EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

plications begin earlier in the Eastern mind than they
did in the consciences of the old Crusaders. For whereas
the ladies of the Crusaders were prohibited by lock and
chain from departing from chastity, the Eastern women
are never given the opportunity of arousing even the
slightest dangerous feeling in the breasts of possible
admirers. And even to-day the Afghan women, on
attaining the age of enticement to dangerous manhood,
are enveloped in the all-concealed folds of the purdah
far more strictly than are the women of India.

Their lives are spent behind the walls of their apart-
ments. Their infrequent visits out of doors are confined
by the walls of the garden, where they may take their
evening exercise. When, rarely, they venture further
afield, their purdahs are adjusted even more rigorously
to evade a chance glimpse by a bold stranger. Perhaps
the men of Afghanistan knew what they were about
when in the dim days of history these precautions were
invented. Hence imprisonment for the higher-class
ladies of Afghanistan for all time, it seems.

Their health suffers, and their minds suffer. Their
babies are born under the most dangerous conditions,
for there is no relaxing of the purdah law on any con-
sideration. They are still children in mind when they
die. All chance of work in the service of mankind, all
chance of entertainment, of recreation, is prohibited.
The purdah is the strongest influence in the land, and
through history has proved itself the one stubborn abuse
which seems to resist altogether the many courageous
attempts to check it.

Amanullah was planning to make the strongest assault
on the system that has ever been known.

During those long periods of self-examination by the
camp fires of his native hills, the thought had grown in
his mind that the secret of success for the future would

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