MODERN AFGHANISTAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 21, 25 January 1936, Page 7 (Supplement)

MODERN AFGHANISTAN.

IN the popular imagination, Afghanistan is generally identified with the Indian North-west Frontier—a region whose murderous excitements have lately made great appeal to moviegoers. Such excitements undoubtedly occur. But what the popular imagination does not realise is that they are as troublesome to the Afghan Government as to the Indian. For AfghanUt 111 is a country as well as a frontier.

Measured diagonally, from the southwest to the north-east, it is more than JOO miles across. It i s bounded by Persia, Russia and China, as well as by India. It has recently entered the Nations. And more recently still it has received the diplomatic recognition of the United States. It can claim, in fact, the status of a fullfledged independent State, with a part

in world affairs. Yet of all such organisms, it remains perhaps the least known and the least travelled. From a strategic point of view, the security of the country depends on its convenience to England and Russia as a buffer State. The last thing that either Eussians or English want is a common frontier between Russia and India. Country Without Parallel. From an administrative point, of view, the Afghan State presents an example of geographical inconvenience and racial disparity which must be almost without parallel inside a single frontier. The country is divided, not only in extent, but in character and population, by the great central mass of the Hindu Kusli mountains. To the south and south-east dwell mainly the Afghans proper, tell folk of fierce aspect, eagle-beaked and eagleeyed, who cherish their tribal entities and regard it as every man's right to carry a rifle on his back. These speak Pushtu. In the west, where the plain of Khorassan extends a hundred miles over the Perso-Afghan frontier to em-

brace the once famous city of Herat, the population is composed largely of town or village dwelling Tajiks, whose language is Persian. The mountains of the centre are inhabited chiefly by Hazaras, a. highcheeked, slit-eyed Mongol race, who are said to be descended from soldiers brought by Tamerlane from Central Asia. To the north of the Hindu Kush the country changes. There, instead of alternate mountain and desert, interspersed with rare oases of cultivation, a fertile plain extends between the foothills and the Oxus, varying from fifty to a hundred miles in width. This is peopled, in addition to the races already mentioned, by the hirsute, Turki-speak-ing Uzbegs, and by nomadic Turcomans. Finally, to the north-east, there stretches the highland province of Badakshan, followed by that curious salient of Afghan territory known as the Wakhan Valley, which contains the upper waters of the Oxus and which separates the Russian, Chinese and Indian Empires. Here dwell other Tajiks, and there may also be found,, among inaccessible mountains to the south, a race which no European traveller has ever visited—a fair-haired race, who are reported to sit on chairs, build houses of five storeys, drink wine, worship idols and observe other customs which are contrary to the practice of Islam. This obscure people, who are locally believed to descend from Alexandei s Greeks, was originally heathen. But those of them resident within the Afghan frontiers were forcibly converted to Islam, at least as far as outward observance, by the Emir Abdurrahman at the end of the last century. A Fringe of Old Cities. Owing to the mountains in the middle, the cities of the country lie in a ring at its edge, except on the north-east, where there are none. Kabul, the capital, is on the south-east, and Ghazm also; Kandahar is on the south; on the west, and Mazar-i-Sherif on the north. In between are smaller towns such as Farah and Maimena. Kabul leads, as might be expected, with an adequate hotel, a number ox broad streets, and some gigantic 9° ve s£" ment offices several miles outside tliej

Little-known Buffer State.

ITS GROWTH IN IMPORTANCE

(By ROBERT BYRON in the "New York Times.")

town. Conversely, in such towns as Maimena, life is still patriarchal and the only streets are covered bazaars. So much is apparent to the passing visitor.

Economically it is equally difficult to judge, while travelling through the country, how far appearances represent the truth. In the west and north, from Herat up to the Oxus plain and as far as the plain goes, the plenty of milk, fruit and meat, the gay splendour of the men's dresses, the gardens and fields of the flat, the waving pasture of the hills, the quality of the horses and the droves of camels, cattle and sheep—all seem to indicate an abundant prosperity.

Poverty doubtless exists; justice is cruel and arbitrary; and illness receives little care. But, generally speaking, it is probably correct to say that whatever tlio evils of life in Afghanistan, they are largely counterbalanced by the sparseness of population and the consequent atmosphere of spaciousness and leisure

