(4 of 5)
On through the Dardanelles, scene of Britain's greatest mistake and Turkey's chief glory during the Great War, steamed the Oriental brothers. The big, splendiferous windup of the King of Kings' junket was at Istanbul where the great Dolma Bagtche Palace of bygone Turkish Sultans was thrown open for a great ball to honor His Majesty. Reclining on a divan the King of Kings ate Turkish delight off a onetime Sultan's silver salver and puffed cigarets made for the occasion by the Turkish Tobacco Monopoly which had stamped on each the Persian Royal Arms. Meanwhile spry Turks in the sleek-tailed, Frenchified dress suits affected by President Kemal one-stepped and black-bottomed in a fashion to make the King of Kings blink. Stoutly, Persian courtiers insisted to their jewel-bedecked Turkish partners, on whose toes they had a tendency to tread, that "His Majesty is of ancient lineage, the noblest in Mazanderan."
King of Kings. Such flattery is unnecessary. Riza Pahlevi is self-made and Persians would be proud of the fact were they not so thoroughly Oriental. The parents of the King of Kings were honest peasants. Their village had to send half a dozen young men each year to serve Persia's dissolute Shah and strong young Riza, born on the shores of the Caspian Sea, was mustered into a Persian regiment of Cossacks. He tasted battle chiefly against bandits and won steady promotion to the rank of Sartip with 3,000 Cossacks under his command. For a fateful coup d'état it was Sartip Riza who was sought out in 1921 by Persia's wily Saiyid ZiaudDin, a wealthy newspaper publisher and astute political wangler.
Sartip Riza marched with supreme bold ness on Teheran and such was the Army's disgust with do-nothing Ahmed Shah that a few hours of quiet maneuvering turned the trick as whole battalions went over to Publisher Saiyid Zia-ud-Din's revolution. Not long after the publisher found he had made the mistake of his life. The upstart Sartip had got himself appointed Minister of War and the publisher was exiled to Baghdad. Two years passed while brooding Riza Khan intrigued, cajoled and bribed among the military, forcing his deep plans and domineering power to triumph over weaker minds. While still only War Minister he reorganized the Army and made it his own by insuring regular pay for the first time in living Persian memory. To do this he had to detach a section of the Ministry of Finance and incorporate it into the Ministry of War. That feat showed who was really No. 1 man in Persia. In 1923 frightened Ahmed Shah fled to the fleshpots of Paris. Two years later Riza Pahlevi, by that time Premier, was elected by the Majlis to be Shah and King of Kings with "full powers" which make him in fact independent of the Majlis. Always domineering, he now became the utter autocrat and one day even kicked his first-born and beloved son Crown Prince Shapur Mohammed Riza into the palace pond for a trifling offense.
King into Communist? Though his most striking feats have been to make Persia safe from banditry and put the Great Powers in their place, Shah Riza, while tactically respecting Persian traditions and taboos, is now driving ahead with a program of modernization and Persian self-sufficiency which fairly makes his subjects dizzy.