Cairo by Mid-July?

On a velvet-padded stool on the green grass beside the fence of the half-ruined Royal Palace in Belgrade, a Nazi officer-artist sat sketching the toppled dome of one of the Palace wings. New York Times's Correspondent Ray Brock, back on his old beat, strolled up and asked what the drawing was for. The officer told him it was for the German picture magazine Signal. Then, to Correspondent Brock's surprise, the officer suddenly became very voluble.

"I have," he said, "made pictures of The Netherlands. Perhaps you saw my sketches of Schiphol Airdrome and the Eben Emael Fortress at Liege? And I also did some sketches of Paris. . . . Next I go to Turkey, they say, and then I am promised an opportunity to make sketches in Africa, the colors so sharp and clean--that will be good--the blue and the white, and sunlight in the desert. There should be good sketching in Cairo, don't you think so?"

Ray Brock hadn't thought much about sketching in Cairo; but he reported last week from Budapest that the more he talked with talkative German soldiers the more certain he was that the Nazi machine would aim point-blank at Cairo and the Suez Canal very soon. Making the most of his talent for getting around, Correspondent Brock pieced together the following agenda: By the end of this week the Nazis intended to bulldoze Turkey into permitting the passage of German troops and equipment, lending air bases to the Luftwaffe, placing roads, railroads and wires at complete disposal of the German High Command. If Turkey refused, Blitz.

While Ambassador Franz von Papen was busy with this bulldozing in Turkey, the German Army last week completed its preparations on the threshold of the Near East and got a winged foot inside the door.

By the first or second week of June, the machine would be ready to roll in earnest. Through Turkey by guile or by force, through Syria with the permission of Vichy, through Iraq with the support of anti-British Arabs, through Palestine and Trans-Jordan and right to the Canal it would roll. At the same time the Axis force in Libya, which was still sparring experimentally last week, would drive across Egypt. Also at the same time the Luftwaffe, in deadly concentration, would "bomb the British ships until the sea is black with their wreckage." Such was the German plan.

A young lieutenant, who sported the Iron Cross as reward for having been the first German officer to reach Sarajevo, told Correspondent Brock: "We shall be in Cairo in July. Before the middle. We're sure of it."

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