• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
 1
Monday, Jul. 2, 1934Brothers in Islam(See front cover)Toothsome young lambs were slaughtered by the hundredsin Ankara last week and their fresh meat sizzled on athousand skewers as banquet followed boisterousbanquet. Champagne-loving Turkish Dictator MustafaKemal Pasha, high-strung and quick as a panther, wasdoing his best to honor the majestic Persian Dictatorwho styles himself the King of Kings and whose age ofsome 60 years is concealed by his upright militarybearing, betrayed by a certain slowness of speech andgesture.Once a Cossack trooper, His Majesty Riza Shah Pahlevi,King of Kings, showed in converse with the TurkishDictator his customary habit of arriving swiftly atobstinate conclusions. Several times Dictator seemedvexed by Dictator, but only in political converse. Whenthe talk shifted to soldiering both were in theirelement. With a strutting pageant of Turkish soldieryand Air Force maneuvers, Host Kemal so diverted GuestPahlevi that the King of Kings prolonged his officialvisit.When His Majesty relaxed in mellow mood, with DictatorKemal half seas over, opportunities to negotiate werenimbly seized by the Talleyrand of Turkey, herperpetual Foreign Minister, Dr. Tewfik Rushdi Bey, whobegan his career as an obstetrician. Knowing that thereis no Persian with whom one can effectively negotiateexcept the King of Kings, ingratiating Dr. Rushdisounded His Majesty on the great project of a MiddleEastern Alliance, a bloc to be constructed in spite ofBritain and France by Moslems of Turkey, Persia, Irak,Syria, Saudi Arabia, Transjordania and Egypt. Such atleast is Dr. Rushdi's dream. And last week the King ofKings had left Persia for the first time since heseized the Peacock Throne in 1925 to discuss bothMoslem dreams and realities with his Turkish neighbors.That His Majesty should have been able to proceed inseemly state over the whole length of his snakelikeroute of 2,000 miles from Teheran to Ankara (see map)was itself a gigantic achievement of the two Dictators.Before they ousted the do-nothing hereditary royaldynasties of Turkey and Persia such a journey couldonly be made by meandering caravan and in utmost perilof attack by bandits. Most savage of all were theKurdish cutthroats who for generations had defied bothPersian and Turkish soldiers, raiding (first into onecountry, then into the other along their commonfrontier. Perhaps the wisest and most enlightened actof the King of Kings was to conclude two years ago withemissaries of Dictator Kemal a pact, by which Persiayielded to Turkey certain bits of her northwestfrontier which made it possible for the two states soto deploy their border patrols that the Kurdishtribesmen could be nabbed at-their raiding and thescourge of banditry wiped out. Last week Turkish andPersian statesmen hailed this achievement in toastafter brimming toast. They then talked behind theirever-itching palms about British oil, by all odds thejuiciest thing in Persia.Anglo-Persian. Spunky young Persians under their gruffand aging King of Kings have finally broken, denouncedand torn up all important concessions previously heldby the Great Powers except that of Anglo-Persian OilCo. Ltd., of which concern the British Government ismajority stockholder."Persia must learn to do without foreigners!" is afavorite dictum of Shah Riza, himself a masterly adeptat playing foreigners off against each other. Issuingbanknotes used to be the profitable prerogative of theImperial Bank of Persia, a prerogative well paid for bythe bank's British backers. When they had been wellsqueezed, the Government founded the National Bank,with Germans in charge, and let them issue banknotesfor a consideration. Belgians were next in favor andonly this spring did the King of Kings give his BelgianTreasurer-General (in charge of customs) notice andbounce the leading German banker in Persia, pompousHerr Doktor Horschitz-Horst. The National Bank thenbecame 100% Persian under a Director who. besides beingHis Majesty's personal favorite, has thoroughly studiedbanking methods abroad. His Excellency Riza Ghuli KhanAmir Chosrowi.Before this fiscal favorite returned the King of Kingswas asked whether it was altogether wise to send suchhighly placed Persians abroad for training from whichthey might return less Persian. "I hope,'' growled theKing of Kings, ''that the men we send abroad willrealize that civilization is different for everycountry. The Persian has a mighty tradition behind him,the Empire of Darius! I want to make out of mycountrymen the best possible Persians! Ah, there is somuch to do! I am always dissatisfied. I cannot do itquickly enough!"With thundering quickness the King of Kings denouncedtwo years ago the concession of Anglo-Persian, claimingthese British oilmen must be cheating his Treasurysince they no longer paid in as big royalties as before(TIME, Dec. 12, 1932). Seething with hate of "theBritish dogs," Persia's Press, which always exactlymirrors His Majesty's views, called for the auctioningoff forthwith of "the Persian heritage of