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only concerned to provide for the reduction of the dead weight debt. Let us see what has happened. Mr. Lloyd George has been Chancellor of the Exchequer for three years; Mr. Asquith held that office for an equal period. The best test we can apply is to compare their records with one another and with that of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach during the three years preceding the South African War. The figures will be found in the House of Commons Paper 84 of 1912:

BUDGET PROVISION FOR THE REDUCTION OF THE
DEAD WEIGht Debt

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1896-7

7,220,943 1906-7 9,620,615 1909-19 3,531,419 1897-8 7,360,292 1907-8 10,909,266 1910-11 6,639,648 1898-9 7,576,601 1908-9 9,988,954 1911-12 7,045,018

Thus in no single year has Mr. Lloyd George made as large a provision for the reduction of the debt as Sir Michael HicksBeach made at a time when the debt was considerably smaller than it now is and the national revenue very much less. That is not all. The principal object of debt reduction is to maintain the credit of the country so that in time of war the nation may borrow on moderate terms. At the time when Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was steadily putting by over £7,000,000 a year, our national credit stood so high that many people argued with some plausibility that the Sinking Fund was even too large. But during and after the war Consols. fell heavily, and therefore an increased effort was needed to restore our national credit. Mr. Asquith realised this, and increased the Sinking Fund by a considerable—though, as events proved, an inadequate—amount. Mr. Lloyd George, in spite of the continued decline in Consols, has actually reduced the Sinking Fund, and by so doing has unquestionably accelerated a further fall in national credit.

This is the most serious fact in the present financial situation, for if a great war were now to break out we should find ourselves, in spite of the great wealth of the nation, in a position of grave anxiety. The broad margin for increased taxation which Mr.

Gladstone was always so anxious to preserve has been swept away by his successors; the credit of England, which used to stand so high above that of other countries, has been brought down nearly to their level. Yet the present Government still continues the policy of subsidising electors at the taxpayers' expense; while the only alternative offered by the Opposition is a different type of subsidy. Apparently the whole art of modern politics consists in buying votes for a party with the money, or the credit, of a nation. EDITOR.

THE PROBLEM OF PERSIA

I. The Strangling of Persia: A Record of European Diplomacy and Oriental Intrigue. By W. MORGAN SHUSTER, ExTreasurer-General of Persia. T. Fisher Unwin. 1912.

2. Parliamentary Papers, 1906 to 1912.

THE

HE origin of the Persian question is not to be found in the Anglo-Russian Convention, the summoning of a Mejliss, the abdication of a Shah, and other things of yesterday. It lies far back in the physical changes which have altered the face of Asia, and is further the product of vast ancient conflicts which only loom dimly in the most distant pages of history. Persia is a land outworn, and, like Stevenson's Olalla, the hands of the dead are in her bosom. She has shared, and is still sharing, in the process of desiccation which has depopulated large areas in Central Asia and left the oldest of civilised continents strewn with half-buried and deserted cities. The process is perhaps intermittent, and is certainly fluctuating. So careful an authority as Sir Sven Hedin is inclined to the belief that the physical condition of Persia is very much what it was when written records begin; but his arguments are too local in character, and are not convincing. No one can doubt that Palestine has undergone some change of climate since the days when it was in very truth a Promised Land; and the desert did not always encroach so straitly upon the valley of the Nile as it does to-day. The fundamental explanation of the plight of Persia is found in its increasing aridity.

