"ملف 61/11 IX (D 159) مسائل متنوعة خاصة بالحجاز ونجد" [ظ‎‎٥‎٤] (٣٩١/١١٩)

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for the Saudi Government to develop the new land more slowly with their own
people, but Ibn Saud will have been flattered to find the tide of migration flowing
back from the town to the desert.
4. Over a year ago I suggested that the gradual replacement of income
from the pilgrimage by oil royalties, paid direct into a bank abroad by a foreign
company, as the main item in the State revenue, should increase the independence
of the crown, but this process has been interrupted by the war. The California
Arabian Standard Oil Company are confident that the Hasa oil-field is going to
be one of the most important in the world, and that it will not be long before
Ibn Saud receives from it much more than he ever received from pilgrims, but
the increase in the revenue from oil royalties, plus the lump sum received for the
new concession granted to the California Arabian Standard Oil Company this
year, has been more than offset by the war slump in the pilgrimage, and Ibn Saud
has just obtained from the California Arabian Standard Oil Company an advance
of a million dollars on account of future royalties. No one, except the King
and one or two others, know what the financial situation of Saudi Arabia
really is and, above all, whether there is a considerable reserve at home 6r abroad,
but the impression made on me is that the King's cheerfulness about his finances
is due to his belief that the war will not last more than another six months or
so, and that, if the low figures of this pilgrimage should be repeated next year
and perhaps the year after, Ibn Saud might be in serious financial straits. The
Minister of Finance is said to have urged the King to have economies made in the
public departments, and to have proposed that the King should not come to Mecca
this season, but economise in transport and entertaining by staying at home.
There was little sign of economy when I was in Riyadh, but it is stated that the
King has, in fact, agreed to the division of all estimates into urgent and non
urgent and to have ordered the latter to be suspended.
5. It is unfortunate from the moral point of view that the new form of
revenue in this country is almost as demoralising as the old. The exploitation
of pilgrims is not an elevating means of livelihood, but it is also demoralising
to draw a large revenue from a natural product whose extraction depends entirely
upon the technical and organising skill of foreigners. But just as fate has given
Saudi Arabia a perfect monopoly in the possession of the shrine at
Mecca, so it has given them a share in the limited quantity of oil in the world,
and one cannot expect tnem to worry about its effect on their character. I am
toid that the demoralising effect of easy oil money on the Saudis is already
apparent, in that whereas ten years ago the rent of 5,000 gold pounds was counted
out with the greatest care, to-day an expenditure of 50,000 gold pounds is con
sidered nothing. But the estect is visible to any observer at Riyadh, where there
is a strong contrast between the poverty of the common people and the sprawling
waste and extravagance of the Royal households. The huge new palace, built
)y the King himself without any proper plan, is typical of evervthin^. It is
said that 2,000 or 3,000 people feed at the King's expense, and this is probably
not an overstatement. There are the brothers and uncles and cousins, and the
Kashids, and the twenty-five or more princes and their unnumbered sisters, each
one the nucleus of a group of idle servants and slaves and expensive cars, and
the men with wives and concubines in addition. And there is no education or
mora i aming or experience to keep a check on the indulgence in pleasure and
or. X f^^ • 0r \ ]e rvm £> himself and the two eldest sons (and perhaps
another son, Nasir who, as the son of a slave mother, has been considered low
fWR. ? S 5® »' overnor , of the tow n of Riyadh), not a single one of
anH nnlv f rsona /^ does , an y work. None of the King's sons have been educated.
Amir qLi 11°^ f \ ave 86611 , an y thln g of the outside world. What the
Amir baud will do, when he succeeds to the throne, with his useless and nossiblv
dangerous younger brothers, it is difficult to imagine At present thev are not
a rthe annehte 0 f' bUt a, . nmad and Khalid have seen something of Europe.
sio-ht of the tlnrip 0 one s has recently been whetted by a
is dead manv of tL Ba hrein and I am inclined to think that once the King
tL new kin/allawL 1S / 0r w k om 'here is no work at home will demand from
new king allowances to enable them to travel and even to livp abroad He
p..«l b, k pro,ongat,on S.'
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