Page 203 - PERSIAN 8 1912_1920_Neat

FOR THE YEAR 1913. 61
nsO administration is t° enrich himself and maintain his followers on. the
oiiKJCS iu kind and cash of the province, ■without interference from any
rCS fj0r authority. This conception of the rights and functions of a Governor
functioned by the practice of thousands of years, and is as much an article
!s 5(‘|l0 creed of the oppressed as of the oppressors. It will have to bo destroyed
lU i tilC motive force must come from the European. The Persian talks* of
^handed administration, hut it forms no part of his dreams, and in the
Jcpths of his mind he only thinks of it as a thing to ho enforced on his
“ Lies, not on himself or his friends. One European up against the hosts ot
? rkuess and supported only by dishonest Persians can hope to make but slow
jro^rcss. His enforcement of Government’s rights is a thing which touches p
^/offends almost everyone, and which is not balanced by the small and ua-
JDo'va amount of restraint which his presence may exercise on the peculations
and exactions of his Persian colleagues in other departments.
In the early stages of reform the personality of the reformer is almost every­
thing. and the nature of the reforms is of minor importance. Mr. Lecoffre has
courage, determination, industry and considerable knowledge and astuteness,
aDd these are all to his credit. On the other hand he is vain, . self-
ceutred, aloof, indeed almost a recluse, and eutirely lacking in a sense of
humour and bon homme. He has the air of a man of only one idea and the
trild eyes and manner of a madman. These qualities, in Persia, constitute very
serious defects. Mr. Lecoffre is also a visiouary and a theorist. As in this he
resembles many reformers past and present, criticism is dangerous, hut he is a
visionary and a theorist in a hurry and under the power of extraneous influences.
As the Amir MufakLiam once remarked with some degree of truth, lie wauts to be
King of Kerman ; but he does not want to stay long in Kerman, and is not
prepared to test the truth of the saying that everything comes to him who
waits. An undoubted error on Mr. Lecoffre’s part, is ms readiness to have
recourse to Persian ruses and expedients, of which he has made no secret to His
Majesty’s Consul. He believes in the ready lie that turneth away -wrath, and
te docs not hesitate to bluster and employ threats which ho knows he cannot
fulfil. For months before their arrival he used the gendarmerie as a bugbear
and bogey which was going to dance to liis piping, and he actually telegraphed
to their commandant to bring in by force the Deputy Governor of Bafsinjan,
the Amir Mufakliam’s nephew, though he says he never really meant this
to be done. By such methods he sells his birth right and chief asset, the
reputation as a European for sincerity and straightness. The loss will not
be made good even by Ills giving out in the bazaar that he is a “ very blood­
thirsty little fellow.’*
It will not be judged unnatural that Mr. Lecoffre failed to win for
himself a position in the affections of the Amir Mufakham, a man who, with
certain good qualities, possessed all the ordinary desire of a Persian Governor
for wealth, and who shared Mr. Lecoffre’s sense of hurry and inability to
wait. In all other respects these two men were the points of contact of two
opposing principles. More serious is Mr. Lecoffre’s failure to gain, even in a
email degree, the affection of the public. His task is in many ways an unpopu­
lar one, but this would not in itself have been fatal. It is his haughty manner,
unsympathetic nature and inaccessibility which have really handicapped him.
Bid he not know his Persia and his Persians well the case would have been even
worse, but he does not as a rule set up impossible standards, and he does
display some practical reasonableness.
On his first arrival he had to reorganise the office which was in confusion,
and to deal with the Amir Mufakham’s demands and accounts After that
he was able to devote himself to the problem of collecting, in part directly
and in part through the Amir, the rovonues of the province. The Revenue
Department is now represented by special agonts in all the districts, who
collect what revenue they can, either through the ordinary Kadkhudas holding
their appointments from the Governor, or through other Kadkhudas specially
appointed by the Department for its own work. This transfer of the revenue
work from the Government Kadkhudas (who were in some cases found
unsatisfactory) to special nominees of the Department was one of the causes
of the Amir Mufaknam’s numerous complaints.