An Imperialist in the Making
South-West Persia. By Sir Arnold Wilson. (Oxford University Press. 15s.) THERE is pathos about this book, though not in it. With the sub-title of " A Political Officer's Diary, 19°7-1914," it was to have been the first book of Sir Arnold Wilson's reminiscences. Now, alas! it is a memorial. It was compiled when " A.T." (as those with Eastern interests will always recall him) was an Air Gunner Officer, and from his diaries and the letters which he wrote to his father and mother from Persia and the Persian Gulf in those remote days when the oil industry in Iran was beginning and arms traffic in the Gulf was ending. Egotisuc it is, but inevitably so; for during a great part of those years the author was playing a lone hand, and his achievements were largely personal achievements, the work of one with unsurpassable physical equipment and quite remarkable intellectual appetite.
Persia, now Iran, was in the years following the Anglo-Russian Convention in a somewhat anarchic state, the intellectuals pay- ing vocal allegiance to democratic ideals, the tribes reverting to " feudal " ways. To It Lieut. Wilson went imbued with the attitude of the Government of India, an attitude which postulated the independence of a strong Persia, and, failing that, predomi- nating British influence in Southern Persia and in the Gulf. Steeped in the righteousness of his cause, Wilson exerted super- human efforts to get his point of view accepted. His drive considerably exceeded his patience—he boyishly confesses to being so full-blooded at times that he would sooner fight a man than negotiate with him! Whether he was trying to secure. or protecting, concessions in what he considered our Imperial interest, whether he was journeying where few it any Britons had preceded him, whether he was critical or appreciative of those for whom he worked, he wearied not. He worked-exultantly, He walked, rode, shot, swam, lived like the Persian or the Arab, read, thought, conversed—and this all with a degree of concen- tration, even of fierceness, given to few men. But,- talking Persian or Arabic, eating or drinking like the inhabitants of Persia, he was always, quintessentially, " A.T." Not for him was it to merge his identity in those among whom he lived, though he could study and approve their ways. To such as have read the earlier output of the author this book will have interest chiefly on account of the way in which it shows how firmly and constantly convictions (as those who share them will consider them) or prejudices (as those who dis- pute them will consider them) were maintained by " A.T." is the years after 1914. As a soldier Lieut. Wilson was supposed to have no political opinions: yet in this book we have obiter dicta on the unsuitability of Parliamentary institutions to the East, tirades against doctrinaire Liberalism, particularly when applied to foreign politics, distrust of Russia as an ally, the unwisdom of diminishing the influence of Germany in Europe, dislike of a central authority in Persia which might eradicate the better aspects of tribal life, and so on. Wilson, reading ornnivorousht, listening unceasingly, experiencing profoundly, formed his opinions early in life, and his enunciation of them is luridly magisterial. For some time after he had been in Persia, Wilson was still hankering to return to India, despite the fact that he liked Persians better than Indians • he saw more scope for his' active bodY and mind on the North-West Frontier and in Baluchistan than In Southern Persia. Emphatically he was not the soldier who strives to become a " Political," for his longing to be back with his Sikhs, whose fortunes he nostalgically followed, was genuine and constant. But fate decreed that he should become assistant to the late Sir Percy Cox (of whom an admirably faithful portrait
is given in these pages): and his lot as a Persian expert was sealed.
The end comes with his account of the work done by the Commission, consisting of British, Russians, Turks, and Persians, delimiting the long disputed frontier between Turkey and Persia, from Ararat to the Persian Gulf. That work went on beyond the outbreak of war. But, before the end of 1914, Wilson, having returned to England from the Middle East via Russia, found himself back again in the Persian Gulf. His story thence onwards has been told by many, not least by himself.
KENNETH WILLIAMS.
Previous page
