"ملف 61/11 V (D 95) مسائل متنوعة خاصة بالحجاز ونجد" [ظ‎‎٢‎١‎٩] (٥٣٠/٤٥٥)

530
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
[JULY
arranged to send H.M.S. Pcuzunce to Jedda. Finally, a game of
cricket was arranged between the Europeans of Jedda and the
sloop, and the soldiers thought no one would play cricket if the
serious business of getting the slave through was to be done,
so the men in charge simply took the slave down and walked
him through and he was taken off to the sloop. At the time
there was very serious trouble. The King sent a strong protest
to the Foreign Office and even threatened to withdraw the
Hejazi Minister in London unless the slave was given back.
He was told to withdraw the protest or there would be trouble,
and knowing that the Amir Feysal later in the year was going
to London in the hope of raising a loan, he withdrew his com
plaint so as not to spoil his chances of getting the money, and the
whole affair ended amicably.
I told you about Khurmah and how, although he had been
warned off by Lord Curzon who sent an emissary to say he was
not to defend it, he not only defended it but killed 3900 out of
the 4000 men sent against him. He always manages to pick the
right time to take a firm line. Even now he has one or two little
aces—or bombshells—up his sleeve, such as the Hejaz Railway
and the Arabian air route. The only route for Imperial Airways
to India, in the event of not being able to fly over Persian
territory, is via al Hasa and the Persian Gulf. Then he has
always had a claim to 'Aqabah, and the strange thing is that the
agreement by which he agreed to accept the de facto boundary
between Transjordan and the Hejaz, leaving himself the right
to raise the legal question at a later date, was based on the 1918
military survey map, in which the boundaries between Trans-
Jordan and the Hejaz and between Nejd and 'Iraq were fixed
with regard to meridians, and it has since been discovered that
the map on which the survey was founded is thirty miles wrong.
Many of these things are purely matters of opinion and I
certainly do not wish to appear dogmatic. But it is my firm
belief that Ibn Sa ud wishes to become the paramount chief of
all Arabic-speaking countries. That is his great ambition, and
that all his subjects should profess the Wahhabi creed. That
is why I draw attention to the word for " unity " in the petition.
He believes himself to be possessed of a divine mission to have
all his subjects converted to Wahhabism, which is far and away
the sternest sect of Islam. But I do not believe he will ever
risk or bring about any war in which Great Britain could possibly
be implicated in furtherance of that ambition. If he achieves
his ambition it will be by peaceful means, not by means of war.