Phlegmatic, often apathetic, sentimental but not emotional, they are a people capable of great outbursts of political action. They should not therefore be considered a people prepared to follow docilely and blindly where the United States leads. The failure to recognize the presence in British character of this fundamental, unruly independence even when it was flourished in their faces is one of the principal reasons why President Eisenhower and his administration were surprised by Britain's intervention in Egypt in the autumn of 1956. Granted that the President was involved in the election campaign, it is mystifying that a man of his experience in dealing with the British failed to see the signs pointing toward independent action. As early as August of that year letters in _The Times_ urged an independent course for Britain and France in the Middle East. One letter signed by Julian Amery, then a Conservative back-bench Member of Parliament, ended with the reflection that if the two countries followed such a course and took action independently of the United States, it would not be for the first time. That _The Times_ would give space to letters of this sort was a sign that the Establishment recognized the ideas they contained. In September, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer visited Washington, he made it clear to the most important of his hosts that Britain would not take the Egyptian seizure of the Suez Canal lying down--that if this was to be a struggle for Britain's existence, his country would prefer to go down with the guns firing and the flags flying. During that same month Sir Anthony Eden had written to President Eisenhower in terms which to anyone familiar with British official phraseology said that if Britain did not get a satisfactory settlement of its difficulties over the Canal through the United Nations, other action would be necessary. In speech after speech, especially at the Conservative Party Conference on October 13, the leaders of the government carefully stated that they did not exclude the use of force as a means of settling the Suez problem. The British government badly miscalculated the Eisenhower administration's reaction to intervention in Egypt. It expected benevolent neutrality from a trusted ally. It got pressure and criticism. But this miscalculation may have been natural under the circumstances, for it can be argued that Britain did not expect the United States administration to be surprised. It had, after all, given abundant direct and indirect warnings that force might be used as a last resort. How much of the administration's anger, one wonders, was based in the realization that it had been told what was going to happen--if only it had stopped to read again and think?