Suez Canal Problems

F EW material works of man have exerted as much influence on contemporary and later times as the cutting of the Suez ship canal. Coinciding with the advent of the age of steam, it revolutionized many types of human activity. It wrought a fundamental change in geographical relationships by providing a useful short cut between the two most densely populated areas in the worldwestern Europe and eastern Asia. The very potentialities of the canal were such that, for at least half a century before it had emerged from the realm of ideas, it was an important factor in international politics. It was a principal bone of international contention during the several years required for its construction. Since its opening in I869 it has been the subject of endless controversies, negotiations, diplomatic incidents, and unsolved problems. In the current struggle for world domination nothing is more certain than that Suez is one of the most coveted prizes. During periods of international tension the flow of writings relating to the Canal has always increased markedly. Recent crises display such a trend. The success of the Italian attack on Ethiopia in I935 required the constant and unobstructed use of the Canal. Because it constituted a serious threat to British hegemony in the East, if not indeed to British control of the Canal and the Red Sea, it introduced a changed era in the history of the Canal. The culmination of antagonisms in a second World War naturally has drawn the Canal still more prominently into the limelight; and undoubtedly these events are in part the cause of the appearance in print of several new works relating to that waterway. Only a few of these can be noticed in the course of this article, and only briefly; but perhaps such references will be illustrative of current interest in the geographical bearings of the Canal and resultant problems

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