1949-05-28 — Page 4

RICHES & RAGS IN IRAN

The Shah modernized Iran by building an Opera House. It mattered little to him that his poverty stricken subjects did not care, for nor understood European opera

By JOHN RODERICK

IN

TEHERAN. Iran there are only two

tih

and the very poor. And, as usual, the poor are in the majority.

This is the thing which strikes most visitors. It is apparent wherever one turns in the few expensivo cars and smartly dressed people on the one hand and the crowds of poorly clothed, Inadequately fod men, wo- men and children on the other.

.

bread, onions,

01 sometimes

a

eng. Meat is rare.

To anyone who has seen to atid land, surrounded by a few trees, it is dimeult to see how Iran's 15 million people manage to keep alive.

It is estimated that nearly two-thirds of the land is uncul livable.

The present economic situa- 'stu- tlon, according to many dent, is in large degree a hang. over from the drastic attempts nt modernisation which the late Shah Reza began. A man of but little back- great vigour ground, he spectacularly moder- nized

the army, the raliway indus- Teheran, the capital of the system and introduced

Many of his pro- country, is a city of nearly a trialisation.

bo- million people. Yet it does not, jecta were white elephants,

nowhere and ending seware ginning have modern water system. The water which roca nowhere. More important, they into most people's homes flows falled to take account of tho in muddy, polluted streams in basic needs of the people. open sewers on

Il democratically. ench street. washes the poor workman In his tenement and the rich mer- chant in his mansion.

comes truin Drinking water

wells. terles of horizontal Kome of them within the city One inside the huge Imits. British legation supplies many homes.

The water is carted through the streets in larga metal casks.

a

both sides of

STATE MONOPOLIES COME were grandiose, such as the Great Opera House ho began in Teheran and had to abandon when it was found to be built on quicksand. It at tered little to him that Persona cared little for nor understood Every great European opera. capital had an opera house, so he decreed one for his.

he

To finance his projects, began state monopolies which embraced

Bugar. rice,

tea, The

of the primitive Because Lewago and water supply sys- Tem, good health in Teheran salt, matches and tobacco. a precarious thing. The popular result was n rise in prices, and tion is prey to many diseases of a fall in the living standards of the intestinal tract. Skin rashes

nes the already poor. Most foreigners avold the drinking water, rare-

aro common.

Today, the Persian econo- is supported largely from ly at raw vegetables, whole my

and payrolls of the Undulant royalties milk or ice cream.

is a constant danger.

In the rural areas, malaria Is widespread. A debilitating dirense

It has which recULTE, sapped the vitality of a great part of the nation.

WORSE IN COUNTRY

fever, which comes from cows, British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Unable to ax. ploit her rich natural resources, Great Britain the Iran gave concession in 1901.

The southern plain near Aba- dan is the slie of the world's biggest oilfield. It is a modern Industrial community of more than 200 square miles with a population in excess of 50,000.

Ilving conditions in Tehe- ran, with its dirty, poorly furnished sluma and muddy streets, are bad, they are in- finitely worse in the countryside, Here the people huddled to gether in meagre dwellings, many of them built of mud. Ex- crement and refuse are dumped into the streets. Food is of poor quality and inefficient.

Despite the fact that Iran has on its own soil the liquid gold which could make it under oft nationalisation, vastly better than it is now, chances are that it will be many years before it has the money or the technica ability to take it over.

Until then, or until cconomic Only through extreme fruga- plans now begun are matured, lity are the peasants ablo to Iran seems destined to be a keep alive. Their usunt diet nation without a middle class- consists of cheese, thin slices of Associated Press.

No. 3

Get

Out

Him

of

This!

ERNEST DUDLEY

The Armchair Detective

SNIP CARTON-Insurance Agent-nabs Black Jack and his notorious gang of jewel thieves red- handed at Bedside. Manor, stealing the Bedside Diamonds.

Then, too late, Snip Carton realises he has slipped his mouth-organ into his pocket in mistake for the sub-machine-gun which he has left on the mantelpiece

at home.

