Persia - A Political Officer's Diary

PERSIA- A Political Officers Diary by SIR ARNOLD WILSON. INTRODUCTION: I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a manshould rejoice in his own works for that is his portion:for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him ?Ecclesiastes iii. 22.THIS autobiographical fragment relates to the years190714 inclusive which I spent in SW. Persia, save fortwo short spells of leave at home and a few months withmy Regiment in India. It was the centre span of a periodof great diplomatic activity which reached a peak, firstwith the signature of the AngloFrench Agreements of1904, again with the conclusion of the AngloRussianConvention in 1907, and finally in 1914 with the outbreakof war. I was a Lieutenant and not quite 23 when I firstwent to Persia: I entered the war as a Captain just overSO. From the time I went to Sandhurst in my 18th year,and until I married, I wrote almost daily a page or twoof foolscap to my parents recording events as theyoccurred and the impression they left upon me, interspersed with many comments and occasional reflectionsupon current political issues at home and abroad, a fewof which I reproduce here, as representative alike of thewriter and of his times.I also kept a diary, the greater part of which was fromthe outset official in the sense that the greater part ofjt was sent every week to my superiors at Bushire andtransmitted by them to the Foreign Department of theGovernment of India, where it was printed as part oftheir cProceedings. I made it a rule to retain no copiesof official documents which, once submitted, became theproperty of the Government under which I served, but,from my original diaries and from my letters home, which my mother was at pains unknown to me to preserve,I have been able to reconstitute a record of my doings andthoughts, about onesixth of which is here reproduced inalmost precisely the same unadorned form in which it wasrecorded, often in camp by candlelight, from day to day.1Here and there, for brevitys sake, I have summarizedevents and recorded a few contemporary comments distinguished in print by a slightly greater interval betweenthe lines. Otherwise the book as a whole has been compiled in my spare time whilst serving as AirGunnerofficer in a squadron of VickersWellington Bombers inEast Anglia. I have not had ready access to my own orto public libraries and have not been able to check alldates or to verify all my quotations.