qualities principally to science, the fine arts, and social
development. Who would dare to ask them to cut down their armaments in
the present state of Europe, which makes it compulsory for every
country to arm to the fullest extent? All the other states are in a
similar position. They need not be discussed individually.

The only hope to be found is in such a coalition of the Powers as will
make these excessive armaments unnecessary. If this can be effected,
the reduction of armaments will take place naturally, and without any
external pressure. But then the question arises, how can the permanency
of such a coalition be guaranteed? The vital requisite to give
stability to any international coalition is community of interests.
Such a community of interests exists already, in a larger or smaller
degree, among many states, though it is unknown to most people.
Besides, it is not strong enough to prevent war in times of excitement.

In many countries definite war parties exist, and most extraordinary
opinions can be gathered from their representatives. I was assured by
some military leaders, and even by a diplomat in a responsible
position, that war is a blessing! In disproof of this theory it may be
desirable to state some plain facts. Mankind lives and exists on this
earth solely and entirely by the exploitation of our planet, and the
general average status of the peoples can be improved and raised to a
higher level only by a more complete exploitation of the forces of
nature. This process requires, in the present state of civilization,
capital, intelligence, and manual labor--the handmaid of intelligence.
War is bound to destroy an enormous amount of capital, and a great
number of the ablest workers. It is evident, therefore, that every war
must reduce the general well-being of the peoples who inhabit this
planet. Besides, there is the misery inflicted upon millions of people,
principally belonging to the poorer classes, who have always to bear
the brunt of a war, whether it be started by the personal ambition of
one man or by the misguided ambitions of a nation.

Some people argue that, from the days of Alexander the Great to those
of Napoleon, combinations of states have always been brought about by
armed force, and they believe this to be a natural law. I do not admit
that the case of Napoleon is a proper illustration of such a law. On
the contrary, his career seems to demonstrate clearly that the world is
too far advanced to be driven into combination by force. And as to
Alexander the Great, has the world really made no progress since his
time? Force or war is a relic of a savage age, and will be relegated to
the background with the advance of civilization.




PERSIA'S LOSS OF LIBERTY A.D. 1911

W. MORGAN SHUSTER[1]

[Footnote 1: Reprinted in condensed form from the original narrative in
_Hearst's Magazine,_ by permission.]

As told in the preceding volume, Persia in the year 1905 began a
struggle for freedom from autocratic rule. This she finally achieved in
decisive fashion and set up a parliamentary government. Her career of
liberty seemed fairly assured. She had against her, however, an
irresistible force. England and Russia had long been encroaching upon
Persian territory. Russia, in especial, had snatched away province
after province in the north. Of course Persia's revival would mean that
these territorial seizures would be stopped. Hence Russia almost openly
opposed each step in Persia's progress. In 1907, Russia and England
entered into an agreement by which each, without consulting Persia,
recognized that the other held some sort of rights over a part of
Persian territory: a "sphere of Russian influence" was thus established
in the north, and of British in the southeast.

The climax to this antagonism against Persia came in 1911. The
desperate Persians appealed to the United States Government to send
them an honest administrator to guide them, and President Taft
recommended Mr. Shuster for the task. The work of Mr. Shuster soon won
him the enthusiastic confidence and devotion of the Persians
themselves. But in proportion as his reforms seemed more and more to
strengthen the parliamentary government and bring hope to Persia, he
found himself more and more opposed by the Russian officials. Finally
Russia made his mere presence in the land an excuse for sending her
armies to assault the Persians. Seldom has the murderous attack of a
strong country upon a weak one been so open, brazen, and void of all
moral justification. Thousands of Persians were slain by the Russian
troops, and many more have since been executed for "rebellion" against
the Russian authorities. The parliamentary government of Persia was
completely destroyed; it finally disappeared in tumult and dismay on
December 24, 1911.

The country was reduced to helpless submission to the Russian armies.
Mr. Shuster's own account of the tragedy follows. He called it "The
Strangling of Persia."

Of the many changing scenes during the eight months of my recent
experiences in Persia, two pictures stand out in such sharp contrast as
to deserve special mention.

