With the Persian Expedition

by Martin Henry Donohoe

On the following day there was the sequel to the case of child murder by mother and daughter, when these two unfortunates paid the cruel penalty imposed by Persian law for killing one's own offspring—that of being stoned to death. The "execution" took place in front of the Hamadan telegraph office. The condemned women, already on the borderland of death from hunger, were staked down in two shallow pits near where heavy stones were plentiful. Then the police, reinforced by a willing mob, armed themselves with heavy boulders and pounded the flickering life out of their emaciated frames, silencing for ever their unavailing cries for pity and mercy. It was a revolting spectacle, and although their crime was an abominable one, no one not a Persian could repress a feeling of compassion for the wretched creatures who, made desperate by hunger, had become so dead to all human instinct as to kill and be prepared to eat their own flesh and blood.

Other women were apprehended and executed for child murder. It was reported that there was plenty of wheat stored in private houses, and it was urged that severe measures should be taken against the hoarders. The men were still eating their evening meal of grass, flavoured with a little salt. One of the favourite trysting-places of the Democrat stalwarts was the football-ground near the Hospital Compound. Nearly every afternoon in fine weather, when the ground was not being used for play, they sat there cross-legged—in their brown and black loose-fitting robes, resembling so many clucking hens on a roost—discussing and planning the overthrow of the British, while hundreds of their own people lay dying around them of starvation.

In Hamadan, to add to our other difficulties, we were greatly troubled with professional mendicants, whose ages varied from six to sixty, and whose energy and begging zeal were unbounded. In time we got to know them, chiefly, I think, because of their physical fitness. They were always in the pink of condition, sound in wind and limb, and could run a mile in pursuit of a likely dole without turning a hair, while their vigorous lung power would have done credit to a "cheap jack" auctioneer.

I always did, and always shall, admire the wonderful patience and clemency exercised by Dunsterville when faced with the Democratic organization, which aimed at nothing short of wiping out both himself and his force in Hamadan, if not by a tour de force, then by starvation. They were always inciting the populace to rise and finish us. But hungry men have little stomach for blood-letting, and although those in Hamadan found it difficult enough to exist owing to the food shortage, they were in no hurry to abridge their unhappy days by flinging themselves on British bayonets.

The Hun or the Turk would have ended this intolerable situation long ago by decorating Hamadan lamp-posts with the dangling bodies of local Democrats; but Dunsterville was forbidden to embark upon any strong measures. Our own Minister in Teheran, Sir Charles Marling, kept warning us that we were neutrality-breakers, and wondering whether the Persian Government, even by the exercise of all his (the Minister's) diplomatic skill, could ever be induced to forgive us. Sir Charles, who has since been transferred to some other sphere of usefulness, was always quick to grasp and expound the Persian official point of view. I often wonder if he ever busied himself with attempting to understand that of the British concerning the occupation of Hamadan and Kasvin.

One of the contributory causes of the Hamadan famine was the insane behaviour of the Russian Army when in occupation of the town and district. They destroyed the growing crops of wheat and barley, and wantonly wasted the grain they were unable to consume or carry off. The Hamadan harvest is not ripe for gathering until about the first week in July, so the British, in May, were faced with the problem of feeding a starving population for some sixty days. It was not incumbent upon them to do so, but both pity and policy coincided in indicating the necessity for combating the evil of food shortage that was so rapidly thinning out the population.

With the approval of the British Government a scheme of famine relief was inaugurated by General Dunsterville. Labour gangs were formed, and under the supervision of our officers the starving multitude was set to work road-making. In about the first week three thousand offered themselves for employment, and were enrolled. Nominally, only the able-bodied were supposed to be eligible, but judging by the human wrecks that one saw in the Labour Corps few of this category existed in Hamadan. The road-makers, at the beginning, were paid four krans per diem (a kran is, at war-exchange, the equivalent of a franc), and it was stipulated that they should provide themselves with a spade or mattock and a basket in which to carry away the loosened earth. A number, it is true, did present themselves armed with the narrow-bladed bilm or spade of the Persian agricultural labourer, but there were hundreds who heroically tackled the job equipped with nothing more efficacious than wooden rice-spoons. Still, no one kicked at this, and the rice-spoon wielders did their "bit," or attempted to do it to the best of their enfeebled ability. Our object was rather to be content with some colourable imitation of a quid pro quo for cash disbursements, than to exact a stiff day's labour from people wholly incapable of performing it.

In our blissful ignorance of Persian psychology, we fondly imagined at first that the equivalent of £400 a day paid out in wages to roadmakers would sensibly alleviate the prevailing distress. But we did not reckon upon Persian avarice, selfishness, and untrustworthiness of character. The price of bread, somewhat to our surprise, did not fall. In fact it became dearer than ever. The bakers saw to that. Money was beginning to circulate more freely; the very poor were no longer empty-fisted; so up went the price of bread with a bound! In short, it was found that the more we distributed in famine relief the lower fell the purchasing power of the kran. Another thing, too, that militated against the successful working of the "all cash" scheme of assistance was that it did not to any extent ameliorate the pitiable lot of the women and children. The men did not always bother to buy bread for their starving dependents, preferring to dissipate their earnings in a nightly carouse in an opium den—the local equivalent to a British gin palace.

An unpleasant element of "graft" was also brought to light. No Persian for very long can keep his itching fingers from other people's money. The native foremen of the road gangs were not an exception to the rule, and for a brief period they made a lucrative income by trafficking in labour tickets. First they issued spurious ones to their friends and relatives, none of whom had done a stroke of work; they even sought, somewhat clumsily to be sure, to counterfeit the official stamp which each ticket bore on its face. They rubbed some Indian ink on the reverse side of a two-kran piece, and with this stamped the forged tickets, adding a few pencil strokes à la fantasie by way of giving a finishing touch of verisimilitude.