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The second and much shorter way to connect up rail linkage between India and Europe would be simply to extend across Afghanistan the lines which already come up from India and down from Russia to the very borders of King Amanullah's realm. Although funds for such a project are not immediately in prospect, His Majesty arranged while in Berlin to have two German engineering firms make preliminary surveys of these routes.
Commercial Opportunities. Keenest disappointment is felt by business firms in European capitals visited by King Amanullah that he let practically no important contracts, and made few large purchases, except to buy some furniture for his new palace, several airplanes, and a brace of automobiles. It is not true, as has been widely stated, that Their Majesties in purchasing clothes and personal effects, carried the goods away on credit and have not yet paid. It is true that they received numerous valuable presents from firms which hoped for further orders. Thus the German Lufthansa company presented to His Majesty a seven-seater three-motored airplane. Generally speaking the Monarch's circumspection in letting contracts or concessions may be considered as due to the fact that the securities market is not yet ripe for any investment in Afghanistan. As the country becomes gradually civilized—a process which King Amanullah is furthering by every means in his power—Afghanistan will indeed open up as a land of richest mineral promise and virgin soil.
* His exhausting official title is: "Chairman of the Union Central Executive Committee of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics."