Playing with Fire
The dispute about Aircraftman Rigden, which came near to ruining the remaining chances of an Anglo-Egyptian agree- ment on the Canal Zone, was extraordinarily silly as well as unnecessarily dangerous. It was silly of Lienutenant-General Festing to express himself in a way which could give a more phlegmatic man than Major Salem genuine cause for alarm. It was silly of Major Salem to talk about " rivers of blood " (whether it was Egyptian or British seemed of no importance so long as it was blood) when he had to admit that " the time had not yet come " for the rivers to flow. But General Festing and Major Salem were probably not quite as silly as they sounded. The abduction of Aircraftman Rigden was only one of a series, which included the two Maltese, Messrs. Borg and Beneditti, who turned up later in an Egyptian jail but who had not in the first place been arrested by the Egyptian police. For some time it has been known that a branch of the Government in Cairo is trying to organise a guerilla force which " when the time has come " will be able to operate against the British forces rather as the Stern Gang used to operate in Palestine. To this end they had interrogated Borg and Beneditti and were probably interrogat- ing Rigden. In so far as the British find it necessary to keep their troops in Ismailia in present circumstances, they obviously cannot allow these plans to develop without official protest. So Rigden became an inflated, clumsy but understandable cause celebre. Though young Egyptian thugs are still bran- dishing pistols in the Zone and (hough the British army are still searching Egyptian vehicles at the points of entry, it now looks as though the affair will pass without a major crisis. If it does, this will tend to confirm the.impression that the more sober elements in General Neguib's cabinet do not want to make a settlement finally impossible even when they are given the perfect opportunity of doing so. But the fact remains that Major Salem is the Minister of National Guidance in that same cabinet.
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