EGYPT: Trouble Postponed

All day long, over the sun-baked Suez base that sprawls for 90 miles along the canal banks, British spotter planes droned last week, alert for Egyptian concentrations. Big, Sunderland flying boats rumbled in from Malta with 600 commandos to beef up the 80,000 British troops already crammed into Britain's Middle East bastion. All home leaves were canceled; British soldiers took over local water and power plants and set up checkpoints flanked by machine-gun nests, sandbags and barbed wire.

Egypt pulled back its best division from Gaza on the Israeli border, where it might be cut off, and sent soldiers to...

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