Within a couple of days I got what
I wanted in the following item, which I need hardly say is taken
word for word from the Press despatches:
"Perim, via Bombay. News comes by messenger that the Shriek of
Kowfat who has been living under the convention of 1898 has violated
the modus operandi. He is said to have torn off his suspenders,
dipped himself in oil and proclaimed a Jehad. The situation is
critical."
Everybody who knows England knows that this is just the kind of
news that the English love. On our side of the Atlantic we should
be bothered by the fact that we did not know where Kowfat is, nor
what was the convention of 1898. They are not. They just take it
for granted that Kowfat is one of the many thousand places that
they "own," somewhere in the outer darkness. They have so many
Kowfats that they cannot keep track of them.
I knew therefore that everybody would be interested in any discussion
of what was at once called "the Kowfat Crisis" and I wrote it up. I
resisted the temptation to begin after the American fashion, "Shriek
sheds suspenders," and suited the writing, as I thought, to the
market I was writing for. I wrote up the incident for the Morning
Post after the following fashion:
"The news from Kowfat affords one more instance of a painful
back-down on the part of the Government. Our policy of spineless
supineness is now reaping its inevitable reward.
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