learning from the iran experience

Learning from the Iran ExperienceAuthor(s): Frank P. SherwoodSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 40, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1980), pp. 413-418Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3110193 .

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FROM THE PROFESSIONAL STREAM 413

sor." Ph.D. dissertation (Ann Arbor: University of Michi- gan, 1971), p. 158.

29. Ibid., p. 145. 30. The administrative undersecretaries were supposed to be

"permanent," that is, to be appointed for five years and not subject to change by incoming ministers. But this also did not turn out as planned, as none of the permanent undersecretaries appointed in 1958 was in office by 1960. See Amuzegar, p. 25.

31. Personal interview by author on October 14, 1974. 32. Binder, p. 141. 33. Esman and Montgomery, p. 509. 34. Congress eventually came to have serious doubts about aid-

ing police in developing nations; in 1973 it instructed AID to "phase out" all police assistance, that is, to give no new assistance in this area. See Public Law 93-189, 93rd Congress, Dec. 17, 1973.

35. Personal interview by author on October 3, 1974. The re- marks cited in this paragraph are paraphrased statements

based on extensive notes taken during the interview. 36. Richard Cottam, "Goodbye to America's Shah," Foreign

Policy, No. 34 (Spring 1979), p. 14. 37. Robert A. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third

World: Political Development Ideas in Foreign Aid and So- cial Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 123-129.

38. Another very large public administration assistance program was set up in the late 1950s and early 1960s and also failed. This project, in Brazil, was to aid DASP, the Brazilian cen- tral management agency. See John L. Seitz, "The Gap Be- tween Expectations and Performance: An Exploration of American Foreign Aid to Brazil, Iran, and Pakistan, 1950-70." Ph.D. dissertation (Madison: University of Wis- consin, 1976), pp. 195-200.

39. See Bill, 1978/79, pp. 323-324. 40. Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental

Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. U.S. Sen- ate, 94th Cong., 2nd Sess., April 26, 1976, Book I, p. 190.

LEARNING FROM THE IRAN EXPERIENCE Frank P. Sherwood, University of Southern California, Washington Public Affairs Center

T here is a seductiveness to the title of the paper on which the essays in this mini-symposium are based; and the particularly ensnaring word is "failure." At its mention the confronting, academic juices flow. What sweet joy in mar- shalling the argument to prove Professor Seitz wrong.

Such a disposition, however, can easily divert us from our real objective, which is to learn from the experience. And the grander the phenomenon with which we seek to deal, the greater the tendency to become evaluative, to con- struct our own normative images of what ought to have been.

In his work David Kolb has emphasized that learning is a complex process, requiring a number of capacities. His theory embraces four different kinds of abilities, each of them critical but typically applied differentially as a result of in- dividual growth and development patterns. These abilities are applied at a different stage in a continuingly iterative process; and obviously these abilities will imply greater or lesser attention to the various stages, which are:

1. Concrete experience, which involves the capacity to involve one's self fully, openly, and without bias in a new experience. (One might add this stage also suggests wanting a new experience.)

2. Reflective observation, which involves the capacity to report objectively on what happened and to observe it from many perspectives.

3. Abstract conceptualization, which involves the

capacity to integrate the reporting into logically sound pro- positions and which therefore implies an evaluative function.

4. Active experimentation, which involves the active use of theory and judgment to set up new opportunities for concrete experience.'

While Kolb's studies may at first seem extraneous to a paper on technical assistance in public administration, its applicability should become apparent. We have done very little to learn from our many rich experiences in seeking to help others to improve their governmental performance. The tendency, in general, is to move from concrete experience to concrete experience, in the same collective way that we speak of a person's having had 20 years of experience, the same thing repeated 20 times. Seitz is to be commended for having sought to break out of this learn-nothing mode. His abundant citations reveal that he has energetically sought to understand the Iran experience in technical assistance.

