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Not long ago he decided that the great square and the side streets in the busiest quarter of Teheran should be repaved as fast as possible and for a month shop-keepers wailed as all traffic was obstructed by the pavers and customers kept at bay. Another order set up the Government Foreign Trade Monopoly, with iron rules that for everything imported Persia must make a corresponding export, or the import cannot be made. This has so strengthened the Treasury that with nearly all Great Powers off the gold standard, the King of Kings was said last week to be considering putting Persia back on.
"The two greatest evils from which a country can suffer are foreign control and Communism," His Majesty has said, only to add darkly: "If Persia had to choose between the two I should be the first to put myself at the head of a Communist army!"
Always at bottom the soldier, Shah Riza spent the closing hours of his visit to Istanbul last week with Turkish generals bent over staff maps showing the new strategic motor roads and railways of Turkey and Persia. Ten years ago there was no railway striking east from Ankara toward Persia and nothing but a caravan trail running west from Teheran toward Turkey. There is no through railway yet but the motor road over which His Majesty zipped from Teheran through Tabriz and Erzerum to the Turkish coast at Trebizond is now in prime shape to become an artery of heavy trucking and carry Persian carpets on a direct route to Europe. For trade with Russia and possible defense Persia is in course of being spanned by the line from Bandar Shapur via the Anglo-Persian oil country and Teheran to Bandar Shah. The line will make it possible for the first time to cross Persia by rail. With other railways sprouting throughout the Near East, across Syria and Irak, the statesmen in Dolma Bagtche Palace last week saw spread on their unromantic staff maps the physical symbols of a future United Islam. After taking the final Turkish salute Persia's King of Kings set the wires humming with his reputed farewell words to Ankara's Dictator Kemal: ''I rejoice at the prospect of your visit to Teheran! We are soldiers, not diplomats."