The first is a small party of Americans, of which the writer was one,
seated with their families in ancient post-chaises rumbling along the
tiresome road from Enzeli, the Persian port on the Caspian Sea, toward
Teheran. It was in the early days of May, 1911, and from these medieval
vehicles, drawn by four ratlike ponies, in heat and dust, we gained our
first physical impressions of the land where we had come to live for
some years--to mend the broken finances of the descendants of Cyrus and
Darius. We were fired with the ambition to succeed in our work, and,
viewed through such eyes, the physical discomforts became unimportant.
Hope sang loud in our hearts as the carriages crawled on through two
hundred and twenty miles of alternate mountain and desert scenery.

The second picture is eight months later, almost to the day. On January
11, 1912, I stood in a circle of gloomy American and Persian friends in
front of the Atabak palace where we had been living, about to step into
the automobile that was to bear us back over the same road to Enzeli.
The mountains behind Teheran were white with snow, the sun shone
brightly in a clear blue sky, there was life-tonic in the air, but none
in our hearts, for our work in Persia, hardly begun, had come to a
sudden end.

Between the two dates some things had happened--things that may be
written down, but will probably never be undone--and the hopes of a
patient, long-exploited people of reclaiming their position in the
world had been stamped out ruthlessly and unjustly by the armies of a
so-called Christian and civilized nation.

Prior to 1906, the masses of the Persians had suffered in comparative
silence from the ever-growing tyranny and betrayal of successive
despots, the last of whom, Muhammad Ali Shah, a vice-sodden monster of
the most perverted type, openly avowed himself the tool of Russia. The
people, finally stung to a blind desperation and exhorted by their
priests, rose in the summer of 1906, and by purely passive
measures--such as taking sanctuary, or _bast_, in large numbers in
sacred places and in the grounds of the British Legation at
Teheran--succeeded in obtaining from Muzaffarn'd Din Shah, the father
of Muhammad Ali, a constitution which he granted some six months before
his death.

The pledge given in this document his son and successor swore to fulfil
and then violated a dozen or more times, until the long-suffering
constitutionalists, who called themselves "nationalists," finally
compelled him, despite the intrigues and armed resistance of Russian
agents and officers, to abdicate in favor of his young son, Sultan
Ahmad Shah, the present constitutional monarch. This was in July, 1909.

It was this constitutional government, recognized as sovereign by the
Powers, that had determined to set its house in order, and in practise
to replace absolute monarchy with something approaching democracy.
Whence the Persians, a strictly Oriental people, had derived their
strange confidence in the potency of a democratic form of government to
mitigate or cure their ills, no one can say. We might ask the Hindus of
India, or the "Young Turks," or to-day the "Young Chinese" the same
question. The fact is that the past ten years have witnessed a truly
marvelous transformation in the ideas of Oriental peoples, and the
East, in its capacity to assimilate Western theories of government, and
in its willingness to fight for them against everything that tradition
makes sacred, has of late years shown a phase heretofore almost
unknown.

Persia has given a most perfect example of this struggle toward
democracy, and, considering the odds against the nationalist element,
the results accomplished have been little short of amazing.

Filled with the desire to perform its task, the Medjlis, or national
parliament, had voted in the latter part of 1910 to obtain the services
of five American experts to undertake the work of reorganizing Persia's
finances. They applied to the American Government, and through the good
offices of our State Department, their legation at Washington was
placed in communication with men who were considered suitable for the
task. The intervention of the State Department went no further than
this, and the Persian Government, like the men finally selected, was
told that the nomination by the American Government of suitable
financial administrators indicated a mere friendly desire to aid and
was of no political significance whatsoever.

The Persians had already tried Belgian and French functionaries and had
seen them rapidly become mere Russian political agents or, at best,
seen them lapse into a state of _dolce far niente_. Poor Persia had
been sold out so many times in the framing of tariffs and tax laws, in
loan transactions and concessions of various kinds that the nationalist
government had grown desperate and certainly most distrustful of all
foreigners coming from nations within the sphere of European diplomacy.
What they sought was a practical administration of their finances in
the interest of the Persian people and nation.

In this way the writer found himself in Teheran on the 12th of May last
year, having agreed to serve as Treasurer-General of the Persian
Empire, and to reorganize and conduct its finances.