Black and his gang are able to overpower Snip Carton and sling him into an old, deep, disused pit at the edge of a near-by wood.

In the pit is a large, ill-tempered cobra, escaped from the local menagerie, but to make sure Salp Carton won't be Jonesome Black hurls in a box of Tarantula Spiders.

As Black is leaving.

he sees his, victim: la regaining conscious- ness-so be heaves his extra-sized jemmy, at him. Snip Carton pre- tends he has been ACTAUR knocked out again, but the jemmy has merely dazed him.

Theat

hod-

Black who born at school with Snip Carton be

Carton bas fore being expelled for robbing the tuck- chop-remembers that.

his hated enemy was

a champ high-jumper.

A

50 he orders his henchman, a French- man named Clench- man, who's a wild- animial trainer, ito. fetch three tigers from the menagerie. Clench- man chains them so: that they can patrol all round the pil

three

down..

So there's Snip Carton Insurance Agent-thrown into a deep pit, a cobra. allding towards him, Tarantulas approach- ing from all sides, man-eating tigers glaring

oh, and to add macabre touch, a Vampiro bat has just filted on-to a twig

That You've got to tris; GET HIM OUT 'OF THISIAIS the clues are in the pig

a

·18).

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

SATURDAY

THE MEN WHO WATCH THE MARKET

1040

“... by GILES

SoLd'out

toffy'Appris

"O.K. Now's the time to sell them all back-cost-plui.".

London Express Service

NEWS FROM AMERICA:

From Soup To Sanity

By CV. R. THOMPSON

NEW YORK,

EMILY POST, who has spent the best *years of her life trying to teach Americans when to lift their hats or how to tilt their soup plates, has: set herself a new task.

She hopes to teach manners to motorists.

+

Traffic experts who have trial to frighten Americans into driving more carefully, will use her booklet to shame them into it.

Some of Miss Post's edicts: "A gentleman will no more cheat a red light than cheat at cards; a courteous lady will not scold with her horn any more than she would act as a fishwife at a party.

LONDON: WHAT'S GOING ON

OCIALIST M.P.8 aro

with studying

in- creasing curiosity the Parliamentary Bill by which the MOUNTBATTENS Reek. to increase their income from the trust controlling the CASSEL millions.

Will Parliament give the Mountbattens £40,000 a

year?: The rich recluse of Lisbon: Lord Portal's

death duties: The lucky man of the City:

'June' coming home

There he lives at the rather cess Elizabeth has been round to arrived at Mr Bhort's home

Danny Kaye's dressing room with an invitation to Tuesday's - three times" on his present visit. ceremony.

The trust deed prohibits dull Hotel Aviz, spending only the Mountbattena anticipat a fraction of his fabulous in ing their income. The Bill come

Is intended to permit them to do so.

But that' would have conse- quence which

on o

•

In disturbing! the Socialists.

If the in- come is anti- cipated that Sir Benest Cassel is, borrowed

in advance on security-it ceuses to be subject to sur- Instead it becomes tax. subject to income tax only in the hands of the lender.

Some Socialist M.P.s cnl. culate

that the saving in surtax to the Mountbattens would be about £40,000 a year, which is quite a loss to the Treasury.

He sleeps, works, cats, and plays in a three-roomed suite on the first floor. And it is not the most expensive suite in the hotel, although it has a bathroom in marble with golden decorations that

have would

suited Cleopatra.

has no Ho

valet and no of chambermaid

hla Own. These services are included in the hotel's dally charges.

That is not so.

The Princess

has seen Danny Kaye In his dressing room only twice-onco this year and once last year.

Cock Robin

And Mrs Short was included.

Duchess-poet

WHO ARE the ablo women In the gallery of today? The 'DUCHESS OF WELLINGTON has just published a book of

When she and the late LORD CASTLEROSSE talked norose a dining table they enlivened and

adorned the whole art of con- versation.

Welcome

THE WHITE-HEADED City poems.

