File 3852/1912 Pt 2 'Persia. Conditions in South Persia. German Documents' [‎253v] (138/280)

74
grandees, such as the Russophile Farman Farma. He studied
the newspapers and the state of public feeling; in brief, he
sought for knowledge, but not only on his own behalf. What
ever came to his ears (“ My sources of information are excellent”,
he writes on March 16 , 1915 ) he reported red hot to the English
Consul at Shiraz, Major O’Connor, for whom he tried occasionally
to do a little business in motor cars as well. He was particularV
delighted to have an occasional dig at Europeans who were
not on friendly terms with O’Connor, for instance, Churchill
for many years Dragoman of the English Legation. “Sir
W. Townley does not trust Churchill quite, he has repeatedly
shown dislike for you (O’Connor) and he receives bribes, as
source of information for Major O’Connor. It is well known
that the English Consuls in latitudes which were to be ^peace
fully penetrated” are generally of military rank. He learned
from the American that the German wireless station was “still
working successfully”, that Persian popular sentiment always
excited anew by arbitrary acts of England, such as the arrest
of the German Consul Listemann at Bushire, was quite openly
demanding an alliance with Turkey and that Russian forces
were always ordered to march whenever a ministry tried to
assert itself, which was disliked by Russia or England. He
also heard that the British minister at Teheran “was going to
make a big row” to have the Governor-General of Fars removed
from office, and how badly the British and Russian ministers
were getting on together.
Is Merrill only an idle gossip ? The good fairies were
indeed absent from the cradle of this adventurer. His witless
cynicism, the cynicism of one of those unscrupulous profit hun
ters who have done so much to discredit the European- American
race with the peoples of the Orient, has produced this grotesque
passage in one of his letters: “I am afraid this policy of letting
the Persians do as they please may cause them, like all Orientals,
to mistake kindness for fear and proceed to take affairs in their
own hands to the detriment of both Russia and England.”
It is just the want of imagination of this American which
is a guarantee of his correspondence reproducing the game
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