As is so often the case when a worthy effort of this sort is made, he has been to eager to reach a conclusion, to form a

Frank P. Sherwood is a senior faculty member and former director of the Washington Public Affairs Center of the University of Southern California. He is also a senior staff member and the former director of the Federal Executive Institute.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1980



414 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

theory before the reporting has been done. Indeed, one has the impression that generalizations were in place before the stage of reflective observation was ever undertaken. Such a tendency is fairly universal in the case of Iran; and, as a result, it is almost impossible to get into a learning mode. One has absolutely to establish his credentials as anti-Shah. For those who cannot honestly do that, there is little to be said that has credibility. In the process we lose a great many learning opportunities. Our motives do not classify easily into rights and wrongs; human experiences into successes and failures; rationality into knowledge or ignorance; and so forth.

The failure of our learning processes to yield the kinds of insights and opportunities for active experimentation that might have been anticipated 30 years ago is to be found in a summary comment by Seitz, ". . . we do not know how to help developing nations reform their administrative structures." I agree with that statement almost completely, with the reservation that there is no reason to restrict the conclusion to developing nations. Indeed, my ruminations on Iran have led me to some very disquieting anticipations of the governmental future in the United States.2

Further, Seitz does not probe the essential implications of his conclusions, namely why we have generated so little applicable knowledge. Certainly the opportunities to learn have been present; and the regrettable conclusion must be that we have been very poor learners. Part of that might be charged to neglect, in the sense that we have not invested much in getting beyond the concrete experience. Second, the learning abilities which have been utilized in a limited fashion have generally been at the stage of abstract conceptualization, highly evaluative in nature. Finally, in the Schon and Argyris sense, most of the effort has been in Model I learning. The government agencies involved have been interested largely in fine tuning, with little inclination to examine basic values and premises that undergird any experience. On the other hand, many who have opposed the technical assistance strategies that have been followed are equally unwilling to have their values and premises made a part of the learning process. Hence, there has been little Model II learning.3

I.

As is inevitable in seeking to understand any complex situation, it is extremely difficult to isolate a variable and examine its consequence for the whole. In point of fact, technical assistance in public administration was never an immensely consequential factor in Iranian politics and life. We should not be surprised at that; it is not consequential in governmental behavior in the United States, either. For this reason I find it fairly implausible to assume that our technical assistance efforts in public administration had very much to do at all with Iran's national fate. Most of the time, we were trying to secure some presence and some ex- posure in order that we might make a difference. Again, there are substantial parallels with experience at home.

It is important that a potential contribution of technical

assistance not be confused with ultimate outcomes. It is undoubtedly true that the performance of the bureaucracy had a lot to do with the fall of the Shah; but that is essentially a truism. When people develop enough anger to over- throw a government, we can assume the system is not working well. In Iran, there were a great many things working against effective performance, most of which could have been only marginally affected by even the most outrageous claims of what public administration can contribute as an area of disciplinary expertise. The Shah himself had developed his own megalomania; there was a weak prime minister unwilling and perhaps unable to insinuate himself signif- icantly into the situation; and a tragic destabilization of traditional values left few anchors of order.

In this midst of presumed plenty, a society emerged in which there was a rapidly escalating number of "have- nots." The new rich were almost entirely speculators; and among the most alienated were the young professionals, the very people upon whom the modernizing society depended. That the salary of the deputy chancellor of the State Man- agement Training Center was insufficient to pay his rent was not a narrow public administration problem; it ran to the very core of the dilemmas that faced Iran as a society.

But the problem of acquiring realistic expectations for the potential contributions of public administration do not have to be escalated. Two institutions in which I had a great interest, and to which I may have made a modest contribution over the years, were the School of Business and Public Administration at the University of Tehran and the Iran Municipal Association. Both acquired reasonably substantial reputations; and, under certain circumstances, they probably had the institutional capacity to make far greater contributions than they did. Once having helped to create a useful vehicle, does the technical advisor have a continuing responsibility for its performance? Who would want to take on that obligation in connection with educational institutions in the United States?

Since it appears in many other contexts, we should not be surprised that our problem of fuzzed boundaries in public administration inevitably hampers our efforts to learn from the Iran experience. What is the accountability of the technical assistant in public administration? I do not propose to answer that question (not because of space limitations but because of a sense of incompetence); but cautions certainly seem in order. If public administration is in the business of remaking society, then it is hard to see why we should ex- pect to be consequentially influential or why any successes we may hope to achieve should be any more than random. Personally, I think there is a place for a special input by a group of people who are dedicated to, and skilled in, the full use of resources, human and material.

In any case, I have sometimes felt that I am being held accountable for far more than I could ever have expected to handle. In some degree that anxiety was stimulated by the Seitz paper, in which we are instructed that the adviser should be ". . . certain that the reform he or she is propos- ing is suitable for the foreign country." I do not believe I have ever seen myself as having that kind of corner on wis- dom, knowledge, or expertise. Change and innovation





should not be inhibited, in my judgment, by the fear of a failed temporal foresight.

I. The experience in Iran is best understood by dividing the

post-1950 period into three rough time phases. (Incidental- ly, it is important to remember that American technical assistance in government affairs goes back to the beginning of the century with W. Morgan Shuster; another American, Arthur G. Millspaugh, was the virtual economic czar of Iran during the twenties. The conclusion seems obvious that they did not fix things permanently either.) The phases accord with the decades: the fifties, a period of major U.S. involvement and dominance; the sixties, one of national emergence but with real financial problems; and the seventies, completely wild and impossible.

Years later, I find it somewhat hard to rekindle the "feel" of the fifties. I was helped somewhat in that task by re-reading my case study, U.S. City Planners in Iran, the research for which was done in 1957-58 but which shows a publication date of 1962.4 That review led me to summarize the major forces operating at the time:

* The fear of Russia was pervasive. Dominoes were everywhere. One attraction of technical assistance was that it put Americans on the ground, instead of Russians. In my case, I quoted one U.S. official as noting, "When the Rus- sians receive a request for one technician, they send six."

* Iran was in chaos. We built roads to nowhere just to keep people busy and to have some legitimacy in paying them. But even then the U.S. was facing some resource limitations. We had to get a system in place that had some prospect of working.

* The various technical assistance projects carried their own rewards, in terms of status, and perquisites such as automobiles, educational opportunity and trips abroad. We should not assume there were no advocates for our undertakings. The Dean of the University of Tehran Law School, within which technical assistance was being provided to establish a new Institute of Administrative Affairs, was a great supporter of the project but torpedoed public administration regularly. His agenda was to gain more ad- vantages for the Law School, not for a competing institu- tion.

* There was plenty of public spirited dedication in the situation, most personified by the Country Director Wil- liam Warne. My experience in visiting many Iranian municipalities in 1957-58 revealed a great grass roots enthu- siasm for improving the quality of Iranian life. There were the physical betterment interests, such as road paving, electricity, water, and similar infra-structure elements. But there were also efficiency incentives, such as what roads to pave.

In this environment there was much confusion and con- tradiction-in many ways understandable. We in the U.S. thought we had found the answers to the good life; and everybody told us that was true. We were more altruistic than Seitz appears to suggest; but his charge that we were locked into our habits and customary ways of doing things is undoubtedly correct. Perhaps one of our most egregious

exports to Iran was position-classification, our great contribution to organization inflexibility and rigidity. Years later I found, much to my consternation, that we had done a remarkably effective job in planting this harmful seed in Iranian bureaucratic life.