It is difficult to describe the Persian political situation existing at
that time without going too deeply into history. It is true that in a
moment of temporary weakness after her defeat by Japan, Russia had
signed a solemn convention with England whereby she engaged herself, as
did England, to respect the independence and integrity of Persia.
Later, by the stipulations of 1909, these two Powers solemnly agreed to
prevent the ex-Shah, Muhammad Ali, from any political agitation against
the constitutional government. But, as the world and Persia have seen,
a trifle like a treaty or a convention never balks Russia when she has
taken the pulse of her possible adversaries and found it weak. What is
more painful to Anglo-Saxons is that the British Government has been no
better nor more scrupulous of its pledges.

During the first half of July, we began to learn where some of the
money was supposed to come from, and we were just beginning to control
the government expenditures after a fashion when, on July 18th, late at
night, the telegraph brought the news that Muhammad Ali, the ex-Shah,
had landed with a small force at Gumesh-Teppeh, a small port on the
Caspian, very near the Russian frontier. It was the proverbial bolt
from the blue, for while rumors of such a possibility had been rife,
most persons believed that Russia would not dare to violate so openly
her solemn stipulation signed less than two years before.


PERSIA IS TAKEN UNAWARES

The Persian cabinet at Teheran was panic-stricken, and for ten days
there ensued a period of confusion and terror that beggars description.
There was no Persian army except on paper. The gendarmerie and police
of the city did not number more than eighteen hundred men inadequately
armed. The Russian Turcomans on the northeast frontier were reported to
be flocking to the ex-Shah's standard, and it was commonly believed
that he would be at the gates of Teheran in a few weeks. This belief
was strengthened by the fact that his brother, Prince Salaru'd-Dawla,
had entered Persia from the direction of Bagdad and was known to have a
large gathering of Kurdish tribesmen ready to march toward Teheran.

After a time, however, reason prevailed and steps were taken to create
an army to defend the constitutional government against the invaders.
At this time, one of the old chiefs of the Bakhtiyari tribesmen, the
Samsamu's-Saltana, was the prime minister holding the portfolio of war,
and he called to arms several thousands of his fighting men, who
promptly started for the capital. Ephraim Khan, at that time chief of
police of Teheran, was another defender of the constitution who raised
a volunteer force, and twice, acting with the Bakhtiyari forces, he
signally defeated the troops of the ex-Shah. By September 5th, Muhammad
Ali himself was in full flight through northeastern Persia toward the
friendly Russian frontier. Whatever chances he may have formerly had
were admitted to be gone.

The hound that Russia had unleashed, with his hordes of Turcoman
brigands, upon the constitutional government of Persia had been whipped
back into his kennel. No one was more surprised than Russia, unless
indeed it was the Persians themselves. Russian officials everywhere in
Persia had openly predicted an easy victory for Muhammad Ali. They had
aided him in a hundred different ways, morally, financially, and by
actual armed force.

They still hoped, however, that the forces of Prince Salaru'd-Dawla,
which were marching from Hamadan toward Teheran, would take the
capital. But on September 28th, the news came that Ephraim Khan, and
the Bakhtiyaris had routed the Prince and his army, and the last hope
from this source was gone.

In the mean time, another encounter with Russia had occurred. There was
at Teheran an officer of the British-Indian army, Major Stokes, who for
four years had been military attache to the British Legation. He knew
Persia well; read, wrote, and spoke fluently the language and
thoroughly understood the habits, customs, and viewpoint of the Persian
people. He was the ideal man to assist in the formation of a
tax-collecting force under the Treasury, without which there was no
hope of collecting the internal taxes throughout the empire. Not only
was Major Stokes the ideal man for this work, but he was the _only_ man
possessing the necessary qualifications.

I accordingly tendered Major Stokes the post of chief of the future
Treasury gendarmerie, his services as military attache having come to
an end. After some correspondence with the British Legation, I was
informed late in July that the British Foreign Office held that he must
resign his commission in the British-Indian army before accepting the
post. This Major Stokes did, by cable, on July 31st, and the matter was
regarded as settled.

What was my surprise, therefore, to learn, on the evening of August
8th, that the British Minister, following instructions from his
Government, had that day presented a note to the Persian Foreign
Office, warning the Persian Government that any attempt to employ Major
Stokes in the "northern sphere" of Persia (which included Teheran, the
capital) would probably be followed by _retaliatory action_ (_sic_) by
Russia which England would not be in a position to deprecate. Between
individuals, such action would clearly be considered bad faith. Sir
Edward Grey, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, shortly
thereafter explained that the appointment of Major Stokes would be a
violation of what he termed the "spirit" of the Anglo-Russian
Convention of 1907. Yet just two weeks before, when he consented to
Stokes resigning to accept the post, he had never dreamed of such a
thing.

