'File 61/11 VI (D 102) Hejaz-Nejd Miscellaneous' [‎52r] (124/522)

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this document is the property of his britannic majesty's government
EASTERN (A rabia).
January 22, 1934.
CONFIDENTIAL.
Section 2.
[E 501/76/25]
No. 1.
Sir A. Ryan to Si?' John Simon.—{Received January 22, 1934.)
(No. 371. Confidential.)
Sir, Jedda, December 30,
IN my telegram No. 227 of to-day's date I have summed up briefly my
conversations with my French colleague and Fuad Bev Hamza regarding the visit
of the former, in the company of the latter, to Riyadh." It may interest you to have
a fuller account of this episode.
2. As reported in Mr. Calvert's despatch No. 359 of the 12th December,
M. Maigret and Fuad Bey started on the 11th December, two days before my own
return to Jedda. They reached Riyadh on the morning of the 15th December and
left again on the 18th December, getting back to Jedda and Mecca respectively
on the 21st December.
3. M. Maigret lay very low, as his custom is, until the 27th December. On
that day a telephone message from me asking whether he had returned elicited
the offer of a visit. When he came, he first gave me some interesting general
impressions. He contrasted Sana, a place where one merely got back to the Middle
Ages, with Riyadh, which might be a Babylonian city of 5,000 or 6,000 years ago.
all sun-dried bricks and silence, in a setting of illimitable desert.
4. I observed presently that M. Maigret's journey had been the subject of
much comment. In order to draw him out, I cited, half-jestingly, the rumours
that a Saudi prince was to sit on the Syrian throne, that negotiations regarding
the Hejaz Railway were in progress, or that France was intervening in the quarrel
between Ibn Saud and the Imam Yahya.
5. M. Maigret endorsed my own sceptical comments on rumours so fantastic
and proceeded to tell me, with an air of great frankness, what he represented as
the whole truth. He had a passion for visiting out-of-the-way places. He had a
great sympathy for this country. He intended to write a book. His Government
had authorised him to go to Riyadh, and he had gone there on the invitation of
Ibn Saud. He had undoubtedly talked politics with the King, but only European
politics. France had no political interest in Arabia, except in so far as her
position in Syria raised certain questions, e.g., in regard to tribes, and intensified
her concern with Moslem affairs. His Government always impressed on him the
necessity for a discreet avoidance of mixing up in Arabian politics. And so on
and so on, for a pleasant hour or more.
6. It is quite true that M. Maigret, who hardly leaves his house while in
Jedda, has a great taste for distant travel in the East. I had been prepared, for
this reason and because I do not believe him to " cut much ice " with his own
Government, to discount the importance of his trip to Riyadh. Nevertheless, his
statement left one thing unexplained, namely, why the Saudi Government had
authorised the visit. The ban on non-Moslem access to Riyadh has been slightly
relaxed this year, witness the recent visit of Mr. Twitchell, but the reception
there of any foreign diplomatic representative is a portent.
7. On the 28th December Fuad Bey came to see me for the first time since
my return. Our first subject of conversation was M. Maigret's adventure. I
trotted out the same three rumours, with much the same comments as before, and
added a vague reference to suggestions that the French Government might be
prepared to give some kind of material assistance to Ibn Saud. Fuad Bey
expatiated on M. Maigret's love of travel, his desire to write a book and his great
iriendliness towards this country and Islam. He dealt systematically with my
collection of rumours. There was no present question, he said, of a Saudi
candidature for the Syrian Throne. There could be no such question so long as
the French were committed to a policy in Syria which turned on its having a
republican constitution, and any modification of which would raise complicated
questions, among them that, of securing' the assent of the Leasrue of Nations. If