Not So Violent

From peasant to prime minister, Egyptians shook their fists and hurled angry words into the face of the West last week. The Egyptian State Council authorized the government to invoke general mobilization and a manpower draft "in case of war or threat of war." Newspapers blossomed with daily threats of imminent bloodshed if the British did not pull out of the Suez Canal Zone and the Sudan. Egyptians began boycotting British goods; stores tacked up signs announcing that they would no longer carry them. A poster on Cairo walls promised death to anyone who bought British goods. Government officials angrily referred to Britain as "the enemy"-and lumped France and the U.S. with Britain.

But, for all the din, the violence had subsided in Egypt's fight with Britain-and her allies-over control of the Suez Canal and the Sudan. Though they had stood by a fortnight ago while Egyptian mobs demonstrated and rioted in the streets, Egyptian leaders/last week issued a firm ban on mass demonstrations, and ordered police to enforce it. Thousands tested the ban in Alexandria and Cairo, coursing through the streets and breaking into shops. Police dispersed them with clubs, tear gas and gunfire. A mob descended on the Russian legation to cheer the Soviet.Union, but the cops also broke that up. Workers who tried to rush a police station in the Canal Zone were shooed away. The Egyptian army was carefully kept out of contact with the British Suez forces, which had shown no reluctance to shoot when first they met, last fortnight.

While its words were no less warlike, and it was still adamant in demanding British evacuation, the Egyptian government was acting with more restraint. It had obviously given up the reckless notion that its sorry army could push the trim, entrenched and reinforced British forces out of Suez; it was talking now of a long and gradual siege to squeeze them out. Hatreds so swiftly stirred, and so swiftly tamped down, could easily stir again; no one on either side wore a hopeful, happy face. But the West was determined to go ahead-albeit slowly, and despite Egypt's refusals-with plans for a Middle East Command in which Western and Arab nations would participate as equal partners in control of the Suez and general security of the Middle East (TIME, Oct. 22). The U.S., author of the plan, found some encouragement in discovering that diplomats in other Arab states, while publicly supporting Egypt's abrupt rejection of the Middle East Command, were confiding privately that they thought the Egyptians should not have been so hasty.

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