Revolutionary's Rise

The west bank of the Suez Canal, from Port Said 90 miles south to Suez, houses the mightiest military base in the Middle East. It is jammed with 37 big military installations--ten fully equipped airfields, docks, dumps, hospitals, radar stations, the world's largest ordnance depot. Building the base took the British 38 years and more than $1.5 billion. This week they will sit down in Cairo and begin negotiations for giving it all up to the Egyptians.

Facing them across the table will be Egypt's top team: Premier Mohammed Naguib, Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi, and four men from the Free Officers' Committee. But the British have an idea that the most important man they face is a lean young field officer, just turned 35, who does not even hold cabinet rank.

Lieut. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser is be coming the real power in Egypt's military junta--more important even than Naguib, the reluctant dictator.

"We Are Soldiers." The British first began to catch on to this significant news early last month, at the height of the impasse over Suez Canal negotiations. The British were willing to evacuate the zone only after an Egyptian promise to keep British technicians and join the Western-sponsored Middle East Defense Organization. The Egyptians refused; the deadlock seemed unbreakable. Nasser called in a British correspondent and told him: "What is our policy? It is evacuation--complete independence." Egypt, he said coolly, was not interested in a Middle East Command. But, he went on: "We are soldiers and we are realists. We cannot maintain such an immense base as we are now. We will want technicians, and since it is a British base, we will need British technicians."

This hard, forthright statement had an authentic ring. From the London Foreign Office went a query to its Cairo embassy: Does Nasser speak for the regime? Back came the reply: Nasser not only speaks for the regime; he, more than any one man, is the regime. Negotiations opened.

Cut of the Knife. In February 1942, when Rommel was threatening Alexandria and the British feared an Egyptian stab in the back, British tanks battered down the gates of Abdin Palace and forced King Farouk to accept Nahas Pasha as Premier. That evening a 24-year-old Egyptian captain, attached to the British at El Alamein, wrote his brother: "I am glad for this incident. This cut of the knife has given life back to our young officers."

From that day, young Captain Nasser, the son of a postal clerk, began ten years of underground preparation for the day when the corrupt Farouk would be overthrown. Service in the disastrous Palestine wars brought him a bad shoulder wound, increased his bitterness at Egypt's wretched regime, and intensified his determination. By 1949 he had enlisted seven trusted young officers. "I trained and brought up all the officers in the Free Movement," says Nasser. "I spent ten years on them. I tested them all without them knowing it." When the time came, Nasser and the others looked for a respected senior officer, picked bluff, thrice-wounded General Mohammed Naguib, a soldier's soldier. On July 23 King Farouk fell, and the world discovered General Mohammed Naguib.

Discovery of Nasser is coming more slowly. A well-knit, handsome six-footer, in public he is shy and seeks the background. His official title is nominal: secretary general of Egypt's single party, the Liberation Rally. But while Naguib dashes to receptions, bussing babies and pumping hands, Nasser labors at GHQ 20 hours a day, making the decisions, sparkplugging the revolutionary council.

Naguib himself has begun referring to Gamal Nasser as "my commander." He recently spoke of "Gamal, that strong mind, that abnormal determination--Gamal, who doesn't relax a second in doing his duty."

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