EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

of one in these days, and with the coming of the new
roads the imports of cars are ever increasing.

The British Legation is patched up again, and there
rules a Scotsman with a small staff for the representation
of Great Britain. The dark days have nearly been for-
gotten, and English women are once more at the great
white building. It seems a long time since the last
'plane flew from Kabul with the last Englishman in
the cabin.

Outside the city, on the playing-fields, are to be heard
the voices of those who are playing football and hockey
and handball. Sport newest of all new things for the
Afghan, has come to the country. Government lends a
sympathetic ear to the directors of national sport. It
was even hoped that this year Afghan hockey players
would be at Los Angeles for the Olympic Games.

It is a free country once more. The old embargo is
lifted again, and the old vindictive cry, that followed the
anti-European protest, is heard no more. Passports
are given for visitors to Kabul, and the land that was
forbidden returns for the second time to freedom for the
feringhe.

Nothing is heard of another Royal trip to Europe.
Strangely enough, the fact of the King's European train-
ing arouses no resentment nor suspicion in the minds
of the people. He has seen, and he has benefited by
Europe. He gave up security and comfort to come back
on a forlorn hope. He knows the West and he returned
to the East. The philosophic Afghan reflects that there
is here less danger than in a ruler who thought to tackle
the West after he had sat on an Eastern throne.

Peace, and the gospel of content, has been suggested
to the Afghan nation, for the first time, with success.
No fire-eating idealist sits in Kabul and looks with envy
across the frontiers of his own Kingdom. A country

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