'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎604] (671/714)

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604
PERSIA
superannuated and utterly useless contingent may be eliminated
from consideration, as certain never again to be mobilised.
Of the Austrian corps I have already spoken. The idea was
that this corps, in reality a small brigade organised on the Austrian
Austrian model, should serve as the nucleus of a new system for
corps the whole army. In common with most other schemes of
Persian reorganisation, the scheme came to nothing, and its only
survivors are the young European-trained native officers, who are
drafted as instructors into the various infantry regiments.
A Diplomatic lleport in 188G returned the army expenditure of
the preceding year as 613,000/., plus 81,000 Jiharvars of grain,
Cost of the valued at 55,000/., or a total of 668,000/. I have seen
arm y other reports in which the total varied from 585,000/. to
850,000/. The revenue tables, which I publish elsewhere, return the
expenditure for 1889 as 1,800,000 tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. , or 524,000/. But I can
not be sure that these figures are quite exhaustive; and in Persia
I received, from a reliable source, the total of 2,500,000 tomans 10,000 Persian dinars, or a gold coin of that value. as
the real annual outlay on the army. This was equivalent, at the
then rate of exchange, to 714,000/., which we may accept as the
mean annual charge. If we contrast this with the five millions
sterling of Nadir and further remember that a large fraction of the
smaller sum never reaches the army at all, we may find a far from
imperfect clue to the lamentable decadence of the militarv resources
of Iran.
Having now analysed and explained in detail the various ingre
dients of the Persian army, I pass on to say something of the system
Pprsian
as a whole, of military administration in Persia, and of the
personnel, both of the officers and the men.
Ot the Persian officers as a class no one has ever been found to
speak except in terms of contempt. Ignorant of military science,
destitute of esprit de corps, selected and promoted with no reference
to aptitude, they are an incubus under which no military system
could do otherwise than languish. When it is known that the
command of regiments is sometimes inherited, sometimes vested in
the hands of infants, and commonly bought and sold, a high stamp
of otficers is an impossible result. The theory would appear to be
that an officer in Persia, like a poet elsewhere, nascitur, ywnfit. A
child of eleven years ot age was, at the time of my visit, a
field marshal in the Persian army and, at the Royal levee which I
attended at Teheran, stood between the Commander-in-Chief and an