AMANULLAH

settlement, and were usually content to wait. But
some day, the trip would have to be paid for.

Stories of his expenditure would have reached Kabul.
A thousand pounds given to the poor of each capital
would seem a great deal of money to be thrown away
on theferinghe, especially when it had been wrested from
a starving nation. Amanullah had his moments of
anxiety, but they were soon forgotten in the thrill and
enjoyment of some new occasion at which he was chief
guest. It was a case of now or never. Let the future
look after itself.

But Tarzi Khan, the Afghan Foreign Minister, had
not come to England, and had thought it wiser to pro-
ceed straight back to Kabul from Paris. The rumours
of unrest seemed to be backed up by truthful incidents.
It was repeatedly said that the Royal visit would be
cut short, and that Amanullah would hasten back to
his country without visiting Russia. His answer was
to deny these statements out of hand, as a gesture of
bravado. He went to the Grand National, where he
watched with close interest the methods of the tipsters
and the tricksters on the course. There was a visit to
Oxford, where Queen Souriya met her brother, then at
Exeter. Amanullah told the Oxford authorities who
honoured him with the D.C.L. that there had been
universities in Afghanistan a thousand years ago.

In Liverpool an ex-soldier presented him with an
autograph book, and requested his signature. Seeing
the man's poverty, Amanullah wrote his name in Roman
script and dug his hand in his pocket. The little present
was a £100 note. A king must be kingly in thought
and deed, he must have decided. That story, too, went
back to Kabul.

The Queen meanwhile was acquitting herself well in
the difficult territory of society. She bought toys from

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