ANOTHER notable of oldon boy of the Socialists at the

And vory Ane poetry it 1, daya comes back to London moment seems to be. 40-year-

honoured with laudatory soon for a fortnight, after to RONIN old BRIGADIER

of absence-Mru BROOK, just off to the United Introduction by W. D. YEATS. long years

EDWARD HILLMAN, of States.

Then their is the MAR- Beverly Hills California, His recent rise has been on0 CHIONESS OF BATH, a most He cats alone most of the of the most remarkably in City remarkable woman. Sho has Perhaps you remember tima and is rarely seen with annals. Jobs have poured upon just produced a fascinating better as Lady Inverclydo

book on her magalilcent home June. Longleat,

anyone except one of his three him. secretaries,

ماكة

At 37, he was the youngest Groundnuts director of the Bank of Eng- laud. He is also deputy chair- project 2. man of the British Tourist THE roundnute

director of running into more trouble. Board, Eventually R select committer Colonial Development Corpora will have to be set up to probe tion and of the Ionian Bank. this business to the nut roots. And the sooner the better.

The project is so vital to Em. piro development that shebees must be achlaved.

No wonder he has been described as "the man with the wprightllest call in neodle-strect"

Thread.

Afterthought

Lady Bath stamped her per- zonality so much on the name

Loogleat

You do not recall the name?

"Well-bred -- people, whether drivers or passengers, are just as considérate of each other 'as aro hosts and guests in a drawing- room; bad car manners can all too often result in murder

Comment: In a drive through New York I found two. "gentle- men" and no "ladies."

of

can

TUIE BEEFSTEAK may get ba

replaced by a pico plank highly soasmied **ook. Harvard'ı Professor Eugene Rochow, who calls himself a geochemist, says man is using up the world's resources faster than they can be replaced... That means, he says, that meat, eggs, even vegetables, are "out" in his brave new world.

Mainstay in man's diet must be trees, which

be made their digestible by converting cellulose into sugars. And even trees cannot bo wasted. Clothes must be made from them so that when your spring frock is worn out it can be con- verted into sugar and eaten,

All the enjoyment- man

world of the expect in the future, says Professor Rochow, will come from music and the dance.

he E ONE - WORLDERS,

THES. Troup dedicated

or

can

to

the ideal that we are all one wóre great big happy family, There will

be sadness

embarrassed today to see their mingled with the joy with own little world splitung Into which she comes back to the two. London her elßn charm once conquered.

One section, which gives an annual award to America's out- Her mother died in the war, standing one-worlder, is threa her blind brother Edgar, to tening to sue another section whom she was devoted, died which has alleged that commer- two and a half years ago.

clalism is creeping Into their

They say

plan to perpetuate the memory of one-worlder. Wendell, Willkie.

A WHISPERING campaign } CHOW BUSINESS: At 48, Mit- breaking out in the political

chell Parish, the Tin Pari

clubs and restaurants. It mys, Alley lyricist who wrote the

and

"Deep

"It a slump comes in America, words for

"leated

CRIPPS 1.3

Prime Lady, went to

and won

Whore wit flows

sho formerly bore that her THE . SUNDAY EXPRESS friends still think of her us WHO IS THE best azter- drew attention recently to the Lady Weymouth.

Sho The Socialists are also dinner speaker? Kopular choice fact that Mr OSWALD SHORT,

has very considerable would you accept SIR STAF-Purple," Run Inventor of the dying boat, talents as a journalist, and at FORD -LORD READING. saying: "This is in a sense ners-up LORD. MORAN and whose brain made the latest one time wrote for the 'Sunday Minlater of a National Govern honours reserved only for the a war gift we are asked to SIR NORMAN DIKETT. craft, City of London, possible, Express.

ment?"

most brillant students....Filip- make to the Mountbattens. One of the wittiest-although had not been invited to the She would have been a great

And the whisperers add, "Now po del Gludice announces that ho has formed a U.S. branch Yet we refused to make war less known in

the South- naming of the boat as it lay on figure as a writer, but she did you can see why we had a B MOUAT JONES, a the Thames.

