precurser of still other British loans for the complete rehabilitation of Persia, said subsequent loans to be secured in similar fashion. The method of expending these sums is also most thoughtfully and specifically provided. The British Government agrees (at Persia's expense) to supply the services of whatever expert advisers may be necessary for the several departments of the Persian administration. The British Government agrees to supply (at Persia's expense) such officers and such equipment of modern type as may be necessary for the formation of a uniform force adequate to establish and preserve order in the country and on its frontiers. The British Government agrees to encourage "AngloPersian enterprise" in such matters as railway construction and other reforms of transport. The British Government agrees to provide experts (apparently at its own expense) to assist Persian experts in examining and revising the existing customs tariff. The British and Russian spheres of influence delimited in 1907 are abolished; in plain language, consolidated into a single British sphere conterminous with the whole country. At the same time it is announced that the young shah, "who has been a warm supporter of the agreement," is on his way to England on a visit to mark his good-will.

I myself do not purpose to analyze this "agreement." I shall limit myself to showing by direct quotations how it impresses Englishmen, Frenchmen, and the American Government, and will leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. First as to British opinion. The bulk of the British press welcomed the treaty as good for Persia and necessary for the safeguarding of India. Typical is this excerpt from a leading editorial in the London "Outlook":

The recent Anglo-Persian agreement will be welcomed by all who have the interests of Persia and the British Empire at heart. In itself it is a simple, straightforward, sensible arrangement, which, in a few words, covers the whole matter of correct policy.

Particularly eulogistic is "The Near East," the organ of British trading and financial interests in the Orient. It asserted:

Both Great Britain and Persia are to be congratulated upon the new agreement made between the two governments on August 9. This document, it is to be hoped, marks the definite end of the weak policy that Great Britain has pursued toward Persia for the last dozen years. The British Government has done well, therefore, to lose no time in giving its real policy toward Persia a fair start while Russia is out of action. We owe it to ourselves, to the Persians, and to the world at large.

Criticism was confined to a section of

the liberal press. The "Manchester Guardian" remarked sarcastically, "If this had been done by another Power, the arrangement would be regarded as a veiled protectorate." "The secret way in which the matter has been gone about is certainly unpleasant," said the Liverpool "Post.'

In France the publication of the treaty evoked a perfect storm of protest and indignation. "Protectorate!" was the general cry. "If the above stipulations do not constitute a most complete protectorate," said the "Echo de Paris," "then words have lost their meaning. Doubtless, nowhere is a formal protectorate mentioned, and doubtless a clause announces the independence and full integrity of Persia, but the substance of the agreement will fool no one."

Another French semi-official organ. "Le Temps," carried a stinging editorial analyzing the treaty and pointing out how it violated both the Persian Constitution and the covenant of the League of Nations, while "L'Europe Nouvelle" contended bitterly:

If England has monopolized Persia; if she has ousted therefrom all other Powers; who is the Power directly and uniquely injured? It is France. We are, indeed, the sole Power injured. It is against us that, during long months, the Anglo-Indian diplomacy of Lord Curzon has intrigued at Teheran; it is against us that, on August 9, that diplomacy gained the victory. Our commerce is today boycotted in Persia by the British authorities in occupation. The English censorship holds up the mails. The English police refuses permits of exit and entry. Such an attitude is intolerable and calls for energetic official representations.

All this protest drew from the British Government explanatory rejoinders. The treaty was defended officially by Cecil B. Harmsworth, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who stated in the House of Commons on August 17:

The policy of His Majesty's Government is to assist Persia to reëstablish herself on a sound basis. There is not the slightest foundation for a suspicion that the Government proposed or that the Persian Government would have consented to create anything in the nature of a protectorate. The Persian Government turned to Great Britain as her most powerful friendly neighbor, and this Government would have departed from its traditional policy of warm interest in the Persian Government had it declined to respond to her appeal.

