NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1929. ALL THE DIFFERENCE

Northern Advocate, 24 January 1929, Page 4

NORTHERN ADVOCATE DAILY

THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1929. ALL THE DIFFERENCE

Registered for transmission through the post as a newspaper.

Deeply rooted relgious creeds and ancient customs which have become second nature to the natives of Afghanistan play such parts in the national life of that country as cannot be understood by 'those outside their grasp. Amamulla was .deposed from the kingship with spectacular speed, but he evidently knows how to use his intimate acquaintance with the workings of the native mind, and the latest cabled information to the effect that lie is again making a bid for resumption of power goes to show that he is the very astute gentleman that repute has always credited him with being. He is staid ,to have won back the allegiance of several tribes who are anarching upon Xabul at his instance, and who may be joined in that enterprise by the most influential tribal section of the land, which would prove tho deciding factor in replacing him upon the ithrone. It is evidently one thing to nominally despose Amanulla, but quite another matter to dispose of him, for he has that cork-like faculty of bobbing to the surface again after every submersion. The sudden disaster which recently overtook this sagacious Amiri—or rather, as we must write for the moment, exAmiri—is one of the many extraordinary incidents which have ever been recorded in the history of a country that has always been the home of the dramatic. It has already been said (that his wholesale efforts at reform were, in the colloquialism of the day, “asking for trouble, 77 and now that the trouble has come, his precipitancy discounts the sympathy (that otherwise he might have won. But, all the same, there was much to inspire admiration in those efforts, and in the evident sincerity with which he launched them. They may not have been wise, but they were, in a sense, magnificent. The policy of festina lente had clearly no place in the ex-Amir 7 s character; he believed that the reforms were advisable, but where he w r as indiscreet was in the haste with which he tried to effect them. He has paid dearly for his indiscretion, and, as is so often the case with those who are too rash, the reaction from his rashness has almost certainly put back the instead of advancing it. When 1 one remembers the state with which he recently travelled through the countries of Europe, (the receptions he was accorded, the compliments he inspired, and the extent to which his friendship was courted, and compares the majesty of those* days with- the circumstances wherein he is found today, it is impossible not to road into his fate a most, effective sermon on the vanity of human greatness. It is said that it was the example set by the Turkish dictator, Mustapha Xenial Pasha, that inspired Aman ulla to the actions which have proved his downfall. If so, he doubtless wonders why, when Ivemal was so successful, ho .should have so terribly failed. But the explanation is not far to seek. To reason that what would do for Turkey and the Turks would do for Afghanistan and the Afghans was to overlook the essential differences between the two countries, and the peoples who inhabit them. In the first place there is the difference of situation, and the effect of that difference upon two vastly different peoples, Turkey has been for centuries standing on the doorstep of. the West, and vht characteristics of Western civilisation have all that time been known to her. Her people have become gradually familiar with the very customs that Ivemal ha's now imposed upon them, and that imposition merely brought something into the house which they had long enough .observed through the window. The radical changes, that had 'so affected the world around them, as the result of the Great War, had affected them, too, and had made them all tho readier to accept the Westernisation which their leader demanded. Tho Afghans, on the other hand, have never seen the West at close quarters; their savage peaks and passes have kept them isolated from a changing world; such as they were centuries ago, they still, for the most part, remain, with all their religious fanaticism and all their Eastern conservation untouched by tho hands of time or tho incursions of man. Into, their cities, perhaps, some touch of modernism had crept; but even there the leaven was little indeed, hud that little very much suspect. The mullahs ruled by virtue of their religious office, and ( t;ho native fanaticism of the people, fostered to the last extremity by these holy men, has once, again proved sufficient, as it has so many times before, fo prevent all efforts of

tho enlightened few to overturn their

changeless conservatism. Apart, moveover, from these characteristic differences between the two nations, it is evident that there is a great difference in the characters of the two men who have respectively endeavoured to reform Mem. Ivemal Pasha, had been for long the ■acknowledged leader of the “new 77 Turks, and the new Turks, as events showed, were not only in the majority, hut also possessed nearly all the ability and initiative which was left to the Ottoman Empire after the conclusion of the war.

Xenial found a people eager to be led out of the slough into which they had fallen. It is highly probable that he did not lead them out of it by the path they anticipated; but they had given him the reigns of power, am] his was jtflie strength that they wore unable to deny. He knew exactly what ho wanted, for himself and for them; and if, in taking his medicine, they found it bitter, they found also that the changes that their leader effected began at once to raise their national prestige. The Turks are a proud nation, jealous of their reputation among the nations of the world, and to find their reputation thus restored; to feed again the balm of a salvaged honour made them more than ever ready to support the leader who had brought about so happy a result. Moreover, 'Kcmfl'l, wise in his generation, was gradual in the institution of his reforms, radical and complete as they now appear to be; by carefulness and craft he wore down the opposition that even he was bound to find, and so won out at last. But Amanulla was made of different stuff. Inspired by Xenial's success he forgot Xenial’s methods, and entirely overlooked the difference in the stuff he was so keen to mould. Running where he should have walked, he tried to do at once with a tough, unruly people what the Turkish leader had done, only after infinite pains, with a pliant and wellgoverned one. Instead of futi’dy railing ait fate, however, as many would have done, in his ease, Aman ulla has speedily arrived at a realisation of the error of his ways and is figuring out the best means whereby he may rise to rule again upon the steppdng-stones of his tactical indiscretions.