7 DECEMBER 1945, Page 10

From the ruins of his citadel at Alamut the ghost

of the Old Man of the Mountains, the Sheikh-el-Jabal, can look down upon the tawny plain of Kasvin and contemplate our present difficulties. It was here, in a hidden valley of the snow-capped Elburz, that he made his garden of paradise and drugged his devotees with cannabis indica, or hashish, giving to them momentary oblivion of all human pre- dicaments. If we, with that unflagging and unflinching patience which is the only remedy, are to solve our present predicaments, then we also must at moments take short puffs at the drug of unawareness.