The truth is that the semiofficial St. Petersburg press, like the
_Novoe Vremya_, had begun to bluster about the affair, egged on by the
Russian Foreign Office, and Sir Edward Grey was compelled to _invent
some pretext_ for his manifest dread of displeasing Britain's "good
friend Russia" about anything. Hence the birth of that wondrous and
fearsome child, that rubber child which could be stretched to cover any
and all things, the "spirit of the convention." It was a wonderful
discovery for the gentlemen of the so-called "forward party" of the
Russian Government, since they now beheld not only a new means of
evading the plain letter of their agreement, but gleefully found a
woful lack of spirit in their partner to the convention, Great Britain.

The British Foreign Office pretended to believe that they had checked
Russia's march to the Gulf; they knew better then, and they know still
better now. There is but one thing on earth that will check that march,
and that thing England is apparently not in a geographical or a
policial position to furnish in sufficient numbers. The British public
now know this, and unfortunately the "forward party" in Russia knows
it, and that is why bearded faces at St. Petersburg crack open and emit
rumbles of genuine merriment every time Sir Edward Grey stands up in
the House of Commons and explains to his countrymen that he has most
ample and categorical assurances from Russia that her sole purpose in
sending two or three armies into Persia is to show her displeasure with
an American finance official.

For that same reason, doubtless, she has recently massacred some
hundreds of Persians in Tabriz, Enzeli, and Resht, and has hanged
numbers of Islamic priests, provincial officials, and
constitutionalists whom she classifies as the "dregs of revolution."
That is why the Russian flag was hoisted over the government buildings
at Tabriz, the capital of the richest province of the empire, while a
Russian military governor dispensed justice at the bayonet-point and
with the noose.

But to get back to events. After the crushing defeats of the ex-Shah's
two forces and his flight, Russia was still faced by a constitutional
regime in Persia--and by a somewhat solidified and more confident
government and people at that.

Tools and puppets having dismally failed, enter the real thing. Russia
now proceeded to intervene directly and to break up the constitutional
government in Persia without risk of failure or hindrance. She did not
even intend to await a pretext--she manufactured such things as she
went along.

The first instance is the Shu'a'us-Saltana affair. On October 9th, some
twelve days after the last defeat inflicted on the ex-Shah's forces, I
was ordered by the cabinet to seize and confiscate the properties of
Prince Shu'a'us-Saltana, another brother of the ex-Shah, who had
returned to Persia with him and was actively commanding some of his
troops. The same order was given as to the estates of Prince
Salaru'd-Dawla, the other brother in rebellion.

Pursuant to this entirely proper and legal order, the purport of which
had been communicated by the Persian Foreign Office to the Russian and
British ministers several days previously, no objection having been
even hinted, I sent out six small parties, each consisting of a
civilian Treasury official and five Treasury gendarmes, to seize the
different properties in and about Teheran. As a matter of courtesy, the
British and Russian legations had been informed that all rights of
foreigners in these properties would be fully safeguarded and
respected.

The principal property was the Park of Shu'a'us-Saltana, a magnificent
place in Teheran, with a palace filled with valuable furniture. When
the Treasury officials and five gendarmes arrived there, they found on
guard a number of Persian Cossacks of the Cossack Brigade. On seeing
the order of confiscation, these men retired. My men then took
possession and began making an official inventory. An hour later, two
Russian vice-consuls, in full uniform, arrived with twelve Russian
Cossacks from the Russian Consulate guard, and with imprecations,
abuse, and threats to kill, drove off my men at the point of their
rifles. Later in the day, these same vice-consuls actually arrested
other small parties of Treasury gendarmes, took them on mules through
the streets of Teheran to the Russian Consulate-General, and after
insulting and threatening them with death if they ever returned to the
confiscated property, allowed them to go.

On hearing this, I wrote and telegraphed to my friend, M.
Poklewski-Koziell, the Russian minister, calling his attention to the
outrageous actions of his Consul-General, M. Pokhitanow, and asking the
minister to give orders to prevent any further unpleasantness on the
following day, when I would again execute the government's order. The
next day I sent a force of one hundred gendarmes in charge of two
American Treasury officials, and the order was executed.