oil" to thehighest foreign bidder."Fundamentally Sound," The sequel to this patrioticPersian attempt to shake the foreigners down was ahasty visit to Teheran by Anglo-Persian's suave BoardChairman and "Petrol Diplomat." Sir John Cadman carriedthrough the ensuing negotiations of high public policyon the private basis that "the Shah is my personalfriend." The result was a new concession for Anglo-Persian running until 1993, but His Majesty squeezeddown the area under lease to Anglo-Persian by more thanhalf and while leaving Anglo-Persian in possession ofits pipe lines deprived the British of exclusivePersian oil pipe-line rights (TIME, May 15, 1933).Observed a cynical Soviet diplomat well posted on SirJohn Cadman's negotiations: "Persia is fundamentallysound. They will sell you the country six times over,but that makes no difference. They are always on thelookout to sell it again. Da, da [yes, yes], Persia isfundamentally sound!" It was this fundamental ofPersian policy which made oil such a pleasing subjectof converse last week at Ankara. The stronger the twonations become, the more firmly they knit bonds ofMoslem unity across the Near and Middle East, thestronger will be Shah Riza's hand the next time hefeels like tearing up an oil contract. Dictator Kemalfor his part was anxious to talk Persian oil for theTurkish fleet. He was said in Ankara to have turneddown British firms and ordered ten new Turkish cruisersbuilt in—of all places —Japan. "The peoples of Islamare intensely admiring of the Japanese," said an Ankaraofficial. "The Japanese have made themselves strongwithout rejecting their ancient faith or paltering withChristianity."Dictators to earthquake. Neither the King of Kings norPresident Kemal lacks personal courage. During the
 
 2
fêtes, rejoicings, fireworks, skewered lamb andchampagne at Ankara last week news came of severeearthquakes in Western Turkey, the very region throughwhich Host Kemal was about to escort Guest Pahlevi.Neither showed the slightest desire to cancel theseplans. The royal Persian junket became an earnestinspection trip through the shaken area down to Smyrnawith homeless families watching the Near East's twoStrong Men.As their chief relaxation the two old campaignersstopped at the Battlefield of Sakarya and General Kemalexplained with gusto how he beat the Greeks in 1921. Soclose grew the confab of host and guest at this pointthat Turkish and Persian journalists reportedecstatically afterward: "They have become real friends,personal friends and brothers!" At Smyrna, to his gravedelight, the King of Kings received personal command ofsome Turkish troops who pitched under his orders intoan exciting sham battle with airplanes raining "boombombs."On through the Dardanelles, scene of Britain's greatestmistake and Turkey's chief glory during the Great War,steamed the Oriental brothers. The big, splendiferouswindup of the King of Kings' junket was at Istanbulwhere the great Dolma Bagtche Palace of bygone TurkishSultans was thrown open for a great ball to honor HisMajesty. Reclining on a divan the King of Kings ateTurkish delight off a onetime Sultan's silver salverand puffed cigarets made for the occasion by theTurkish Tobacco Monopoly which had stamped on each thePersian Royal Arms. Meanwhile spry Turks in the sleek-tailed, Frenchified dress suits affected by PresidentKemal one-stepped and black-bottomed in a fashion tomake the King of Kings blink. Stoutly, Persiancourtiers insisted to their jewel-bedecked Turkishpartners, on whose toes they had a tendency to tread,that "His Majesty is of ancient lineage, the noblest inMazanderan."King of Kings. Such flattery is unnecessary. RizaPahlevi is self-made and Persians would be proud of thefact were they not so thoroughly Oriental. The parentsof the King of Kings were honest peasants. Theirvillage had to send half a dozen young men each year toserve Persia's dissolute Shah and strong young Riza,born on the shores of the Caspian Sea, was musteredinto a Persian regiment of Cossacks. He tasted battlechiefly against bandits and won steady promotion to therank of Sartip with 3,000 Cossacks under his command.For a fateful coup d'état it was Sartip Riza who wassought out in 1921 by Persia's wily Saiyid ZiaudDin, awealthy newspaper publisher and astute politicalwangler.Sartip Riza marched with supreme bold ness on Teheranand such was the Army's disgust with do-nothing AhmedShah that a few hours of quiet maneuvering turned thetrick as whole battalions went over to Publisher SaiyidZia-ud-Din's revolution. Not long after the publisherfound he had made the mistake of his life. The upstartSartip had got himself appointed Minister of War andthe publisher was exiled to Baghdad. Two years passedwhile brooding Riza Khan intrigued, cajoled and bribedamong the military, forcing his deep plans anddomineering power to triumph over weaker minds. Whilestill only War Minister he reorganized the Army andmade it his own by insuring regular pay for the firsttime in living Persian memory. To do this he had todetach a section of the Ministry of Finance