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Much of the King's spending is an unavoidable legacy of tradition to which he is bound whether he enjoys it or not. Every night the royal board seats from 80 to 200 guests and retainers, where the King, a huge man, big of bone and body in his father's mold, presides with courtly grace. In the first year of his reign, he has traveled more widely than old Ibn Saud ever did. One trip south, which took him over some 3,500 kilometers of flinty desert innocent of all roads, was an astonishing testimonial to the durability not only of the King himself but of his fleet of U.S. autos, including the trucks in which he carried heavy bags of silver coin for distribution along the way. "In our country," says one of his loyal retainers, "it is necessary that the people see the King. In the old days it was the tradition that the people come to the King. Now the King comes to the people."
Such generous junketing is inevitably expensive, but it would be both unfair and unwise to assess Saudi Arabia's new King merely in terms of conspicuous consumption. His father carved out the land and lived to be astonished by a flow of gold that nothing in his training could have anticipated or prepared him to spend wisely. He left the land to his sons to make or break. In Saudi Arabia there are signs—new hospitals, new roads, new schools (though not enough of them), a bustle on all sides—that Saud will make it if he can, and if the oil holds out. It should: the country has the largest proved reserves in the world.