Seventy years ago, Britain and France, partners in decline, tried to take the Suez Canal by force. The odd thing is that neither country was led by an obvious jingo. Anthony Eden, a scholar of Arabic and Persian, stands out as the most cultivated occupant of 10 Downing Street in the postwar era. It is just that status anxiety makes sensible people do rash things. France would fight a hopeless war in Algeria and Britain would stay out of a euro-federalist project that it thought had no future: misjudgments that affect both nations even now.
70年前，英国和法国，这对“走下坡路的伙伴”，曾试图用武力夺取苏伊士运河。奇怪的是，当时两国的领导人都不是那种一眼就能认出的好战民族主义者。安东尼•艾登(Anthony Eden)通晓阿拉伯语和波斯语，在战后历任英国首相中堪称最有教养的一位。只不过，地位焦虑会让理性的人做出鲁莽的事。法国后来在阿尔及利亚打了一场注定无望的战争；英国则把自己排除在一个它自以为没有前途的欧洲联邦化项目之外——这些误判直到今天仍在影响两国。