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EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

emanated edicts and orders, which, miraculously, were
eventually translated into law.

Yet they seemed to have a dignity impossible to
imagine among his own countrymen. They seemed to
rule unconsciously. And then the brain of the child in
him stumbled across a half-truth that strikes all children
and many animals. The secret was in the clothes.

He had found it. You cannot rule by law and order,
by precept and principle, if you dress in the style of the
jungle and the hills. You can attain dignity by the
pulling on of a pair of trousers. You can tie up your
impressiveness every morning as you lace up your boots.

They had it at Westminster, they had it in Rome.
In Moscow they wore the garments of peace and orderli-
ness, even in a land of war. Who could imagine, at
Versailles, the men of mighty Parliaments debating in
the clothing of the jungle ?

The answer was easy. Afghanistan was to be civilised.
By Allah it should begin right! Its first Parliament
should be clothed in the manner of the great Parliaments
of the West.

And that thought had beaten into the brain of
Amanullah as he risked his neck at the wheel of his car
all the way back through his wild, primitive land.

" Send me all the tailors in Kabul! " he commanded,
the day after he arrived. " Send the bootmakers too,
and the sellers of skins and the merchants of the cloth
market! Send the barbers and the barbers* assistants.
Send me the police ! "

So on the day of the first Afghan Parliament, the
delegates came over the hills into Kabul City.

" The Amir is back! " they greeted each other.
" The Amir is back, and the travellers say that he has
been over the Black Water to see the feringhe in his
own land."

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