EGYPT: Boy Scout into Field Marshal

Boy Scout into Field Marshal

(See front cover)

Last spring 18-year-old Egyptian King Farouk went incognito to England’s great festival of precedent and tradition, the Coronation season. Last fortnight Farouk the First arrived back in Cairo to have his own kingship solemnized by a ceremony for which there was no precedent, no tradition. Nearly 2,000 years ago died beak-nosed but fascinating Queen Cleopatra*, the last of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Egypt then became a province of the Roman Empire until 641 A.D. when it fell to the Mohammedan Empire. In 1914 the British Empire’s War Office issued this proclamation: “In view of the state of war arising out of the action of Turkey [in joining Germany and Austria against Britain, France, Belgium and Russia] Egypt is placed under the protection of His Majesty [King George V] and will henceforth constitute a British Protectorate. The suzerainty of Turkey over Egypt is thus terminated.” After the War the British puppetized on the throne of Egypt as “Sultan” the father of today’s Boy-King, His Late Majesty Fuad I, who in hisdeclining years was styled “King” (TIME, May 11, 1936 et ante). Last week, however, big-boned, fair and six-foot-tall Farouk I was correctly hailed by Egyptian dignitaries representing his 16,000,000 subjects as “The first Sovereign invested as King of modern Egypt, the Senior Arab Kingdom.”†

Since no precedents existed to guide His Majesty’s Government, plans for last week’s ceremony were evolved in last-minute haste by tubby little Premier Mustafa El Nahas Pasha. To make up his mind on one point he telephoned from Cairo, Egypt to Vichy, France where an eminent expert on protocol was taking a water cure. The question was whether to crown His Majesty with the golden fillet once worn by Ancient Egypt’s King Tutankhamen and only unearthed in recent years. This was a good idea, except that Mohammedan sovereigns are never crowned, and Premier Nahas knew that the Egyptian people grew accustomed, when they were subjects of Turkey, to seeing each new Sultan symbolically invested with the Sword. Fortunately modern Egypt possesses the gorgeously jeweled sword of Mohammed Ali, founder of the present Egyptian dynasty, or so the Premier thought. Upon actually looking for this historic State Sword, it simply could not be found. With neither sword nor crown exactly available, His Majesty’s Government ordered that anyhow the State procession should be featured by bright red limousines, changed this finally to one bright red limousine for Premier Nahas and a shiny gold coach for King Farouk.

Farouk had arrived from a European holiday with Fawziya, Faiza, Faika and Fathiya, his sisters, and his mother Queen Nazli “a handsomer Queen than Cleopatra.” His father Fuad considered that “names commencing with ‘F’ are exceedingly propitious,” and today Egyptians consider Farouk just about tops in a name beginning with F since it means in translation “One Who Carefully Distinguishes Between Right & Wrong.” In any Eastern country the populace always frantically cheer their Lord and Master,* and bothAlexandria and Cairo went deliriously wild last week over Farouk I. In Egypt some$50,000 will buy enough triumphal arches and paper streamers to choke the mainstreets of Cairo, and this was the sum its civic fathers proudly spent. Everywhereone looked was green— the Egyptian national color—everywhere theflag of Egypt, green with a white crescent and three white stars.

Oath at 104°. Up to last week King Farouk’s nearest approach to military rankwas as Egypt’s Chief Boy Scout. In this capacity he recently keynoted: “Youngmen and young women of Egypt. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, it is our task tobring our bodies into subjugation to our wills!” Straight from Boy Scouthood lastweek His Majesty was promoted to Field Marshal. He donned a uniform of red,white and green, grasped the baton of Field Marshal in lieu of a sceptre, andwhirled off in his coach, flanked by barefoot native runners and EgyptianRoyal Guardsmen who topped off their white, blue and gold uniforms with redfezzes.

Cairo sizzled at a temperature of 104°—which is too hot even for Egyptians—and the Barlman or Parliament was a steaming little sweatbox, with room only for the Royal Family, Deputies, Senators and diplomats. Here last year, upon the death of Fuad I, the President of the Barlman held up for all to see the envelope into which 13 years before His Late Majesty had sealed the names of three Egyptians whom he wished to act as Regents during the minority of the present King. A flashlight and a magnifying glass were produced to aid the speaker in officially determining that the seals were authentic, intact. As he fumbled, the Barlman grew more & more excited, Deputies andSenators shouting their advice until finally the Egyptian President declared himself too overwrought to open the envelope and it was slit by a less nervous Senator.

Of the three Regents whose names were extracted from the envelope one was dead and the Barlman did not share the liking of the late King Fuad for the other two, promptly voted to appoint three entirely different Regents. These grave dignitaries have performed their stewardship well. Last week in the Barlman the powers they have exercised were turned over to Farouk I in a simple ceremony of oath-taking like that by which a President is sworn in at Washington. Swore His Majesty upon the sacred Koran last week, with alert U. S. Minister to Egypt Bert Fish listening in the diplomatic box: “I promise before Allah the Almighty to observe the Constitution and laws of the Egyptian people and to maintain the national independence and integrity of their territory!”

Next day, although the heat of Cairo continued almost unbearable, King Farouk drove through the poorest quarters of his capital, again wildly cheered, to pray at the Mosque in which his father lies buried. On the third sizzling day His Majesty’s Government set the program forward several hours, so that Field Marshal King Farouk reviewed the Egyptian Army in the cooler hours just after dawn. Every Egyptian town of importance had been equipped by the Government in recent weeks with a radio loudspeaker in the public square and the whole kingdom could listen for the first time to its sovereign. “I pledge myself to be the first servant of my country,” broadcast Farouk I. “I thank everyone, the Egyptian people and also foreigners, for the loyalty they have shown to the fatherland and to myself.”

