Page:The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (1910).djvu/98

 62 THE PERSIAN REVOLUTION

It is, perhaps, not worth while saying much more about the views expressed by the British Press at this time. There was a good article by Sir Lepel Griffin in the Wzneteenth Century for July, in which he spoke well of the new Shah, Muzaffaru’d-Din,

vand expressed the admirable sentiment that it was England’s policy “not, as has been suggested, to come to terms with Russia for a partition of the country, which would be as wicked as the partition of Poland, but to work for Persian regeneration, which is by no means hopeless.” In another article of the same issue of the same magazine Mr J. D. Rees, C.I.E., also strove to ex- culpate the Babis, and indeed the theory that they had anything to do with the death of Nasiru’d-Din Shah was soon abandoned, even by the Persian Government. There was a leader in the Morning Post of May 11 which revealed an extraordinary mixture of ignorance (Sayyid Jamalu’d-Din being described as “the Afghan who is the recognized leader of the Babi”) and shrewdness. There was the usual inane. dissertation in the Spectator of May 9, concluding “Friendship with Russia, were it only possible, would at all events remove a burden which

(is now almost as widespread as is the Queen’s dominion or our trade.” The Pioneer, though considering “Reuter’s announcement that the assassin of the Shah was a Babi fanatic...enough to deprive that tragic event at once of any suspicion of political significance,” maintained, what I still believe to be the true view, notwithstanding recent jubilations over the Anglo-Russian Agreement, that Russia’s aim “is to secure in Eastern Persia a base for her advance upon Afghanistan and India, to say nothing of the further projects she cherishes for eventually reaching the Persian Gulf.”

Let us turn, however, from these flowery fields of romance and rhetoric to the actual facts elicited by cross-examination from the Shah’s assassin, Mirza Muhammad Riza. The fprocés- - verbal of this examination, preserved in the Ministry of Justice

at Tihran, has only recently been made public in the S#r-2-/srafil (“ Trumpet-blast of Israfil”)1, in my opinion one of the best of the many excellent Persian newspapers which the Constitutional

., Movement brought into existence during the first period (Aug.

1 It has since been reprinted in the Awakening, pp. 125 et segg.