Word: mediterranean
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Ever since Homer called it "the navel of the sea," Malta has been an island in search of an umbilical cord. 'Alone and vulnerable in the Mediterranean, 150 miles south of Italy, the rock (9 by 17 miles) has no economic value. But a fine deep harbor on its northeast shore has brought it the "protection" of a succession of great seafaring peoples, Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, and for nearly 300 years, the crusading Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Napoleon cut that tie. Then came Nelson, and the island, at the request of the Maltese themselves, became a crown...
...most exciting thing that happened in Malta, as well as the chief source of livelihood of its 320,000 inhabitants. But the island hardly interested the British until, in World War II, it became the center of bitter struggle with the Italians and the Germans for control of the Mediterranean. Then, as a British air and naval base, with the Maltese dug into its golden limestone, the island held out against one of the most intense and blistering air bombardments of all times...
...without consulting the Maltese, NATO made the island its Mediterranean headquarters, but the very existence of NATO was a reminder that the days of British naval supremacy, and possibly dockyards, were over. Politically-minded Maltese talked of revolution and self-government, but a better idea came up: Why not put a clove hitch in the British umbilical? Last week Maltese Prime Minister Dom Mintoff and a delegation of Maltese went to London for a round-table conference with a group from the Mother of Parliaments, and put the idea to the British M.P.s in specific terms: make Malta an integral...
What had caused the mild winds of discontent on a small Mediterranean island to blow up into a crisis involving the entire Western alliance? Act I. It began with some inept diplomacy in London. The British, having turned Cyprus into their Middle East military-command post, decided the time had come to do something about Greece's demand for enosis (union) with Cyprus and its dominantly Greek (80%) population. Instead of seeking a direct Anglo-Greek settlement, British Foreign Secretary Harold Macmillan polished up an old British plan for limited home rule, already rejected by the Greek Cypriots...
...Greek and Turkish units meet in mock combat, for fear that they might begin firing in earnest. Now that Greece was embroiled with both Britain and Turkey, the Greeks last week prudently decided to withdraw all their forces from NATO's scheduled war games in the Mediterranean...