Monday, Aug. 06, 1956

"A Matter of Deep Concern"

Out of the loudspeakers of Egypt shrilled a voice, urgent, strident, and sharply reminiscent of the days in the early 1930s when another mustached zealot ranted and raved his way across the world stage. The decision of Egypt's 38-year-old President Nasser to seize the Suez Canal, his dire prophecy of an Arab empire stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic, his incitement to Algerians to rise up against the French--all these were summonses to the diplomats of Foggy Bottom and their opposite numbers in Whitehall and the Quai d'Orsay to consider, consult, act.

Before canceling out on the offer to help build the $1.3 billion Aswan Dam (TIME, July 30), the U.S. had speculated that Egypt's Nasser might seize the Suez Canal in retaliation. But State did not rate the chances very high. Secretary Dulles was in Peru when Nasser shrieked his challenge (see FOREIGN NEWS). Dulles got on the radiotelephone to Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr. Hoover conferred with President Eisenhower, and the President dispatched Deputy Under Secretary of State Robert Murphy to London to confer with the British and French on lines of counteraction.

At first crowded out of the headlines by the sinking of Andrea Doria (see Disasters), the crisis picked up momentum by the minute. Lights burned late at State. the Treasury Department, the Pentagon. The British ordered drastic economic sanctions designed to bring Nasser down. Unofficially, Britain hoped the U.S. would not only follow suit, but would cut off further aid to Nasser and perhaps disrupt Egypt's cotton market by dumping U.S. surplus cotton abroad (a move that would also disrupt such cotton-growing friends as Mexico and Brazil). The French were talking of a military landing. All seemed to hope mightily for support from the U.S. Sixth Fleet, which was not promised.

Pending seasoned Bob Murphy's report, the U.S. intended to mark time. Secretary Dulles cut short his Latin American schedule, flew home this week. Said he: "The [Egyptian] action could affect not merely the shareholders, who. so far as T know, are not Americans, but it could affect the operation of the canal itself. That would be a matter of deep concern to the United States, as one of the maritime nations."

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