EGYPTIAN CRISIS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 47, 24 January 1938, Page 2

EGYPTIAN CRISIS.

ANXIETY IN LONDON. • UNITY IN FOREIGN POLICY. LONDON, Jan. 11. Officials are extremely sensitive about the political conflict in Egypt. It is hoped that Marmoud Pasha, the Liberal Constitutional leader and the new Prime Minister, who has banned all coloured-shirt private armies and prorogued Parliament without haying provoked a disturbance, will continue to be successful. It is not thought, however, that all is well under the surface. Any signs of reaction among the Wafd (Nationalist Party) to King Farouk’s rebuke, delivered when his letter of dismissal was addressed to the former Prime Minister (Nalias Pasha) are being looked for. It is considered in the most reliable quarters that it will be a bad outlook for Britain, as well as for Egypt, if a long and serious political struggle follows King Farouk’s assertion of the Royal -power. . The central facts emerging from the present state of affairs is that what Egypt urgently requires is a united political front in foreign policy, and nothing is more likely to cause either important Egyptian political party to attempt to open the door to other Powers besides Britain than a serious domestic issue. British observers have not been perturbed as much as foreign critics, who suggest, on the one hand, that Britain has supported King Farouk against the Wafd, and, on the other hand, that Nalias Pasha has been dispossessed because of the influence of Italy in Egypt. British observers insist that there is no truth in these suggestions, that the affair is purely Egyptian, and that certainly nothing unconstitutional has been done. Even if King Farouk’s strictures on Nalias Pasha have been a little imprudent, it should be hoped that nothing unconstitutional happens; for therein lies the danger.