Now Iran has possession of the British oil refinery in Abadan. All the employees of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company have left the country. We are sorry for the British. Certainly this is as humiliating a moment as the nation has experienced in many a year. It is a strong argument to get rid of the Attlee administration under which the empire has been whittled down to a fraction of interest and has been insulted right and left without resort to successful diplomacy or force. [Prime Minister Clement Attlee] Nothing like this has happened in a hundred years and more.

But now Iran has the refinery. What is she going to do with it? The Persian government has lived on the profits of its oil, and the British were the experts who made those profits possible. Iran has no experts. The United States won’t provide them. Even Russia, watching for the opportunity, is so weak in that direction that it hardly can do anything dynamic about it.

The best Iran can do is to negotiate, rapidly and sanely. If the proletariat, stimulated by communistic infiltrates, can prevent a sensible settlement Iran is in a difficult situation. Certainly there ought to be a compromise. Chaos ensures when an irresistible body meets an immovable body. But neither Iran nor Britain should be either irresistible or immovable.