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EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

more to gain by general defiance of the Government,
learnt for the first time that they could no longer continue
their once-profitable occupation of loot and plunder on
neighbouring villages.

Most important of all, the priests regained their
position. It may be that Nadir Khan himself did not
approve of their old methods of wielding power over the
people. It may be that he saw the evils of the regime of
the Church. But the mullahs were too strong. With the
coming of revolution, they had crept back to their old
strongholds. They had been foremost in urging the
people on to violent protest against the reforms. They
had been able to point to the downfall of Amanullah as if
it had been their own personal triumph. The old fear
and superstition still persisted in the hearts of many of
their followers, and before the country-people knew
where they were, they found themselves once more under
the yoke of the mullahs. Nadir Elan was too wise a man
to protest at the beginning, and, once back in office, the
reverend gentlemen would have taken a deal of shifting.

The mullahs, then, came back. It is an old truism
that when you take an influence away from a childish
people, you must replace it. Looked on in that light,
Amanullah's wholesale repression of the priests cannot
be defended. He gave the people nothing in place of
their traditional overlords. Nadir Khan could not yet
give them any reality of Government. He Was there
more or less on sufferance. And so he allowed the
mullahs to regain their old pre-eminence in every vil-
lage, in every department of national life. " As you
were ! " had been the order once more.

At first, indeed, this was a Government of marking
time. The Army, which must always come first in im-
portance in the country, was half organised and con-
sisted only of those who did not care to desert. It was

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