Yet he sat there unharmed while the Asiatic world wondered. His position was precariousness itself. The full virulence of political animosity was focussed upon him and his dangerously thin khaki line. I am convinced that no Assurance Company, however speculative, would have considered him a "safe life" during those dark and doubtful days, when he was barricaded within the British Compound, alternately waiting for the inglorious but picturesque death so fervently promised him by the local Democrats, or {116} watching for the reinforcements which dribbled fitfully from Bagdad and over Persian plain and mountain. Hamadan was at once the foyer of Turkish espionage and of Persian intrigue. The moribund association of local Democrats, merchants and grain-growers, had been largely galvanized into anti-British activity by Kuchik Khan, whose army of Jungalis still barred the road from Manjil to the Caspian Sea. The Hamadan Democrats were "pure patriots," who talked glibly in the local tea-houses of the blessing of political freedom, cursed the British as mischievous, evil-minded interlopers, and called upon Allah to bless their deliberations and rid them of the British oppressor. Incidentally, they would meet in secret conclave and decree a further increase in grain prices, which meant a substantial gain to themselves. Supplies were refused to the British except at very exorbitant rates; the profiteers waxed fat and became more insolent; and the poor of Hamadan were left to die of hunger, victims of Persian cupidity and Persian indifference. Pamphlets, inflammatory in tone, and bearing the imprimatur of the principal democratic club, were distributed broadcast in the streets, and from these the victims of famine had at all events the ante-mortem satisfaction of learning that it was the British who were deliberately starving them to death in order that these beardless intruders might the more easily overrun the whole land of Persia. {117} If a Persian Democrat be valorous in speech, he is fortunately discreet in deeds. An ukase would go forth from Kuchik Khan that there was to be a truce to temporizing, and that the Dunsterforce must be sent without delay to the Jehannam of Unbelievers. "By Allah, it will be accomplished!" would be the prompt reply. Then the fearless Democrats, always careful never to risk their own skins unduly, would hire some half-starved fedais or irregulars, who for a kran or two would fire a few shots into British Headquarters, or, under cover of dusk and a sand-bank, snipe some solitary officer or soldier of our force. Whereat there would be much rejoicing in democratic circles, and the club would sit up late drinking arak.