SUEZ—Artery Of Empire

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 169, 19 July 1941, Page 11

SUEZ—Artery Of Empire

gETWEEN Suez at the extreme north-eastern point of the Red Sea and the synthetic town of Port Said on the Mediterranean lies the most valuable, one of the most vulnerable and one of the most strategically important rectangles in the world.

By Philip Jordan

It is 201 miles lung and a few hundred yards wide. Within the borders of those few hundred yards there runs from north to south a sweet-water canal, a railroad, a superbly surfaced motor highwav. electric cables—and the Suez Canal. It is for the possession of the Suez Canal that tirinies have been fiercely battering one another in the mountains of Greece, in Crete, in Iraq. Syria, and on the hot Libyan plateau, for ii has always been the German conception that" once Great Uritain was driven from military control of the canal the whole structure of her imperial misht would dissolve and that the home island would thereafter vield easiiv to a concjuering force. Not a New Theory This conception of the canal's strategic importance vis-a-vis London is not a new theory. As long ago as l!)ll a German writer. Dr. Paul Rohrback. in a book. "Die Bagdadbahn." wrote: "England can be attacked and mortally wounded by land from Europe onlv in one place—Egypt. The loss of Egvpt would mean not only the end of her dominion over the Suez Canal and of her communications with India and the Far East, but would probably entail the loss of her possessions in Central and East Africa."

It is with full realisation that this statement is intrinsically correct that, outposts of tlie immediate British defence of the canal have been lighting hundreds of miles from its magic waters —in Libya and in (heck territory. To balk Germany of the prize she so ardently covets there are also the Roval Navy, the Imperial forces in Palestine. Trans-Jordan and Svria. and. wherever there is air above, the warplanes of the Roval Air Force.

Hut this rectangle of land and water is still defended in 110 small degree from headquarters in the lovely canal city of Ismailia. about half way between the two seas which the canal joins, where a co-ordina-ting British force of all three fighting services maintains a regular defence patrol of sufficient strength to insure—within the numerical limits of troops available to General Auehinleck—the canal's immunity from serious attack.

At regular, very shortly spaced intervals—ii would be unwise to say how often—the canal is swept from end to end for mines, its greatest danger, for even the most vigilant air patrols cannot with certainty guarantee to prevent the enemy's flying into the canal zone at night and laying mines in the waters of this great international maritime highway. Targets are -easy, for

Egyptian nights, even when the moon is small, can have a splendour and brilliance found nowhere else and. even at the darkest hour, the visibility is often tremendous.

Xo ship, about the integrity of whoso papers ana purpose there ss the slightest doubt. allowed to enter the canal before she lias been searched from stem to stern, from truck to keel. but. even so. there is always the chance, however slim, that she may have concealed about her undetected apparatus for minelaying. Guarded Waters Such precautions are not alwa.\considered sufficient, as 1 had the opportunity of observing shortly before the Italian entry into the war. A Soviet freighter loaded with cement, passed through the canal from north to south. On arrival at Suez she received orders from her Government to turn around immediately and go home.

Xo chances were taken with a ship who.se load and circumstances were considered suspicious. An armed guard was placed on her bridge and a naval escort preceded and followed her. while along the canal bank a Bren gun carrier accompanied her. and there was a bomber overhead. Thus she journeyed from Suez to Port Said, where the army abandoned her to the care of other escorts until she had reached the three-mile limit. An often exaggerated wartime danger to the canal is the ship whose captain has orders either to scuttle her or set her on fire. So close a watch is kept on all shipping that passes through that if such a case were to arise there would always be time for tugs to push the sinking vessel to the bank before she was able to block the main passage. As the main channel, which is that part of the canal forty-two feet deep, averages in width just under 200 feet, which is nearly half the total surface width, it will be understood that there is plenty of space in which to manoeuvre sinking or fired ships so that they will not interfere with legitimate traffic. Although Britain is defending the canal in her own most vital interests, she is in fact under international law responsible to all nations for its safety. She is the international guarantor that in both war and peace the canal shall be available to ships of all nations. In the original 1888 convention, which defined the policies on which the canal was to be operated." its signatories—Great Britain, Germanv, Austria-Hungary, Spain, France. Italy, the Netherlands, Russia and Turkey—named the Ottoman Empire as guarantor, but at the end of the last war, when Turkey was no more than a defeated and disarmed nation, this duty was demanded bv and granted to Britain. But the convention was not otherwise modified and indeed. Article I. —although somewhat ironic at the moment—reads: ' The Suez Maritime Canal shall always be free and open in time of war as in time of peace to every vessel of commerce or war without distinction of flag." It adds: "The canal shall never be subjected to exercise of the right of blockade." This means that if, say, a German or an Italian ship were able by some almost impossible means to" reach either Port Said or Suez, it could not properly be refused transit through the canal, provided it obeyed the canal company's regulations. It could, however, and would be either captured or destroyed as soon as it passed the three-rnile limit at whichever end it left the canal. Italian If as "Delayed" There are. however, ways other than military of keeping unwanted vessels out of the canal. Three days before Italy came into the war an Italian ship loaded with 5000 tons of arms arrived at Port Said en routeto Mas§awa in Eritrea. A convenient "mishap" occurred suddenlv at the end of the canal and the vessel's transit was delayed 24 hours. As a result she never reached Massawa. Half-way down the Red Sea a British destroyer discovered her. She was scuttled.

In t'nis war. when the Mediterranean is a battleiield. the Suez Canal t eases almost entirely to function aa a trade highway for bringing the raw materials of the East to Europe, but its true function remains intact: to act as an artery through which vitality and strength are pumped into all the component parts of the British Empire (other than those of the Western Hemisphere l , which go to jiiake it one living body.

li is true that through tragic has aimost ceased, but it is true also that the Imperial Armies of the Xiie. who light equally for the integrity of the British Isles as for that of Egypt, could not be adequately supplied :f it did not exist.

Mr Roosevelt'? declaration that the Red Sea is now a zone to which American shipping will be admitted underlines thi< point heavily.

Communication between the port.-? of Eastern Africa and Egypt, little more than primitive, certainly eouid not supply the tremendous consumption demands of General Wavell's

far-flung forces. Were there no canal there certainly would be no Red Sea ports, such as Suez or Port Tewfik across the bay. capable of handling the fantastic tonnage which now passes through their warehouses, capable of shifting it rapidlv bv rail to whatever destinations the various cargoes are consigned. Canal's Importance If the canal did not exist no modern army in Egypt could hope to defend itself against forces operating on interior lines of communication. Its fall to the enemy would mean the end of resistance in the Middle East and perhaps in the African continent entirely. Nor could it hold out if Cairo were to fall, for Cairo is an integral part of the canal's anatomy. Just as the canal is itself an arter\\ so is it kept alive by a vein of - its own: the sweet-water canal cut from the Nile at Cairo to Ismailia and thence bifurcated to Port Said on the north and Suez on the south. This sweet-water canal (although no water in the world can less deserve the name) provides the whole area with its only water supply. If it were cut —and it is at the mercy of whoever is master of Cairo —the canal zone could no longer support human life: its cities would revert to the desert whence they were wrenched with so much labour and tears; gradually the canal would silt up. The silences of so many thousand years would come down once more on the melancholy brackish landscape through whose wastes Napoleon once dreamed of cutting the canal that a practical visionary from his country finallr achieved. Not that Napoleon and de Lesseps were the first men to realise how great might be the benefits such a canal could confer on mankind: such a passage had been a human dream more than forty centurics before it became a realitv.