EGYPT: Enter, Friend

For half a century Germany's diplomats and big industrialists, deep in Drang nach Osten (Drive to the East), talked of a Berlin-to-Baghdad railway. Kaiser Wilhelm II rode through the sweltering streets of Damascus one day in 1898 to tell the citizens that Moslems "may rest assured that at all times the German Emperor will be their friend." Hitler took up where Wilhelm II left off: by the time the Nazis invaded Russia, Germany was dominating the markets of Turkey and Iran.

Now the Germans are back again. Last week a delegation of twelve...