The re-reading of my case on the planners both revealed a relative aimlessness of technical assistance directions and also a fatal gap between our promises and our capacity to deliver. We simply could not materialize the expert resources needed for the monumental tasks we had identified. An AID official went to a Midwestern professional con- ference to recruit qualified planners for the Iran project and could not find a single taker! To be sure, there were some highly able and dedicated people who served in these programs; but the number of inadequate performers was also far too large. Further, few wanted any diminution in comfortable U.S. life styles; and, indeed, most expected housing, servants, and perquisites they could never have had in the United States. Of five planners who ultimately went to Iran, only one agreed to live outside Tehran. The rest spent most of their time travelling.

With all the foibles, the technical assistance effort of the fifties was characterized by high energy and activity. Years later, highly knowledgeable Iranians told me that much of the Point Four work continued to be, by far, the best analy- ses of governmental management in Iran. But the biggest gain of the fifties was the major shift of young Iranians from European to American education. Not only in public administration but in many professional disciplines, able young Iranians began to filter back to their homeland in the early sixties.

III.

Though the sixties are largely ignored by Seitz, any real effort to learn from the Iranian experience requires a most careful attention to this period.

In the first place, it is important to realize that technical assistance support was withdrawn precipitously by the U.S. government. The big push of the fifties had become a blip. However, the training support for young Iranian professionals did persist through much of the decade.

The arrival in Iran of an increasing number of highly educated people represented an important point of development for the management institutions of Iran. Much was to depend on whether this new talent would be given opportunities to serve society in roles that required the full use of their capacities. Less than a decade before, merit and capacity had very little place in the job market. But in the sixties the situation had changed dramatically; Iranian graduates went back to positions of considerable status and material reward. I found that the situation contrasted mar- kedly with that in Pakistan, in which my university was also involved. The Pakistanis found their education meant very little for their career development.

Largely because of the infusion of new talent, significant change did occur in the administrative institutions of Iran. As illustration, I cite the work of Dr. Manuchehr Goodarzi, whose university education was entirely in the United





States. At very considerable personal cost, he did manage a major reform of the Iranian civil service. Because a large number of people were stripped from the government payroll, Goodarzi endured many threats on his life. Further, he assembled in his organization other able professionals who shared his values. In the seventies they continued to be some of the best and most dedicated people in government service. Thus, the assertion in the Seitz paper that the Shah had no intention of reducing the government's payroll is not supported by the facts. A public administration adviser who left in the late 1950s is not a good authority on events over the longer run.

The Khuzestan development was another example of maturation and growth, occurring largely in the sixties. Here David Lilienthal and Gordon Clapp sought to export much of the ideology, values, and skills that led to the re- generation of the Tennessee Valley.5 While much of this story has little relevance to this essay, there are two aspects that deserve attention. The first is financial. The World Bank at that time was particularly conservative in its lend- ing practices; and Iran was under very considerable pres- sure to demonstrate its capacity to manage itself and its fi- nances. Thus, bureaucratic performance took on new significance in attracting necessary infusions of foreign capi- tal. The second involved the Khuzestan Development Authority as a management laboratory, much as the Ten- nessee Valley Authority had been. By the end of the decade there was perhaps no better job address than the Khuzestan.

Certainly there remained much to criticize in the pre-1973 period. Corruption had not been wiped out, even among the graduates in public administration. Yet, it was certainly my impression that substantial progress had been made. It was particularly striking that the very able people with whom I had been involved continued to work for the government, nearly all in high level positions. What will never be known is the extent to which the sudden rush of oil wealth in 1973 put an end to a process of change that might have had significant consequence for Iran.

IV.

It could be argued that an emerging, self-confident bureaucracy might have been a highly important counter- force in the politics of the monarchy. An emphasis on legal- rational norms might further have supported the development of a middle class, in turn more able to hold its own in the political competition. And, as the budget process matured, there was increasing awareness of expenditure tradeoffs, making kingly capriciousness in the financial realm less acceptable.

Associates in Iran tell me that 1973 did bring a substantial change in the system of governance at the top. The Shah developed much grander aspirations, turned his interests to military dominance, and became increasingly tes- ty toward criticism. Money was no longer a problem; and it was totally controlled by the government. Long-time members of the government began to move to the private sector. Those who followed them were less confident, more

dependent on the Shah. It was a system in which virtually all the controls against exces had disappeared.

