All Tuesday night and Wednesday and Thursday there was heavy
firing in Teheran. The news is very vague, as the onlookers were unable to move about the city. It seems, however, that the Nationalists have gradually made good their advantage. The Times special correspondent, writing from the Bank of Persia on Wednesday, said that those who lived in the zone of the worst fire had left their houses, but the European telegraph clerks remained at work in offices which were far from safe. The Shah occupied a line of hills about three miles outside Teheran on Wednesday, and his artillery bombarded the points in the city occupied by the Nationalists. On Wednesday evening Sir George Barclay and M. Sablin, the Russian Charge d'Affaires, visited the Shah to ask him to agree to a truce. He answered that the Nationalists must surrender. Europeans, it is said, are being respectfully treated by the National:As, who also behave well in other respects, and deal mercifully with their prisoners. In Friday's paper the correspondent says that Colonel Liakhoff is treating with the
Nationalists, the proposed conditions being that the Russian officers should be allowed to depart free, and that the Persian, Cossacks should serve under the Constitution. This informa- tion prepared us for the statement which comes as we go to press that the Shah has taken refuge in the Russian Legation. The Nationalists will be able virtually to dictate their own terms ; they are in the position of the Young Turks when they took Constantinople.
