I taxed their generosity, and sat for hours on a ten-thousand-dollar pile of Asian rugs behind the store; and, whatever I have missed and lost, or squandered, at least I know their story and can keep it until the proper time.
Of course, you have to allow for point of view, just as the mariner allows for variation and deviation; but when they inferred that most of the constructive good that has come to the Near East in the last fifty years has been American, they spoke with the authority of men who have lived on the spot and watched it happen.
"You see, the Americans who have come here haven't set up governments.

They've opened schools and colleges.

They've poured in education, and taken nothing.

Then there are thousands of Arabs, living in hovels because there's nothing better, who have been to America and brought back memories with them.

All that accounts for the desire for an American mandate--which would be a very bad thing, though, because the moment we set up a government we would lose our chance to be disinterested.