138 PERSIA IN 1903. 



pected capacity for holding their tongues pending the 

 negotiations, and the commercial convention which was 

 concluded between Russia and Persia in November 1901 

 remained a profound secret for more than a year. In 

 December 1902 the ratifications were exchanged, and 

 the British community rudely awakened to the blow 

 which they had sustained. For a blow it undoubtedly 

 was, though — thanks to the Anglo-Persian Convention 

 which was hastily concluded in February 1903 — not of 

 the overwhelming nature that those responsible for it 

 had originally hoped and intended. 



I have no wish whatsoever to minimise the adverse 

 results to British interests of this the latest Russian 

 diplomatic coup at Teheran, for no one can deny that 

 the tariff has been framed more especially against 

 British trade ; but while admitting that we are un- 

 doubted losers by the Russo-Persian Convention of 

 December 1902, I refuse to attach to it the altogether 

 disproportionate significance that the ultra-pessimists 

 would, from their utterances, appear to do, or to see in 

 this modest triumph of our rivals the presaged collapse 

 of British empire in Asia. 



The episode may yet be productive of good if we are 

 only willing to learn by experience and to observe, 

 before a worse thing befall us, the inevitable results of 

 a policy of drift. For it is thanks only to our ow^n 

 want of foresight in the past that British interests lay 

 open to any such attack. At the conclusion of the 

 Anglo-Persian war an article concerning our commercial 

 relations was inserted in the treaty of peace concluded 

 at Paris in 1857, which article read as follows: "The 

 high contracting parties engage that, in the establish- 

 ment and recognition of Consuls-General, Consuls, Vice- 

 Consuls, and Consular Agents, each shall be placed in 

 the dominions of the other on the footing of the most 