Cripps is the to make films in Ifollywood... the other

not percevere as the ought to severo Budget. and DR gifts to

Greta Garbo is interested in former vice-chancellor of Leeds

man of foresight, the only man have done. greater war leaders such as

acceptable to Socialists and playing Martita Hunt's part in University.

lier Broadway

"success, "The ALEXANDER, MONT.

Tories"

Madwoman of Chaillot," for. GOMERY, CUNNINGHAM, AND TEDDER.

But he la Inclined to forgot the pearl of brevity.

What makes Lord Reading His flow of wit outstanding?

"That 1008 our policy. We do not like being asked and wisdom seems spontaneous. to change it in one case alone."

This tricky thing

MONEY IS A tricky thing to handle.

LORD PORTAL, who died recently, probably add- ed to his death duties by trying to make provision for them.

Some, time ago he sold a large block of shares in Por

But that caso

is deceptive.

I

is merely another

example of genius being · a 'capacity for

taking pains.

Lord Reading writes every before- hand with Ini- mense care, com- mits it to memory, then devotes equally Intent study to dell-

it with vering

a spontaneity that suggests no: preparation whatever.

Lord Reading Speech

Swaffer slips

dis-

•

•

•

· Thai oversight was prompty, repaired. A1 p.m. on the As a wit she is nimost with Monday a special messenger out equal among women."

London Express Service), the Alms.

Bernard Wicksteed hunts for a tiger

I HAVE HIRED

A GUNGA

JAIPUR (India).

HAD the idea at one time that the best way of seeing India was to get

an invitation for yourself a maharajah's guest,

a

You would be met at the airport by

a string of elephants (one for each item of luggage); you'd be lodged in a luxurious guest house swarming with bearers and punkah-wallahs,

DIN

MYSELF

BERNARD WICKSTEED Toft Britain with Round- the-World Air Ticket No. 1. He decides his route

02

ho

goes. This dispatch Is from

India

very big, very wild; very hungry. We would hire a car and drive out after dark to see them.

So, at dusk, we set out in m broken-down old rattletrap which any determined tiger could have pushed over with

Our destination was one paw.

a sacred tank (Indian name for a pool of water) which lay. In front of a ruined temple in the hills.

It was wild country' and looked even wilder by moon-

light. On either side the jungle-

I liked that man. Once he'd and the sixth does something covered hills TOGO steeply, and if you wanted to shoot a got it into his head that I was else (pollshes too nalis)? Twice we caught running deer tiger before tifin, all would mad, he proved most co-opera- rather die than be seen sweep a thrilling second, saw a pair The man who cooks would in our head-lamps and then, for bo laid on.

tive, He fetched a tonga (one

"oughin't to say that, he sold tals Ltd., the family bank the other day, "because it is note paper manufacturing rather like giving away a trade firm, to Morgan, Grenfell secret." and Co., In order to put money aside to meet death duties.

FLEET STREET'S

of those little pony traps the bug up, and the mahout who of eyes flash back at us.. So when an official of the Indians use instead of taxis) sits on its neck in processions It may have been a tiger. Naturally he negotiated tinguished HANNEN SWAFFER

the would be a social outcast if he Buttercup and the driver, both the highest price possible column many stakes Indian Government met me in and gave directions to

as a columnist.

Delhi and asked what I most tonga-wallah. (Pardon the demeaned himself by giving it anxious to please, sold it was. for them.

But he tripped when he told wanted to see in his country. I vernacular, but it's catching.) water.

If they were right, I am onɔ up Dally Herald readers that "Prin- sald; "Maharajah's tigers, and

Away we weOss of the

through the Our trades unions at home on William Blake, who wrote elephants with gold rings round teeming bazaars.

a lot to learn from the

Tiger, tiger, burning bright. their.

colourful effects was our elephant keepers of India. tusks?!**

In the forests of the night So he sent me down here to own pony. Originally it had So much for elephants. My

Night of magic

thas high By catablishing value for the shares he in creased the value of the shares ho kept, and the duties now to

be paid on them will, in const. quenos, be higher than they might have been.

