As recently as yesterday, twenty minutes before that ultimatum came, he was in this room assuring me that he would be able to solve the credit difficulty within a day or two." "Would you like to send for him now ?" suggested Grim.
"I doubt if he would come." "Well, have him fetched!" Feisul shook his head.
"If other people break their promises, that is no reason why we should break ours.

If we can defeat the French and force them to make other terms, then we will expel him from Syria.

I leave at midnight, Jimgrim." "To defeat the French?
You go to your Waterloo! You're in check with only one move possible, and I'm here to make you realize it.

You're a man after my own heart, Feisul, but you and your Arabs are children at dealing with these foreign exploiters! "They can beat you at every game but honesty.

And listen: If you did defeat the French--if you drove them into the sea tomorrow, they'd get away with all the money in Beirut and you'd still be at the mercy of foreign capitalists! Instead of an independent Arab kingdom here you'd have a mixture of peoples and religions all plotting against one another and you, with capitulations and foreign consuls getting in the way, and bond-holding bankers sitting on top of it all like the Old Man of the Sea in the story of Sindbad the Sailor! "Leave that to the French! Let them have all Syria to stew in! Go to England where your friends are.