FOREWORD
The decision to write this book was taken on the advice of an old and valued friend who has himself recently published an autobiography in which he tells of certain events in Iran in which we both participated, but which he sees from a point of view entirely different from mine. After reading his book I told him the true story of other and more recent happenings in Iran about which he had heard quite a different version and he then suggested that I should render a service to my country by writing my reminiscences and making known the truth about certain events in which I had taken part. As my parents were of different nationalities with completely dissimilar backgrounds, I have had the opportunity of meeting many interesting personalities and of being concerned in one way or another in much of the recent history of my country. Others had also urged me to write the story of my life, and so this book has been written. In it I have tried to set down what I remember of the events in which I have taken part in a dispassionate and impartial way, from the point of view of an Iranian army officer which I was for thirty-three years and which I remain in spite of my subsequent political and diplomatic career.
I hope that none of the persons whose names have been mentioned in this book or their relatives will be hurt by anything I may have said in my efforts to give a true account of things as I remember them.
I should like to express here my deep gratitude to my wife without whose encouragement, help and advice this book would certainly never have been written and who for forty years has given me her unfailing moral support.
As I have been not only the spectator but one of the actors in the tremendous evolution of my country from the position of a mediaeval oriental state to that of a modern progressive one, this national renaissance being entirely due to the untiring efforts of the late Reza Shah the Great and of his son and heir His Imperial Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah, I wish here to offer my humble tribute to the Imperial House of Pahlavi, to which the Iranian nation owes the preservation of its independence and in which it places its hopes for the future.
Acknowledgment
This book, which is my first attempt to write in English, although it was written in a very short time, was so stuffed with memories which directly or indirectly influenced my life, and were woven into the history of my country, that it was shapeless and sometimes confused. Thanks to her energy, intelligence and understanding, Mrs. Osyth Leeston of John Murray, so shaped and reduced this production of my inexpert pen, as to render it, I hope, readable to the British Public, and I am deeply grateful to her.
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