AMANULLAH

searched anew for any possible hidden meanings,
Amanullah will never forget.

He attends picnics, given by friends in the summer-
time. Now and then there are English hosts, and he
delights to exhibit the few words of the language he
picked up during his English tour. He is a boy once more,
anxious for any audience, for he has never quite shed
the pose of the eager and passionate youth. Then
comes again the black despair, the sense of frustration
which only the once-mighty can know,

Picnics, and he dreams still of an army on the march 1

The trivialities of the suburbs, and he once saw cities
beflagged in his honour!

He is cursed with imagination, to make his life the
harder. He tests out his theories anew, struggles with
his ambitions in private, and plans again the Afghan
nation as he visualised it. Always, at the end of his
vain reasonings, he comes to the same decision. He was
right, he was right !

He sees now the same reforms that he struggled to
effect, taking shape in his own capital, He sees the new
Royal bodyguard equipped even more splendidly, capped
now in bearskins after the English pattern, stiff at the
salute in honour of an older, less vigorous, and more
simple man. He sees his own dreams rising in stone
and cement on the Afghan plains* Slowly, but more
surely. Backed now by the support of a nation, aided
by the willing hands of well-governed and amenable
citizens.

Whereas he had tried force. He knew no other way,

He hears of a monument erected within sight of his
old Palace, a slender white pillar flanked by victorious
guns. The words on the simple but beautiful monument
tell of the gratitude of a nation toward a man who
rescued it from the effects of his own ambition.

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