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What then was Britain's good deed? "In the first place," Stewart Perowne told a TIME correspondent recently," "we created the country." Britain's main gift has been the fundamentals of orderly government and security. Before World War I no one dared go out Bagdad's South Gate after dark for fear of bandits. Now it is relatively safe. Many Iraqis used to walk about with one hand on their heads, to ward off djinns. Now few do.
Nuri Pasha knew that the British had insured oil-rich Iraq against Russian pressure as well as against bandits and djinns. If the Hashimites and their advisers who gathered in Amman last week decided on a customs and military union, it would be because the British thought the time had come for a stronger Hashimite state. But such things move slowly in the Arab world. Perhaps, as the Arabs say, union would be achieved bukra fil mishmish (tomorrow, when the apricots bloom)—a day which never comes.
*Unsightly Iraqi national headdress, resembling oversized U.S. Army fore-&-aft caps, known to Westerners as the only headgear a man can) leave on a Middl'e East hatrack without fear of theft.