MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IHAVE been saddened during the last few weeks by the attitude adopted by so many of my compatriots towards the Persians. The Press has, on the whole, been courteous and restrained ; what distresses me is the fatuous chatter that one hears in clubs and streets. I can perfectly well understand the anger of those who regard the issue from a purely legal point of view. They certainly have excellent cause for indignation. Here was a contract freely entered into by both parties guarantee- ing reciprocal benefits to each until the year 1993. Few treaties have ever been more explicit or, from the commercial point of view, more just. For one side to tear up such a contract and to refuse to submit the dispute to arbitration is a very flagrant act of bad faith. It is not possible for the Persians to say that they were forced to sign the contract under duress. It is not very consistent of them at one moment to decree that Reza Shah merited the title of "The Great" and at the same moment to contend that he was so pitiable a weakling that he signed away the property of the nation under pressure from the cruel British. I thus fully understand, and am prepared to respect, the rage of those who, having been trained in our admirable system of commercial law, regard with sincere moral repulsion the actions and statements of Dr. Mussadck and his supporters. I do not believe, of course, that anger will get us very much further, or that it would be very wise on our part to start munching our nose in order to spite our face. In the old days we should have seized the southern Customs, landed a few Indian troops at Abadan, occupied Masjid-i-Suleiman, and waited quite quietly until the Government at Teheran was succeeded by another more amenable and apologetic. It would be very foolish if we were to take such measures today. Thus our rage, however justified and however noble, must for the moment remain impotent. Few things arc as bad for the health as impotent rage ; therefore those who feel very angry about this business would be well advised to recover their calm.
* * * * It is not, I repeat, the angry people who distress me: it is those who think Persia and the Persians funny. Haviug been born in Persia, and having in adult life spent in that country nearly three delightful years, it may be that I talce a sentimental view. Yet unless one permits a large dose of sentiment to enter into one's estimate of the Persians and their strange character. one will be apt to become impatient and to misinterpret what essentially is a very curious and interesting phenomenon. More- over, I have observed that those who find the Persians ridiculous, those who repeat with inane giggles that the Persians have not changed since the days of Hadji Baba, are almost always people of low mental calibre. Those English exiles, be they sahibs or mem-sahibs, who find Orientals comic are nearly always men and women without rich internal resources, without any sound education, and without that cerebral faculty that enables a person to recognise differences as interesting rather than absurd. But one can probe deeper than that. One can identify the virus that leads Westerners to giggle at Easterners as a form of self- protection, self-comfort, self-reassurance. We have been con- ditioned to believe that our Western logic, our special conception of law and order, are so sacrosanct as to constitute a norm ; any deviation, in terms of inconsequence, from that norm is disturb- ing ; therefore the protective guffaw is summoned to re-establish confidence and a desired feeling of superiority.
* * * * I havesometimes been tempted to remind the gigglers that the ancestors of those who provoke their merriment were kings and priests at a date when our own ancestors were gnawing thigh- bones in caves. It must always be remembered, especially in a year celebrating the glory of Avicenna, that much of what we cherish as Western civilisation owed its inspiration and continuity to the East. Nor should we forget that until the year 1498, when Vasco da Gama landed in India, the East had a civilisation more cultured, philosophic, progressive and self-contained than that of arrogant Europe. If it be true, as I fear it is true, that from that year onwards the West started to contaminate and then to dominate the East, is it so very funny that after five hundred years- the latter should begin to hit back and to recover some of the majesty and independence that were lost on the banks of the Granicus and by the gates of Issus? Nor does it seem so strange or comic to me that, in their recent uprising against the West, they should break contracts and cut Gordian knots in a way that is naturally deeply shocking to those who have grown grey in the service of the Chancery Bar. Our predominance during the nineteenth century, during the years that we assumed with such selfless devotion so large a share of the white man's burden, was mainly due to the fact that we had " got the Maxim gun and they had not." It was due to our infinite superiority in this matter of machines and things. Now that we are so frightened of the big bad wolf at Moscow that we dare not show our faces outside our own back gardens, is it so very sur- prising that those who have hitherto been treated as urchins should throw stones at our windows accompanied by cries of glee?
I am not seeking to indulge in sneers at imperialism. I am in fact an admirer of the work that has been accomplished by our colonials in such places as East Africa or the Sudan. I believe that British imperialism has brought far more happiness to the world than it has brought unhappiness ; and, after all, had it not been for our imperialism, and in its most buccaneer form, there would not today be the United States of America, our great rich protector against the Scyths. I have, moreover, never met a real imperialist (by which I mean a man who leaves his own country and devotes his whole life to the administration of sub- ject peoples) who ever for one moment thought the natives "funny." It is the muddied oafs of England who derive amuse- ment from what they fail entirely to understand. I admit that the Persians do not possess our brand of logic ; that they have little conception of the workings of cause and effect ; that they are not gifted with foresight ; that they are not stable, orderly, or consistent. It is their brilliant, imaginative inconsequence that renders them both so difficult to negotiate with and so salutary an example. We of the West are apt to become rather muscle- bound by our own righteousness ; the Persian denial of all our values acts as a very excellent solvent for these lumps of chalk. Nor should we forget that, however comic some of the London clubmen may find Dr. Mussadek and his compatriots, the hilarity of Pall Mall is a mild cacchination compared to the roars of Homeric laughter that at this moment must be echoing through the corridors of the Majlis.
The Persians, let us get this perfectly clear, are a nation or poets and artists ; they are not a nation of business-men or. engineers. Like all poets. they are occasionally irritable, and their irritation when aroused is apt to take hysterical forms. The things they are now saying about us and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company are just little experiments in invective, even as on a spring morning one might scribble a quatrain or compose the opening of an ode. In their hearts they know very well that The Company has brought great benefit to Persia and been very charitable and humane. If we react with violence, if we allow that beastly sneer of amused contempt to flicker for one instant upon our lips and nostrils, then the hysteria may become maniac. But if we behave in a calm. friendly way, recognising that Asia is no longer the Asia of 1890, a great many kegs and barrels can be rescued from the wreck.
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