By a _ruse de guerre_ the grain owners were induced to disgorge some of their hoarded stocks. Telegrams purposely written _en clair_ which passed between Bagdad and Hamadan made it appear that large {128} supplies of wheat were being forwarded from Mesopotamia, whereupon the local Hamadan hoarders rushed into the market and sold readily at daily diminishing rates, until something like normal prices were reached once more. And so the bottom fell out of the wheat ring. Private foreign effort closely co-operated with the military in the distribution of food and the relief of the famine-stricken. Dr. Funk and Mr. Allen of the American Presbyterian Mission, Mr. McMurray of the Imperial Bank of Persia, and Mr. Edwards, local manager of the Persian Carpet Factory, amongst them spent considerable sums of money and devoted a great deal of time to this work of charity. Mr. McMurray is a man possessing much business acumen and financial ability, and as expert adviser to the British in occupation at Hamadan he was able to render very great services to his country. Too modest to seek reward or recompense of any kind, he nevertheless had an honour thrust upon him. It was a minor class of a minor decoration which a grateful Government in England somewhat grudgingly, it seems, bestowed upon him in generous recognition of his zealous labour in the common cause of Empire. So now, should he attend a public function at home, and the question of precedence arise, he will probably find himself ranking next after some lady typist from the War Office, who can write shorthand and spell with tolerable accuracy. To be {129} an unofficial Briton working for Britain abroad is a very serious handicap for the Briton concerned. The Government of the Empire sees to that. I have never been able to discover exactly why it is, but the handicap holds good all the way from Tokio to Teheran, and from Salonika to Archangel. Should you desire to acquire merit, and you happen to be the possessor of a name that betokens pure British ancestry, hide it, and let it be inferred that the cradle of your race is somewhere in Palestine or the Middle East. Then your path is easy. The India Office will pat you on the back, and the British Foreign Office will ecstatically fold you to its bosom.