In this debauched period the institutions of government fared very badly. Salaries did not in any respect keep pace with the cost of living nor in any sort of alignment with the private sector. Working for the government became essentially a part-time obligation. After 1975 there was excessive turnover at the top. People were constantly being shuffled; and I encountered no more frustrated people than those who served in deputy minister roles.

Yet, it was a time when the country needed the very best from its governmental institutions. Expectations of citizens inevitably rose; and the government promised even more. On all fronts it was assumed that Iran would make the quantum leap into the ranks of the developed nations, with all the appropriate amenities. Yet, at the same time, there were no incentives to serve in even the most vital public agencies. In the midst of energy plenty, the electric utili- ty could not recruit enough engineers to operate at full capacity and, thus, to avoid a regular procession of brown- outs.

Is there a place for technical assistance in public administration in such an environment? From the advantage of hindsight, one would answer no. Unfortunately, the con- tours of the problem are not so discernible in the thick of things. Societies are not composed of one kind of people; and even in the darkest days there was a number whose pa- triotism, dedication, selflessness, and ability commanded by profound loyalty and respect. In my case I supported those people, not the Shah, not the regime. I wanted to help them become influential because I believed in their capacity, their values, and their integrity.

In the precipitate decline in the capacity of the public service, our alarm grew. In a contradictory sense, the tougher it got the more we wanted to be helpful. Certainly there was a delusory quality in our behavior, in the belief that reason still had a chance to triumph. Because our values caused us to believe that severe discrepancies between public and private sector pay levels would work great harm in the society as a whole, we did what good technicians do. We made salary surveys. We demonstrated that there was a tragic mis-alignment. We wrote reports suggesting possible consequences. We entreated high level people.

Much the same effort went on in other areas. We ana- lyzed the highly centralized control system under which the municipalities were required to operate. We recommended substantial changes, making the point that it was critical to the stability of the regime that at least modest service levels be sustained in the urban areas.

Over a period of two years we sought to initiate a major examination of the explosion of para-state enterprises that were completely out of control and were siphoning off about two-thirds of domestic expenditures. That concern had developed out of an earlier, in-depth look at the problems of managing public utilities (water and electricity), upon which the quality of life in Iran depended greatly.

The honest conclusion has to be that we accomplished nothing in these and other undertakings of a similar nature. Were we wrong in trying? Were we politically naive? Others

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1 980




may be able to answer those questions better than I. My own conclusion is that my involvement was no more ill- advised and naive than was my engagement in a civic un- dertaking in Charlottesville recently. In both cases I felt I was thoroughly professional, preserved my integrity, and made an honest effort toward system improvement. The experience in Iran in the seventies, however, was so confused, unsettling, and puzzling that I suspect my reflective phase of the learning process will continue for a very long time.

V.

In seeking to develop my own (relatively limited) generalizations on the Iran experience, I begin with two assump- tions:

(a) That the essential contribution of a fully functioning public bureaucracy lies in its valuing of legal-rational norms. This implies predictability and, in the best of cases, equity of treatment in a rule-oriented system. In this sense the bureaucracy becomes a political antagonist of capriciousness, so often the prime trait of the dictator.

(b) Before the 1973 OPEC hike in oil prices, Iran was ex- periencing considerable enhancement in the quality of its public bureaucracy, with consequent implications for the nation's political structure. (I realize this is only one point of view. Even if I am incorrect, however, the implications of such a positive change are well worth exploring for their own learning benefits.)

Assuming that the U.S. did have a big stake in Iran and that its interest was far more in a stable, orderly society than in sponsoring a particular regime, our short period of hyper-activity was particularly unfortunate. The "failure," of which Seitz writes, covers a period of only about seven years, from 1954-61. The Shah certainly did not expel us; and there is no indication that the chances of making a solid contribution were less in 1961 than previously.

