The "Young Persia" representative put his case concisely, fairly, and without any tinge of political jaundice. None better than he realized the impotency of the vacillating Teheran Government to enforce its paper protests against the violation of Persian neutrality. Its only military instrument was a ragged, unpaid, undisciplined rabble, which international courtesy has been wont to designate an Army. The Persian Democrats therefore linked up with the Bolsheviks. But it would be erroneous to assume that their ranks were recruited entirely from disinterested patriots, inspired by the highest altruistic ideals, burning to rid their country of the foreigner--be he Briton, Turk, or Russian--in order that Persia might be free to work out her own political salvation in her own way and without interference from anybody. Some there were in the ranks of the Democrats actuated only by love of country, as they conceived it, who, with noble resolve in their hearts, trod the financially unremunerative path which led to the goal of political glory. There was always plenty of elbow-room and never any overcrowding on this road. The great majority of the Democrats, as I found them, put pul (_i.e._, money) before patriotism, and for them a Turkish lira, or a twenty-mark piece, had an irresistible attraction. {70} With the downfall of Russia as a military power, her Army, which had pushed down through Persia in order to effect a junction with the British in Mesopotamia, rapidly retreated, and as rapidly disintegrated, smitten by the deadly plague of Bolshevism. Discipline and organization were at an end; obedience was no longer rendered to Army Chief, corps commander, or regimental officer, but to the soldiers' own "Red Committee"--usually with a sergeant at its head--which, besides usurping the functions of Generalissimo, became the Supreme War Council of the Army, giving an irrevocable decision upon everything from high strategy to vulgar plundering. Now two Russian generals, named Bicherakoff and Baratof, appeared on the troubled stage of Persian politics. From the debris of an army they had gathered round them the odds and ends of stray Russian regiments, bands of irregulars from Transcaucasia, and Cossacks from the Don and the Terek--stout fighting men of the mercenary type, whose trade was war and whose only asset was their sword.