(See front cover]
No country is more anxious to demonstrate its freedom than Iran, no ruler anywhere is more conscious of his dignity, more jealous of his sovereignty, than His Imperial Majesty Reza Shah Pahlavi, Shah-in-Shah ("King of Kings") of Iran.
This week Iran's 60-year-old, 6-ft., grey-mustached King of Kings celebrates a coronation anniversary. Twelve years ago on April 5, the former Persian Cossack officer, born of middle-class landowners on the shores of the Caspian Sea, placed a specially-made crown of diamonds, emeralds and rubies on his own head.
This week the monarch whom the elaborate-tongued Iranians often call "Most Lofty of Living Men," "Agent of Heaven in this World," "Brother of the Moon and Stars," will drive down Teheran's broad avenues, reflection of the glory of his reign, to famed Gulistan Palace. There the King of Kings will be pleased to stand in front of the $50,000,000, 17th-Century Peacock Throne and watch file past him diplomats, ministers, army officers, notables, all clasping their hands on wrists to show they carry no weapons, all bowing heads in profound deference to the August Presence. Unhappy the lot of a mere commoner who should by chance say "Your Majesty" instead of "Your Imperial Majesty," or by a slip of the tongue call Iran "Persia."
Emancipator of his country from British domination, Shah Reza has commanded world attention during the last twelve years by deeds which, in other times, would have spurred British naval and military forces to action. Fresh proof that once-helpless Persia, now aggressive, heavily-soldiered Iran, could stand manfully up to her former master came early this month. A giant, trimotored Junkers low-wing monoplane, with swastikas gleaming on tail, roared down to Teheran airport, inaugurating Lufthansa's new commercial airline between isolated, mountainous Iran and the Near East and Europe.
The bustling American and European salesmen who made the inaugural trip were delighted that they had been spared the hitherto unavoidable, tedious, 48-hour journey from Bagdad, Iraq to Teheran over Iraq's slow railroads and Iran's slower, often impassable dirt mountain roads. Better still, they had missed having to put up for a night in one of Iran's insect-ridden rest houses. What the plane's arrival meant to Middle Eastern diplomats, however, was that the German-controlled Lufthansa had just won a significant battle with British Imperial Airways over flying concessions.
"Shadow of God." Formerly divided into spheres of influence by Imperial Russia and Imperial Britain, Iran shook off Russian influence when Cossack officers retired from the country at the end of the World War, but waited five years for the British-officered South Persia Rifles to disband. With a newly-created army of 40,000 men, commanded in person by the then Reza Khan, supplied with secondhand rifles, machine guns, tanks, Iran first dealt with her own warring, rebellious Kurds, Kashgais and Bakhtiaris, then began shaking a determined fist at Great Britain.