For, whatever the alliance means to Americans, to Britons it has meant a special relationship between the two countries under which the United Kingdom is entitled to more consideration than she often receives. It was the realization that the United States did not recognize this special relationship which touched off the wave of criticism and doubt during the Suez crisis. From the welter of words loosed in that period--speeches, Parliamentary resolutions, editorials, and arguments in pubs--a central theme affecting relations between Britain and the United States emerged. The decision of the United States administration to condemn British action in Egypt and to vote with the Soviet Union against Britain in the General Assembly of the United Nations smashed the conception of the alliance held by millions of Britons. This sorry development is quite unaffected by such considerations as whether the British government should have ordered intervention or whether the United States government should have been as surprised by intervention as it was. The British regarded the alliance as one in which each partner was ready to help and sustain the other. They felt that the administration's actions mocked a decade and a half of fine talk about standing together. Traveling through Britain early in 1957, I found "that United Nations vote" was a topic which arose in every conversation and to which every conversation inevitably returned. Some could understand the logic of the United States. But very few understood how, in view of the past, we could bring ourselves to vote against Britain. Whatever Washington may think, the British believe they deserve special consideration because of their present exertions and past performances. They point out, accurately, that the United Kingdom has put more men, money, and matériel into NATO than has any other ally of the United States. They assert that, although there have been differences between the two powers, Britain has sustained United States policy in Europe sometimes, as in the case of German rearmament, at the cost of great political difficulty. An alliance, they say, should work both ways. Britons are thankful for American generosity after World War II. But their gratitude is affected by a powerful psychological factor often overlooked by Americans, one that strengthens the British belief that their country merits a special position in America's foreign policies. This factor is the British interpretation of the role played by their country in two world wars. It is an article of popular faith in Britain that the nation twice went to war in defense of smaller powers--Belgium in 1914 and Poland in 1939--and that the United States, whose real interests were as deeply involved as Britain's, remained on the sidelines for thirty-three months of the first war and for twenty-seven months of the second war.