The recipients were delighted and grateful. But it was now that the local Democrats, who throughout had stood aloof from the movement for succouring their starving brethren, reached their high-level of political strategy. It was not at all to their liking that the detested British interloper was filling the empty stomachs of the people gratis. In such circumstances they could not be expected to revolt and join hands with the Democrats, and besides, if this free distribution of food were not stopped, it would be a bad day for the wheat-trust and inflated grain prices. So they set to work and issued broadcast handbills warning the poor against partaking of British soup, on the ground that it was heavily flavoured with poison. It was part of another "deep-laid plot," they said, to kill off all the Hamadani whom the ravages of famine had so far overlooked. The average Persian peasant is an ignorant and gullible individual as a rule, but this time the Democrats overshot the mark and their assertions were too much even for Persian credulity. The hungry people came and ate. The second and succeeding days they came in thousands. Barricades and armed soldiers were required to prevent their storming the distribution centres and carrying off all the available supply. And, to the dismay and horror of all good Democrats, not a single one died from poisoning. This was the deathblow to the prestige of the Democratic {127} movement. It lost its grip on the people. There is nothing a Persian, or indeed any Oriental, hates so much as being made to look ridiculous; and the Democrats became the target for quip and jest in the bazaars of Hamadan, until in rage they plucked their beards and tore their garments, exclaiming, in accents of sorrow and humiliation, "Alas, what ashes have fallen on our heads to-day!" But they rallied in their last ditch, and made an eleventh-hour attempt to avert the consequences of the moral defeat which had overtaken them. Kuchik Khan, the "Robin Hood" of the Caspian Marches, yielding to democratic pleadings, and in the hope possibly of discrediting British famine relief work, sent fifteen mule-loads of rice to Hamadan to be sold for the benefit of the poor. But Kuchik's agents had seized the rice without payment from growers living in his "protected area," so he was able to play the merry game of robbing the Persian Peter in order to comfort the Persian Paul. The artifice was too thin. Hamadan was not deluded. The British were _de facto_ masters of the situation. They had conquered the people of Hamadan not by the sword and halter of the Turk who had preceded them, but by a modern adaptation of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.