In contrast LORD *WAKE- FIELD, the oil king, held al his shares until his death, when they also were sold to Morgan, Grenfell

"CRIME QUIZ Inipur, one of the show Stales been white, but the fonga- opinion of the guide roso after

by Milsson Horton

4. SCENE OF CRIME:

12. PRINTS ON, WEAPON :- Their valuation after his death was probably below what ha could have negotiated. In his lifetime.

As a result his death duties were on a lower scale,

A man alone

VERY FRICH men are "fascinating study, V

One of them, 80-year-old

·GULBENKIAN; CALOUSTE

wealthiest of all the Lomilla trärulferred" humštis]

THE

mer Doda

employ for remain in the princely

Blato

foot of a ravine. Here we

of Rajputana. All the houses wallah had got to work on it this demonstration of his edi-

the with yellow paint, and it had clancy and I've to long as 1 THE rough track ended at the are palated pink by

the Hindustani equivalent of my maharajan's orders. and 100 peacocks run around wild,

"Halleluja", on each side. The Indian Government fixed up everything. They got me a sent in the plane and wired ahead to the Court officials.

"

Crow of six

I call him Buttercup because left the safety of the car and,

of his huge yellow turban, but, printed up some ancient stops.

It might equally well be Gunga cut in the rock and, worn by

is not one of those the pilgrims of centuries.

shave They lod to the terrace of

Indiana who

never

more noisome until I began A Hindu mot me and asked THE streets get narrower and Din. Ho. 1 mo. If I worked a sleepy hotel, to wonder If I had not been (they're called Sikhs), but he the abandoned temple, where I piled my luggage on the old too trusting, but at last wo is one of those who don't shave we looked out on the sacred

In fact, by home light dusty very often. fellow's bike and followed him turned into a small,

beneath

Ting"

Uitie

in the moon-

*TRALIN, wearing

hotel,

and there chained to standarde, he's fairly untouch Bleory was right. There the trunk of a banyant (ons of able.

very litúe, crept out from werewo

two pigeons asleep on the those trees, with roots hanging

under a

a fuck and watched us Zoo? No, No Heard, dozing down from the branches), was wardrobe and a

silently...A", tree. In the

was full of off in the wash basin. A colony a gigantic elephant.

Koorting the ceiling had to

that dirty courtyard It was the maharajah's per- PUT

monkeys talking" In their sleep. layer because there was sonal mount that only he may B yellow urban mere lurks

The ́nin stay there

was alive with no way of getting them down ride, and its tusks were bound a resourceful brain, and when I bats, ove kabinet dan

Having aired me of a with ringe of gold, (At least sald "Now for some tigers," he

The night

was warm, unearthed a zoo-in Jaipur. night's lodging. If not rest, my they looked like

stoid)

beautiful that even Hindu sald he would act as my talk with the mahout en "No protested me though no tigers came to drinie

prowi in did I want to ables me to tell What

that it wild tigers, Ones that You

sfared":"at the temple till to look after a the jungle and eat people”

dawn. I don't know what the PRESIE WAN, Kamo as before. Onco ELEPHANTS. I

I answered. maharajah's

maharajah would have arranged

inkes at mephant.

"Not very holy Hindu temple? There's one man whose sole he understood that, I was crao

** old-fort!!** he job weeping up after it and wanted to be saten by Not ruinous

Another cook the spoolai cakes tiger, he just we

A Later, perhaps I said. It sata, another gives it water, do

outside the clly, But frat of all?) must seo an mother, paigia it for ceremoniu wzmer hitial to elephant toith gold on its tusker occasions, as afth fan rides Ith mild, a wire b. full be tigers,

wo

tho

had he known) I was coming, but HeFcouldn't haveÁr dana better than, Buttercup the un- touchable