A Hearst reporter interviewed Gamal Abdel Nasser last year and came away describing him in print as "a composite of Hitler, Mussolini, FDR and an Egyptian edition of a South American revolutionary leader."
    I would have left out Mr. Roosevelt.
    And I can't say how close Egypt's strong-arm man comes to the other parties mentioned by the Hearst delegate. I know Nasser himself can't say. He is only a young fellow and he's playing it by ear.
    He doesn't know how his revolutionary etude ends.
    He had no notes in the beginning, when he lay under siege in Palestine and cursed Fat King Farouk for sending the flower of Egypt into battle "unprepared...our destinies the playthings of passions, plots and greed..."
    And he had no notes four years later, on July 23, 1952, when he rode into power over Egypt's long-suffering millions. He was 34 and strong in will and body, but he was all mixed up.
    Nasser set forth the problem himself in his book, "The Philosophy of Revolution," when he told of the torment he endured that hot July night as he debated whether to assassinate Farouk "and those who tampered with our sacred traditions":
    "I had within me a feeling of distraction, which was a mixture of complex and intermingled factors: of patriotism, religion, compassion, cruelty, faith, suspicion, knowledge and ignorance."
     I spent an evening with Nasser in Cairo and found the mixture quite as the man described it.

    The ruler of Egypt is a humbly candid fellow out of simple beginnings--his father was a postmaster in Alexandria. Gamal was a poor student, destined to be an infantryman rather than an egghead.
    He could never be a drafter of fancy blueprints on the order of a Hitler or a Mussolini. His revolution is a sketchy kind of thing; there's no "Mein Kampf" to guide the tourist bent on political and intellectual trails.
    Nasser never had time for that sort of mishmash. Short on scholarship, he is a man of action, first and last. Farouk's police were cracking clubs over his ample head when he was 16--and he has the dents to show for it, although he didn't always know why they were clobbering him.
     The postmaster's big boy got into street demonstrations only because he happened to be passing and had muscle to spare. It wasn't until his skull stopped aching that he discovered he was helping to fight the corrupt and rotten regime in the palace.
      Gamal Nasser today is a strapping 200-pounder going gray at the temples and a little heavy around the middle as he broods over the great plaything he holds in his hamlike fists--"Egypt the strong, Egypt the free."
    He is clearly happier in his loose-fitting Army tunic than in custom cut civvies but now he is not just Lieutenant Colonel Nasser but also "El Raiss"--the Chief--and the Prime Minister, too. And the thing he called "the ecstasy of success" has turned out to be a complex prize indeed.
      The first decision, back in 1952, was simple--whether to send out the execution squads (he had been on some in his time) and open with a "Reign of Blood" or exercise the dignity and restraint of a good winner.
    Nasser let his enemies live--at least most of them, certainly, including the filthy rich Farouk.     Now the decisions come much harder:
    Shall he have the bloodbath in Israel instead? Is "El Jihad" (Holy War) the way to the rule he cherishes over all the Arab nations?
    [The Soldier-Premier denies such an intention. "I am the last man who will decide to have a war," he told me. "I know what is war. The military people know what is war."]
    In the world outside, where men in high places court his favor, shall he go East or West? Can he take Communist tanks and bombers and no Communist ideologies? Can he take the West's money (and maybe some of its arms) and none of its democracy?
    And what about the revolution? It always comes back to the revolution. Shall he buy the people weapons and let the reforms wait?
    On this count, wherever else his mind may be cloudy, Nasser's course is solidy charted.
    He'll buy the weapons and nothing can change his mind, he told me when we talked amid the hand-me-down furnishings in the study of the plain five-room house he occupies with his wife and five children in the Abbasiya army compound in Cairo.     There's an air of sincerity and conviction about the hawk-nosed Premier and he talks softly. They say no one has ever heard his voice raised but he does have a way of conveying anger. Thus when I remarked that I had been in Israel for 10 days and found much concern there about his arms deal with the Czechs I got this answer:
     "If I feel that Ben-Gurion is feeling a nightmare, I'll be delighted. He was always trying to frighten us by his acts and statements. I know Ben-Gurion from the 15th of May, 1948." (The day the State of Israel was proclaimed.)
    Nasser paused, and I asked whether it wasn't a fact that Egypt and Israel had enjoyed some periods of peace since 1948.
     "I was feeling safe," he said, "until the 28th of February (the day retaliating Israeli troops killed 38 Egyptians). I was surprised when they said the Israeli troops are in Gaza and we suffered heavy casualties and everyone put the blame on me."
