Persia and Anglo-Persian The action of t he Persian Government
in cancelling the sixty years' concession granted in 1901 to the D'Arcy group, and now held by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, has, and professes to have, no legal justification at all. The Persian Government is concerned, intelligibly enough, at the loss of royalty due to the fall in the price of oil, but there is no suggestion that the Anglo-Persian Oil Company is not duly carrying out its obligations, and a unilateral denunciation of the agreement is completely indefensible. New negotiations are proposed, and it is conceivable that some arrangement acceptable to both sides may be arrived at. If not, the matter will no doubt be taken up between the British and Persian Govern- ments, the more so since the British Government happens to own more than half the ordinary shares in the Anglo- Persian. That, however, is a secondary matter. Far more serious is the Persian Government's adoption of an attitude gravely detrimental to its credit, both material and moral.
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