With the Persian Expedition

by Martin Henry Donohoe

As the tickets entitled the bearers to draw four krans when presented nightly at the pay office, the thieving foremen were in a fair way to becoming rich by the time the fraud was discovered. The same individuals were also in the habit of coercing their hapless underlings into selling their tickets for a kran or two. These were then resold to a middleman, who cashed them at their full face value. But a liberal application of the bastinado worked wonders, and speedily rendered such dishonest practices highly unpopular.

Still, it was felt that some radical alteration was necessary if we were to get full value for, and the Hamadan poor full benefit from, the money that was being expended on their behalf. General Byron, a level-headed practical soldier, and very wise in worldly knowledge, who at this time was second in command to General Dunsterville, now took over control of famine relief work. He decided upon an alteration of the existing system of doles in favour of one consisting of a free distribution in food supplemented by payment in cash of two krans instead of four. Bread alone was deemed to be insufficient, and it was felt that the starving people who toiled daily road-making required some more nourishing food. After overcoming many difficulties, official as well as unofficial, and silencing the usual group of objectors who vowed that it could not be done, the General opened soup kitchens at several centres, and fed as many as 2,000 hungry people per day.

The recipients were delighted and grateful. But it was now that the local Democrats, who throughout had stood aloof from the movement for succouring their starving brethren, reached their high-level of political strategy. It was not at all to their liking that the detested British interloper was filling the empty stomachs of the people gratis. In such circumstances they could not be expected to revolt and join hands with the Democrats, and besides, if this free distribution of food were not stopped, it would be a bad day for the wheat-trust and inflated grain prices. So they set to work and issued broadcast handbills warning the poor against partaking of British soup, on the ground that it was heavily flavoured with poison. It was part of another "deep-laid plot," they said, to kill off all the Hamadani whom the ravages of famine had so far overlooked.

The average Persian peasant is an ignorant and gullible individual as a rule, but this time the Democrats overshot the mark and their assertions were too much even for Persian credulity. The hungry people came and ate. The second and succeeding days they came in thousands. Barricades and armed soldiers were required to prevent their storming the distribution centres and carrying off all the available supply. And, to the dismay and horror of all good Democrats, not a single one died from poisoning. This was the deathblow to the prestige of the Democratic movement. It lost its grip on the people. There is nothing a Persian, or indeed any Oriental, hates so much as being made to look ridiculous; and the Democrats became the target for quip and jest in the bazaars of Hamadan, until in rage they plucked their beards and tore their garments, exclaiming, in accents of sorrow and humiliation, "Alas, what ashes have fallen on our heads to-day!"

But they rallied in their last ditch, and made an eleventh-hour attempt to avert the consequences of the moral defeat which had overtaken them. Kuchik Khan, the "Robin Hood" of the Caspian Marches, yielding to democratic pleadings, and in the hope possibly of discrediting British famine relief work, sent fifteen mule-loads of rice to Hamadan to be sold for the benefit of the poor. But Kuchik's agents had seized the rice without payment from growers living in his "protected area," so he was able to play the merry game of robbing the Persian Peter in order to comfort the Persian Paul.

The artifice was too thin. Hamadan was not deluded. The British were de facto masters of the situation. They had conquered the people of Hamadan not by the sword and halter of the Turk who had preceded them, but by a modern adaptation of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

By a ruse de guerre the grain owners were induced to disgorge some of their hoarded stocks. Telegrams purposely written en clair which passed between Bagdad and Hamadan made it appear that large supplies of wheat were being forwarded from Mesopotamia, whereupon the local Hamadan hoarders rushed into the market and sold readily at daily diminishing rates, until something like normal prices were reached once more. And so the bottom fell out of the wheat ring.

Private foreign effort closely co-operated with the military in the distribution of food and the relief of the famine-stricken. Dr. Funk and Mr. Allen of the American Presbyterian Mission, Mr. McMurray of the Imperial Bank of Persia, and Mr. Edwards, local manager of the Persian Carpet Factory, amongst them spent considerable sums of money and devoted a great deal of time to this work of charity.

Mr. McMurray is a man possessing much business acumen and financial ability, and as expert adviser to the British in occupation at Hamadan he was able to render very great services to his country. Too modest to seek reward or recompense of any kind, he nevertheless had an honour thrust upon him. It was a minor class of a minor decoration which a grateful Government in England somewhat grudgingly, it seems, bestowed upon him in generous recognition of his zealous labour in the common cause of Empire. So now, should he attend a public function at home, and the question of precedence arise, he will probably find himself ranking next after some lady typist from the War Office, who can write shorthand and spell with tolerable accuracy. To be an unofficial Briton working for Britain abroad is a very serious handicap for the Briton concerned. The Government of the Empire sees to that. I have never been able to discover exactly why it is, but the handicap holds good all the way from Tokio to Teheran, and from Salonika to Archangel. Should you desire to acquire merit, and you happen to be the possessor of a name that betokens pure British ancestry, hide it, and let it be inferred that the cradle of your race is somewhere in Palestine or the Middle East. Then your path is easy. The India Office will pat you on the back, and the British Foreign Office will ecstatically fold you to its bosom.

McMurray's bungalow was the chief trysting-place for the British officers in Hamadan. It stands within the great walled enclosure or compound where many members of the British and American colonies had made their homes. It was a city within a city, fringed with trees and pleasant pathways, and bordered by flower-beds. Mrs. McMurray was always "at home" to her compatriots from about 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. While she fed starving Persians, she also gave luncheons and dinners to British officers. Rarely were there fewer than six of the latter billeted under her hospitable roof. The eaglets of the R.A.F., and especially the fledglings still without their second wing, found her an admirable foster-mother, who counselled them in health and nursed them in illness, and was always a sympathetic amanuensis when fevered brows and unsteady hands attempted to grapple with the problem of inditing a "line or two" for home to catch the outgoing mail.