PRESENT IMPOTENCE AND PAST SPLENDOUR. 331 



flank of the land defences of our Indian Empire. 

 *' Concessions in the Persian Gulf, whether by posi- 

 tive formal arrangement or by simple neglect of 

 the local commercial interests which now under- 

 lie political and military control, will imperil Great 

 Britain's naval situation in the farther East, her 

 political position in India, her commercial interests 

 in both, and the imperial tie between herself and 

 Australasia. "1 Moreover, the blow to British prestige, 

 none too high even now, would in such an eventuality 

 be extremely dangerous, and shake to its foundations 

 the whole structure of British dominion throughout 

 the East. 2 



There is another point of resemblance between the 

 two countries — the pitiable state of their present 

 impotence as compared with the splendour of their 

 past. Time was when the fame of a great Shah^ 

 rang clarion-like through all lands, when a Russian 

 Tsar thought it no dishonour to borrow from a Per- 

 sian king,^ and when a monarch of Iran contemp- 

 tuously ordered the impure footprints left by an 



1 The Persian Gulf and International Relations. Captain A. T. Mahan. 



2 All who are acquainted with the East are well aware how sensitive an 

 instrument is the pulse of public feeling in Asiatic countries. A corres- 

 pondent writing from Quetta at the outset of hostilities in the Far East 

 says : " It is extraordinary the exact information the people in the bazaars 

 have of the relative forces of Russia and Japan. Our frontier men are 

 keen politicians. . . . The firm alliance between .Japan and Britain while 

 Russia and .Japan were evidently drifting into war, created the warmest 

 feeling of admiration for our country, while it excited some astonishment. 

 The result of the Japanese victories has been to raise British prestige 

 higher than even a successful frontier campaign could have done." 



3 Shah Abbas the Great, under whom modern Persia reached its highest 

 pinnacle of renown. 



* The Tsar Michael Romanoff was reduced to such straits in the first 

 years of his reign that in 1617 he borrowed 7000 roubles from Shah 

 Abbas. 



