ABSTRACT
On May 24, during the first phase of the Middle East crisis, General de Gaulle proposed to the Great Powers directly concerned in the crisis that they should 'get together'. This was how, up until 1914, the Great Powers had tried to arbitrate forcibly so as to avoid the worst. In between the two meetings of the French cabinet, the Minister of Defence of the United Arab Republic had gone to Moscow; President Nasser had talked in a speech about destruction of Israel. According to the French President, only some new factor could allow us to hope for a peaceful settlement in the Middle East. One would need, however, to be extremely optimistic or wilfully blind to put France and Great Britain into the same category as the Soviet Union and the United States. One is far rather tempted to fear not the spectre of a general war but the widespread conviction that nuclear weapons make such a war impossible.
