A dust cloud became visible in the distance. A welcoming shout went up. It turned out to be a column of soldiers, marching with their banners in the wind -- a contingent of about two hundred volunteers bound for Palestine under Misr el Fattat auspices. They were dressed in war-surplus khaki and the Arab headpiece...Their faces were bronzed by the Nile sun, their hands bony from toil. They were fellaheen -- those lowest in the social scale, usually tenant-slave farmers or unskilled workers. They joined the Green Shirt columns, and together marched past a guard of honor of Green Shirt officials. I began to photograph the scene with one policeman behind me, the other at my side. Suddenly, as the massed banners and flags passed by, a dozen Green Shirt arms shot out in the old-fashioned Fascist salute. To snap or not to snap! What would the police say? Nervously, I took two photographs of the saluting soldiers. Nothing happened...

..."Take a picture of my daughters," Hussein said. "I have named them Faith and Liberty." Hussein's wife was nowhere in evidence, faithful to the Moslem tradition that no decent woman ever shows her face to strangers. In his military dress and cap, hands on hips, jaw stuck out, Hussein on the balcony of his home imitated Il Duce. Hussein had neither the girth, the stature, the jaw, nor the snarl of the Italian Fascist whom he admired and tried to emulate...

...As we watched from the balcony, the Followers of Truth marched across the bridge in long thin columns, their khaffiyas flowing in the wind, their banners proclaiming in huge Arabic letter: GO AND FIGHT THE JEWS...THE ARMY OF ALLAH GOING TO FREE PALESTINE...I WANT TO COME WITH YOU. While the two feuhrers stood side by side with me, waving from the balcony, the columns marched to Misr el Fattat headquarters.

That St. Patrick's night, I witnessed the weirdest briefing session any American could hope to see. Green Shirts and Followers of Truth filled the courtyard, so that not even a crow could find a resting-place. On the iron fence was a banner, reading: THE ARMY OF MOHAMMEDAN GOD. FOR THE LIBERATION OF PALESTINE...

...From eight o'clock on,. for two hours, speaker after speaker mesmerized them with the most extraordinary supercharged emotional oratory I have heard in ten years of hearing the best among our worst Americans...It seemed to me the words were like savage thrusts into the night. They were like flying stilettos jabbing at my senses. I understood on ly a few words -- Allah, Yahood, Falastine (Palestine) attl, attl (kill, kill), Mujahed (Holy Warrior), Jehad (Holy War) -- but I felt the impact of every word, and the crackling thunder of every sentence as it ripped and lashed out into the night.

One speaker was a true firebrand. He was a thin wisp of a man, with a small, thin, pointed beard. His long deep-copper-colored face glowed with religious frenzy...He mixed pure fire with his words, and as he spoke he swayed slightly with the fluid rhythm of his words, as a cobra sways, at times speaking in a kind of hypnotic singsong -- half prayer, half chant -- then suddenly, his voice as brutal as a mailed fist, he exhorted, demanded, beat with the hammer of his eloquence on the ears of his men to fight for Allah and His Prophet. His words were like the thunder of a savage symphony, piercing the listeners and the darkness beyond...

As he finished, the bowels of the earth seemed to explode. The roar that came from the frenzied listeners is utterly undescribable to American ears. The least I can say is that it was like the snarling of volcanic monsters, bloodcurdling, awesome. The white-turbaned faces, roasted under the Nile sun, burned with the zealous fire of Islam; wherever I looked men stood screaming, shouting, eyes bloodshot, ready at the moment to tear the hearts of their foe with bare hands in the name of Allah and the Holy War...

...Hussein was an intense speaker. With powerful gestures and deep emotion he reinflamed the religious frenzy of his listeners.

"Death to Palestine's Jews!" he bellowed.

"Death to Palestine's Jews!" the mob roared back.

He exhorted them against British occupation of the Suez and the Sudan. The mob thundered its approval. As Hussein ended with the familiar words, Jehad, attl! attl! the same vibrant voice in the rear called out in Arabic:

"Hussein, our leader; Hussein, our savior; Hussein, protector of Egypt!"

Once again the monsters thundered into the night, the echoes reverberating from Cairo's moon-bathed rooftops.

The briefing was over. The Holy War was launched. The emotional crescendo on which this rally had ended found everyone perspiring, ecstatic, savage, ready to dismember any Jew, or burn his home. I could understand now how it was possible, after such meetings, for inflamed mobs to pour into Cairo's Jewish quarter, and smash and destroy Jewish shops. Hussein himself had incited a number of such riots on Friday, the Moslem Sunday, after his prayers. Cairo police with black shields and long black whips stopped such riotings -- after the "patriotic" fury had spent itself.