Nor was Mr. Dulles's attitude toward America's closest allies, the British, in the period of British and French intervention in Egypt calculated to create the impression that the United States, as an ally, would remain true in good times and bad. Nowhere has British prestige and influence declined more rapidly as in the Middle East. Yet nowhere are Britain's economic interests greater. Recent events have emphasized the economic connection between Britain and the Middle East. But the ties that connect a group of islands set in the cold waters of the northern ocean with the arid, sunny lands of that area were established long before the discovery and exploitation of oil reserves made the Middle East vital to Britain's economic life. Sidney Smith, Abercromby, Nelson, Gordon, T.E. Lawrence--a whole battalion of British heroes won fame in the area. The empty deserts and clamorous cities have exercised a fascination on Britons for more than two centuries, have called explorers and scientists, missionaries and merchants eastward. Nor was the Middle East's strategic importance to Britain born with oil. Nelson destroyed the French on the Nile, Kitchener triumphed at Khartoum, and Montgomery fought at El Alamein because the land bridge between Asia and Africa and later the Suez Canal were considered vital to the existence of Britain as a world power. Centuries of involvement in the Middle East resulted in a strong British bias in favor of the Arabs. No such favoritism was extended to the Egyptians as a people, although certainly the British were at first as willing as the Americans to trust Colonel Abdel Nasser of Egypt. This bias, amounting in some cases to a blind affection, played its part in the formulation of British policy especially in the years when the state of Israel was taking shape. One example is the fact that the British consistently underrated Jewish military ability and overrated that of the Arabs. Egypt's seizure of the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956, was a punctuation point in the long history of Britain's involvement in the Middle East. No British government could permit control of the canal to be vested in a single country, especially a country so openly hostile, without going to the utmost lengths to break that control. Given the shipping and pipeline facilities of the summer of 1956, the passage of oil tankers through the canal was essential to Britain's economic life.