PERSIAN AFFAIRS.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1921, Page 5

PERSIAN AFFAIRS.

A DISTURBED COUNTRY. Some interesting information regarding Persian affairs was given a representative of the Press by Mr. C. E. G. Tisdall, who has just taken up the duties of organising secretary for the New Zealand Board of Missions for the South Island, and who connected with rpission work in Persia for a number of years. Mr. Tisdall is a brother of the Rev. Dr. St. Clair Tisdall, and a cousin of the Rev. Canon Tisdall. ►Referring to the new Prime Minister of Persia, Mr Tisdall . said that Jie was a Bakhtiari tribesman; it is through the territory of that tribe that Lynch’s road from Ispahan to Ahwaz passes. The Bakhtiari,. Mr. Tisdall continued, were more inclined to be friendly to the British than any other people in Persia, because of the labors in their midst for many years of Dr. Carr and other medical men connected with the Church Missionary Society. When the war broke out the Germans put a pride on the head of Mr. Grahame, the British Consul-Gen-eral of Ispahan, and also on the head of Dr. Carr, and it was the Bakhtiari who rescued them, and conveyed them safely to Ahwaz. Mr. Tisdall’s experience of the Persian people was that they had been always in favor of Great Britain taking charge of their country to save it from the Russians. Now .that the Bolsheviks had overrun the country Mr. Tisdall anticipated that the Mohammedans and the Christian missions were m for a bad time—th? Bolsheviks being antagonistic to religion. Since the time that the Persians were granted a constitution there had been no law and order in any part of the country; the Parliament curtailed the power of the Shah, but failed to replace his authority by its own; that led to each chieftain setting himself up as an authority empowered to rob every caravan that passed through his territory. Except on the shores of the Persian Gulf, where British authority was strong, the whole country was in a disorganised state.