“And Also Foreigners.” The British Government have been high-mindedly stringing Egyptians along ever since William Ewart Gladstone announced at Newcastle in 1891 that the British military “occupation of Egypt is temporary and should be brought to an end.” In 1922 Britain by treaty granted Egypt the status of an “Independent Sovereign State.” excepting that the Sudan was entirely reserved to Britain, and her garrisons remained quartered throughout Egypt. It was actually Benito Mussolini—the Dictator buttered the Egyptians with many blandishments while he was making for Ethiopia (TIME, Nov. 4, 1935 et seq.)— who convinced the British that if they are to retain effective control of Egypt they must do so even more unobtrusively. Thus a new Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was signed by Premier Nahas and Mr. Anthony Eden on cream-colored parchment tied with blue ribbons at the British Foreign Office (TIME, Sept. 14).

Since Egypt was already an “Independent Sovereign State” by the Treaty of 1922, the new Treaty is one of “Military Alliance/’ intended to flatter Egyptians with the notion that they are held in esteem by the British as allies on equal terms. Held the Egyptians continue to be, for Britain is to retain 10,000 troops in the Suez Canal zone and British bombing planes have the right to operate freely over any part of Egypt—with Egyptian bombing planes given for the first time the privilege of operating freely over England.* The British Navy retains its permanent base at Alexandria, pays rent. But Egyptians agree to build and pay for an entire system of strategic highways fanning out from Suez, so that in a few hours British motorized land forces can speed to any part of Egypt. Only after these roads have been completed does Britain agree to withdraw her present garrisons in Egypt, although Article I of the treaty reads in full: “The military occupations of Egypt by-the forces of His Majesty the British King and Emperor is terminated.”

Similarly, although new King Farouk is “Sovereign of the Sudan,” the Sudan is actually ruled by a Governor General who remains British and commands British troops under the treaty which is for 20 years, automatically extended then for another 20 years.

In these circumstances a King of Egypt, if he expects to keep his throne, must be educated and reared just about as was Farouk I, recently hailed by the British press when he visited London as “The Most Perfectly Brought Up Boy In The World.” Aged four he received a pretty Yorkshire widow, Mrs. Ina Xaylor. as his nurse-governess. She remained his governess until he was 15 and the Egyptian Parliament voted $80,000 to defray the expenses of himself and suite during the Crown Prince’s first year of education in England. With Egyptian guards bristling all over the place, Farouk took up country residence at Kenry House, Kingston Hill, soon was greatly liked for his democratic ways by local English tradespeople who still speak of him as “Prince Freddy.” Invariably Farouk’s four “F” sisters dressed like demure English schoolgirls with pigtails down their backs. Queen Nazli excelled her brood in snapping, developing and printing photographs. Her Majesty is a descendant of a French com-mander of dragoons whom the Emperor Napoleon took to Egypt, and from this ancestor King Farouk inherits his “heavy dragoon” appearance, big-boned, healthy and hefty, with a fair complexion most rare in an Egyptian. Like many people of Arab strain, however, His Majesty is not only “quick at arithmetic” but also in the intricacies of higher mathematics. Like any Oriental potentate he keeps a taster who first samples his food lest he be poisoned, a bold little English licensed pharmacist, who is known in Egypt as Eric Titterington Bey.

Sir Miles & $50,000,000. Entirely unmentioned in Cairo dispatches last week was the de facto ruler of Egypt, moose-tall and tolerant Sir Miles Lampson. He used to be the British High Commissioner in Cairo, became the British Ambassador as soon as Egypt and England set up their recent “alliance.” Sir Miles is a grand surviving figure in the Victorian tradition of Bearing the White Man’s Burden, spreading the Pax Britannica and generally wiping the noses of people like the Egyptians. Almost nobody disputes that half a century of British dominance in Egypt, more or less disguised, has acted as the greatest graft-purge in Egyptian history. Standards of administration have been upped and the 14-year reign of the late King Fuad was marked by more material progress in Egypt than the previous 2,000 years. His Late Majesty, however. was a definitely strong Egyptian character, obliged though King Fuad was often to behave as an acceptable British puppet. Behind the scenes and at moments when British pressure was relaxed. Fuad I was always wangling this or that concession for Egypt from her masters, set an example which 18-year-old Farouk I will have to show the character and tenacity of a Yorkshire governess to equal.

Fuad I came to the throne poor, yet left a private fortune of $50,000,000 to Farouk I, thus making the new King probably the wealthiest Egyptian. His Late Majesty accomplished this byconfiscating the estates of the mad Prince Ahmed Seif Eddin. That he was mad or at least mad at King Fuad, the Prince proved decisively by firing a bullet which lodged in His Majesty’s throat. This made Fuad I often cough and gurgle horribly, and His Majesty carried the bullet to his tomb.

-Invading Japanese troops marching into a Chinesevillage they have just captured are usually cheered by the citizenrywho wish to be on the safe side.

*This picture was reconstructed from the British Museum bust of Queen Cleopatra and her likeness on Egyptian coins of her reign by Mrs. Guy Brunton, a South African whose husband is Assistant Curator of the Museum of Antiquities, Cairo.

†The juniors, all established since the War, and all more or less under British influence, are the kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Yemen.