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This knowledge, and the brooding conviction that the will to attack is mounting in Israel, has made Jordan's frontier villages especially pleased of late to be host to a small, urbane Englishman who is a man of distinction in this part of the world. He is Major General John Bagot Glubb, 57, the small, grey-haired commander of the Arab Legion, who is known across the desert as Abu Huneik (father of the small jaw) in tribute to the disfigurement he bears as the result of a World War I bullet wound in the face. Glubb Pasha's personal plane Hies daily from Amman (pop. 200,000), the capital of Jordan, to Jerusalem, ostensibly to enable Abu Huneik to visit his aged mother, sick in her Jerusalem home. But Glubb is more often in the field than in Jerusalem. With his distinctive cavalcade (two jeeps and a tan staff car crammed with Arab Legionnaires) he bounces from village to village along the frontier, and everywhere he stops, an impromptu majlis (assembly) forms to discuss the defense of the border.
Abu Huneik knows how to talk to the Arabs. Though he often reads the lesson in the Anglican church at Amman, he still carries in his right hand the prayer beads which Moslems use to calm their nerves and count their petitions to Allah. Outsiders are not welcome at Abu Huneik's talks, but the word leaks out that what he is saying goes like this:
"The Jews mean to attack us. Geography shows that they have got to widen their waist by straightening out the bulge we make into Israel. They have got to shove Jordan back. And one way or another, they mean to do it."
Jordan's only military resource is Glubb's Arab Legion: 20,000 men. But against a growing Israeli army, whose officers hope will one day number 250,000 men, even Glubb admits that "we must have outside help." Where is the help to come from? Glubb seems to imply that the British army, about to evacuate Suez, might be pleased to reinforce Jordan, in return for base facilities. Many Jordanians agree. Seated on a golden throne in his white stone palace at Amman. 20-year-old King Hussein told me recently that military aid from Britain "is now under discussion, and we believe these contacts will produce good results."
The sad fact is that there are people on the Jordan side who still dream about renewing the war. Defeat and injury in 1948-49 left many Arabs with a sick and shamed desperation, and they see no hope of recovery except by force of arms. Both sides have their war parties, and if the border killings continue, the moderate men may break. You have only to watch the daily mounting tension to become gloomily convinced that sooner or later, one incident or another is going to touch off an explosion. No border built so largely on fear and hatred can be counted upon to produce peace.