A Skeptic Views the 'New' Egypt

...An attempt is even being made at land reform...

...Ideas have to be founded on a broad philosophic and economic base to carry Egypt into the world of today, not on the Victory of Islam and the Extermination of the Foe...

...My Egyptian companion assured me that it was so backward because the English had used it as a temporary garrison 75 years ago and had deliberately depressed the natives...

...Only one thing is clear: In a country like Egypt, where all effective political power rests in the hands of the military, a change of the frontispiece in no way alters the story...

...Will Egypt close Suez to France over the Moroccan issue...

...I have always hoped to emulate him...

...regardless of who is dictator, the objectives of the Army??control of the Suez Canal Zone and the Sudan, mutilation of Israel??remain the same...

...Hooded Bedouins lounged in the grass, and it was impossible to believe we were less than a hundred yards from the entrance to the Canal...

...The British, immorally there, are actually protecting the moral law of equal rights...

...on the contrary, it might be said that only foreigners brought civilization to Egypt during the last 2,500 years...

...It was almost with a sense of mockery that I took the road leading to Ismailia along the Canal??a mockery that soon disappeared when I came upon an incredible spectacle...

...the only sign of human life was several local policemen lazily scratching themselves in the burning heat...

...Continual convoys of trucks moved up and down the road...

...as modern history shows, things can get worse and still worse until they approach the apocalyptic...

...The Egyptians have also applied to the World Bank for a large loan to construct dams for irrigation and electric power...

...Tommies posted with submachine guns demanded all passports...

...Yet, at the same time the Egyptian Government is assuring the Bank that it is good for the loan, it is straining every sinew to break a contract??namely, that of the Suez Canal??which still has some years to run...

...The two Salem brothers, who occupy positions that can best be compared to those of Goebbels and Goering, are known exponents of fascism...

...The point is that, regardless of Egyptian demagogy and power politics, the Canal issue must be settled within the very near future with the agreement and cooperation of the Egyptians...

...Food prices have been forced down...

...45 miles deep in the desert south of Cairo, we passed a miserable village...

...Neither party shares the fundamental aims of the other...

...The easiest political tool of any Egyptian politician is an appeal to xenophobia...

...Wing Commander Gamal Salem of the Revolution Council has acknowledged that, though the population of Egypt has increased from 12 to 22 millions in the last fifty years, the cultivated area has remained static...

...These unromantic statistics tell a story...

...This is not to say that the Egyptian Government is unconcerned with the plight of its people...

...We beseech you to help Arab and Islamic countries to fulfill their aims...

...In the first year of its operation, the Commission reported that, of a cotton stock of ??89 million Egyptian (about $270 million), it sustained a marketing loss of "only" ??9.5 million, or over 10 per cent of the total worth...

...The contrast of words with deeds runs like a continuous thread through Egyptian politics...

...Rocking back and forth, they screamed so loud the speaker could no longer be heard...

...A few weeks earlier, Naguib said at Mecca: "Almighty God, give us victory in driving the British out of Egypt...

...President Naguib, as one of the first acts of his regime, liquidated the Alexandria Cotton Futures Exchange and set up an Egyptian Cotton Commission charged with control of the production, marketing and export of cotton...

...A certain unnamed power, and I assure you it is not an Arab state, is attempting to bribe traitors in our midst to spread lies...

...The basic trouble for a man of good will, when dealing with Arab states like Egypt, is that, although he is naturally sympathetic to the desire for real independence on the part of all peoples, closer knowledge leaves him with the sickening feeling that, because the desert sons of Islam start from such alien premises, it may be that the uses of their freedom will be far more inhuman than the practices of the former colonial powers...

...Finally at 8 p.m., after appropriate readings from the Koran...

...A drop of one inch in the waters of Lake Victoria, a change in the buying habits of American women, a strike in the mills of Mancheste??all these mean agony or prosperity for Egypt...

...I declare that we shall never accept joint defense in any form...

...This time, he too spoke with passion: "The Revolution was staged with one aim, which has never changed, namely to fight imperialism...