Two hours after we were in peaceable possession of the property, the
same two Russian vice-consuls drove up to the gate and began insulting
and abusing the Persian Treasury guards, endeavoring, of course, to
provoke the gendarmes into some act against them. In other words,
finding that they had lost in the matter of retaining possession of the
property, these Russian officials deliberately sought to provoke my
gendarmes into something that they could construe as an affront to
Russian consular authority. The men, however, had received such strict
and repeated instructions that they refused even to answer. They paid
no attention to the taunts and abuse of these two dignified Russian
officials, who thereupon drove off and perjured themselves to the
effect that they had been affronted--in other words, that the incident
which they had gone there to provoke actually had occurred. These false
statements were reported to St. Petersburg by M. Pokhitanow
independently of his minister, who, I have the strongest reason to
believe, entirely disavowed the Consul-General's actions. The Russian
government thereupon publicly discredited its minister and demanded
from the Persian government an immediate apology for something that had
never occurred. The apology, after some hesitation, was made on the
advice of the British government. It was hoped that this evident
self-abasement by Persia would appease even the Russian bureaucracy.

But it now seems that a compliance with Russia's demand was exactly
what was not desired by her, since it removed all possible pretext for
taking more drastic steps against Persia's national existence. Hence,
at the very moment when the Persian Foreign Minister, in full uniform,
was at the Russian legation complying with this first ultimatum, based,
as it was, on absolutely false reports, the St. Petersburg cabinet was
formulating new and even more unjust and absurd demands, which, as some
of the public know, have resulted in the expulsion of the fifteen
American finance officials and in the destruction of the last vestiges
of constitutional government in the empire of Cyrus and Darius.

Russia called for my immediate dismissal from the post of
Treasurer-General; she required that my fourteen American assistants
already in Persia should be subject to the approval of the British and
Russian legations at Teheran; that all other foreign officials in
future employed by Persia be subjected to the approval of those two
legations; that a large indemnity should be paid to Russia for the
expense of moving her troops into Persia to hasten the acceptance of
these two ultimatums; and that all other questions between Russia and
Persia should be settled to the satisfaction of the former.

The acceptance by Persia of these demands meant, of course, a virtual
cession of her sovereignty to Russia and Great Britain. It should be
noted, also, that in this Russian ultimatum the name of the British
government was freely used, although the British minister took no part
in the presentation of the same. Sir Edward Grey was subsequently asked
in the British Parliament as to this point, and explained, in effect,
that he agreed with the Russian demands, with the possible exception of
the indemnity.

The Russian minister informed the Persian Government that this
ultimatum was based on the following two grounds: First, that I had
appointed a certain Mr. Lecoffre, a British subject, to be a tax
collector in the Russian sphere of influence; and, second, that I had
caused to be printed and circulated in Persia a translation into
Persian of my letter to the London _Times_ of October 21, 1911, thereby
greatly injuring Russian influence in northern Persia. These grounds
might be classified as "unimportant, if true." The truth is, however,
that they are both well known to have been utterly unfounded in fact. I
did not appoint Mr. Lecoffre, a British subject, to a financial post in
northern Persia. I found him in the Finance Department at Teheran (the
capital, which is in the so-called Russian sphere) when I arrived there
last May, and he had been occupying an important position there for
nearly two years, without the slightest objection ever having been
raised by the Russian Government. I proposed to transfer him to a
somewhat less important position, but one in which I thought he could
be of greater service.

As to the second ground or pretext, in effect, that I had caused to be
printed and circulated a Persian translation of my letter to the
_Times_, it was simply false. It was well known to be false--so well
known, in fact, that a newspaper in Teheran, the _Tamadun_
(_Civilization_) which did print it and circulate it, publicly admitted
the fact the minute they heard that I was charged by Russia with having
done so. So these two at best rather puerile pretexts upon which to
base an ultimatum from a powerful nation to a weaker one lacked even
the merit of truth.