andincorporate it into the Ministry of War. That featshowed who was really No. 1 man in Persia. In 1923frightened Ahmed Shah fled to the fleshpots of Paris.Two years later Riza Pahlevi, by that time Premier, waselected by the Majlis to be Shah and King of Kings with"full powers" which make him in fact independent of theMajlis. Always domineering, he now became the utterautocrat and one day even kicked his first-born andbeloved son Crown Prince Shapur Mohammed Riza into thepalace pond for a trifling offense.King into Communist? Though his most striking featshave been to make Persia safe from banditry and put theGreat Powers in their place, Shah Riza, whiletactically respecting Persian traditions and taboos, isnow driving ahead with a program of modernization andPersian self-sufficiency which fairly makes hissubjects dizzy.Not long ago he decided that the great square and theside streets in the busiest quarter of Teheran shouldbe repaved as fast as possible and for a month shop-keepers wailed as all traffic was obstructed by thepavers and customers kept at bay. Another order set upthe Government Foreign Trade Monopoly, with iron rulesthat for everything imported Persia must make acorresponding export, or the import cannot be made.This has so strengthened the Treasury that with nearlyall Great Powers off the gold standard, the King ofKings was said last week to be considering puttingPersia back on."The two greatest evils from which a country can sufferare foreign control and Communism," His Majesty hassaid, only to add darkly: "If Persia had to choosebetween the two I should be the first to put myself atthe head of a Communist army!"Always at bottom the soldier, Shah Riza spent theclosing hours of his visit to Istanbul last week withTurkish generals bent over staff maps showing the newstrategic motor roads and railways of Turkey andPersia. Ten years ago there was no railway strikingeast from Ankara toward Persia and nothing but acaravan trail running west from Teheran toward Turkey.There is no through railway yet but the motor road overwhich His Majesty zipped from Teheran through Tabrizand Erzerum to the Turkish coast at Trebizond is now inprime shape to become an artery of heavy trucking andcarry Persian carpets on a direct route to Europe. Fortrade with Russia and possible defense Persia is incourse of being spanned by the line from Bandar Shapurvia the Anglo-Persian oil country and Teheran to BandarShah. The line will make it possible for the first timeto cross Persia by rail. With other railways sproutingthroughout the Near East, across Syria and Irak, thestatesmen in Dolma Bagtche Palace last week saw spreadon their unromantic staff maps the physical symbols ofa future United Islam. After taking the final Turkishsalute Persia's King of Kings set the wires hummingwith his reputed farewell words to Ankara's DictatorKemal: ''I rejoice at the prospect of your visit toTeheran! We are soldiers, not diplomats."Monday, Apr. 25, 193820th-Century Darius(See front cover]No country is more anxious to demonstrate its freedomthan Iran, no ruler anywhere is more conscious of hisdignity, more jealous of his sovereignty, than HisImperial Majesty Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shah-in-Shah ("Kingof Kings") of Iran.This week Iran's 60-year-old, 6-ft., grey-mustachedKing of Kings celebrates a coronation anniversary.
 
 3
Twelve years ago on April 5, the former Persian Cossackofficer, born of middle-class landowners on the shoresof the Caspian Sea, placed a specially-made crown ofdiamonds, emeralds and rubies on his own head.This week the monarch whom the elaborate-tonguedIranians often call "Most Lofty of Living Men," "Agentof Heaven in this World," "Brother of the Moon andStars," will drive down Teheran's broad avenues,reflection of the glory of his reign, to famed GulistanPalace. There the King of Kings will be pleased tostand in front of the $50,000,000, 17th-Century PeacockThrone and watch file past him diplomats, ministers,army officers, notables, all clasping their hands onwrists to show they carry no weapons, all bowing headsin profound deference to the August Presence. Unhappythe lot of a mere commoner who should by chance say"Your Majesty" instead of "Your Imperial Majesty," orby a slip of the tongue call Iran "Persia."Emancipator of his country from British domination,Shah Reza has commanded world attention during the lasttwelve years by deeds which, in other times, would havespurred British naval and military forces to action.Fresh proof that once-helpless Persia, now aggressive,heavily-soldiered Iran, could stand manfully up to herformer master came early this month. A giant,trimotored Junkers low-wing monoplane, with swastikasgleaming on tail, roared down to Teheran airport,inaugurating Lufthansa's new commercial airline betweenisolated, mountainous Iran and the Near East andEurope.The bustling American and European salesmen who madethe inaugural trip were delighted that they had beenspared the hitherto unavoidable, tedious, 48-hourjourney from Bagdad, Iraq to Teheran over Iraq's