Coll 6/19 'Arabia: (Saudi Arabia) Hejaz-Nejd Annual Report.' [‎91v] (183/540)

was interest in the development of aviation in this country, to which the Italian
Government had already contributed by training Saudi students to become
pilots.
87. A few days later Yusuf Yasin informed His Majesty’s Minister that
Ibn Saud had consented to receive the Italian Charge d’Affaires at Ashaira,
where the King was in camp. The King had tried to excuse himself and had only
agreed to the visit when M. Persico had repeated the request four times, laying
stress on the infrequency of His Majesty’s visits to Jedda, and, finally, on the
unfavourable impression a refusal might have in Rome. Sir Andrew Ryan
told Tusuf Yasin that he did not think the King’s reception of M. Persico would
be misunderstood; it was true that the King had been in Jedda very little during
the last year, and on the two occasions early in 1936 when he was there M. Persico
was away. At the same time Sir Andrew Ryan recorded his assumption that
M. Persico was not undertaking the laborious journey to Ashaira simply in order
to say how-do-you-do, an assumption which was borne out by the account of the
interview which was given to him afterwards by Sheikh Yusuf.
88. According to that account M. Persico began by thanking the King for
having observed neutrality in the Italo-Abyssinian war and for not having taken
part in sanctions. The King replied that he had adopted that attitude out of
friendship for all concerned. M. Persico spoke of facilities afforded to Moslems
in occupied parts of Ethiopia before the pilgrimage and of the happy future
awaiting Moslems there, and stressed the friendly disposition of his Government
towards the Arab nations and their readiness to give any assurances required in
this respect. He again described the offer of Italian aircraft as entirely
disinterested. He spoke of the proposed renewal of the Italo-Yemen Treaty.
He referred to the Saudi-Iraq Treaty, and expressed the misgivings of the Italian
Government on this point. The King confined himself to polite generalities
except on the question of the treaty with Iraq, where he made a reassuring
statement.
89. It is possible that the consignment of Italian arms, to which reference
was made in paragraph 83 of the 1935 report, was not, in fact, welcomed with
enthusiasm by the Saudi Government. There was no evidence during the year
that further consignments of this nature had been received, nor even of the
employment of the arms composing the first consignment. Of the six aeroplanes
offered by the Italians as a gift, the three instructional machines arrived in May.
They were not used often, and one of them met with an accident at Taif and was
completely wrecked. One of the three machines for civil use, a Caproni eight-
seater (but apparently capable of holding fourteen persons), was delivered in
November, but only flew for a few days. At the end of the year ten Italians,
aided by a horde of local labour, were erecting a large hangar imported in sections
from Italy, which had either been presented to the Saudi Government by the
Italian Government or sold to them at an uneconomic price. The section on
aviation gives a fuller account of these matters. The ten young Saudis sent to
Italy for training in aviation (paragraph 76 of the 1935 report) returned in April
1936, having apparently made greater progress in the Italian language and in
admiration of the Fascist system than in the art which they had been sent to
acquire. A report in an Italian aeronautical journal that fifty more Saudis
were to be trained in Italy as air pilots received no support from the facts as
observed at Jedda. On the contrary, there is good reason to believe that the
Saudi Government were inclining to a policy of local training for aviation.
90. On some date before that (the 13th May) on which the Italian
Ambassador in London handed in at the Foreign Office the text of the Italian
decree announcing the annexation of Ethiopia, the Italian Charge d’Affaires in
Jedda made an oral communication to that effect to Sheikh Yusuf Yasin who
subsequently informed Sir Andrew Ryan that he had said in reply that if the
communication had any other object than to convey general information it did
not concern the Saudi Government, who had nothing to do with the consequences
of a war in which they had declared their neutrality. Yusuf Yasin was expecting
a written communication on the subject, and he invited Sir Andrew Ryan’s
comments. Sir Andrew gave it as his personal opinion that any Power which
had previously recognised the Ethiopian Empire would be well advised, even if
not a member of the League of Nations, to avoid hasty recognition of Italian
annexation. Yusuf Yasin declared that his Government entirely shared this