{"book":"adl0973","page":33,"text":"few chosen courtiers went on an extensive\ntour in Europe and Western Asia. It was\na very expensive affair, indeed, and could not\nbe justified in view of the then conditions\nprevailing in the country and the exhausted\ncondition of the treasury. It is estimated\nthat this tour cost no less than £ 1,000,000.\nTo the outside world this may not\nappear extraordinary, but to one who\nis familiar with the meagre resources of\nAfghanistan, so backward in commercial and\nindustrial organization, the expenditure of\nthis large sum cannot but be a matter of\nindignant surprise. Well-wishers of the\ncountry, who were alive to the needs of the\nsituation, protested strongly against the pro-\nposed tour, but the strong-headed King,\nalthough professing great enthusiasm for\nnational welfare, preferred his personal enjoy-\nment to public considerations, and paid no\nheed. One can easily understand why the\nbest brains of the country did not form\npart of the King's entourage on his European\ntrip.\n\nOn his return from Europe, people\nthought that he would inaugurate an era of\n\n6","chars":1060,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0973/00033.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":315,"title":"Progressive Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0973/33","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0973/canvas/33","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0973/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0973_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}