slowrailroads and Iran's slower, often impassable dirtmountain roads. Better still, they had missed having toput up for a night in one of Iran's insect-ridden resthouses. What the plane's arrival meant to MiddleEastern diplomats, however, was that the German-controlled Lufthansa had just won a significant battlewith British Imperial Airways over flying concessions."Shadow of God." Formerly divided into spheres ofinfluence by Imperial Russia and Imperial Britain, Iranshook off Russian influence when Cossack officersretired from the country at the end of the World War,but waited five years for the British-officered SouthPersia Rifles to disband. With a newly-created army of40,000 men, commanded in person by the then Reza Khan,supplied with secondhand rifles, machine guns, tanks,Iran first dealt with her own warring, rebelliousKurds, Kashgais and Bakhtiaris, then began shaking adetermined fist at Great Britain.First real shock to reach Downing Street from Teheranwas arbitrary cancellation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Co.concession scheduled to run until 1961. SurprisedBritish statesmen, suddenly realizing that protectionof this oil lease would involve great military effortand huge expenditures, ended by negotiating. Anglo-Persian's basic holdings were enormously decreased andthe Shah obtained increased royalties which werepromptly earmarked for the army. This highly successfulinstrument of national freedom, now 100,000 strong,still receives its daily orders from His ImperialMajesty.Another move was an Iranian hint that His BritannicMajesty's naval forces in the Persian Gulf were nolonger welcome to make their base in Iranian waters.Result: The British Naval Base was moved across theGulf to the oil-laden Bahrein Islands, territory ofmore tractable, independent H. H. Sheik Sir Hamad bin'Isa al Khalifa, leaving His Britannic Majesty'sdiplomatic agent for the Persian Gulf uncomfortablyhigh & dry in.' Bushire's British Residency (see map,p. IQ). Meanwhile protection-loving Imperial Airwaysrevised its flying route to India, establishing itsregular Persian Gulf stop for seaplanes at Bahreininstead of Iranian territory.Since Iran was bent on proving her independence, leanpickings were in store for British advisers, Britishbusiness. Ships were ordered from Italy and Italianofficers were engaged to teach Iranian landlubberstheories of navigation. Barter trade was establishedwith Soviet Russia and German goods began to pour intoIran under a clearing agreement arranged by the wilyDr. Hjalmar Schacht. Among the first arrivals were 100German warplanes for the Iranian air force. Danes.Czechs.Swedes, Italians, all chipped in to build new beet-sugar factories, power plants, cotton mills. Roadbuilders arrived from Europe and America andconstruction companies were not long in learning thatTeheran, "City of the Shadow of God." was to undergo afacial operation. The King of Kings guaranteed promptpayment in foreign cash.Iran the New. By this spring thickly-populated bazaardistricts were condemned and destroyed, new, broad,straight avenues plotted through once narrow, crookedstreets. Magnificent, many-roomed, multistoriedgovernment buildings stood where once sagged ancientone-story huts. A handsome post-office buildingcovering a city block has arisen and a Ministry of WarBuilding, with sufficient space to house the generalstaffs of Germany, France and Great Britain at the sametime, is being utilized by the ever-expanding but stillrelatively small Iranian staff.The Imperial Bank of Iran, set back from the street,needed an entire square. Slowly rising to completion isan Imperial Opera House to cater to the hithertoundiscovered musical tastes of Iran's citizens.The shortcomings of the Shah's dozen years in office,the ludicrous anomalies, misappropriations and masssuffering bring laughter and tears only to the eyes ofWesterners. By Oriental standards, his own, the Shah isthe man of his generation in the Middle East.Iranian public building has all been under directorders of the Shah. He approved plans, altered details.Little did it seem to matter to the King of Kings thatan architect omitted plumbing detail when building ahotel, that Teheran's water supply still came throughthe streets in half-open, easily contaminated cementdrains, that Teheran's old electric power plant had alimited capacity. When His Imperial Majesty drove atnight through a street not sufficiently lighted for histastes, he ordered more powerful bulbs installed.Upshot of this was that the rest of Teheran was plungedinto semidarkness.Most Lofty. Almost illiterate when he came to thethrone, speaking only Persian with a smattering ofRussian, Reza Shah Pahlavi had a strong historicalsense, pictured himself as a 20th-century Darius evenwhen he was still only a cavalry colonel. When hebecame Minister of War in a Shah-less government (theformer do-nothing Shah had moved to Paris), he actedmore like the great Persian monarch. He imposed hiswill on hitherto independent fierce tribes, hanging
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...