This second ultimatum, despite all hypocritical attempts made to
justify it, fairly stunned the Persian people. Accustomed as they had
become in recent years to the high-handed and cynical actions of the
St. Petersburg cabinet, they had not looked for such a foul blow as
this. They had been realizing dimly that the peace of Europe was being
threatened by the open hostility of Germany and England over the
Moroccan incident, and that British foreign policy was apparently
leaving Russia absolutely free to work her will in Asia, so long, at
least, as Russia pretended to acknowledge the. Anglo-Russian _entente_
of 1907; but the Persian people had too much, far too much, confidence
in the sacredness of treaty stipulations and the solemnly pledged words
of the great Christian nations of the world to imagine that their own
whole national existence and liberty could be jeopardized overnight,
and on a pretext so shallow and farcical as to excite world-wide
ridicule. Their disillusionment came too late. The trap had been
unwittingly set by hands that made unexpected moves on the European
chessboard, and the Bear's paw had this time been skilful enough to
spring it at the proper moment.

The Persian statesmen and chieftains who formed the cabinet at this
time, whether because they perceived the gleaming, naked steel behind
Russia's threats more clearly than their legislative compatriots of the
Parliament or Medjlis, or whether they suffered from that abandon and
tired feeling which comes from playing an unequal and always losing
game, quickly decided that they would accept this second ultimatum with
all its future oppression and cruelty for their people.

On December 1st, therefore, shortly before the time limit of
forty-eight hours fixed by Russia for the acceptance of the terms had
expired, the cabinet filed into the chamber of deputies to secure
legislative approval of their intended course.

It was an hour before noon, and the Parliament grounds and buildings
were filled with eager, excited throngs, while the galleries of the
Medjlis chamber were packed with Persian notables of all ranks and with
the representatives of many of the foreign legations. At noon the fate
of Persia as a nation was to be known.

The cabinet, having made up its mind to yield, overlooked no point that
would increase their chances of securing the approval of the Medjlis.
Believing, evidently, that the ridiculously short time to elapse before
the stroke of noon announced the expiration of the forty-eight-hour
period would effectually prevent any mature consideration or discussion
of their proposals, the premier, Samsamu's-Saltana, caused to be
presented to the deputies a resolution authorizing the cabinet to
accept Russia's demands.

The proposal was read amid a deep silence. At its conclusion, a hush
fell upon the gathering. Seventy-six deputies, old men and young,
priests, lawyers, doctors, merchants, and princes, sat tense in their
seats.

A venerable priest of Islam arose. Time was slipping away and at noon
the question would be beyond their vote to decide. This servant of God
spoke briefly and to the point: "It may be the will of Allah that our
liberty and our sovereignty shall be taken from us by force, but let us
not sign them away with our own hands!" One gesture of appeal with his
trembling hands, and he resumed his seat.

Simple words, these, yet winged ones. Easy to utter in academic
discussions; hard, bitterly hard, to say under the eye of a cruel and
overpowering tyrant whose emissaries watched the speaker from the
galleries and mentally marked him down for future imprisonment,
torture, exile, or worse.

Other deputies followed. In dignified appeals, brief because the time
was short, they upheld their country's honor and proclaimed their
hard-earned right to live and govern themselves.

A few minutes before noon the public vote was taken; one or two
faint-hearted members sought a craven's refuge and slunk quietly from
the chamber. As each name was called, the deputy rose in his place and
gave his vote, there was no secret ballot here.

And when the roll-call was ended, every man, priest or layman, youth or
octogenarian, had cast his own die of fate, had staked the safety of
himself and family, and hurled back into the teeth of the great Bear
from the north the unanimous answer of a desperate and downtrodden
people who preferred a future of unknown terror to the voluntary
sacrifice of their national dignity and of their recently earned right
to work out their own salvation.

Amid tears and applause from the spectators, the crestfallen and
frightened cabinet withdrew, while the deputies dispersed to ponder on
the course which lay darkly before their people.

By this vote, the cabinet, according to the Persian constitution,
ceased to exist as a legal entity.

Great crowds of people thronged the "Lalezar," one of the principal
streets of Teheran, shouting death to the traitors and calling Allah to
witness that they would give up their lives for their country.

A few days later, in a secret conference between the deputies of the
Medjlis and the members of the deposed cabinet, a similar vote was
given to reject the Russian demands. Meanwhile, thousands of Russian
troops, with cossacks and artillery, were pouring into northern Persia,
from Tiflis and Julfa by land and from Baku across the Caspian, to the
Persian port of Enzeli, whence they took up their 220-mile march over
the Elburz mountains toward Kasvin and Teheran.

