The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-01-21

| tries since the outbreak of hostilities
 and something of the events leading
 up to the present status were de- scribed to a correspondent of the As
 soclated Press by the man responsible
 under the viceroy for the conduct of
 Indian foreign affairs. He is A H.
 Grant, foreign secretary for India, whose diplomacy and intimate knowl- | edge of conditions in the east are said l to have been largely responsible Tor the bringing of the floods of intrigue
 that have been set loose in the orient bS the war.
 Secretary Grant, among other things made a pronouncement of pol icy toward Tibet He stated that the suspicious concerning the British gov ernments intentions in regard to this | country were unfounded as Great
 Britain had no desire to interfere with i her neighbor in any way so long as Tibet was left alone by other powers.
 He pointed out that Indias foreign interests cover a very wide field,
 stretching practically from Morocco to
 the Pacific slope.
 Trade and religious and political
 movements affecting India," he con- tinued bring us daily references, es- pecially since the war. from all man | ner of distant places; but our main | interests. of course are centered on 1 the countries immediately adjacent to ! India: on Ara bia the Persian gulf, | Persia, Baluchistan. Afghanistan, the northwest frontier. Tibet and China. Each of these presents it's own pe- culiar problems which have. naturally, 1 been complicated out of all knowledge 1 by the worldwide war and the in- trigues resulting from it.
 In Arabia the main point of interest is Alden, which, I am glad to say, we
 have been able to defend without diff ficulty against Turkish inroad from the north. The Alden settlement itself has never for one moment been in dan ger, although a Turkish force pene-
 trated south of the Yemen. The Arabs
 of the Alden hinderland, in spite of the difficult position in which they have been placed by this inroad. have re-
 mained, on the whole, remarkably loyal to the British government. "The Persian gulf, due to the dis patch early in the war of a force to Mesopotamia, has remained tranquil. The leading chiefs of the gulf littoral have remained entirely stanch to the
 British government and have main tained peace and order. on the shores of the gulf.
 "On the Persian side. however, things have not been quite as satis- factory. But this is rather the reac- tion of the conditions in the interior of Persia than any real manifestation Of unrest on the littoral. For that most distressful country, Persia, has been, through no fault of her own, dragged into the vortex of the war by the selfish and interruptions intrigue of the central powers
 Persia, with an changing gov ernment unsupported by an army, af- forded a vacuum into which alien in trigue would inevitably fly. German diplomacy was not slow to realize that here was a field for endeavor, If a state of disorder and religious excite ment could be caused in Persia which would force the Persian government to declare itself oh the side of the Ger manic powers. the moral effect would be far-reaching. The conflagration the Germans hoped would spread through out the middle east; Afghanistan and Russian Turk estan might catch fire and the fire spread to Moslem India and thereby Great Britain and Russia might be seriously embarrassed.
 With this policy before them and re- gardless of the loss and suffering which would thus be caused to a weak and unoffending neutral country, the Ger mans and the Turks at the dictation of the Germans, set themselves from the start to do what was possible to creat a state of fanatical chaos in Per sia. The Turks started by the violation of the southwestern frontier with an armed force who were promptly expelled by us; the Germans by sending small parties of agents with mule loads of ammunition and money to itinerate Per- sia and stir up trouble as they went.
 These German agents, posing as Mos lens, though ignorant of the first prin-