CHAPTER XXIV

ON THE KNEES OF THE GODS

UNDER Cyrus, the Persian empire followed hot on the
heels of the downfall of Assyria and Babylonia. Two
centuries later, when no one ruled strongly anywhere,
Alexander grasped his opportunity. Rome, built upon
roads, fell when the centurions led their armies farther
abroad. Space defeated time. Persia was the by-pass to
the East. The next great power, that of Islam, was
founded by forces stronger than force itself; nourished
by religious fervour during an era of general collapse.
Then came the Asiatic empires of Genghis Khan and
Timurlane, founded upon the mobility of virile nomads.
Away in the West, Great Britain began to awaken from
her slumber.

In the nineteenth century, and at the dawn of the
twentieth, Persia, ever a pawn on the chess-board of nations,
was fair political game. Because of the weakness and
indolence of her statesmen, she had endured a long period
of stagnation, which bore fruit during the years of the
Great War, when Russia and Britain considered that
they both had the right to protect her.

There is vague report that the warlike Lurs and the
Bakhtiari, among others, are revolting against the Shah,
under the leadership of a member of the house of Kojar—
that of the deposed Shah. Riza's methods; his reforms in
defiance of the vested religious autocracy, fanatically Shfa
at heart; and the capacity for internal strife inherent in the

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