344 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1944 
territories. Thus, the Sudan supplied personnel and bait for Arabia; 
India sent a trained staff to help in Persia and Oman; Kenya has 
undertaken to supply bait to the territories of the former Italian 
East Africa, etc. In Persia where local personnel was competent to 
deal with the situation, the extent of the operations required was 
too great for the local resources, and British, Indian, and Soviet 
Governments came to their assistance by providing additional per- 
sonnel, motor transport, bait, etc. 
The chief problem, however, remained that of Arabia, a vast sub- 
continent devoid of communications, with a sparse population, which 
has little interest in locusts as agriculture is practically nonexistent. 
On the other hand, this is one of the most important locust-producing 
areas. Fortunately, most of the peninsula is under the rule of King 
Ibn Saud who is keenly interested in the development of his country 
and he not only agreed to admit anti-locust missions but offered ready 
assistance in their work. Small motorized anti-locust missions were 
sent to various parts of Saudi Arabia and Oman in 1942-43, mainly 
for the purposes of studying the conditions and acquiring experience 
in desert warfare against locusts. The next winter (1943-44) it 
became possible with the assistance of civil and military authorities 
to send into Arabia several well-equipped missions, comprising over 
350 motor vehicles and nearly 1,000 men. These missions were dis- 
tributed over all the most important locust-breeding areas and have 
accomplished a magnificent piece of work in spite of many and various 
difficulties. Most of the personnel were British, but it included also 
Americans, Egyptians, Indians, Palestinians, and Sudanese locust 
officers and technical assistants. The whole anti-locust army was 
technically directed by the Chief Locust Officer (R. C. Maxwell- 
Darling, later succeeded as Senior Locust Officer in Arabia by D. 
Vesey-Fitzgerald), and various detachments kept in touch by wireless. 
Many thousands of square miles of territory, some of it never before 
visited by Europeans, have been effectively cleared (by poison bait) 
of locusts, which were killed in quantities defying all estimation. 
Apart from the immediate achievement in reducing locust hordes, 
which would have invaded the adjoining fertile countries, the Ara- 
bian campaign had a great propaganda value, showing the population 
that locusts, which used to be regarded as Allah’s visitation, can be 
killed and crops saved from them. These crops may be few and far 
between, but this makes their local value even greater than it would 
have been elsewhere. The campaign has also demonstrated the sin- 
cerity of purpose of the United Nations in sending the anti-locust 
missions. For those who conceived the idea of the Arabian campaign 
and who participated in planning and in carrying it out, it was an 
encouragement to see that, as it was hoped, locusts can be beaten on 
their own ground. 
