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Today the Suez Canal is more a world seaway than ever. Last year 14,666 ships passed through, half of them tankers. Nearly half of all Western Europe's oil imports pass through the canal. Almost all of the 525 French, British, Greek, Dutch, Scandinavian, Yugoslav and other non-Egyptian employees have pledged to quit working for their new Egyptian bosses whenever their old bosses tell them to. "These foreign workers include all the key men, the technicians and engineers," said a canal expert. "Without them the Egyptians couldn't run the canal for more than a week." Last week the Egyptians admitted that the number of convoys making the 103-mile, slow journey through the canal each day had been cut from two each way to one each way, because many of the 200 pilots "have not returned from their vacations."
Sweet Independence. Nasser and his canal bosses have the advantage of possession. As Nasser predicted, the British and French threats to retake Suez by force faded quickly. The earnest reformer who used to say: "How easy it is to appeal to the emotions of the people−and how difficult to appeal to their minds!" now went around tearfully calling on boys to form home-guard units, and confiding to his handlers: "Never before have I tasted the sweetness of independence like this." The night the Big Three call for the London conference arrived in Cairo, Nasser and his advisers debated for several hours what to do about it. All agreed immediately that Egypt could not go, and that the invitation should be rejected, immediately. When the conversation broke up at 2 a.m., the word was passed to the controlled press.
After he got to bed, however, Nasser could not sleep. He got up and resumed studying the teletyped Big Three communique. In the morning the Egyptian press bannered the word that Egypt would say no that very day, but Nasser announced to his staff that he had decided to postpone a decision. He made his decision only after a week. The delay gave Nasser time to recruit some allies.
Choosing His Words. By the time he finally spoke, he had sought the Russian ambassador's advice six times. His press conference was a slickly staged affair held in the Egyptian Chamber of Deputies, unused since the 1952 revolution. The key phrase of his statement, rejecting the invitation as an act of "collective colonialism," was his own idea. "Perhaps the Americans will understand better if I say it this way," he said. "They don't like words like collective."
After last week's press conference, Nasser talked long with India's Krishna Menon. Then he left by car to join his family at a riverside government rest house just north of Cairo. There he spent the day with his wife Tahia, their three sons and two daughters. The main event: an afternoon showing of six Tom and Jerry cartoons, with the President himself running the projector.