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