Foreign News: Nasser Reacts

The users’ plan of the Western powers seemed truly to catch Nasser unawares. “Instead of continuing the game,” the tennis-playing young dictator complained to a friend, “Eden has picked up the ball and walked off the court.” In uncharacteristic haste Nasser ordered his Washington ambassador to protest to John Foster Dulles that the plan “means war”—just as Dulles was about to explain to his press conference that that was precisely what it did not mean. Then, in his first important—if insufficient—shift toward compromise, Nasser let it be known through the Indian government that he would be ready to “internationalize” Suez Canal tolls, i.e., let a conference of canal users set the rates. But on the core of the matter—Egypt’s refusal to relinquish control of the canal to international supervision —Gamal Abdel Nasser stood firm, awaiting the next challenge.

It came at midnight Friday. Bags in hand, many of them leaving all but their most personal belongings behind, 93 of the pilots employed by the deposed Suez Canal Co. walked off their jobs and out of Egypt. Some, particularly the British, were bitter. Said Captain James E. I. Peters, a veteran of 18 years on the canal: “We cannot work with a gun in our backs.”

Hugs on the Balcony. Egypt was left with 65 pilots (only 33 Suez-seasoned). Could they and a gradually trained group of volunteer pilots handle the flow of ships and the tricky 103 miles of water without stalling traffic or blocking the canal? At 2:30 Saturday morning the first full convoy of 13 ships pulled out of Port Said with Egyptian pilots. “Give us more ships; we’ll take them through,” shouted one pilot as he took his tanker into the cut. A second convoy of 29, the largest in months, headed north from the Red Sea entrance and arrived at Port Said right on schedule twelve hours later. The weather was perfect, sparing for the moment the inevitable trials of crosswinds and sandstorms that may provide the real test for Nasser’s pledge to keep the canal functioning normally. Delighted with the first day’s performance, President Nasser awarded the Egyptian Order of Merit to every pilot who made the trip. Their runs over, a group of Egyptian pilots and shore technicians gathered on the waterfront balcony of the Canal Authority’s Port Said headquarters and hugged, kissed and backslapped each other like winning politicians on election night.

Sixty more Egyptian pilots were to be pressed into service after only a month’s training, and pilots from other countries (including 15 from Russia, four from Yugoslavia) arrived to help. But the seasoned pilots were faced with the job of working days on end without relief, and it remained a question how long the Egyptians could keep it up. Sixty percent of canal tolls are still being paid to the old Canal Co. accounts in London and Paris or to blocked accounts elsewhere. U.S. ships have been paying most of what the Egyptians have been collecting—under protest. Skeptical insurance firms hiked rates for ships transiting Suez by 150%. Lloyd’s of London reported at least a dozen ships diverted from Suez to make the long voyage around the Cape. One bad slip and the canal could be closed for days.

Defensive Words. This was but one of the mighty pressures building up around the brash young dictator of Egypt as the Western powers took back the initiative with their unified action. His credit rating with the West was gone. His sterling and dollar assets were frozen in London and Washington, his economic aid from the U.S. curtailed, his cotton income mortgaged for years to pay for Communist arms. His support in the Arab world, whose economy depends on the oil that goes through the Suez, is slipping. “Nasser is gambling with our independence,” complained a high Lebanese official, “and he is doing so without consulting other Arab governments before he acts.”

By no means, however, was Nasser pressed into retreat or silence. Speeding out of Cairo to the Bilbeis Air Force college, he raised his fist against the new Western unity, the “horrible international conspiracy.” While ten Egyptian-owned Soviet bombers and two MIGs flashed overhead, he shouted: “The big countries cannot scare us with their threats. We shall defend our rights to the last drop of our blood. No aggressor will leave Egypt alive!”