<^c^c^c^e^t^<^i^<^ EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN another artful old fox, held the strongest of the belting. He laughed at all the Amir's cruel jokes, approved all his actions, and showed himself as cunning at the old game of diplomacy and time-wasting palaver* But that time was a long way off still. Habihullah had not relented a scrap, during the last ten years or so, in his playful habits. Only the other day, rumour said, he had played a pithy joke while engaged in his equivalent of a game of chess. He was interrupted during a move. A messenger came in to announce that; four hundred mutinous soldiers had been brought in from Herat. The guards awaited instructions, " Oh—poke their eyes out,*' said Hubibullah, without; taking his gaze from the board before him. This story is vouched for by an Englishman who was with him at the time. The sentence was carried out that same day. When Amanullah came to hear of this and similar incidents, he wondered at such methods- He hud been brought up in a hard school, and ho hud heard the maxim and favourite saying of his father* " I rule an iron people," Habibullah would «ayf ** and I must rule with an iron hand." But Amanullah was unconvinced. Something must be wrong. He looked abroad, and though he saw pillage and slaughter on a scale unknown in history bofWe, he saw that there were lessons to be learnt from the West which might with time be applied to the Kiu*t, Chief of the evils that he saw at Court WHH the universal system of corruption. There was little decep- tion about it* It was a recognised and apparently ineradicable taint. It had gone on for so long Uu*t it had grown into custom. Every man had his priee, and the wise ruler was he who raised the market and gained as great a sum as possible for his favours* 95