NUMBER ONE, MECCA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 9 August 1924, Page 16

NUMBER ONE, MECCA.

HOW TO STOP LISTENERS

f OTHER NUMBERS CUT OFF. The new Arab Caliph, King Hussein of Hejaz, has had the telephone system installed in Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed, and has insisted that his own number, as /befitting a king, should be No. 1 Mecca. But the king has not stopped here in asserting his power and dignity. In order that his words may not be overheard when he is carrying on a conversation the king has insisted that the telephone service shall be so arranged that the lifting of his receiver automatically disconnects all other telephones! Until the royal conversation is finished and the king’s receiver is replaced on its hook, no other telephones can be used in Mecca! Not content with the telephone, the king has also had a wireless station erected outside Mecca. It is used for official purposes only. The enemies of the king would liko the Western world to believe that he is a mere desert sheik, untutored and unlettered, but, as a correspondent of The Times points out, he is very far from this.

While the new Arabian Caliph has many patriarchial traits in his character, says a. correspondent of the Children’s Newspaper, he is less primitive in outlook than some supnose. Untutored his Majesty certainly is not, and it is hardly justifiable to apply the belittling description of a mere desert sheik to a monarch, who is not only editor-in-chief to El Kibla, the official organ of the Hejazi Government, but often actually writes the leading articles, and generally makes a point of reading the whole paper in proof. The reading and correcting of Arabic galley-proofs is a matter of no small technical nicety, and both King Hussein and his Heir Apparent, the Emir Ali. have been seen in their tents at Shuneh hard at work with fountain pens improving the grammar, polishing the periods, and perfecting the stops of the next issue of El Kibla

It is one of the most amazing signs of the times, this progress at "Mecca. Who would have thought it possible, ten years ago, to find at the birthplace of the Prophet, the sacred centre of the Moslem world, sue!) things telephones, newspapers, and wireless? It is little more than a hundred years ago that Mecca was visited for the first time bv a Europeah traveller, •John Burckhardt, who ran • enormous risks, but owing to native fanaticism he has found very few followers. Now. however, under an enterprising king, Mecca seems to be modernising itself.