Malta: what next?

Open door' for Mentoff DR. BORCi OLIVIER, Prime Minister of Malta, has gone home bitterly disappointed with the British government's offer of £100,000 aid for the island instead of the L8,500)300 he had asked for. In an evident reference to Mr. Mintoff's Labour Party. he has stated that the door has now been Opened to elements in Malta unfavourable to NATO.
The Prime Minister's latest move is to ask Whitehall outright for independence for Malta. It was only after Archbishop Makarios had secured complete independence that he obtained substantial aid for Cyprus, said Dr. Borg Olivier this week. He went on to point out the difference between Cypriot violence and the non-violence of the Maltese.
A Commonwealth correspondent writes: Is Britain becoming bored with the George Cross Island, now that its strategic significance has so diminished? It is odd that the Tories. who liberally doled out to Mintoff. a Leftist ready to seek Iron Curtain aid and out to secularise Maltese life, now treats a Catholic premier as an importunate cadger.
Lord Gladwyn warned the CATHOLIC HERALD, a year ago, of the underlying suspicion, among anti-Marketeers. of getting mixed up with a Catholic ethos. Remembering the shady treatment of certain Catholic African leaders by the Colonial Office, one cannot help smelling this. perhaps subconscious, distrust again. Yet British Protestants on the island itself warmly support Archbishop Gonzi.
If Dr. Borg Olivier — and it would be a scandal -has to get help from the continent, he reed not go cap in hand. Malta has a historic role to play as the economic and cultural half-way house linking Europe with Africa, a truth embodied in her dream of creating a Mediterranean University. She may well become an inter-racial University Island which could yet be Europe's — but not Britain's — pride.