Coll 28/67 ‘Persia. Annual Reports, 1932–’ [‎243r] (485/644)

31
prepare for the international gatherings that are bound to take place at the time
of the Valiahd’s wedding. The social boycott continued unchanged in Tehran
and the provinces, in spite of the fact that one of the excuses apt to be preferred
in defence of it, the presence of Russian consulates, was removed by the closure
of all the U.S.S.R.’s provincial consulates during the year, except that at Pahlevi.
162. The Shah’s treatment of his ministers followed established lines. The
Foreign Minister, M. Inayatullah Samii, died a natural death in February,
following an illness of some weeks’ duration, during and after which the Under
secretary, M. Adi, acted in his stead. At the end of May a new Minister was
appointed, M. Ali Soheily, till then Minister in London. But his tenure of office
was short. In the middle of July M. Hikmat, Minister of Education, rashly sent
an appreciative telegram to the French Minister of Public Instruction on the
occasion of an exhibition of Persian art at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.
The Shah disapproved of this exhibition, because the exhibit savoured too much
of the old Persia and too little of the new Iran. Fie had not been consulted about
the telegram, and, so far as is known, it was in consequence of this, together with
an article in LTntransigeant that referred to the Shahinshah’s disapproval of the
exhibition, that he summarily dismissed M. Hikmat, who had initiated the
telegram, and M. Soheily, who had passed it for despatch. Like the incidents
that keep recurring over foreign books and press articles (see paragraph 172), this
exemplifies the manner in which the otherwise shrewd Reza allows matters of
personal pique to obscure his sense of proportion, and how he puts obedience
before competence. M. Hikmat was replaced by a man of inferior calibre,
M. Ismail Mirat, and M. Soheily by M. Muzaffar Alam, whose qualifications for
his present post are not immediately apparent.
163. Another competent official to incur the Shah’s displeasure and suffer
removal was M. Hussein Ala, who was relegated in April to a retirement from
which he has not yet emerged. It is true that M. Ala’s previous career had been
mainly diplomatic; he possessed no particular training to mark him for a Minister
of Commerce, and his abilities would have been put to better use elsewhere; but
the reason for his dismissal seems to have been that he tendered unwelcome advice
on the subject of putting so much of the country’s commercial activity into the
hands of monopoly companies. His work was continued, up to the end of the
year, by the Under-Secretary, M. Vassighi, a person who may or may not have
been as able, but was certainly more amenable.
164. The fourth Cabinet Minister to be dismissed during 1938 was, as far as
a foreigner is given an opportunity to judge, a genuine case of failure to come up
to scratch. M. Majid Ahy, Minister of Roads and Communications, was relieved
of his duties in November, and remained under what appears to have been house
arrest until the end of the year. His fault is understood to have been that he
proved adequate to carry out arrangements inherited from his predecessor for the
completion of the Bandah Shah-Bandar Shahpur railway, but failed when it came
to make further plans for the Tehran-Tabriz line, and allowed the organisation
of the road department of his Ministry to deteriorate.
165. On the other hand, M. Ali Mansur, C.B.E., who was arrested when
Minister of Roads and Communications in 1936, on charges of misappropriation
and incompetence, of which he was later acquitted (see paragraph 245 of annual
report for 1936), was restored to favour as Minister of Industry and Mines
in August.
166. In 1937 the nation was reminded that no politics deemed “ subversive ”
would be tolerated by the crop of arrests alluded to in paragraph 243 of last
year’s report. This year another such reminder was more publicly given in
November by the lengthy trial, prominently reported in the press, of fifty-three
persons accused of communism and having'relations with political groups in the
U.S.S.R.
167. 1 orty-five were found guilty, and given sentences of ten years down
wards. Only one newspaper gave an account of the defending counsels’ speeches.
The defence claimed—quite reasonably, to judge from what was published of the
prosecution—that very little hard and independent fact was produced by the
prosecutor, nearly all the evidence tendered being of that circular kind wherein
one accused makes allegations against a second accused, who in turn makes