Experimental Cabinet

Few Occidentals are aware of Mustafa Nahass Pasha, a statesman who greatly resembles in appearance plump, black-mustachioed King Fuad I of Egypt. Politically the King and Pasha are poles apart--the Sovereign a British puppet, the statesman a firebrand Egyptian Nationalist. Therefore it is significant that, last week, King Fuad gave the Prime Ministry of Egypt to Mustafa Nahass Pasha.

So radical a shift in Egyptian politics came, and could come, only after a prolonged and bitter crisis (TIME, March 12 et seq). The previous Prime Minister, Abdel Khalek Sarwat Pasha--like King Fuad a British puppet--was forced to resign when he attempted to foist upon Egypt a British-dictated treaty of "alliance" which was actually one of "subjugation."

When Sarwat fell, the majority party (Nationalist or Wafd) once more set up the rightful majority claim of its leader, Nahass Pasha, to be called to the Prime Ministry. Such a call would have come as a matter of course but for British dominance in Egypt. It finally came, last week, only after the British High Commissioner to Egypt, Baron Lloyd of Dolobran, had convinced himself that force would be needed to impose another puppet Prime Minister upon Egypt and that for the moment force is inopportune.

Accordingly Mustafa Nahass Pasha has been suffered to become Prime Minister, as an experiment. Urged by his Nationalist convictions, he went before Parliament with the following program: 1) Rejection of the treaty of "alliance" in its present form; 2) Maintenance in the Sudan of Egyptian rights which are now being quietly usurped by Britain; 3) Determination to "admit of no encroachment upon the independence, honor, or sovereignty of Egypt."

Though these phrases rang out against Britain, observers were confident that no effective steps to enforce them could be taken by fledgling Prime Minister Nahass. True he is the successor of the late famed Zaghlul Pasha who forged and created the Wafd; but Nahass Pasha, wafded into power, is scarcely a match for lean-limbed, steely-eyed Baron Lloyd.