U.S. technical assistance has generally been erratic and episodic; and it has been driven by criteria extraneous to the situation. No matter the state of political/administrative development in a society, we have insisted on judging its capacity to go it alone on economic grounds. Thus, the scale of Iran's oil income in the 1960s was deemed sufficient to assure its stability and capacity to secure its own political/administrative development. It was an easy way to ex- cuse ourselves from further involvement and reflected in substantial degree our "quick fix" mentality. We threw a lot of money at a situation for a very short time and then summarily announced that a cure had been achieved. There was yet another way in which conservative eco-

nomic criteria substituted for risk and responsibility in making decisions about technical assistance in Iran. As early as 1957 (very shortly after paving roads to nowhere), we began insisting that the Iranian government sustain the full support costs for projects, with the U.S. essentially sup- plying the technical assistance bodies. Many games were played in respect to this requirement; and I have no doubt that such insistence greatly limited the options that might have been available to achieve maximum improvement in the public bureaucracy.

My belief is that a program of technical assistance in public administration, conceived and implemented in Iran over two decades and emphasizing government political/ administrative development considerations rather than economic ones, might have resulted in a far different structure of relationships by 1973. As I have noted above, I am con- vinced the bureaucracy could have achieved greater political significance; and its legal-rational values would likely have functioned as major constraints on the monarchy.

But the Iranian bureaucracy did not reach such a point of strength. Consequently anyone involved in the post-1973 period has to assume accountability for supporting a dicta- torial regime, in which the bureaucracy's power and capacity were constantly being diminished. It could be argued, of course, that the post-1973 advisory activity was of so little consequence that it could not qualify as "helping" the Shah. That is an escape from the real question, however. We did want to help. Two primary issues must, therefore, be confronted:

(1) The humanitarian dilemma of personal responsibility. Clearly there was no legal issue, as a parade of presidents from both parties had supported the regime. Also, many re- sponsible, liberal Iranians felt the Shah was the least harmful of the potential evils. The fear of suicidal dismember- ment, of Russian invasion of the chaotic remains, and/or the substitution of one dictator by another were frequently mentioned fears. While no one predicted the rise of clerical power, the events of the last 18 months are of the kind that caused so much apprehension.

It is also important to recognize that Iran had become an extremely complex society; and the last two decades had seen the emergence of a greatly enlarged educational system. It was expanding rapidly at all levels. Though there were many problems in this effort, I was (and am) con- vinced that education held a high priority in the government. That was important to me as an educator. I do believe learning can change many things and liberate great potential. The rapid growth of business and professional communities also greatly expanded the mediating structures of the society. In short, I still had hope that change would evolve.

(2) The bureaucratic dilemma of ultimate consequences and end states. There is more to public bureaucracy than to function as a vehicle for control and domination by a des- pot. Iran needed predictability; individuals required assur- ance of their rights and established means of redress; and there was an imperative to provide services uniformly and fairly to everyone. While not all government organizations behave in these ways, these are the values with which public bureaucracies ought to be invested. Put another way, I believe that bureaucracy can be a good and constructive force in a society. Not only were such needs present in Iran, but I was associated with many Iranians who shared those goals and aspirations. Not everyone was trigger-happy.

Finally, a point of agreement with Seitz. Whether the name ought to be technical assistance or technical collabor- ation, the U.S. support for the education and development of future bureaucrats in countries like Iran has been an extremely wise investment. Many of the Iranians supported





by AID in their U.S. education, like Goodarzi, made im- mense contributions in Iran. Other observers have come to similar conclusions.

While the overall results were positive, there were serious flaws that are similarly found in other countries. The first involves the time frame. At most, the U.S. investments in the future human resources of Iran were 15 years, probably somewhat less. Indeed, the phasing out period was well under way by 1965, representing just about a decade of activity. Certainly an education effort of this kind should have been contemplated in very long-run terms, encompassing at least one generation.

