With the approval of the British Government a {123} scheme of famine relief was inaugurated by General Dunsterville. Labour gangs were formed, and under the supervision of our officers the starving multitude was set to work road-making. In about the first week three thousand offered themselves for employment, and were enrolled. Nominally, only the able-bodied were supposed to be eligible, but judging by the human wrecks that one saw in the Labour Corps few of this category existed in Hamadan. The road-makers, at the beginning, were paid four krans per diem (a kran is, at war-exchange, the equivalent of a franc), and it was stipulated that they should provide themselves with a spade or mattock and a basket in which to carry away the loosened earth. A number, it is true, did present themselves armed with the narrow-bladed bilm or spade of the Persian agricultural labourer, but there were hundreds who heroically tackled the job equipped with nothing more efficacious than wooden rice-spoons. Still, no one kicked at this, and the rice-spoon wielders did their "bit," or attempted to do it to the best of their enfeebled ability. Our object was rather to be content with some colourable imitation of a _quid pro quo_ for cash disbursements, than to exact a stiff day's labour from people wholly incapable of performing it. In our blissful ignorance of Persian psychology, we fondly imagined at first that the equivalent of £400 a day paid out in wages to roadmakers would sensibly alleviate the prevailing distress. But we {124} did not reckon upon Persian avarice, selfishness, and untrustworthiness of character. The price of bread, somewhat to our surprise, did not fall. In fact it became dearer than ever. The bakers saw to that. Money was beginning to circulate more freely; the very poor were no longer empty-fisted; so up went the price of bread with a bound! In short, it was found that the more we distributed in famine relief the lower fell the purchasing power of the kran. Another thing, too, that militated against the successful working of the "all cash" scheme of assistance was that it did not to any extent ameliorate the pitiable lot of the women and children. The men did not always bother to buy bread for their starving dependents, preferring to dissipate their earnings in a nightly carouse in an opium den--the local equivalent to a British gin palace.