Page 58 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

43

and Dr. Storm were able to report that, despite record high

operating costs, the medical side of the Mission work had be-

106
come completely self-supporting.

Medical touring into the interior of Saudi Arabia \\ras
also a growing occupation up through the 1950’s. In 1934

King Abdul Aziz Ibn Sa’ud had invited Dr. Dame to institute

a regular policy of tours "to Nejd, not only to Riyadh, but

to the numerous towns north and northwest as far as Hail." 107

This the Mission had done its best to accomplish. 10,406
108
patients were treated on a tour of Arabia in 1935. Dr.

Harrison had made two tours to Arabia in 1942, and another

109
two tours to Nejd the following year, Dr. Storm made

numerous trips along the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, and
;
Dr, Wells Thoms made a long tour in 1952 at the request of
110
the Sultan of Oman up into Dhofar and along the Trucial Coast.

Thus, throughout the forties and early fifties, itinerant work
m

was kept up and prosecuted as energetically as it had been in

its inception in the twenties and thirties.

Meanwhile, new political currents were being set in

motion in the Middle East that were to make all western in­

volvement more difficult and circumscribed. In the after-

math of the Second World War, nationalist movements had been

slowl3r talcing shape in reaction to western political and

economic imperialism, These finally surfaced and flared up

into military'revolt, Arab nationalists felt betrayed by

the West in Palestine and blamed the British and the Americans

for the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel in Pal-