that pervades everyday affairs. In this respect, the old life of Central Asia has persisted unchanged since the fifteenth century. To recall summer evenings among the meadows on the outskirts of each town, the partridge fights and wrestling matches, the songs of the tea houses, and the sweet-smelling roses that every man carries in hand or mouth, is to efface altogether the memory of such inconveniences as must always attend the survival of the past. Advancing, Though Harassed. In the towns, at least, a uniformed police force now controls the traffic and keeps order in the bazaars, while broad, straight avenues, where the inhabitants can promenade and converse of an evening, are gradually being driven through the picturesque but foetid alleys of the past. Save in Kabul, where there are a numJber of foreign teachers, education is still mainly in the hands of the mullahs, the Mohammedan priests. Economically the country is advancing, though harassed by that form of commercial blackmail which the Russians call a trade agreement, and by the usual flood of cheap goods from Japan. A few factories have been 6tarted, to produce matches and cloth for military uniforms. And the export trade, which consists mainly of wool and lamb skins, pistachio nuts and lapis lazuli, has been well organised. Internally, commerce is assisted by new roads, over which goods can be transported by lorry more cheaply as well as more quickly than by caravan. Unfortunately, there is a considerable discrepancv between the theory and practice of Afghan transport,, even along such roads as already exist. The direct road from Herat to Kabul by Bamian must rise, when made, to such a height that it can never be anything but seasonal on account of the snow. And the same applies to the route from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sherif. Such is at least part of the internal picture. It presents a country in a fair way toward economic sufficiency and internal security. And if those conditions can be maintained, the external function of Afghanistan as a buffei State between two more powerful and mutually suspicious empires will continueto increase her importance in. world affairs.

Garbo. She is so completely living the part, tlie book seems practically written in her sleeves. And I agreed, with them that her silences spoke volumes—much more in fact than all the talking of the other characters with the exception of Reginald Owen. His continuous flow did create a quite Tolstoyan impression. He is vei-y much iny idea of Steva of the book, blundering in and out of domestic disaffections with a childlike forgetfulness and hopefulness. Indeed Anna in the picture, with compliments to the director, is vitally placed, Steva-included, among her men. Fredric March, in the part of Vronski, is less effectual than he is generally found to be in any of his character studies. This really proves his metal. He is so very much the tenuous Vronski whose three slender cords of romance, imagination and action rolled in one cannot make a thread strong enough for a capable man to hold to life. He is all the time the spectacular and specialised typo of human being with which, two generations ago, the society of Europe must have been intermittently adorned from the Bay of Biscay to Spitzbergen. We see in March's Vronski the beginning of the end of a picturesque race which our own fierce young age is busily abolishing to foist a worse upon the world. The army officer, who was always an aristocrat, is oddly being supplanted in Europe not by a lad with a plank, but by an unhatted official of which there are a million others everywhere. Fredric March carried the character through with an even flow of grace, romance and sullen fatuity, up to his last appearance at the railway station. I think Tolstoi meant his final departure to the vague fighting in the south to be a mixture of toothache and desperation less callous than the company has read it. This is not the fault of March's acting, but of direction and translation, and it is a tiny flaw for such a great work of art. With the performances of Anna's other men I could not find a fault, though I notice some of the rare critics think Basil Ratlibone read a rather too savage aspect into the part of Kaxenina. Ho was -nccbanicpj, antf- -a little <"£iste^

thereby, in the book, and I though Basil Rathbone hit him oil exactly. To me "he suggests a ruthlessly virtuous and fatalistic attitude, quite in keeping with the book. Then Freddie Bartholomew, as the younger Karenin carried all before him and at times held the gathered emotions of the great play in the hollow of his little English hand. His solemn utterance when suddenly Anna appears before him out of nowhere" rings and reverberates even when the film is over and the lights are up... . . "They told me you were dead, mother, but I did not believe them, because I tell you everything always and I know you hear." . . . Even so does wisdom make a paper boat of man's most cherished mechanical codes and artifices and floats it away 011 the stream of life. Freddie, still "trailing clouds of glory," and as unconcerned as if lie felt them at his heels, spoke out of a full heart, with an unstudied all encompassing calm. The rest of the cast encouraged by these brilliant people, maybe coached in the Russian vowels by Greta Garbo herself, makes a vivid 'background, in which I lost myself as completely as in the book. A capable actress new to pictures makes the round-eyed, devoted, forgiving Dolly a fine foil to the stupid, fond, foolish, lavish Steva. Maureen O'Sullivan is believable as Kitty, and a stage actor plays Levine with admirable understanding. The direction is almost as satisfying as the acting. There is finely illuminating change of scene. Frozen snow and sleigh, bells and furs give place at the right moment to domestic scenes of welcome or to briglitly-lit assemblages. The great ball where Yronski and Anna meet is one of the best of its kind, if not the most perfect I have seen upon the screen. One feels, watching it, that one is really in it, dancing the Russian quadrilles and the gay mazurka. I think it a gracious act on the part of any director to finish the dance outright as this one does, so that we get a sense of walking off the floor to some quiet conversation, held, as all such conversations should bo held, in a realm and orbit right off the regular solar system. For every such scene in real life is a welling up of half remembered and more wholly satisfying Arcadian existence. I think even Tolstoi if he could come back and look at us now, regimented, mechanised and electrified in all our existence, instead of being sorry for his effort to help us to it, might be thought to say, "Oh well, they will dance it off!" In this spirit he could enjoy this picture of the old life he deplored as much as we enjoy it ourselves.