ROLE IN SEARCH OF A HERO

The Three Circles of Nasser's Ambition

Nasser's The Philosophy of the Revolution, published two years ago, has now become must reading in Western chancelleries. France's Premier Mollet calls it Nasser's Mein Kampf. In a time of tension, the comparison is pat, but overreaching. Yet, like Mein Kampf, Nasser's little book is a self-revealing portrait of a restless, unstable man intoxicated with vast ambitions. Excerpts:

FATE does not jest and events are not a matter of chance -there is no existence out of nothing. We cannot look at the map of the world without seeing our own place on it ...

For some reason it seems to me that within the Arab circle there is a role wandering aimlessly in search of a hero. For some reason it seems to me that this role is beckoning to us -to move, to take up its lines, put on its costume and give it life. Indeed, we are the only ones who can play it. The role is to spark the tremendous latent strengths in the region surrounding us to create a great power, which will then rise up to a level of dignity and undertake a positive part in building the future of mankind.

The First Circle

There can be no doubt that the Arab circle is the most important and the one with which we are most closely linked. For it is intertwined with us by history. We have suffered together, we have gone through the same crises, and when we fell beneath the steeds of the invaders they were with us under the same hooves. We are also bound within this circle by virtue of religion.

I maintain we are strong. The only trouble is, we do not realize just how strong we are. When I try to analyze the elements of our strength, there are three main sources. The first is that we are a community of neighboring peoples . . .

The second source of strength is our land itself and its position on the map of the world -that important strategic position which embraces the crossroads of the world, the thoroughfare of its traders and passageway of its armies.

There remains the third source: oil, a sinew of material civilization without which all its machines would cease to function. The great factories producing every kind of goods -all the instruments of land, sea, and air communication; all the weapons of war, from the mechanical bird above the clouds to the submarines beneath the waves -all would cease to function, and rust would overcome every iron part beyond hope of motion or life . . .

The center of world oil production has shifted from the U.S., where wells are going dry. the cost of land is going up and the wages of workers have risen, to the Arab area where the wells are still virgin, where land over vast spaces continues to cost nothing, and where the worker continues to receive less than a subsistence wage. Half the proved reserves of oil in the world lie beneath Arab soil. Have I made clear how great the importance of this element of strength is? So we are strong -strong not in the loudness of our voices when we wail or shout for help, but rather when we remain silent and . . . really understand the strength resulting from the ties binding us together.

The Interior of the Dark Continent

If next we turn to the second circle, the continent of Africa, I may say without exaggeration that we cannot under any circumstances, however much we might wish to, remain aloof from the terrible and sanguinary struggle going on in Africa today between five million whites and 200 million Africans. We cannot do so for an obvious and important reason: we are in Africa. The peoples of Africa will continue to look to us, who guard their northern gate and who constitute their link with all the outside world.

Islamic Domain

There remains a third circle -a circle which stretches across continents and oceans and which is the domain of our brothers in faith who all, wherever under the sun they may be, turn as we do in the direction of Mecca and whose devout lips speak the same prayers.

When I consider the 80 million Moslems in Indonesia and the 50 million in China, and the millions in Malaya, Siam and Burma, and the close to 100 million in the Middle East, and the 40 million inside the Soviet Union, and the other millions in far-flung parts of the world -when I consider these hundreds of millions united by a single creed, I emerge with a sense of the tremendous possibilities which we may realize through the cooperation of all these Moslems, a cooperation not going beyond the bounds of their natural loyalty to their own countries, yet enabling them and their brothers in faith to wield a power without limit.

And now I go back to the wandering role looking for a hero to play it. The role is there. Its characteristics I have described. This is the stage. By the laws of geographical circumstance, we alone are able to play it.

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