French-Fried General

Bearded Afghans moved mum as ghosts about Kabul last week, afraid of losing their ears, anxious not to be blown into bloody fragments from a cannon mouth. Their bandit-king, fierce, white-toothed, grinning Habibullah Khan, was in one of his wild rages. For weeks he has been stubbornly defending Kabul against the potent Nadir Khan, another ruthless seeker of the crown lost last winter by deposed King Amanullah, who is now in bitter exile in Italy (TIME, July 15). Last week Habibullah heard that one of his favorite generals had just been captured by the Nadir Khan. Cringing, the messenger gibbered to the flashing-eyed king that his general and the general's staff had been boiled alive by the Nadir Khan in a huge, sizzling cauldron of vegetable oil.

French-frying one's generals is an insult no potent bandit king can tolerate. Fierce King Habibullah therefore decreed that any of his own subjects who should publicly utter the name of execrable "Nadir Khan" should be:

1) Nailed by the ears to the city wall.

2) Torn from the wall next day and blown from the mouth of a cannon.

Indian editors, commenting on the ways of Afghans, noted that while boiling in oil is a venerable Asiatic tradition, dating from the wars of Alexander with the Persians, blowing prisoners to bloody fragments from a cannon is a British invention instituted as the official punishment for mutinous Indians.