In the government at Teheran, conference followed conference. Intrigues
against the deputies gave way to threats. Through it all, with the
increasing certainty of personal injury, the members of the Medjlis
stood firmly by their vote.

It is impossible to describe within the limits of this article the days
and nights of doubt, suspense, and anxiety that followed one another in
the capital during this dark month of December. There was a lurking
dread in the very air, and the snow-covered mountains themselves seemed
afflicted with the mournful scenes through which the country was
passing.

A boycott was proclaimed by the priests against Russian and English
goods. In a day, the old-fashioned tramway of the city was deserted on
the mere suspicion that it was owned in Russia, while an excited
Belgian Minister rained protests and petitions on the Persian Foreign
Office in an endeavor to show that the tramway was owned by his
countrymen. Crowds of youths, students, and women filled the street,
dragging absent-minded passengers from the cars, smashing the windows
of shops that still displayed Russian goods, seeing that no one drank
tea because it came from Russia, although produced in India, and going
in processions before the gates of the foreign legations to demand
justice of the representatives of the world powers for a people in the
extremity of despair.

One day, the rumor would come that the chief "mullahs" or priests at
Nadjef had proclaimed the "holy war" (_jihad_) against the Russians; on
another, that the Russian troops had commenced to shoot up Kasvin on
their march to Teheran.

At one time, when rumors were thick that the Medjlis would give in
under the threats and attempted bribery which well-known Russian
proteges were employing on many of its members, three hundred veiled
and black-gowned Persian women, a large proportion with pistols
concealed under their skirts or in the folds of their sleeves, marched
suddenly to the Parliament grounds and demanded admission to the
Chamber. The president of the Medjlis consented to receive a deputation
from them. Once admitted into his presence, these honor-loving Persian
mothers, wives, and daughters exhibited their weapons, and to show the
grim seriousness of their words, they tore aside their veils, and
threatened that they would kill their own husbands and sons, and end
their own lives, if the deputies failed in their duty to uphold the
dignity and the sovereignty of their beloved country.

When neither threats nor bribes availed against the Medjlis, Russia
decreed its destruction by force.

In the early afternoon of December 24th, the deposed cabinet, having
been themselves duly _persuaded_ to take the step, executed a _coup
d'etat_ against the Medjlis, and by a demonstration of gendarmes and
Bakhtiyari tribesmen, succeeded in expelling all the deputies and
employees who were within the Parliament grounds; after which the gates
were locked and barred, and a strong detachment of the so-called Royal
Regiment left in charge. The deputies were threatened with death if
they attempted to return there or to meet in any other spot, and the
city of Teheran immediately passed under military control. The
self-constituted _directoire_ of seven who accomplished this dubious
feat first ascertained that the considerable force of Bakhtiyari
tribesmen, some 2,000, who had remained in the capital after the defeat
of the ex-Shah's forces in September last, had been duly "fixed" by the
same Russian agencies who had so early succeeded in persuading the
members of the ex-cabinet that their true interests lay in siding with
Russia. It is impossible to say just what proportions of fear and
cupidity decided the members of the deposed cabinet to take the aliens'
side against their country, but both emotions undoubtedly played a
part. The premier was one of the leading chiefs or "khans" of the
Bakhtiyaris, and another chief was the self-styled Minister of War.
These chieftains have always been a strange and changing mixture of
mountain patriot and city intriguer--of loyal soldier and mercenary
looter. The mercenary instincts, possibly aided by a sense of their own
comparative helplessness against Russian Cossacks and artillery, led
them to accept the stranger's gold and fair promises, and they ended
their checkered but theretofore relatively honorable careers by selling
their country for a small pile of cash and the more alluring promise
that the "grand viziership" (_i.e.,_ post of Minister of Finance)
should be perpetual in their family or clan.

