Ostriching the truth
QUESTION Where does the notion that ostriches stick their head in the sand come from?
IF Someone is ‘hiding their head in the sand like an ostrich’, they are thought to be foolishly ignoring a problem while hoping it will eventually disappear.
It is thought this originated with the great Roman thinker, Pliny the elder (AD 23-79). In book ten, chapter one, of his natural History, he wrote: ‘[ostriches] have the marvellous property of being able to [ swallow] every substance without distinction, but their stupidity is no less remarkable; for although the rest of their body is so large, they imagine, when they have thrust their head and neck into a bush, that the whole of their body is concealed.’
Interestingly, Pliny was not the first to mention this behaviour. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the 1st century BC, noted: ‘When she [the ostrich] is near being taken [by her pursuers], she thrusts her head under a shrub or some such like clover; not (as some suppose) through folly and blockishness, as if she would not see any pursuers, or be seen by them, but because her head is the tenderest part of her body and she seeks to secure that part all manner of ways she can.’
There is one aspect of ostrich behaviour that might seem as though they are burying their head in the sand: when ostriches feed, they sometimes lay their head flat on the ground to swallow sand and pebbles. The hard grit helps them to grind their food in their crop and, from a distance, the ostrich looks as though it’s burying its head in the sand.
Colin Wells, Frinton-on-Sea, Essex.
QUESTION Did U.S. President Eisenhower come to regret not supporting the UK and France over the Suez Crisis in 1956?
In 1956, Britain, France and Israel launched co- ordinated invasions of egypt. The aims were to regain control of the Suez Canal and to remove egyptian President Gamal Abdel nasser from power.
eisenhower was incensed; he, and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, felt that the action had threatened to destabilise the strategically vital region and strengthen Soviet influence.
eisenhower demanded that the allies evacuate egypt immediately and imposed economic sanctions on France and Britain by threatening to sell U. S. government pound sterling bonds. Israel faced the threat of other sanctions.
All three powers buckled under the pressure. Although Prime minister Anthony eden was America’s closest ally, eisenhower brought the British economy to the verge of collapse, and the pressure destroyed eden’s career.
eisenhower came to rue these policies. In a letter to British mP Julian Amery in 1987, Richard nixon, who had been eisenhower’s vice-president in 1956, commented: ‘ Years later, I talked with eisenhower about Suez. He told me that it was his major foreign policy mistake.
‘He gritted his teeth and remarked: “Why couldn’t the British and French have done it more quickly?” He went on to observe that our action in saving nasser at Suez didn’t help as far as the middle east was concerned.’
eisenhower believed he was stabilising the region and laying the foundation for a strategic accommodation between the Arabs, as a bloc, and the U.S. But the anticipated benefit never materialised.
President nasser emerged from the conflict stronger and more adversarial to U.S. interests. The Soviet penetration of the middle east deepened, and these trends had catastrophic consequences, chief among them the 1958 revolution in Iraq, which replaced the mostly pro-Western Arab government with a junta that migrated into Soviet orbit.
nixon and eisenhower agreed that ‘ the worst fall- out from Suez was that it weakened the will of our best allies, Britain and France, to play a role in the mid-east or in other areas outside europe’.
When the U.S. became mired in Vietnam, Britain and France refused to help. eisenhower had taught them that membership in the nato alliance imposed no binding obligations outside europe.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT. You can also fax them to 01952 780111 or you can email them to charles. legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.