EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

" As you were ! You are the East, and cannot ever
adopt the customs of the West ! Throw away your
Western trappings, your boots, walking-sticks, over-
coats, French hats, German suits, and British manners !
Return to the blanket if you need warmth, and to the
knife if you need defence against a foe ! The West is not
for you ! Afghanistan must go back, not forward . . . ! "

Such was the meaning of his last Order as a King.
Perhaps at the last his tongue was in his cheek. Kabul
was already back fifty years. Not a clerk in the city but
reverted to his old order of manners, clothing, headgear.
The mullahs were up again. The old religious formalities
returned, the old superstitions and beliefs returned, with
double their force, overnight.

Then the Bang dashed out of the ruined Palace,
hurried wife and children into the waiting machine, and
was shot up in the air, above the city which he had tried
to modernise and had reduced to smoking ruin,

One more order he made in those last minutes before
he left Kabul for ever. Again with a touch of irony, he
appointed the next King of Afghanistan. His eyes must
have roved round the little company of his friends, seek-
ing a figure who might prove more acceptable to the
people. His eye lit upon his fat, contented-looking, elder
brother.

" Inayatullah will be King," he said.

And perhaps he chuckled at the joke, as he had always
chuckled at his brother's troubles,

Those who followed closely events in Afghanistan will
always discuss the important point of what part Sir
Francis Humphrys played in the departure of Amanullah
from Kabul. Newspapers representing every view-
point of the political side of the affair, all had their own

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