...No, not yet," he shouted through the microphone...

...Tanks stirred in the desert sands...

...it is just that he wants his to succeed and not that of the other fellow...

...The Revolutionary leaders will soon learn, if they do not temper their program with actual constructive projects, that you cannot inflame the masses with promises and live immune from a counter-reaction...

...With a formula for the ultimate disposition of the Sudan agreed upon, the two nations will no longer have grounds for dispute once the Suez problem is settled...

...In the last year, France has taken the place of England as a leading importer of Egyptian cotton, and Naguib would scarcely risk an embargo on his cotton sales, no matter how deep his sympathies for his fellow Arabs...

...The British say their contract has years to run...

...Give us the word...

...Noureddine Tarraf, Minister of Hygiene, has publicly stated: "Hitler was an ideal leader who consecrated his life to the realization of his noble ambitions...

...And, for two hours after the meeting, the frenzied mob rolled through the square searching for a victim, while I sat shivering in my little room...

...Public schools are now truly open to the public, to the poor as well as the small group of the very rich...

...President Naguib opened the rally with what my dragoman hastily interpreted as a sober address...

...All foreigners had been warned not to attend: as I realized later, this was for their protection, for if they had been caught the mob would have torn them limb from limb before the end of the evening...

...In fact, Egypt provides one of the unique historical examples of a peaceful mass shift in the base of the racial, religious and cultural pattern of an entire people, the transformation of an original Coptic Christian population under Roman rule to a Moslem Arab nation guided by the legal tenets of the Koran...

...We will get guns . . . ." This was what the mob was waiting for...

...It is hardly possible to sympathize with British suzerainty over an Egyptian stretch of land and water...

...Not yet...

...What is less realized by foreigners is the extent to which this hope is shared by the mass of the Egyptian people...

...The life and blood of Egypt is cotton...

...He thereupon went into a tirade against the Greeks, the British and others who throughout history had plotted against the Egyptians, and added that Farouk had "naturally" sold out to the English because he was a foreigner, his ancestors having settled in Egypt only a century and a half ago...

...yet, the Egyptians would use their control of this international highway to force their reactionary national concepts down the throats of others...

...Slowly, the mood of the crowd heightened...

...With one wild roar, the mass shouted for blood...

...Last year's statement shows a deficit amounting to ??74 million...

...A type of Egyptian FEPC has been instituted, not on the basis of color and religion but against nepotism...

...And, to look at the matter realistically, there is little Egypt can do to hurt others...

...not an Egyptian soldier could be seen, and, though the city has been off-limits for British troops for two years because of repeated outbursts, I walked through the back streets and bazaar area with perfect immunity...

...Certainly the number of German technicians and advisers to the all-pervasive military bureaus is too high to be coincidental...

...By 5 p.m., the enormous area, about four blocks square, began to fill up...

...Neither British nor Egyptian soldiers were in evidence...

...we are all familiar with the reasoning of apologists for Mussolini that "he made the trains run on time...

...Suez belongs in this category...

...What should be kept in mind is that, within a few short years, England's contract will expire and she must get out willy-nilly...

...The above-quoted Commander Salem, at the same time he was declaiming against the poverty caused by overpopulation, approved the purchase overseas of new Army uniforms, thus further augmenting the trade deficit...

...Hassan Ibrahim, in charge of foreign affairs and one of the Twelve of the ruling Revolution Council, has admitted: "In 1942, the Germans were at Alamein...

...In this enormous range of time, not once did a native Egyptian, of Egyptian by Egyptian descended, rule...

...A few more such "successes"??the actual word employed by the report ??and Naguib and his Revolution Council will go toppling into the Nile...

...From a banker's point of view, this is hardly the proper background to create confidence for a loan of hundreds of millions of dollars...

...This was followed by incorporation into the Roman Empire, domination by the Arab Caliphs of Damascus and Baghdad, control by the Fatimids of Tunisia and then by a succession of Turkish and Circassian Mamelukes, and, finally, annexation by the Ottoman Empire...

