A Settlement with Egypt ?
If all goes well, the negotiations with Egypt on the new British proposals for the future of the Canal Zone may shortly be entering the final phase. If they are successfully concluded all British troops will be evacuated, civilians will be left to maintain the installations, and the right of re-entry into the Zone will be conditional on an attack on Turkey or any of the Arab States. In Cairo there is optimism and in London resignation to the inevitable. But among Captain Waterhouse and his band of rebels there is something like horror. They had two hard blows on Tuesday. The details of the British proposals—to them a complete scuttle—delivered the first. The second was launched by Sir Winston when he came down at last in favour of evacuation. The rebels had always thought of him as sympathetic towards their tough' attitude, but Sir Winston has been thinking deeply of late of the effects of the hydrogen bomb upon strategy and he disillusioned them brusquely when he observed that ' prestige' (the strongest argument of the diehards) cannot be maintained with folly. But neither the Prime Minister himself nor the combined efforts of the Secretary of State for War and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with their strategic and financial arguments, could persuade Captain Waterhouse and the others to fall in with the Government, and so the ` revolt' is now official. Notice has been publicly given that they will ' vote against any treaty which involves the removal of all fighting troops from the Suez Canal area.' They should ask themselves again whether £50,000,000 a year and the of Egypt is a reasonable price to pay for the ' prestige' of remaining in a base which could be knocked out by one blow in a major war.
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