NEAR EAST: Holy Skirmish

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Adolf in Paradise. The timing of the Iraqi affair had a Germanic neatness. Axis business in the Balkans was newly finished. The technique of provocation was a haunting echo of similar German undertakings elsewhere—the appeal to justice, the air of outrage, the nationalistic frenzy. And there were familiar sounds to be heard, phrases repeated as if by rote. Proclaimed El-Gailani: "The Iraq nation will not submit to humiliations inflicted by a foreign power. We have not sought the struggle, but now an appeal of country goes out to everyone. . . . We are waging a sacred struggle. ..."

The German press and radio talked as if Germany owned this sacred struggle. Berlin began yammering about a jihad—holy war. Even if the Germans were not able to land troops on the flank of the British Near Eastern Front, it would sit well with them if the British had to start shooting Moslems.

Germany has been long active in this zone. It was common gossip in Turkey last week that although the British had persuaded Iraq to break off relations with Germany, several German intrigants had recently sneaked into Iraq to negotiate with Iraqi sheiks. Outstanding among these was said to be the former Middle East Chief of Germany's Foreign Office, smooth, Arab-speaking, businesslike Georg Werner Otto von Hentig, a fabulous character who was supposed to have presented Mercédés-Benz automobiles to the biggest sheiks, bicycles to the smallest. Britain has no Lawrence of Arabia in this war (one of Lawrence's rivals, Ibn Saud's good friend Harry St. John Bridger Philby, it was learned last week, was released after three months' detention by the British under the Emergency Powers Defense Act).

Fuel and Ships. Although Iraq has supplied Britain with only 4% of her oil, she fuels the British Mediterranean Fleet. In spite of her sizable synthetic-oil plants, Germany needs oil, particularly since the yield of U.S. wells has been largely poured into the British pan of the scales of war. The U.S. controls 63% of world production, while the Axis (counting Rumania and synthetics but not Russia) controls only 4.4%. The fields of the Near East, including Iraq, give 5.7%—which, from the point of view of Eastern Mediterranean strategy, Britain can ill afford to lose, but which will more than double Germany's supply if the Axis can control them.

Iraq's yield is refined partly in Iraq, partly at the terminus of the 640-mile pipeline to Haifa on the Mediterranean. (The British closed the branch pipeline to Syria after France's fall.) The British Fleet has been oiling at Haifa. Though London claimed last week that the Fleet has built up substantial stores, the week's worst news in the Mediterranean theater grew out of the incident in Iraq: the Iraqi seized the Mosul wells and shut off the pipeline to Haifa.

Fuel for Sheiks. That Britain's first test in the East should have come in Iraq was ironic. Britain created Iraq. As a reward for Arab assistance against Turkey in World War I, the British amalgamated the Turkish vilayets of Mosul, Bagdad and Basra into the mandate of Iraq, which by successive negotiations was gradually given independence. Britain trained Iraq's soldiers, equipped its Army, nursed its Government through perilous times, bought its oil.