Reluctant Millionaire
ISM
A POPULAR fictional character is the rags-V riches millionaire who comes to regret his weal° and its corrupting influence on his family. David Howarth's new book has such a hero, ibn Saud' the larger-than-life King of Saudi Arabia, whose income at the time of his death in 1953 Made the average millionaire seem merely comfortably off by comparison. Howarth tells how, during the first quarter of this century, the Foreign Office and the ludoti Office, each with its own candidate for the leader' ship of the Arabs, fought a Whitehall war. The FO protdgd, the pathetic Sherif Hussein, at first
was victorious, but it was ibn Saud who, desP' ot official British disapproval, finally united most
the peninsula in the first independent Arabian
ter kingdom for over a thousand years: la' came oil and with it the collapse of the moral and religious foundations of the Saudi State. Howarth compares Saudi Arabia unfavour- ably with Kuwait in the way that oil wealth has been spent, but he overlooks the fact that at the beginning many members of the Kuwaiti ruling family, with the notable exception of the Amir himself, went on a spending spree com- parable with that of the Saudis. It was only later that extravagances were ended and ordered government came to the Sheikhdom. Today Saudi Arabia has, in Prince Faisal, a new King in everything but name. Will he succeed where his brother has failed in transforming Saudi Arabia into a modern State? If he does, then ibn Saud's achievement in creating a united kingdom out of the desert will not have been in vain.
JAMES H. D. BF LGRAVE
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