EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

London shops for her son in Paris, and was an honoured
visitor to the great shops, where her taste was ever
superintended by Lady Humphrys. The newspapers
still sought new adjectives for her beauty, and a certain
coiffeur who arranged her hair for the State receptions,
stated to an enthralled public that the Queen possessed
the most beautiful head of hair in London.

Other visits were made to a Boy Scouts Rally, and
to various private houses. The tour was nearly over.
And on the 5th of April King Amanullah, his Queen,
and his suite, set sail for Paris once more, hurried to
Brussels, Warsaw, Riga, Moscow, Angora, and Teheran.
The rumours of trouble in Kabul must have assumed
more ominous strength as he approached his own
country.

It was some time before the officials, the guides, and
the Ministers of State in London began to suspect that
they had been backing the wrong horse. They had done
it magnificently, energetically, and painstakingly. Apart
from the minor consideration of the sum of money spent
on the entertainment of Amanullah and his suite, which
could not have been below £100,000, the British Govern-
ment had competed with other European nations in a
display of force that had an almost negligible effect.

That impression, conveyed to the confused brain of
a man who was already charged with a kaleidoscope
of memories, was nullified by the fact that Aman-
ullah was in a few short months to be a puppet ruler.
England had put her shirt on an outsider. The some-
what undignified manner in which the official broad-
casting corporation took part in the great campaign of
ballyhoo did nothing to raise our prestige. There were
knowledgeable cynics in the East who, before the very

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