The biggest problem, however, was lack of follow-up. These recipients of U.S. support, who were not only favor- ably disposed toward the United States but now possessed of many of our values, were cut off entirely. We made no effort to maintain communications and in fact had no idea what had become of them. In this circumstance we obviously could do nothing to support our friends in any reform efforts they might have undertaken. In only the rarest of circumstances did we sponsor their return to the United States for re-tooling and re-vitalization. Again, the "quick fix" mentality was operative. In many ways this neglect of a particularly scarce and valuable resource in Iran was our biggest technical assistance failure. And it is helpful that Seitz should have reminded us of its importance.

In the composition of this paper, I hope I have adhered to my goal of contributing at least modestly to learning about Iran and its technical assistance experience with the

United States. But I am not sure. There is so much accusa- tory behavior in respect to what it was "right" to do in Iran that defensiveness is almost inevitable. With all the pitfalls that may beset learning in this volatile situation, the effort remains highly worthwhile. My aspiration is that this mini- symposium will ignite more intellectual energy devoted to understanding these complicated relationships and events.

Notes

1. David A. Kolb, "On Management and the Learning Process," in Kolb, Rubin, and McIntyre, Organizational Psychology: A Book of Readings (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 27-42, paper.

2. Frank P. Sherwood, "The Public Official in the 80's," to be published in a forthcoming book edited by Charles Goodsell, The Public Encounter (24 pp., typescript).

3. A most recent formulation of this theory is found in Chris Ar- gyris and Donald A. Schon, Organizational Learning: A The- ory of Action Perspective (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978), 344 pp., paper.

4. Frank P. Sherwood, U.S. City Planners in Iran, ICP Case No. 70 (University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1962), 25 Pp.

5. See two volumes of David/Lilienthal, The Journal of David E. Lilienthal: The Road to Change 1955-59, Vol. 3 (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 373 pp.; and The Journal of David E. Lilienthal: The Harvest Years 1959-63, Vol. 4 (New York: Har- per and Row, 1971), 557 pp.

THE SULTAN, THE WISE MEN, AND THE FRETFUL MASTODON: A PERSIAN FABLE

William J. Siffin, Indiana University

O nce upon a time there was a fretful mastodon. A certain sultan, knowing of this mastodon, wanted no trouble from its territory. So he summoned his viziers to counsel him: "O Sultan," they said, "the key to that land and its riches is the mastodon. Sooth him and titillate his fancy. Yea verily, do these things and the mastodon himself will transform that land into a garden of earthly delights, ever friendly to thine interests." And the sultan gave com- mands:

"Send forth janizaries, not to war but to awe and enter- tain. Let them take their tools to be his toys. Send forth other gifts from the treasures of my kingdom. Likewise send forth some healing wise men from my cloisters, that they may also help to sooth his fret."

And it came to pass that three wise men were dispatched -aided on their way, for they were blind and childless. And they examined, mused, deliberated, proposed, pre- scribed, and purveyed: "Tis clear," sayeth one of them, "that the mastodon lacks certain supports which are proper

to his needs. Let him therefore have the ordering and sus- taining devices of which I am the master, that his quarters may be clean and his housekeeping requirements met ex- peditiously."

"Forsooth, I do concur, yet duly note," bespoke the second sage: "The mastodon is fretted from other causes also. There is no sufficient program to bespeak his noble mode and manner. Let there be provided my powerful elixir, em- beeyo, and its cogent corroborants; that the mastodon may command away those causes of his discontent which lie beyond the power of dutiful routines."

"Well said," cried the third wise man, "but let my tocsin too be heard. Give elixir! Make order! But let the mastodon be secured as well against all lurking evils-noises, rumbles, murmers and the like. Let these be smothered in sibilant

William Siffin is the director of the International Development In- stitute at Indiana University.




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