HOPES FOR FUTURE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 January 1943, Page 4

HOPES FOR FUTURE

OF BETTER UNDERSTANDING WITH MOSLEMS . IN NORTH AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST. CALL ON UNITED NATIONS. (By Norton Webb in the “Christian Science Monitor.”) In step with the war’s break-up of old alignments all over the world: and busy discussions of hopes for improvement over the past, North Africa and the Middle East are stirring and fermenting over America’s clear cut, bold and powerful entrance into this theatre of operations in association with Britain and other United Nations adherents. While it is highly encouraging that many Arabs and Frenchmen are fighting on the Allied side in North Africa, with hopes that "many more will join, the role of France cannot be fully and finally claried until, as President Roosevelt pointed out, the French people have been fully liberated. Liberation of French North Africans from the Nazi Vichy yoke is a direct application ofthe Atlantic Charter. For the Roosevelt declaration implies that not colonial hierarchies or “any individual” but democratic procedure will determine the status of colonial peoples. This seems to have been recognised by Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nuri-es-Said, in his message to the President. The trend so far in North Africa appears favourable to the United States, Britain and other United Nations adherents. The Sultan of Morocco has pledged his aid to the United States. Algerian authorities seem pro-Ally. And so do Tunisians. Italian Fascism is being cleaned out of Libya. Egypt has just reaffirmed confidence in the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. And the entire littoral populace shows signs of its antiNazism and pro-Anglo-Americanism. But the Moslem mentality cannot be judged much by outward signs. It is traditionally one of stolid aloofness to those not co-religionists. And while Moslem and Arab influence has been slowly declining in this century, it nevertheless still presents a big challenge to the United Nations in their present efforts to establish a springboard to crush the Axis in Europe and rid the Middle East of its influence. SEMITIC MILLIONS. The Semitic-Moslem elements of North Africa and the Middle- East num'ber nearly seventy millions as against a handful of Europeans and Anglo-Saxons in their midst. Their ancient common outlook is so close that what happens in westward Morocco is quickly buzzed along by chattering populaces in market places and bazaars, all the way to Bagdad, and more remotely to- the Iran plateau’s twenty-six million additional Moslems, with possible echoes also among India’s some seventy-eight millions- of Mohammed’s followers. Since the break-up of the Turkish Empire under the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, demands of the Semitic-Moslem world for more freedom and independence in North Africa and eastward have been linked with marked stirrings and often violent outbursts, such as to force the Powers to make concessions. Insubmission to any “foreign” overlord is specially marked in the Arab. The centre of Pan-Arabia, most, potent organised movement among North African and Middle East Moslems, was recently transferred from Mecca to Cairo, now a Mohammedan intellectual, centre that includes the El Azhar theological school with its 12,000 students. Egypt’s King Farouk is an earnest Mohammedan, and a few years ago showed he had definite powers for re-weld-ing the Moslem world. Whether PanArabianism will be used or not as a weapon to bargain at post-war peace conferences remains to be seen. NEW ERA MAY OPEN. When United Nations’ control fully prevails over North Africa and the Middle East, what can its populations look for in answer to their long and loudly proclaimed aspirations for greater independence, equality with the West and progress in general? The banners of the United Nations are those of the Atlantic Charter, and today represent greater freedom, justice and equality for all peoples. As, through the presence of American, British and o.ther democratic troops, this uplifting moral force is grasped by the Moslem mentality, the result should be increasing cooperation for the Allies, and improved political, economic and other post-war alignments for the Semitic-Mohamme-dan peoples of these regions. Their rights in common with those of other men must have largesse of considera-. tion. i

The portent of North African events is then that, vital as is the establishment of a North African springboard' to crush Nazism and Fascism in Europe, they represent in their wider sense, whatever difficulties ahead, the possible culmination of one era and the start of another that ought to mean better and more ethical living standards for the related areas of North Africa and the Middle East and even beyond.