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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE
OF THE WORLD

THE WAR IN THE
CRADLE OF THE WORLD

MESOPOTAMIA

ELEANOR FRANKLIN EGAN

ILLUSTaATED WITH FBOTOGRAPHB
BT THB AX7THOB

HARPER &f BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW TOBK AND LONDON

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

eirr of

MRS. ODIN ROBERTS

Nov 15 1934 ^

With acknowledgement to the CutUb Publishing Company
of their courteous permission to use such of the mattfial in
this volume aa has appeared in Tht Saturday Evening Post

TBS WaK m THB CrADLS op TBI WOBLD

Copyxight, 19x8. by Harper & Brothers

Printed in the United Stntee of America

Pttbliabed September. loiS

Just to Martin

CONTENTS

L Thb Longest Wat Bottnd 1

IL Ths Shortest Wat Thebe 7

m. The Bobibat Side of the Punka .... SO

IV. An Interestino But Anxious Intebtal . 50

V. To the Remotest Zone 68

VI. What the British Found OS

Vn. Not Through a Port-hole 104

Vm. Strengthening the Foothold 128

IX. Introducing the "Pouticaia" 1S4

X. HOSPITAIB AND THE NURSING SERVICE . . 149

XI. General Townshend's Advance .... 16S

Xn. Lines of Communication . • 172

XTTT. Up the River Tigris 188

XIV. On Up the Tigris 205

XV. From Amara* to Eut-el-Amara 2SS

XVI. A New Kut 242

XVn. The Scene of the Terrible Siege . . , 258

XVJJI. With General Maude in Command . . . 269

In the Shadow of an Ancient Ruin . . 276

The Man of Mesopotamia ...... 287

Round About Town 295

Whence Harun-al-Rashid Strolled . . . SIO

XXTTT. Across an Amazing River S20

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAOB

XXIV« Righteous Men and Sons of Iniquity . 327

A Unique Entertainment 336

A Day's End 344

XXVn. The Last Post 349

XXVm. And Then 356

ILLUSTRATIONS

Lieutenant - Generai. Sib Stanley Maude,

"The Man o^ Mesopotamia" FrontinnMe

MaHATLAS in the ShATT-EL-ArAB . . . . . Facing p. 100

Scene in a Crowded Creek of the Shatt-el-

Arab, at Basra : *' 100

The Canoe of Mesopotamia — ^The Belum. . " 108

Scene at a Caravanserai — A Mesopotamian

Coffee-house " 108

MajortGeneral Sir George MacMunn, In-
spector-General OF Communications . . ** 112

Labor-camp at Basra» with Inset Picture
Showing Camp of War Prisoners at
Basra ** 118

The Ancient Fortress Outside the Zobier

Gate, at Basra '* 146

The Arab Gun-dance at the Palace of Sheikh

Ibrahim '' 146

"The Devil's Elbow" on the Tigris ... ** 208

Piled and Pyramided Supplies on the Banks

OF THE River Tigris "' 216

Marching-post on the Tigris ** 216

A Glimpse of the River-front at Amara,
WITH Inset Picture Showing Troop-
transport ON THE Tigris, with Supply-
barges IN Tow '' 226

Kut-el-Amara — ^The Scene of the Great

Siege ** 2S6

ILLUSTRATIONS

On the Battlb-held of Sitnnaiyat — as Arab

Ghoul Faeinop. 2S6

The Abch op Ctesiphon " 278

The Tomb of Ezra " 278

Thbouoh the North Gate — ^Victorioub British
Entering Baghdad, Famoub Citt of the
Kauphb " 802

American Automobiles in the New Street,

Baghdad " 802

British Guns, Recaptured at Baghdad . . *' 312

Forty Thousand Turkish Rifle-barrels at

Baghdad '' 812

Military Convoy in a Typical Mesopotamian

Roadway Through the Date-gardens . ** 826

The Desolate Graveyard Where General

Maude Is Buried, with Inset Picture of

THE Grave of General Maude ... '* 852

The Sheikh of Muhammerah, After the

Ceremony " 866

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE
OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER I

THE UOSQEBT WAT BOUND

THE only thrill to be enjoyed on a voyage
across the Pacific in these perilous days is
provided by the stormy petrel, When that extraor-
dinary bird stretches its black neck up in prepara-
tion for a swift skimming flight across the surface
of the sea, it looks enough like a periscope to produce
a slight quiver in the fear-center of even the traveler
who has learned in real sea danger zones to be
steady-nerved and casual.

