Evening star., 1951-12-17
IdeoIisn1 In a Rush

beglnnlng LnlS week, with Britain giving up
Its war-won authority over the region Libya
will undergo the final legal transformations that
are supposed to convert 1t into a completely in
dependent nation by next January /. The shift
to full sovereignty Is in keeping with resolution
adopted two years ago by the General Assembly
OF the United Nations. From the standpoint of
pure idealism, the change may be hailed as
great victory for the anti-colonial principle of
lf-determination-the right of every people to
be their own masters. AS a strictly practical mat
ter, however, there Is more than little reason
to regard the whole undertaking as an expert
ment Of very doubtful wisdom.
This Is so because Lbya in It's present stage
OF social, economic and political development,
seems to be anything but ready for complete in
dependence. To begin with, as pulled together by
Benito Mussolini when he made it an integral
part OF the Italian Fascist empire in 1899, it con-
SiStS of three distinctly separate areas that have
never lived and worked together in the pattern
or tradition of national unity. These areas
Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and the Fezzan, which
embrace vast territory of more than 100000
square miles-are now to become a single state
under constitution which. although 1t has yet
to be adopted, is expected to establish an heredi-
tary king and federal form of representative
government.
In terms OF the grave tension now existing In
the Middle East, the creation of such govern
ment Is not likely to be easy. Nor Is 1t likely to
have calming influence on that part of the
world. For within Libya today-especially as
between Cd Tripolitania whose major political
party is closely associated with Egypt and the
Arab League and (2) Cyrenaica whose pro-West-
ern Amir has strong ties with Britain and Is
supposed to become king of the new state-there
is division of sort that does not augur well for
the countryS future in relation to either its own
internal affairs or rival preSsures exerted on it
from the outside Further, even assuming that a
good, workable constitution can be agreed upon,
many years probably will have to pass before the
fedglng nation will have enough Of its own
citizens sufficiently trained to serve as admnis-
traitors in the oncoming era of self-rule. AS mat
ters stand at the moment. the region has liter
ally little more than handful of educated natives,
not nearly as many as will be needed for wide
variety of essential public Offices. Who, then,
will be recruited to help in the governing job?
And what countries will they be recruited from?
Over and above all this, Libya-despite it's
tremendous territorial expanse-has only about
l,l000 900 inhabitants most of whom are iliterate.
It's natural resources, moreover, are far from en-
couraging Possibly in years to come, with the
help of such projects as the Point Four Program,
its primitive economy can be made to flourish,
but right now it must be numbered among the
most backward regions in the world. Indeed, al
though Its chief wealth is its agriculture, it is
incapable today of raising even enough food to
provide its small population with an adequate
diet. Quite obviously, in view of these limitations
which include an inability to get much revenue
from taxes or exports-the new independent
state will be extremely hard put to support itself.
In short, socially, economically and po-
litically Libya seems to have something like two
strikes against 1t it moves now into the status
of sovereign nationhood Conceivably, regardless
of the obstacles, 1t will succeed, but certainly
there is ground for doubt that the United Ma
tons acted wisely, in the best interests of the
people of the territory, when 1t voted in De-
cember, 1949, to make the transition mandatory
within the short space of only two years Idealism
for idealsms sake is not necessarily good. On the
contrary, 1t can do lot of mischief when 1t is
rushed, and in this instance, unfortunately, the
hard realities suggest that 1t has been rushed
much too much.