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Royalty's Contribution. Last week Premier Nasser's revolution was three years and two months old, and the front was still in Cairo. With the army apparently strongly behind him, Nasser is more firmly and more personally in control than ever. To the street mobs, often the governors of Egyptian affairs if not of their own hapless circumstances, he has assumed the proportions of a great leader who persuaded the resented British to withdraw from Egyptian soil. He has promoted sweeping reforms in Egypt's administration. Under a program of land reform, some 660 sq. mi., or about 5% of the arable land of Egypt, most of it taken from the royal family, are being redistributed among the fellahin. He has become a prominent, sought-after guest in diplomatic conclaves across the world.
But the whirlwind enthusiasms of the revolution's early months are expended. Nasser's regime sits uneasily on its base of youthful inexperience and military dictatorship. There still has been no appreciable improvement in the common lot of the Egyptian people, one of the poorest, sickest, most abused on earth. Nasser has not yet been able to win from the International Bank a loan to finance a huge irrigation and power dam across the upper Nile, which Egypt sorely needs to correct the natural imbalance that now jams all but 1% of Egypt's fertile millions (the birth rate will double the population in the next 50 years) along the Nile. While neutralizing some enemies, he has made scores more—the defunct Wafdist politicians, the landlords, the diehard followers of fat Farouk, the Moslem Brotherhood, the handful of Egyptian Communists (perhaps only 3,000), and some resentful officers of his own army.
Flashy dips into the diplomatic big time at New Delhi, Rangoon, Bandung have not obscured a year of setbacks in the foreign field. Nasser's hope of promoting a defense union among Arab states fell apart when, with U.S. blessing, Iraq signed a treaty with Turkey, a NATO partner. Only one other Middle East country, Saudi Arabia, has joined in Nasser's counterplan for a strictly Arab defense alliance. His plan to attach the Sudan after the retirement of the British was frustrated by a revolt in the south, the obstinacy of the northern Sudanese and the ineptitude of one of his chief lieutenants.
An Unholy Mess. The shortcomings and setbacks have disappointed those—both inside and outside Egypt—who began to talk of a new Ataturk when the dashing young soldier sprang up from obscurity and took charge. Yet in Western capitals, Nasser is still looked upon as Egypt's best hope for decent government, a moderate among the hotheaded many who would fight Israel even at the cost of suicide, a man who perhaps some day can grow into the dominant Middle Eastern leader he aspires to be. Even in Israel, officials say privately that they would be sorry to see Nasser fall from power. "Without Nasser," says a British Foreign Office diplomat, "Egypt will be one unholy mess, another Syria."