"بلاد فارس والشأن الفارسي من إعداد السيد المحترم جورج ناثانييل كورزون، عضو البرلمان." [‎٦‎١‎٢] (٧١٤/٦٨١)

612
TERSIA
rotten at the core, and the army is regarded as a profitable source
of plunder for embezzling officials, instead of an instrument of
national defence and an outlet for the manhood of the nation so
long will disgrace attend the Persian arms, and the Lion and the
Sun be no more than a boastful symbol of disaster.
Sir H. Rawlinson has hazarded a prediction as to the future of
Future of tlie Persian arm y' wllich 1 must as a justification of
the Persian hopes that might otherwise be thought premature. He
army said in the lecture before referred to :—
Persia can never become a rich, or a producing, or a manufacturing
country ; 1 but it will doubtless be turned to great account some day or
other as a nursery for soldiers. The Persian, considered as a mere
animal, is so very superior to any other Asiatic, to an Indian, or Turk
or even Russian, that it is impossible to avoid foreseeing that, as any
European war becomes developed in the East, the military resources of
Persia must be called into action. In fact, it seems that we could not
have a more formidable engine of attack and offence launched against
India than a Persian army commanded by Russian officers. In the
same way we could not have a more efficient instrument of defence
than the same army led by British officers or by officers acting in our
interests.
The march of time and the revolution of Fortune's wheel have
rendered it unlikely that Great Britain will ever enlist in her
service the stalwart Turks of Azerbaijan or the hardy Kurds of
the Turkoman and Kurdish frontiers. If these are fated to be the
mercenaries of a foreign power, it will be neither from Calcutta
nor from London that they will draw their pay. But it may well
be that the nomad tribes of the south, from the Persian Beluchis
on the east to the Iliat Bakhtiari and other Lurs on the west, may
one day stand in line with British red-coats in the defence of their
native country.
I must guard myself from being supposed to agree with this dictum.