The Waters of Mara

And the President left Yalta, and journeyed by road to Sevastopol, where there are many ruins, and flew on the wings of his Army to the land of Egypt. And there he took ship and received the rulers of that land, and of Ethiopia and of Saudi Arabia, on the lakes called Bitter or Mara of which it was written (Exodus XV: 22-25):

And Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went forth into the wilderness of Stir: and they marched three days through the wilderness, and found no water;

And they came into Mara, and they, could not drink the waters of Mara, because they were bitter. . . .

And the people murmured against Moses, saying: what shall we drink?

But he cried to the Lord, and He showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, they were turned into sweetness.

By all appearances considerable sweetness had been restored to Great Bitter Lake (midway along the Suez Canal) when Franklin Roosevelt aboard his warship successively received King Faronk, Emperor Haile Selassie and King Ibn Saud. The nature of the sweetness, according to a White House announcement:

With King Farouk. "The President referred to the purchase by the United States of large quantities of long-staple Egyptian cotton during the war and stressed the hope that greatly increased exchange of other commodities would be developed in the future. . . . Tourist travel to Egypt, the President said, was certain to become greater after the war than before."

With Haile Selassie. "The President stressed communications between the United States and Ethiopia and said he hoped, with improvements of communications, particularly by air, the two countries would come to know each other better." Postwar access to Ethiopian air and airports was recently a point of conflict between the U.S. and Britain, was settled (by agreement between Ethiopia and Britain) in the U.S.'s favor.

The sweetness of the President's meeting with Ibn Saud was officially left to inference. But the sweetness in all three cases went beyond trade, tourism and air landing rights. In good part it rested on the simple demonstration that the U.S. was showing a sympathetic interest in the affairs of the Middle East.

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