Word: envoys
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...Khan, Tamerlane and Baber. Centuries later came the British; then the Russians; finally the Germans and Japanese. Last week, clutching his brief case in a car that pitched like a camel over the boulder-strewn Khyber Pass, came the American. He was balding, professorial Cornelius van Henert Engert, U.S. Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Mohammed Zahir Shah, King of Afghanistan...
...Awaiting Envoy Engert in the 6,000-foot high, mud-walled capital city of Kabul (pop. 150,000) were important talks with the young (28) king and his two trusted uncles-shrewd Prime Minister Mohammed Hashin Khan and dark-eyed War Minister Shah Mahmoud Khan. From these westernized leaders of 12,000,000 proud and primitive hillsmen, Engert could expect gracious hospitality. There would be tea and coffee, sweet cakes, pistachio ices and bowls of gigantic white mulberries. But whether there would be any cooperation in cleaning out Kabul's squirming nest of Axis intrigue was another question...
Direct Action. As a toughened-up career diplomat (his wife knitted socks with a revolver at her side while he dug air-raid shelters in Addis Ababa), trouble-wise Envoy Engert knows the Axis technique of penetration and disruption. He also knows that Afghanistan's 245,000-square-mile "kingdom of tumult" is the doorway through which all the land armies of history have fought their way to the riches of India...
...attempts to make them wear bazaar-bought pants, and they refused to tear the veils from their wives. But they learned from him how to play one great nation against another. So far in World War II they have been playing the Axis against the Allies. If Envoy Engert, over tea and mulberries, can persuade Afghan leaders that the hour for such two-way policies is running out, he can march back from Kabul a diplomatic hero...
...beyond doubt, Sir Stafford had before him one of history's most difficult problems in statesmanship. In one respect he had already made what seemed an excellent start. As Britain's envoy it would be his privilege, if he wished, to stay in the Viceroy's elephantine palace in New Delhi. This red sandstone and white granite symbol of British rule stands on a hill overlooking the city and lifts a copper dome 177 feet against the hot Indian skies. Under the dome a huge crystal chandelier lights a marble throne room bounded by ten-foot torches...