In the atmosphere of mass exultation that attended the birth of the United Arab Republic last February, Egyptian and Syrian leaders acted as if the union of their two countries, which do not even share a common border, were the most natural thing in the world. The U.A.R.'s propagandists denounced the rival Hashemite Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan* as a "sham" that would soon collapse, while theirs was a merger of peoples bound by history, blood and religion. Impulsive Syrians, who voted almost unanimously for Gamal Abdel Nasser as the first President...
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