PERSIAN POLITICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13625, 19 December 1907, Page 4

PERSIAN POLITICS.

Neither in Persia nor in Russia docs the half-hearted attempt to graft a Western Constitution upon an Eastern stock promise any degree of success. In Persia as in Russia the experiment has led to what approaches civil war, and the existing state of affairs in Teheran is anarchic in the extreme. Which was to have been anticipated. It is gratifying to our racial self-esteem to persuade ourselves that the democratic methods which wc find passably satisfactory— having gradually ceased to expect any political system to be altogether satisfactory—will suit every nation under the pun of whatever race and in whatever stage of political development. For this infers that we have discovered and follow some great political truth and elevates " one Adult one vote to the dignity of an arithmetical rule or of a gravitational theory* As a matter of fact there is only too much reason to think that democracy as we understand it isadapted solely to the comparatively small group of peoples among whom it slowly evolved, that quite near races are unable toi?maintain orderly government with Tt, and that any ignorant and unrestrained mass of our own people jeopardise it immediately. It is apparently an ideal method for a nation which has passed through a long and severe schooling that has made for social self-control, judicial equity and mutual toleration and forbearance. It is evidently a hopeless system for any people which has evolved under despotisms and dogmatisms, and which pins its hopes upon the coming of a benevolent despot and upon the formulation of a verbal abracadabra. A Western community might as well expect to be satisfied under a wise despot whose decress were better than all the enactments of our Parliaments as an Eastern community to be satisfied with the bundles of compromises which we call laws. Howover , much one nation may learn from another, one race cannot possibly take a political Constitution from another race as it would take a suit of clothes. The attempts of Russia, Persia, China, and India to advance politically along Western lines are therefore likely to be of much greater interest to the historian of the future than to the politicians of to-day. For in the future they may be seen to have had far-reaching though indirect influences, whereas to-day the only inevitable result is spreading anarchy and increased unrest.