...Suez town was quiet...

...We must be ready to march...

...And it is again no mere accident that three former leaders of the Hitler-jugend were hired to train the youth organs of the Revolutionary government...

...Many good things have been done...

...Allah wa akbar wa lleleh el Hamd...

...We need guns...

...The officer sent was Anwar Sadat, now head of Egyptian "brain-washing" operations and another of the ruling Twelve...

...All the values appealed to, and for which the Egyptians roar approval, are pre-French Revolution??appeals to exclusive religion and a patriotism devoid of any larger concept than Egypt for pure-blooded, pure-minded Egyptians...

...If the Egyptians set up textile factories near the cotton fields, if they applied themselves to a diversified production of cereals rather than concentrating on a one-crop economy, they could eliminate these two imports and thus wipe out almost the entire adverse trade balance...

...Unlike Western Europeans, who for centuries have struggled to attain individual rights, the Egyptian is primarily attracted to national glory and only secondarily to personal freedom...

...And when I saw this scene, it came home to me for the first time that this was a real war??conducted politely, it is true, but nevertheless a war...

...Minister of National Guidance, gave a long, impassioned harangue for an hour and a half...

...And General Naguib saw that he had started something which could with difficulty be controlled...

...Certainly it flies in the face of all our understanding of national dignity for the British to refuse entry of Egyptians to their Sinai province, east of the Canal...

...The standard formula for showing concern for the fate of the miserable fellahin is to publish a bombastic decree "abolishing" various evils and then return to dreams of military aggrandizement...

...Regardless of who is dictator, the power remains in the Army...

...Daniel M. Friedenberg, who has contributed to the New Republic and Commonweal, recently returned from Egypt...

...and yet the real reason the Egyptians want to place military encampments there is to foment trouble with neighboring Israel...

...The Egyptian does not object to imperialism...

...it is still today one of the largest growers of cotton...

...Anti-foreign sentiment invests the masses even in their day-to-day attitudes...

...But this was unique...

...The Government recently passed a law allowing only 25 per cent of all farmland to be devoted to the raising of cotton...

...We decided to send them an officer to offer our assistance in the form of information on the British forces...

...It was due to Hellenistic influence that Egypt became the center of world arts, philosophy and science in the ancient world...

...Yet, almost ??42 million were expended in the last twelve months to import wheat from abroad, while another ??19 million were spent to import textile goods...

...The Egyptian trade balance reflects a similar trend...

...but we all know the background of how they "negotiated" this contract...

...Even in our own time, foreigners, by digging the Suez Canal, with one fell swoop recovered for the Egyptians the central trade position they lost in the fifteenth century when the Portuguese made direct shipment from the Orient to Europe possible by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope...

...Then, to conclude, General Naguib again addressed the inflamed audience...

...I was secreted in a yellow five-story building facing Republic Square several hours before Mohammed Naguib and his colleagues were due to start the huge Liberation Rally, described by the press as the most important meeting since the Revolution began...

...For camped not at Suez or at Port Tewfik, but along the entire length of the Canal, is an English army that must number close to 100,000 men...

...That is our pledge and we shall stick to it...

...There are certain situations in life which almost defy rational solution because the positions of the two opposing parties are based on such utterly different premises...

...Major Salah Salem...

...Would Suez be a power weapon against England...

...Thousands of British boys lay listlessly on their cots in the open tents or wandered under the broiling sun...

...but this decree, it is said, is more honored in the breach...

...A Skeptic Views the 'New' Egypt SALAH SALEM, NAGUIB, NASSER: 'WE MUST BE READY TO MARCH' Xenophobia, not reform, is the key to the cabal that ousted Farouk By Daniel M. Friedenberg The recent ouster of General Mohammed Naguib by Colonel Gamal Nasser, and Naguib's return to power in a counter-Putsch, well illustrate the adage that two big fish cannot live in the same pond together...

...Not only has the country been continuously under foreign influence for almost 3,000 years, but the periods of greatest Egyptian renown actually correspond with those epochs when it has been the most completely integrated into a larger international body politic...