That same afternoon a large number of the "abolished" deputies came to
my office. They were men whom I had grown to know well, men of European
education, in whose courage, integrity, and patriotism I had the
fullest confidence. To them, the unlawful action of their own
countrymen was more than a political catastrophe; it was a sacrilege, a
profanation, a heinous crime. They came in tears, with broken voices,
with murder in their hearts, torn by the doubt as to whether they
should kill the members of the _directoire_ and drive out the
traitorous tribesmen who had made possible the destruction of the
government, or adopt the truly Oriental idea of killing themselves.
They asked my advice, and, hesitating somewhat as to whether I should
interfere to save the lives of notorious betrayers of their country, I
finally persuaded them to do neither the one nor the other. There
seemed to be no particular good in assassinating even their treacherous
countrymen, as it would only have given color to the pretensions of
Russia and England that the Persians were not capable of maintaining
order.


AN EXHIBITION OF SELF-RESTRAINT

When the last representative element of the constitutional government,
for which so many thousands had fought, suffered, and died, was wiped
out in an hour without a drop of blood being shed, the Persian people
gave to the world an exhibition of temperance, of moderation, of stern
self-restraint, the like of which no other civilized country could show
under similar trying circumstances.

The acceptance of Russia's terms by the Cabinet removed the last
pretext for keeping in Northern Persia the _15,000_ troops which by
that time Russia had assembled there,--at Kasvin, Resht, Enzeli,
Tabriz, Khoy, and other points in the so-called Russian sphere. Mons.
Poklewski-Koziell, the Russian Minister, had in fact given an equivocal
sort of a promise to the effect that "if no fresh incidents arose," the
Russian troops would be withdrawn when Persia accepted the conditions
of the ultimatum.

With this in mind, it is interesting to note the truly thorough
precautions which were taken by Russia to prevent any such unfortunate
necessity as the withdrawal of her troops from coming to pass.

December 24th, late in the evening, a message was received from the
Persian Acting Governor at Tabriz in which he declared that the Russian
troops, which had been stationed in that city since their entry during
the siege in 1909, _had suddenly started to massacre the inhabitants_.
Shortly after this the Indo-European telegraph lines stopped working,
and all news from Tabriz ceased. It was subsequently stated that the
wires had been cut by bullets. _Additional Russian troops_ were
immediately started for Tabriz from Julfa, which is some eight miles to
the north of the Russian frontier.

The exact way in which the fighting began is not yet clear. The Persian
government reports show that a number of Russian soldiers, claiming to
be stringing a telephone wire, climbed upon the roof of the Persian
police headquarters about _ten o'clock at night_ on December 20th. When
challenged by native guards, they replied with shots. Reenforcements
were called up by both sides, and serious street fighting broke out
early the following morning and continued for several days. The Acting
Governor stated in his official reports that the Russian troops
indulged in their usual atrocities, killing women and children and
hundreds of other noncombatants on the streets and in their homes.
There were at the time about 4,000 Russian soldiers, with two batteries
of artillery, in and around the city. Nearly I,000 of the _fidais_
("self-devoted") of Tabriz took refuge in an old citadel of stone and
mud, called the "Ark." They were without artillery or adequate
provisions, and were poorly armed, but it was certain death for one of
them to be seen on the streets.

The Russians bombarded the "Ark" for a day or more, killing a large
proportion of its defenders. The superior numbers and the artillery of
the Russians finally conquered, and there followed a reign of terror
during which no Persian's life or honor was safe. At one time during
this period the Russian Minister at Teheran, at the request of the
members of the Persian cabinet, who were horror-stricken and in fear of
their lives for having made terms with such a barbaric nation,
telegraphed to the Russian general in command of the troops at Tabriz,
telling him to cease fighting, and that the _fidais_ would receive
orders to do likewise, as matters were being arranged at the capital.
The gallant general replied that he took his orders from the Viceroy of
the Caucasus at Tiflis, and not from any one at Teheran. The massacre
went on.

On New Year's day, which was the 10th of _Muharram_, a day of great
mourning which is held sacred in the Persian religious calendar, the
Russian military governor, who had hoisted Russian flags over the
government buildings at Tabriz, hung the Sikutu'l-Islam, who was the
chief priest of Tabriz, two other priests, and five others, among them
several high officials of the Provincial Government. As one British
journalist put it, the effect of this outrage on the Persians was that
which would be produced on the English people by the hanging of the
Archbishop of Canterbury on Good Friday. From this time on, the
Russians at Tabriz continued to hang or shoot any Persian whom they
chose to consider guilty of the crime of being a "Constitutionalist."
When the fighting there was first reported, a high official of the