Mr. Harmsworth concluded by saying that the attitude of the Persian Cabinet and the impending visit of the shah to England constituted a sufficient answer to all insinuations. Similar in tone was a speech by Lord Curzon, delivered at a dinner to the Persian Foreign Minister in London. "I see it stated in some quarters," said Lord Curzon, "that this agreement is a veiled protectorate by Great Britain over Persia. I find no evidence of such a condition of affairs in this agreement"; and he added, in closing:

I ask our guest to give, as I am confident he will be able to do, recognition of the fact that in the recent negotiations between us both parties acted with absolute freedom and were subject to no pressure whatsoever. We could not have imposed this agreement upon Persia if Persia had not been willing to accept it, and that country could not have wrung it from us. We are jointly prepared to defend this agreement, and look forward to the vindication of its real character in its operation.

official correspondence relative thereto has been, or probably will be, published, but the decided nature of our Government's stand may be judged from two Washington special press despatches to the "New York Times." The first of these despatches, dated August 29, runs in part as follows:

Americans will undoubtedly be interested to learn the attitude of our own Government upon the Anglo-Persian Treaty. That attitude has been flatly critical and unfavorable. It is known with certainty that the United States has protested to Great Britain against the treaty. Neither the protest nor the

The recently signed Anglo-Persian treaty has been submitted to the American State Department by the British Government, which has sounded out the attitude of the Washington Government toward the arrangement. The State Department is understood to have made a reply in which it indicated that the American Government did not look with favor upon the treaty. There was an unconfirmed report tonight that the State Department has declined to recognize it.

Even more interesting is the second despatch, dated September 24, which reads:

It was learned to-day that the Teheran press has published an official statement by the American Legation denying declarations contained in the official Persian press that the United States approved the recently concluded Anglo-Persian treaty. The action of the Legation serves to inform the Persian people that the United States does not approve the agreement. There is reason to believe that President Wilson himself directed that the Legation in Teheran be instructed to reply to the articles, inspired by the Persian Ministry which concluded the treaty with England, to emphasize the strong displeasure of this Government at the pact, which was communicated to the British Foreign Office. The reply of the State Department to the request of the British Government that the United States approve the Anglo-Persian treaty is known to be one of the sharpest and most caustic notes sent to the London Foreign Office in recent years. Neither the British Government nor the State Department is expected to make public the correspondence between Ambassador Davis and Lord Curzon.

Such is the situation. Reviewing all the evidence in the case, the coroner's verdict apparently must be "Death at the hands of persons officially residing at Downing Street, London, England."

T

HE affair opened in a dingy railway compartment not in France, as a matter of detail, but in a hillside village in Spain. I had had the place to myself for two hours of traveling, which I had spent in a nervous agony. I was bound for the frontier, and my passport was not going to get me across it. The war was over technically, but my passport was not good enough even for peace.

Just how the Frenchman smuggled himself into that compartment I never exactly knew. At any rate, he accomplished it in a remarkably decent silence. As I remember it all, the man had no personality whatsoever. The fine blue of his uniform illumined that cheerless interior, but the man himself did not exist. He sat facing me, with two faultless boots posed on the flowered carpet, and his short arms locked across his chest. It struck me at the time that for such a silent, small creature he displayed an impressive assortment of medals. There was a veritable plaid of ribbons shining on his breast.

At all events, he was not an amiable person. He stayed where he was, as communicative as a joss, with the early afternoon sunlight playing over those impeccable feet at every turning and twisting of our fantastic route. I saw the sun burn out above a silver mesa, but I could have sworn that the last diamond flash of light sparkled on those boots, for they had surfaces as brilliant and as keen as a mirror.

For my own part, I discovered that I was grateful for the rich twilight de

scending upon us. I renewed my bitter estimation of my passport, and conducted a neat, ghostly dialogue with the consul lying in hiding at the frontier. When the image facing me in the compartment broke out into speech I suffered the dizzying sensation of dropping back into time and space from some magnificent altitude. I had an impression of betrayal. A wave of actual despair and anger flooded me; neither more nor less than that. It was an attack, that gentle, persuasive, vehement sentence poured out against the entrenchments of our silence. We had made our truce between us, such as it was; there was something indelicate, intimate, almost malignant in this precipitate gesture.

"I beg and implore you to permit me to talk to you as I can talk only to a stranger; for I am the happiest man in the world," was what he said to me. It occurred to me that there was something ludicrous in this choice, foreign English, with its flavor of supplication; but I was charmed into an immediate, almost eager consent. I would have retracted it instantly, however. I had sensed the accent of truth, the terrifying accent of truth. I believe I would have fled that compartment if I could have escaped it.

But there was enchantment in that immovable figure. I lifted my gaze resolutely to the face staring at me from the shadows. I had an impression of a grave, pallid countenance, fine in texture, with well-defined planes. The cheeks were lamentably sunken, and above those sunken cheeks fixed eyes glittered with a relentless, black inten