UNITED ARAB REPUBLIC: The Adventurer

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Age 20—Known as a leading anti-British cadet at Cairo's Royal Military Academy, Nasser graduated as a second lieutenant and was sent to command a platoon at a post up the Nile. It was the year of Munich, the year of Arab-Jewish rioting in Palestine, of U.S. company oil discoveries in Saudi Arabia.

Age 26—Instructor at the military academy, Nasser married the daughter of a Cairo rug merchant. Nasser saw no World War II action. The British had reoccupied Egypt, ringed Farouk's palace with tanks, made the King accept their nominee for wartime Premier.

Age 30—Left Cairo staff college to fight in 1948 Palestine war. Wounded in the shoulder, he held out in "Faluja pocket" till Cairo stopped fighting. Bitterly convinced that the real enemy was the rotten regime back home, he organized his first Free Officers' secret meeting at Faluja.

Age 34—Having personally recruited 700 Free Officers, he led the army revolt overthrowing Farouk, and wielded power through an older, pipe-smoking front man, General Mohammed Naguib, who is now under house arrest. That year Dwight Eisenhower was elected President of the U.S., and Mossadegh, having nationalized Iran's oil, was driving Iran to bankruptcy.

Age 36—Dismissing Naguib as not revolutionary enough, Nasser became Premier himself. He negotiated British withdrawal from their Suez base, attended the Bandung Conference, and then, after rejecting a limited U.S. offer, ordered arms from the Soviet bloc.

Age 38—Nationalized Suez Canal Co., following the U.S. withdrawal of its offer to help build $1.3 billion Aswan dam ("Americans, may you choke on your fury"). Then his armies were badly beaten by the invading British, French and Israelis.

Age 40—Became President of the United Arab Republic (Feb. 1, 1958), following the merger of Syria and Egypt (Feb. 1, 1958). His Egyptian majority: 99.99%

Al Umma. The secret of Nasser's rise to power is that he rides, and sometimes controls, though at other times he is controlled by, the most powerful political force in the Arab world—the idea of Al Umma al Arabia, the dream of Arab unity, of one Arab nation. The idea in modern times sprang up first about 1870 at, of all places, Beirut, among, of all people, Christian Lebanese students of the American University of Beirut. U.S. education, received by Christian Arabs, was the first modern catalyst in the retort where Arab unity began to simmer and then to boil.

The vague and emotional concept of Arab unity, influenced by 19th century European nationalism, held that the Arabic language, Arab ways, and a common past of glorious medieval empire should unite 70 million Arabs from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. The intellectuals' enthusiasm sparked a political awakening in which Islam played a big part. Wherever this Pan-Arab idea came to life, it ran up against the Western imperial domination of the day. The foreigner who drew his arbitrary borders across the body of the Arab lands, who exploited the riches of the Arab soil and what lay beneath it, this Western foreigner was the enemy.