The rose-gardens and the plashing fountains of Shiraz illustrate the keynote of Persian poetry but furnish no clue to the defects of climate which have helped to bring an ancient Empire to the verge of dissolution. Within a few marches of Teheran one reaches the verge of the Desht-i-Kevir, the great depression filled with an incrustation of viscous saline mud, which once was probably, like Lake Eyre in Australia, a huge inland sea. To the south-east the salt desert contracts, but only to expand once more into the terrible Desht-i-Lut, the immense expanse of heated sand whence blows a fierce simoom. There are many other lesser stretches of desert in Persia, as well as dwindling lakes. Even Lake Urumiah is said to be

diminishing, and some authorities believe that the volume of water in Persian rivers is much less than formerly. Persia is in any case almost destitute of navigable rivers, and a large proportion of its streams drain into inland lakes or swamps. The first key to the Persian problem is that the country is drying up. The rainfall does not now suffice to keep a tenth of the cultivable area under crops. Irrigation is practised in a primitive yet not wholly ineffectual manner, but Persia will never be the scene of great irrigation achievements except, perhaps, in the valley of the Karun. The whole population is estimated at under ten millions. The oases shelter large sections of the people, but a land in which barren mountains alternate with deserts necessarily produces nomadic tendencies. The nomadic population is very large, and helps to complicate the present situation; for the Persian nomad hates law and discipline and loves loot.

It must further be remembered that Persia is one of the oldest of Empires. Her greatest glories were attained in the days when her people, who had pressed southward in search of sunshine, had not lost the energy and virility engendered upon the frozen steppes of the north. The sway of Darius extended from the Indus to the Nile; but the sun of Persia passed its meridian when her archers fell at Marathon, and the conquests of Alexander spelt her ultimate doom. There were many periods of wonderful revival. The incursions of militant hordes brought repeated infusions of new blood. Time and again Persia still bulked largely in the world. In the sixteenth century, under Shah Abbas the Great, she rose for the last time to a position resembling her early splendour. Thenceforward her path lay steadily downwards. The sudden rise of Nadir Shah, the swift invasion of India, the merciless sack of Delhi, were episodes which brought no return of stability. Under the Kajar dynasty the Persian Empire has continuously drifted towards decay. A century ago it was already little more than a shell. The Persians never evolved that marvellous social structure which has enabled the indomitable Chinese race to survive a thousand shocks. They had not the advantage of inhabiting a land of magnificent waterways, of incomparable fertility, and of almost limitless resources. Not only were their numbers limited, but they were never really homogeneous. One wave of invasion after another had left behind its flotsam and jetsam

of humanity. The deserts and the mountains were an unchangeable barrier against the growth of the birth-rate. Climate, in the slow passing of the centuries, placed its ineffaceable mark upon fair-skinned races which no longer knew whence they had come; and misgovernment and civil war did the rest.

A very broad factor in the Persian problem is the extraordinary variety of the people inhabiting the country. The Iranian element no doubt predominates, but it has been blended with many other stocks. Turkis, Arabs, Beluchis, and Kurds abound, and all are crudely classified as Persian. Arabs are numerous in the south, and along the line of the Karun Valley. Beluchis are found in large numbers around Kerman, and Kurds are almost equally prominent in the region of Lake Urumiah. The paramount tribe of the Kajars is of Turki extraction. Even the famous Bakhtiari mountaineers have no common origin, for they differ widely, and include septs of both the Turki and Semitic types. Amid such varying peoples it is not surprising that instincts of mutual antagonism are generally stronger than any tendency towards the expression of a common nationality. Regarded as a whole, Persia to-day is inhabited by a collection of tribes, and in that respect may almost be said to resemble the North-west Frontier of India. The diversity is unquestionably greater than is found in the neighbouring land of Afghanistan.

The nomadic tribes are rarely true nomads, but shift from summer to winter quarters, according to the season. They have in their character very little of the dreamy mysticism which is commonly supposed to distinguish the modern Persian; their interests are more material. For the combination of much speculative philosophy with a curiously unpractical outlook upon life, we must turn to the oases and the infrequent cities. The dry climate of Persia seems to sharpen the mind, and it certainly over-stimulates; but the stimulation is in the direction of talk and not of action. The interminable and inconclusive discussions in the first Mejliss were as typically Persian as the speeches of the crew in Kinglake's storm-tossed brigantine were typically Greek. Climate is at the bottom of the Persian question, from whatever point of view that question is examined. Even opium is said to have a more irritating effect upon the human frame in Persia than elsewhere. Peoples endowed with

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