On the Moscow Road

The broad, neatly paved streets of Teheran were alive with the uniforms of U.S., British and Russian soldiers, the rags and splendor of Persians, the sound, sight and smell of Polish refugees, Free Frenchmen, Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Uzbeks, Armenians. Teheran had become more than the capital of corrupt, backward, oil-rich Persia. Teheran was the focal point of a great Allied supply route to Russia, a testing ground for collaboration among the United Nations.

At Persia's southern ports battered freighters unloaded planes, tanks and guns for Russia. Across the arid plains and flinty mountains lines of trucks snaked northward. U.S. and Russian workers sweated in new aircraft assembly plants. Red Army pilots put the finished planes through grueling tests. Aircraft of Britain, Russia and the U.S. kept Teheran's glittering Ghalemorghi airport humming.

Teheran's best hotel, the Imperial Palace, had been converted into an officers' billet. Next best was the ramshackle, Government-operated Ferdowsi Hotel, whose salon had become a 20-bed dormitory. The Ferdowsi's bar swarmed with U.S. and British officers, drinking V & V (vodka & vermouth). Off duty, the Russians kept to themselves in billets and barracks, where they trained when not working and sang when not training. Only once had a Russian turned up in the Ferdowsi's dining room. He ate alone and never returned.

Nominally presiding over this scene is the young (23), handsome Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was put on the throne in 1941 by the British when his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi, proved too friendly to the Axis. The Government is run by Prime Minister Ali Soheily, who has apparently served his country and the Allies as well as circumstances permitted.

Seven Who Try. Thoroughly embroiled in Persia's entangled politics and economy are seven U.S. advisers to Ali Soheily. They are there because: 1) the better Persia is run, the better the Russian supply route will work; 2) the Allies are anxious to offset Germany's influence in Persia, establish a firm barrier between the Nazis and the rest of the East.

Last week the seven were deep in trouble. Lent unofficially by the U.S., they were paid by Persia. But they had no powers; they could only advise. The seven:

--Joseph Sheridan, a retired millionaire and ex-Californian, who for 20 years was Cairo's leading wholesale grocer, is food adviser to Iran. As such, he is in constant conflict with rich, absentee landowners who hoard wheat, sell it on the black market, and keep the Government from controlling prices. Bread is the Persian's staple food, and in the past six months he has often had none. Sheridan first bought flour at $150 a ton, sold it to bakeries at $50 to keep bread prices down. Bakers promptly hid half their flour, sold it on the black market at fantastic prices. Then Sheridan started building public bakeries. One is in operation.

--Bearded, aging Professor Luther M. Winsor, the agricultural adviser, travels the length & breadth of arid Persia, arguing, pleading and explaining to Persian landowners the need for irrigation. (Until Hulaku Khan's invaders destroyed it almost 700 years ago, Persia had an excellent irrigation system of underground passages and canals.)

--Colonel Lyman Timmerman, World War I flyer who once tried to reform Chicago police, is now trying the same job and having similar difficulties with Teheran's Metropolitan police force. Week after week the Council of Ministers promises Timmerman the direct powers he needs, but Parliament never gets around to the matter.

-- Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf, onetime superintendent of New Jersey State Police when the Lindbergh baby was kidnaped and murdered, is trying to improve Persia's rural police, the undisciplined, isolated officers who patrol villages and outlying districts.

--Colonel Abraham Neuwirth, a U.S. Army medical officer on leave, is health adviser (TIME, Nov. 9). Smallpox, typhus and typhoid epidemics are continuous. Seven out of every ten Persian children die before they are nine years old. The Government refused to order compulsory inoculations, fearing that the hungry people would revolt. Best Neuwirth could get was inoculation of the entire Persian army. With the backing of the Prime Minister, Neuwirth has finally won approval for a closed water system to replace Teheran's open ditches, contaminated by street sweepings, garbage, dogs, horses, filthy humanity.

--Major General Clarence S. Ridley is adviser to the Persian Army. Basically his aim is to win over the army from German methods. Most of the general staff and the high-capped, swashbuckling officers have been pro-German. The soldiers themselves, garbed in tight faded khaki uniforms, are undernourished, underpaid. General Ridley is trying to put through an equitable pay system and improve organization.

--Dr. Arthur Chester Millspaugh, political scientist and financial adviser, is making his second effort to reform Persia's national economy (he had the same job 21 years ago). Oil is Persia's principal resource, but Persians see little of it. Persia's oilfields are principally controlled by Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. The people depend on the land, and most of the under-cultivated, ill-used land belongs to the same absentee moguls who control the national finances.

Patches for War. The difficulties all stem from an economic system the advisers are not empowered to change. At best, they can only do a patchwork job on the facade of Persia. If they can make the patches stick long enough to get Persia's important job of war supply done, they will have earned their keep and the thanks of the Allies.

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