TO
HUGH WILSON
MY SON! from my example learn the War
In Camps to suffer and in Fields to dare,
No happier chance than mine attend thy care.
Then, when thy riper years shall send thee forth
To toils of war, be mindful of my worth
Assert thy birthright, and in Arms be known.
Thy Mothers offspring and thy Fathers Son.
VIRGIL, Aeneid VII. 43540.
DRYDEN Trans.
INTRODUCTION
I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should 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 years 190714 inclusive which I spent in SW. Persia, save for two short spells of leave at home and a few months with my Regiment in India. It was the centre span of a period of great diplomatic activity which reached a peak, first with the signature of the Anglo-French Agreements of 1904, again with the conclusion of the Anglo-Russian Convention in 1907, and finally in 1914 with the outbreak of war. I was a Lieutenant and not quite 23 when I first went to Persia: I entered the war as a Captain just over 30. From the time I went to Sandhurst in my 18th year, and until I married, I wrote almost daily a page or two of foolscap to my parents recording events as they occurred and the impression they left upon me, interspersed with many comments and occasional reflections upon current political issues at home and abroad, a few of which I reproduce here, as representative alike of the writer and of his times.
I also kept a diary, the greater part of which was from the outset official in the sense that the greater part of it was sent every week to my superiors at Bushire and transmitted by them to the Foreign Department of the Government of India, where it was printed as part of their Proceedings. I made it a rule to retain no copies of official documents which, once submitted, became the property 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 and thoughts, about one-sixth of which is here reproduced in almost precisely the same unadorned form in which it was recorded, often in camp by candlelight, from day to day.
Here and there, for brevitys sake, I have summarized events and recorded a few contemporary comments distinguished in print by a slightly greater interval between the lines. Otherwise the book as a whole has been compiled in my spare time whilst serving as Air-Gunner officer in a squadron of Vickers-Wellington Bombers in East Anglia. I have not had ready access to my own or to public libraries and have not been able to check all dates or to verify all my quotations. If at times the narrative appears personal to the point of egotism I would remind the reader that most of it was written to my parents, whom I could not hope to see for more than a few months every five or six years, or for my own delectation and guidance, and its completion in the interval between successive North Sea Sweeps and raids over Germany, has inevitably invested it with something of the character of an apologia pro vita sua.
If, as I hope, it reads as an exposition of the gay text which I have placed at the head of this introduction, it is sufficient explanation that my companions for the last six months have been squadron-leaders, flying-officers, pilot-officers, sergeant-pilots, observers, wireless operators and air-gunners, flying men all, of each of whom it may be said, as a poet has said of a blackbird,
he sees the branch trembling
but gaily he sings
What matter to me
I have wings, I have wings!
The voluminous notes from which this book has been compiled contain much historical and archaeological, geographical, geological, zoological, and botanical information, for I derived from my mother and father a keen interest in almost everything I saw and heard. Meteorological, linguistic, and ethnological data, scraps of folk-lore and tales current among the people in the midst of whom I lived crowded the pages of my notebooks. Much of it was copied at second hand from good authorities: whatever was new and of value has found its way in course of time to experts who could use my contributions, like small stones in a mosaic, to fill some gap in their knowledge. The coins I collected went to the British Museum or to the Imperial Museum at Calcutta and have been catalogued; the zoological specimens are in the Bombay Natural History Museum and recorded in its Journal; the linguistic material has been enshrined in official reports; the fossils and rock specimens have been seen by good geologists. My geographical and amateur geological notes have long ago been superseded by the patient labours of two generations of geologists and surveyors, and may well be forgotten: as Confucius says somewhere, men use baskets to catch fish; when they have caught the fish they forget the baskets. The railway reconnaissances to which I have devoted so much space proved valueless, for the Persian Government, scorning to adopt an economical alignment, chose to take the Khor MusaBurujird railway up the Diz valleya magnificent but costly triumph of engineering skill. A motor road from Bushire to Shiraz by the direct road, made by British military engineers during the years 191720 and since much improved, has relegated to obscurity all schemes for railway construction from the coast.
The Turco-Persian Frontier, on the other hand, remains as demarcated in 1914, save for a few minor changes since agreed upon by the limitrophe Powers; and the Anglo-Persian Oil Company at whose prenatal creation and subsequent birth I was privileged to assist and whose rapid growth to healthy maturity I was able to observe at close quarters, has gone from strength to strength.
Thus it is that, though I write this Preface in dark days and among men almost every one of whom has passed many times through the valley of the shadow of death I can still, like George Meredith, look to the good spirit of man with faith in it, and with some capacity to observe current phases of history at close quarters without being blinded by the unsteady light and bewildered by the thunder of the legions.
Before the Great War my generation served men who believed in the righteousness of the vocation to which they were called, and we shared their belief. They were the priests, and we the acolytes, of a cultpax Britannica
