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AMANULLA1I

the Treasury an annual sum sufficient at any rate to
pay for the education scheme without severe recourse
to extra taxation. The goods of foreign nations were
already to be seen flooding the bazaars of Kabul,
coming in on the crest of that wave of commercial
pioneering which followed the Great War. The bazaar
was becoming modernised. All the products of America,
France, and Italy could be bought from the native
dealers. The native handicraft men were complaining
that they were deprived of a livelihood by the mass-
production methods of foreigners. Goods wex*e cheap,
even after paying for entry into the country, and dealers
were making huge profits by pandering to the vanity
of the new public.

Customs duties on these goods should have amounted
to a sum easily capable of financing a large proportion
of the education policy* The fact remained that they
did not* And Amanullah bent his head over the official
records with a new severity and determination.

The reports were immaculate. At every frontier
post, the local officials merely suggested that the great
proportion of imported goods were being introduced at
some other gate of Afghanistan. They had had a slack
time* Here were their records, and here was their
contribution to the general fund. They tallied exactly.
Amanullah was up against the cleverest system of
dishonesty in the world.

He must have known then the strength of the system
•which he was endeavouring to kill. He must have
understood then the apathy of former Amirs to tilt
against the stubborn bulwarks created by generations
of skilled crooks. He must have wondered whether it
was all worth while, this reform campaign. But even
when he had been in the depths of despair, when he had
finally decided that there was no one he could trust in

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