...Change, as Nietzsche unfortunately did not understand, does not automatically mean that man goes toward the angels rather than the dogs...

...The curious part is that any Egyptian conversant with his own country's history should realize that the truth is the very reverse of the political myth he has absorbed...

...I think it was the feeling of the hundreds of thousands of like-minded Egyptians that together they were invincible—the false courage of the mob...

...The French neutralist newspaper he Monde, which printed a series of articles on the key figures surrounding the new Egyptian regime, entitled the series "The Revenge of the Afrika Korps...

...give us the word to fight the British...

...It is crass nonsense for Egyptians to claim that foreigners destroyed their culture...

...But, from all the evidence available, they have no such tender sentiments...

...the Egyptians, morally right in demanding their property, want to use their control for immoral ends...

...Allah wa akbar...

...May the religion of Allah be strengthened and may those who support it emerge victorious...

...It was more than the passion of the speeches, more even than the warm night air softly rolling over the tightly packed throng...

...Our only alliance is that which we have with our brothers, the Arabs ....Allah is great...

...Truth and fiction, national and international forces, fact and myth, are all embroidered in a crazy-quilt...

...Of course, an integral part of this question is overpopulation...

...God is great...

...La, la, la...

...In a continuous mass of tents and barracks, impeding the highway with roadblocks every few miles, the English have erected a wall of soldiery with all the equipment of a large modern army...

...The Government, staffed with military officers who have great political ambition and little knowledge of economics, feels that it can break up the large estates and curtail private capital expansion at the same time it builds up a powerful army and increases the standard of living...

...The morning after the Liberation Rally, I decided to take the train to Suez to see the source of all the excitement...

...Kill the British," screamed several persons, their raucous shouts clearly heard above the hum...

...Major Salah Salem said at the Liberation Rally that negotiating the Suez dispute with Britain "means entering into an alliance with England, Australia, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, etc...

...As for the most dismal prospect, namely international war, Egypt wouldn't dare to close the Canal to the Allies for the overwhelmingly simple reason that she would be annihilated within a matter of days, and every Egyptian from Naguib down knows it...

...But when the time comes I will give the word...

...and, within the next two hours, the Square' was tightly jammed, with lines extending down the adjoining streets...

...Jets roared overhead...

...No, no, no...

...Judging Naguib and his cohorts by what they tell their own people, the Revolutionary government is reactionary in the most literal and old-fashioned meaning of the word...

...At Port Tewfik, outmost spit of land in the Red Sea, the cliffs of Sinai baked in the hot sun across sapphire waters...

...Egypt was once the granary of the Roman Empire...

...But Britain is quite willing to accede to international control of the Canal...

...Allah wa akbar wa lleleh el Hamd...

...In one sense, this makes the problem more critical...

...The crowd roared its approval...

...If her shipments were cut off, she would merely have to accelerate her declared intention of building her own Red Sea port...

...The post-Farouk Egyptian Government has made no secret of its dearest desire: to bring about a renaissance of those national and religious values which gave grandeur to Egypt between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, and which formed the heart of the Golden Age of Islam...

...Egypt's misfortune is ascribed to the malevolent foreigner, the imperialist, and his domestic lackey, the traitor...

...Israel has a land point on both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea...

...But more than the actual presence of unreconstructed Nazis is the mental imprint that the Hitler regime left on the minds of the Egyptians who have now attained power...

...Other speakers followed, each intensifying the excitement...

...Glory to Egypt...

...it is, actually, Egypt that wants the Canal for her own imperial reasons—to use passage as a foreign-policy instrument to build up her own imperialistic bloc...

...Cheap hydroelectric power is easily available in Upper Egypt...

...If General Naguib and Colonel Nasser think this is the way to teach a people political maturity and moral responsibility in a shrinking world, they have learned their lessons in a peculiar school...

...We are all aware of the catastrophic results of this sort of demagogery under Mussolini and Hitler...

...If Naguib has indeed accepted the political ideas of National Socialism, Egypt is stoking a dangerous furnace...