hoped that while in England itself the very propinquity of the atmosphere, I mean the very contiguity of the surroundings, would render the attempt easier. I tried and I failed. My failure was all the more ignominious in that I had very direct personal encouragement. "By all means," said the editor of the London Times, "do some thing for us while you are here. Best of all, do something in a political way; that's rather our special line." I had already received almost an identical encouragement from the London Morning Post, and in a more qualified way from the Manchester Guardian. In short, success seemed easy.

   I decided therefore to take some simple political event of the peculiar kind that always makes a stir in English politics and write it up for these English papers. To simplify matters I thought it better to use one and the same incident and write it up in three different ways and get paid for it three, times. All of those who write for the Press will understand the motive at once. I waited therefore and watched the papers to see if anything interesting might happen to the Ahkoond of Swat or the Sandjak of Novi Bazar or any other native potentate. Within a couple of days I got what I wanted in the following item, which I need hardly say is taken word for word from the Press despatches:

   "Perim, via Bombay. News comes by messenger that the Shriek of Kowfat who has been living under the convention of 1898 has violated the modus operandi. He is said to have torn off his suspenders, dipped himself in oil and proclaimed a Jehad. The situation is critical."

   Everybody who knows England knows that this is just the kind of news that the English love. On our side of the Atlantic we should be bothered by the fact that we did not know where Kowfat is, nor what was the convention of 1898. They are not. They just take it for granted that Kowfat is one of the many thousand places that they "own," somewhere in the outer darkness. They have so many Kowfats that they cannot keep track of them.

   I knew therefore that everybody would be interested in any discussion of what was at once called "the Kowfat Crisis" and I wrote it up. I resisted the temptation to begin after the American fashion, "Shriek sheds suspenders," and suited the writing, as I thought, to the market I was writing for. I wrote up the incident for the Morning Post after the following fashion:

   "The news from Kowfat affords one more instance of a painful back-down on the part of the Government. Our policy of spineless supineness is now reaping its inevitable 

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