EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

Once at least, Sir Francis had to sally out from the
shelter of the Legation to deal with arrogant crowds
outside the walls. I recalled how, a month before, I had
asked him how he would deal with an armed mob round
the Legation walls. He had but a small guard of Indian
cavalry, mainly for State occasions, and there could be
no possibility of the Legation withstanding a long siege
against an armed force.

" I have thought of that," he told me. " And I will
tell you what I would do. I would talk to them. ..."

The thing sounds fantastic, even in the fantastic
history of Afghanistan. But when danger threatened,
Sir Francis stood on the wall, in full view of them, and —
talked.

Nobody will ever know what he said. These con-
versations do not appear in diplomatic reports. In any
case, to judge by his knowledge of their language, and
to judge further by the Rabelaisian nature of all their
similes and epigrams, the speech that saved the British
Legation in Kabul was not couched in terms that would
be edifying to the British Foreign Office. . . .

Your Afghan is beautifully emphatic in his choice of
terms, but he is not always ladylike in his selection. His
illustrations of an argument, and much of his conversa-
tion, are in the form of allegory, and are drawn from the
necessary but seldom mentioned activities of life.

So Sir Francis spoke, a white-clad figure on the high
walls, while below him there ranged two hundred of the
wildest characters in a wild country. They had tasted
blood. They had seen men dragged from their homes,
shot, and burned. They had seen the last agonies of men
on the cross. They had seen the splinters of men blown
from cannon — all in that night of fire and blood and
pillage.

Here was the Legation. Inside were representatives of

223