I have seen Arab babies, left by their mothers in the shade of some tree, whose faces had been devoured by the oncoming swarms of locusts before their screams had been heard.

I have seen the carcasses of animals hidden from sight by the undulating, rustling blanket of insects.

And in the face of such a menace the Arabs remained inert.

With their customary fatalism they accepted the locust plague as a necessary evil.

They could not understand why we were so frantic to fight it.