Page 38 - Arabian Studies (II)

28 Arabian Studies II

was to do and been well, he might have changed his mind and done
what his son Fai$al has done in regard to education.
He also said that he had no ambitions in the Yemen. He could
have taken it, had he wished, when his son, Fai$al, had beaten the
Yemeni army and was in Hodeida in 1934. He went on at length
about the characters of the Imam, his sons, his advisers.
After a week or more at Hafr al-Ats I bn Saud told me that he was
going to the south seemingly for hunting, but in reality in order to
sec Philby befole he reached Riyadh. He had received a message from
Philby that he had something most unusual and important to discuss.
I could go direct to Riyadh and we would continue our talks there.
So a few days later I went one morning, after Ibn Saud’s return,
to the Palace.

Request for a Million
In the interval before Ibn Saud’s return his head of the Dlwan, Yusuf
YasTn, a man from Tripoli in Syria, came to see me and explained
how very poor they would shortly be owing to the war. It had
already made many tilings more expensive owing to the lack of ships
calling and worst of all the forecast of pilgrims coming was a very
low one, for the same reason. He asked for a million pounds from the
British Government to help them out. Oil had been found in Saudi
Arabia in October 1938, a few months after the first strike in
Kuwait. It was only in the late summer of 1939 that the first oil left
the country and of course it was not yet known that the country’s
oil reserves were among the greatest in the whole world. I passed on
the request for a million pounds and in the end Ibn Saud was given a
quarter of a million, although he later received more.

Philby Arrives
LW.as,waiting in the office of Shaikh Yusuf YasTn to see him. On the
nrst day after Ibn Saud’s return to Riyadh, I sat opposite Saud, the
nearest to the closed door of the King’s room,
laiKing with him about the previous evening’s news - other princes
oeing m the room and Yusuf sitting at his desk. Suddenly Philby
= came
_ •« f inp..luen.We ^ad settled down again after welcoming him, Saud
sam to miby in the customary way, ‘Well, what news have you?’ To
^orpatStl°Hn,S^ment 3nd horror’ he told us that as an Englishman he
B atfpntirm ‘v W.3S bad’ Everyone looked at him with great
a
: es, he said, ‘very bad . . . de Gaury there, representing

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