The Indians and the Arabs

Abstract

In December 1936 AB wrote to the manager of his London office:

I presume it is impossible to make you realise that the strength of the firm resides in our magnificent native staff, which it has taken me a lifetime to select. If I had been helped by the London office, we should today have had a European staff imbued with the same lofty ideas, the same sense of devotion, the same loyalty, the same efficiency.

Indeed the record of AB’s Asian staff is in striking contrast with that of the Europeans. Of the scores of Europeans whom AB took on at different times, a bare half dozen were ever with him for as much as five years; while at the time of his death there were double that number of Asians in responsible positions, whose service went back for more than twenty. Incidentally there were a number of Arabs and Indians whose association with AB proved extremely lucrative; whereas with one (or perhaps two) exceptions the Europeans all left AB as poor as when they joined him.