EGYPT: Exodus

Egypt has a new king, new queen, new crown princess. It got a new Prime Minister last fortnight in Ali Maher Pasha, who instituted a new program of economic reform to reduce Government expenses and to improve the condition of the Fellahin (peasants) by checking bilharziasis (dysentery-like disease from Nile water) and cotton worm. Egypt is theoretically free, brown and independent, but Egypt’s strategic importance in world war is as old as the Suez Canal (70 years), which flows through its right shoulder. And Britain’s grip on Egypt was stronger last week, for the sake of that shoulder, than ever before. Some 8,000 troops of the Indian Army arrived to fortify the western garrisons which, although Egyptians consider their desert flank impregnable, were theoretically threatened by Italy’s legions in Libya. Royal Air Force units were massed at Cairo, Ismailia, Alexandria. In Alexandria, where Nelson destroyed Napoleon’s fleet, lay 80 units of His Majesty’s Navy.

Italians and Germans last week scrambled to get out of Egypt, and no others were expected back in.