File 1707/1924 ‘Arabia:- Jeddah Situation Reports. (1924-1930)’ [‎404r] (812/898)

As to the defence the Wahabis can make, it is impossible to make a forecast of
any serious value Their numbers are still unknown. The force which captured
the town was probably not much over a thousand, and there is no reliable news of
the arrival of reinforcements And probably they are not too well supplied with
cartridges. Artillery is not likely to play a large part in the struggle The road
defence cAreoca 0 ' ^ moreover ’ the b' im » are being kept, it is stated, for the
t * le not yet animated by a spirit of patriotism has been fully
proved by the events of this fortnight. If a very few of the senior officials he
excepted it may be said that the capture of Taif roused universal enthusiasm. The
war was regarded as a personal struggle between Ibn Sand and King Hussein
and as a happy occasion by which the latter might be got rid of. The inhabitants
o iV ecca aiid Jeddah now say that but for the news of the massacres they would
have deposed King Hussein. I much doubt whether their courage would have risen
to his, but at least, they were confident that if Hussein could somehow cease to
be ’ £ Jr C 1 0uld h ? ve come t0 terms with Ib n Sand or, at the worst, they
could tight the Wahabis with easy minds, knowing that their victory would not fix
King Hussein s yoke more firmly on their shoulders; and this conviction is not dead
yet. 13oth Mecca and Jeddah showed a spirit of independence which was completely
lacking before. Jeddah town had hitherto been administered by the King by
telephone down to the most trivial detail; but it now runs itself. No man had
ever dared to question the wisdom of an order, but when the public refused to accept
the King s new coinage, believing that the Wahabis would come and render it
worthless, and the King wished to force it on them, the leading officials and
merchants secured the withdrawal of the order, and the Director-General of Customs,
on his own responsibility, issued gold and Turkish silver in exchange for the King’s
copper. Mecca is said to have decided at last that the slow wretchedness of the
ru e of King Hussein is preferable to that of the Wahabis, but this seems to apply
almost exclusively to the richer class, which lost so many men and so much property
at Taif The poorer people have no property to lose in a raid and little fear of
being killed, whereas they suffer daily hardships from King Hussein’s greed and
from his foolish economic policy. Jeddah is at a loss, fearing about equally the
arrival of the Wahabis, the success of King Hussein and an interval of disorder
when the local tribes might come in and loot the town. They have therefore worked
themselves into the belief that the foreign Powers must protect Jeddah, and the
wildest rumours—most of them based on the supposition that His Majesty’s Govern
ment would intervene—have been afloat. I believe, however, that the attitude of
complete neutrality adopted by the Consular Corps is beginning to convince them
that His Majesty’s Government and the other foreign Powers are interested in the
struggle only in so far as it affects the rights and interests of their nationals.
14. When the crisis came, King Hussein’s first step was to clamour for advice
from His Majesty’s Government and to make the false statement that they had
promised him he should not be attacked. He clearly expected more than advice,
for when I reminded the Acting Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how,
according to the local press (written by the King), the Transjordanian tribes had
recently beaten off a Wahabi attack, King Hussein wrote to say that the attack was
only repulsed by means of British aeroplanes and tanks. Yet only a month or so
earlier he had informed His Majesty’s Government that the Amir of Transjordania
was administering that territory on behalf of the Mecca Government. How little
he has done to conciliate Ibn Sand is well known. He has endeavoured to starve
the Nejd tribes by limiting to a quantity quite inadequate even for his own people
the amount of food-stuffs and other necessaries which might be taken out of the
towns of the Hedjaz, and although this measure was rescinded when he took the
title of Caliph, it has been applied in practice with little if any modification. For
several years he refused to allow Nejdis to come to Mecca on the pilgrimage. He
was personally discourteous to Ibn Sand; he always refers to him as his Excellency
instead of as his Highness; and on receiving from him a letter couched in very
friendly language and bearing the full title of King of the Hedjaz, he sent a curt
reply, beginning “ O Excellency! ” a form of address which he wmuld embroider if
he were writing, e.q., to his own Director of Customs. He openly claimed that the
first step towards peace in Arabia was the restoration of pre-war boundaries. This
was to apply to all Arab rulers in the peninsula except himself. He by no means
desired to be limited, as before the war, to the town of Mecca; but Ibn Sand was
to give up his conquests, and the houses of Ibn Rashid, at Hail, and of A1 Aidh, at