     The UN Mixed Armistice Commission condemned Israel for that raid--it had condemned Egypt for others--and I reminded Nasser that there had been many incidents on the barren Gaza plain before last Feb. 28.
    "One refugee may have entered the Israeli territory," the Premier said, and I felt sure it was only a manner of speaking, but nothing at all was from the armed forces."
    If it was "one refugee," of course, he must have been a most formidable fellow, because Israel counted 46 of her men killed and 110 wounded on the Gaza Strip before Feb. 28.     Nasser said it was not until Aug. 24 that he "gave the permission to take contrary action against the aggressors" because by then his officers "felt they were making themselves targets."
    The Israelis say Nasser's sneaker-clad suicide squads, the Fedayeen, went into action on the border more than a year ago.
    In his own rewriting of Gaza's history, Nasser has banished any suggestion that anybody on his side, refugee or otherwise, started the long night of horror. When I asked why in his mind there could be no peace, what came forth in his halting English was this:
    "The first fact of peace is not reaching peace by force. Nobody can feel that this is really peace when Mr. Ben Gurion said we must force a settlement. Nobody accepts peace by threats."
    I said there had been loud words on both sides, understandably, but did that mean war?
    "It will be difficult and impossible to speak about peace," Nasser said, firmly.
    I asked whether there wasn't a single avenue of hope we could discuss, there alone, over his delicious lemon juice. Nasser let a deep-throated laugh come through his gleaming white teeth, put a thumb to his lips and rubbed his thin mustache.
    "If Israel is willing to put into effect the UN resolutions," he replied.
    He was talking about Israel going back to the boundaries it had before the Arabs made war in '48 --obviously a very large order because it would reverse the verdict of that war.
    I asked about the refugee problem--the biggest road-block of all--and whether it couldn't be settled if the Israeli's paid the Palestinian Arabs for the land they lost in the war.        
    "They'll spend the money," Nasser replied, smiling. He added that Israel must take back all the refugees (there are 250,000 on the Egypt-Israeli border and, at the least, 500,000 more in the other Arab states).
    I asked whether some good, however small, might not come out of a talk with the Israelis.
    "No Arab leader can dare sit down with Israel because of the hatred and because of the fear and the tension," Nasser replied. "We are a people who don't forget."
    I asked whether time might not heal Arab wounds.
    "I am sorry to say that conditions are now worse than before," Nasser said. "I think Feb. 28th is the turning point. For me it was the bell of danger."
    Did he mean there had to be war?
    "I have to fight if there is an aggression till the last man and the last bullet and the last house, but I will not begin it," Nasser said. "I am trying to insure my country against invasion."     That, he added, was the only reason for buying Czech arms.
    I asked whether he sensed any risks in dealing with the Russians (his regime has cracked down on made-in-Egypt Communists).
    "I don't see any danger," Nasser said. "The Egyptians are proud to be Egyptians."
    Besides, he said, he wouldn't let any Russian missions into his country, although he might send men behind the Iron Curtain to learn how to use the new machines of destruction that are beginning to reach Cairo.
    He charged that the West, notably the U.S., forced him into the Czech contract by holding back on arms. Washington agreed in June to sell him $27-million worth but the deal fell through in an argument over terms (not to mention the State Dept.'s probable concern over public reaction at home).
    This was the point where Nasser's bitter attack on the American Zionists and world Jewry in general--the first he has ever made for publication--came into the interview.
    The heretofore-secret Arab line came out, in measured tones, after Nasser said he couldn't get help from Washington because Israel "was supported by many influential people--wealthy people."
    I asked him what people and he said he meant "those who are working with the Jews--you have some strong Zionist organizations."
    Under more questioning, the Premier assailed what he termed the "Zionist conspiracy" against the Arab world. The main details of that part of the interview were published in The Post.
    Nasser said everything would be fine in the Middle East except for the "Zionist conspiracy"--
     "Why is Israel always hostile? Because they feel there are people backing them by money, by propaganda, by everything. They feel they are strong because of those who back them. That is why we have trouble."
    I asked Nasser whether he meant in all seriousness to charge that there was an international Jewish plot against the Arab world.
    "I like to speak frankly, he said. "This is my custom."
    He had said earlier that he was "not a professional Prime Minister."
    I asked Nasser if I might not tell him some things about the Jews of America. He smiled, shifting his six-foot frame in his easy chair, and I made these points:
    Not all Jews are wealthy.
    Not all Jews are Zionists--now or before 1948.
    Not all Jews--indeed none, in my view--are sitting up nights scheming how to take over the Arab world.
    The Premier said he had never "heard any of those things before" and he certainly appreciated my telling them to him.
    That was the way we left it.