File 3852/1912 Pt 2 'Persia. Conditions in South Persia. German Documents' [‎246r] (123/280)

was not damaged as is usual during the tribal migration which
has taken place/'
Italy who had in the first place been approached for in
structors declined. Sweden who had assured herself of consent
from all sides, sent a number of tried officers with Colonel
I&.almarson at their head, who was appointed chief of the
C^indarmerie and who arrived at Teheran on August 15 th ,
1911.
Hjalmarson and his comrades (there were twenty of them
in 1912) — set to work zealously. They succeeded within a
comparatively short time in training the troops who not only
gained the respect of the people but even won a certain popu
larity by intelligently turning local conditions to account.
Young tribesmen, for instance, who took to highway robbery
from want of work and poverty, were just as ready for em
ployment in the road-police against payment of small wages.
Contrary to the dissolute Cossack Brigade who requisitioned
at every opportunity which offered and made itself
guilty of other gross offences against property (quite apart
from the fact that it took its orders from Tiflis and from the
Russian legation in Teheran), the Gendarmerie had placed
itself from the beginning on an exclusively Persian footing.
Anyone who knows the Swedish army will understand that the
Swedish officers who were employed and paid by the Persian
Government did their very best to justify the confidence reposed
in them if only because their failure might easily have cast a
slur on the Swedish army.
And the work succeeds. The number of officers and men
is being constantly increased; the sphere of activity becomes
greater from month to month. A state of order reigns on the
caravan-routes. England whose trade in the South of Persia
profits not least by the re-establishment of security recognises
unreservedly the efforts of the Swedes through the Teheran
minister in January 1913: “They are all smart soldiers, keen
on their work." And on the occasion of a parade in April 1913
in the presence of the young Shah the Gendarmerie is stormily
acclaimed by all classes of the Persian people while on the
previous day the Cossack Brigade had been received in