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Is Farouk, after all, more than a royal buffoon? The U.S. has good reason to hope that he is. Farouk may turn out to be the decisive figure in one of the world's decisive areas.
The Killer's Hour. The Middle East is the southern anchor of Europe's defense. Yet today, the Middle East is like a ship heaped with high explosives, drifting toward the rocks while the crew fight among themselves.
In every city, in every oasis, speakers are whipping up hatred for the West. It is the hour of the nationalist fanatic and his gunman hireling. In recent years, the Moslem secret societies (the Moslem Brotherhood, the Crusaders of Islam, the Arab Sacrifice League) have murdered: one King (Jordan's Abdullah) and one President; four Prime Ministers; two cabinet ministers; one police chief, one judge, and one army commander in chief. Near misses: one Shah, one Premier. Two agents of the Moslem Brotherhood were reported last week to be trailing King Farouk on the Riviera.
There is virtually no responsible statesmanship; most Middle Eastern leaders are either anti-Western or ineffectual (see box). The U.S. is doing little to help get the situation under control; the only people who stand to profit without making a move are the Russians. Egypt's masters have on occasion proved themselves as ineffectual as any of the others. But, by virtue of past glory and present intellectual influence, Egypt is looked on by many people in the Arab world as a potential leader. Whether or not Egypt can ever be fit for that role, the country holds a strategic position in the Middle East.
How Goes Egypt? The ancient land of the Pharaohs last week lay drowsily under the parching sun, the Nile Delta a green lifeline beset by the hot brown desert. The river, swollen with the muddy waters from the Sudan and the Ethiopian mountains, as always carried life and hope; as they had for centuries, pregnant peasant women ate mud from its fertile banks, believing that it would make their unborn children strong. Yet even the Nile could not accomplish that miracle. In Egypt, two out of four children die before they are five years old, and the survivors are almost certain to be diseased. In fields which they do not own, 14 million fellahin (70% of Egypt's population) labor over crops whose fruit they will not eat, for wages (average 10¢ a day) which barely keep them alive.
They live in mud huts, sleep on reed mats, dress in rags, eat the bread of the poor (there are two types of bread in Egypt, the good white bread from Egypt's abundant wheat being available only to the rich).
Egypt's ruling class, as stupid, selfish and corrupt as any in the wor,ld, is unconcerned. This summer, as in every summer, the rich fled screeching, scorching Cairo and were relaxing in cool Alexandria or, like their King, on the Riviera. When they return to Cairo later in the fall, their womenfolk diamond-studded and sheathed in Parisian gowns, they will take up life in a small world of their own, which moves between exclusive clubs, theaters and palaces. They own most of Egypt's land, pay ludicrously small taxes.