Ext 5001/41 'PERSIA – INTERNAL (Miscellaneous despatches).' [‎104v] (208/248)

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for the Allied cause, and at a midnight session the power to control the note issue
was transferred from the Majlis to a statutory Persian commission on which the
American financial adviser is to serve when he arrives. This arrangement is
satisfactory, and there has been no trouble in obtaining rials since. Two small
financial concessions were made by His Majesty’s Government in return :
settlements will be made every three instead of every six months, and the
percentage of the sterling balance which wilj be turned into gold has been raisecj^
from 40 per cent, to 60 per cent. His Majesty's Government had also, howevei
to promise to help to make up on certain conditions any real deficit in wheat
and transport.
The Prime Minister’s Position.
4. The Qawam’s courage and firmness, though remarkable in a Persian, were
not equal to the difficult situation which began to develop the moment he came
into power. He would have liked to get rid of the Majlis from the beginning,
but the Soviet Government were against this step, and some members of his
Cabinet were not entirely with him, preferring to keep the Majlis as a screen
between the Government and the Allies. The Prime Minister came into active
conflict with the Majlis almost at once by what the Deputies considered his
oft'-hand treatment of them over the Conscription Bill and, although the dispute
was patched up, an impression remained that the Qawam was inclined to be
dictatorial. He incurred strong criticism—much of it justified—for some of
the appointments he made, and he was the object of attack from both press and
Deputies on the score of high prices, food shortage and shortage of transport and
of consumer’s goods—subjects on which the Allies also came in for violent attacks.
To meet these attacks, the Prime Minister tried, on the one hand, to secure
concessions from the Allies as a condition of the issue of more rial notes, and, ,
on the other, to devise a means whereby the power of the Majlis to delay and
block public business might be limited. The financial concessions granted by
His Majesty’s Government have been mentioned. In addition the Prime Minister
also demanded that Great Britain and/or the United States should supply Persia
with 25,000 tons of wheat. The reasonable resistance of His Majesty’s Govern
ment to this demand, which was formulated in particular by the Minister of
State when he was here, was undermined by the discovery that the Russians
proposed to feed their troops in Persia from local grain to a much greater extent
than hitherto, and in the end an agreement was concluded which will be dealt
with in a later paragraph.
5. The Prime Minister’s attempt to limit the powers of the Majlis was a
failure : he wanted full powers on certain subjects until about next August, but
the Deputies, fearing that this would enable the Qawam to control the next
general election, greeted the proposal with a howl of fury. Taken aback by the
uproar, the Prime Minister first whittled his proposal down and then allowed it
to be referred to a commission where no one took any notice of it. In the course
of this controversy it was found that the Shah, far from backing his Prime
Minister and trying to moderate the factious criticism of the Deputies, rather
encouraged the Deputies for fear lest the Majlis should disappear and he should
be left face to face with an uncontrolled Qawam. This opposition between the
Prime Minister and the Shah was another facet of the conflict which arose when %
the Qawam took office, and, instead of following the usual custom of appointing
to the Ministry of War a general who would be under the thumb of the Chief of
Staff, kept the Ministry of War for himself, and, moreover, maintained that the
Chief of Staff ought to report to him and not to the Shah.
6. The frivolous Deputies began to discuss a change of Government, but
had no serious candidate to put forward as Prime Minister. A few irresponsibles
proposed that the Qawam should be replaced by Soheily. the man who had
contributed largely to the food crisis by his inactivity during the harvest period
and whom the Majlis had driven out ignominiously a few months before. After
the warning given to the President of the Majlis by the British and Russian
representatives, the Deputies attacked the Prime Minister more furiously than
ever : they had to give in on the question of currency, but they took revenge on
the Prime Minister by alleging that it was through him that the Allies had
obtained their distorted view of that patriotic, disinterested and always pro-iVlly
Assembly. Not only the Deputies but the Shah also gave too little weight to the
fact that the British, Soviet and United States representatives openly stated that
the Qawam had worked with the Allies, that they saw no likelihood of securing a
better Prime Minister, and that in any case changes of Government every few
months were ruinous to public business, both Persian and Allied.