"Surest Guarantee"

Egypt's 18-year-old King Farouk last week drove through Cairo streets, sardine-packed with cheering, cotton-robed fellaheen to open the first Parliament elected since his Coronation. Sixteen-year-old Queen Farida, who has been breaking precedents right & left since her betrothal, last week led the way in breaking another. With Queen Mother Nazli she watched the opening from the royal loge, the first time female members of the royal family have attended the traditional male function.

As Farouk's hand-picked Premier, Mohammed Mahmoud Pasha, read the ten-minute Speech from the Throne, Farouk gazed on a Chamber far more amenable to his will than the one he inherited on his Coronation. Although above party politics according to the Constitution, the ambitious boy-King has booted out the Premier of the majority Wafdist (nationalist) Party, Mustafa Nahas Pasha, and dissolved the Parliament. The Wafd, torn by internal dissension, split into two groups, a Nahas Pasha bloc and the insurgents who call themselves Saadists or "true Wafdists."

Three weeks ago Farouk held elections for a new Parliament. Undoubtedly popular with the people, Farouk nevertheless faced the fact that the fellaheen, most of whom are illiterate, had for years voted for the Wafdists, who passed out the bribes, controlled the police and election officials. In this election Farouk controlled the police and officials. Smartly, he held elections in Upper & Lower Egypt on two different days so his police and troops could concentrate in one section at a time. Nahas Pasha followers were clamped in jail, their identity cards taken up to prevent their voting. A dozen persons were killed, scores injured in clashes. To the 264 seats, only twelve Wafdists and 84 Saadists were elected. His Majesty's Opposition are therefore not expected to give Farouk much trouble.

The King, long suspected of Italian leanings--even his coachmen are Neapolitans--last week gave the first public indication that, like his father, King Fuad, he is ready to play ball with the British. Fear of Mussolini has of late become real in Egypt and the main declaration of Farouk's message was to place Egypt squarely behind Prime Minister Chamberlain and the British-Italian pact signed last week in Rome (see p. 16). Egyptian delegates attended the Rome conferences. "The Anglo-Italian agreement," declared Farouk, "is the surest guarantee of peace."

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