(See Cover)
Britain's soldiers stood in their classic and indomitable position: with their backs against the wall. West of Suez there was no other place to make a stand. Behind them was Cairo, capital of Egypt; the delta of the Nile, a great plain as large as Vermont, crisscrossed with irrigation canals; Alexandria, last major British naval base in the eastern Mediterranean. All that stood between Rommel and Suez was General Sir Harold (Rupert Leofric George) Alexander's Eighth Army. If it failed, then, in the words of one U.S. Army official last week, "God help us all."
God Help Cairo. All through the summer, 140 miles behind the lines, Cairo had sweltered and fidgeted, stirring uneasily under an occasional sprinkle of Axis aerial bombs. In & out of gaudy, mosquelike Shepheard's Hotel had streamed the city's potpourri: cotton kings, gamblers, Imperial soldiers, newsmen and Cecil Beaton, wincing at the din of "hurdy-gurdies, bicycle bells, news vendors, trams, bagpipes, loudspeakers and the braying of donkeys."
Wrote Photographer Beaton in Vogue: "The dust blows past the jalousies into the 'Art Moderne 1900' interiors, on to the pinnacles of bric-a-brac. . . . The heat becomes oppressive; only the darkened room is bearable." Before his eyes swam Beatonesque visions: "Prince Mohammed Ali, heir to the throne and cousin of King Farouk I ... in his tarboosh, morning coat and sponge-bag trousers, with an enormous emerald on one finger." . . . Madam Fouad El Manasterly at soirées in her garden overlooking the Nile. "The glitter of the Turkish standard candelabra and the white-draped musicians in the boats below the window create a romantic effect. They say that Moses was hidden in the bulrushes here. . . ."
In Cairo's narrow streets natives in flapping galabeyahs jostled Scots in kilts, Egyptian officers in red fezzes elbowed turbaned Sikhs. British officers relaxed at the Turf Club. Last week Wendell Willkie arrived (see p. 19).
In his palace sulked Farouk I, the boy king with the girl wife. No great friend of the English was Farouk. Despite years of English domination, Egypt was more Latin than Anglo-Saxon. In political control was the Wafd Party, under Prime Minister Mustafa El Nahas Pasha. The best that could be said of the Wafdists was that, with the Axis armies at the gates, they were neutral, their hands upraised. The Egyptian Army, little more than a police force, could not be expected to resist. Egypt, old and lush, indolent and naked, waited—ready to be taken.
This was the crisis faced by the little Irishman upon whom England and the United Nations depended last week. As General Alexander well knew, to lose the battle was to risk the war.
The Relativities. When Rommel made his first tentative attack, the rains in Ethiopia had washed the red-brown silt down from the hills, swelling the sluggish Nile. The hottest desert days were over.