Rumors of submarines and raiders in the Pacific
are practically continuous, but one pays very little
attention to them. An encounter wiUi a raider is
not to be so greatly dreaded in any case, and my
own placid sense of safety all the way over was due
largely to my belief that no submarine would dare
to venture into the zone through which we chose to
travel, even though it might be able to get past the
naval watch of many nations.

Midsummer though it happened to be, there were

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

days when our northern horizon was saw-toothed
with Arctic ice mountains, and all the time we sat
huddled in rugs and furs in sheltered comers of the
deck or sought comfort in the snug library away
from marrow-chilling winds.

When the winds were still, cold fogs would rise
and the great horn would b^gin to bellow. It was
not pleasant, but it was to be preferred to the taut
suspense one suffers on the seas where the U-boat
is known to bear one company. Yet I must hasten
to record that this route was not chosen for any
reason except that it is the shortest one between the
Pacific coast of North America and the shores of
Japan.

When we started down the western curve of the
great half-circle that we cut across the ocean there
were days when we had no horizon at all, so com-
pletely enveloping the fog was. And it seemed to
me as though, wrapped in mist, we were steaming
farther and farther away from the war and all
that the war means to the world that is suffering
its consequences.

And so we were. At any rate, one got an instant
and inescapable impression that Japan is farther
from the war than any other great country involved,
and that she has realized it least of all. That is,
she has suffered little. But her observable extraor-
dinary gains and material developments are suffi-
cient to fill a returning lover of her beauties and
charm with a definite sense of loss.

The last time I sailed out of Yokohama harbor
Fujiyama "came down to the sea." So I knew that
sooner or later I should return.

THE L0N6EST WAY ROUND

Ordinarily that justly famed mountain stands alar
off, a white-crested glory seen across miles of gray
roofs, of glistening rice-fields and soft, low hills.
And too often it is hidden away for weeks on end in
banks of doud. But on very dear days, and espe-
dally in winter, it seems sometimes to come very
close and to hover in the for^round of one's vision
in compelling and aknost overwhdming majesty.
Truly, it is not an overrated mountain.

Lucky for you, if you like Japan, that you leave
Japan on such a day. Because if Fuji does not lift
her head out of the douds long enough at least to
speed you on your way you will never return.
Which is a thing to be bdieved.

And I believed it. I have believed it for many
years. Time and again I have sailed away from
Yokohama, and always, without fail, shining Fuji
has shone for me. And always I have said:

"Yes, of course I shall return!"

For the thirteenth time I landed within the far-
flung cirde of Fuji's radiance. It was my thirteenth
time in Japan; it was thirteen years almost to
the day since I landed the first time; Japan was
the thirteenth Allied country I had visited since
the war b^an; and it was the thirteenth day of the
month!

Yet I was on my way with a fixed intention of
doing a thing I knew could not be done.

/ toas going to Baghdad!

I had mentioned to nobody the fact that I was
going to Baghdad, because I dreaded the necessity
for having afterward to explain why I didn't do it.

I said I was going out East and I intimated that I

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

might go to India. But even about that there was
some doubt» since India also was closed to visitors
on accoimt of certain war-time dangers that a too
lax hospitality might serve to increase.

In order, however, that there may be no mystery
with r^ard to my methods of procedure, I beg to
acknowledge now my debt of gratitude to the late
Sir Cecil Spring-BJce, then British ambassador at
Washington, a friend who believed I was to be
trusted within war-restricted areas.

His Excellency provided me with a special British
passport and, in my behalf, sent letters or cable-
grams to most of His Majesty's ambassadors and
colonial governors from Tokio to Bombay. And,
needless to say, all His Majesty's representatives —
Sir Conyingham Greene, ambassador to Tokio; Sir
Henry May, governor of Hongkong; Sir Arthur
Young, governor of Singapore; and Lord Willing-
don, governor of Bombay — ^treated me with the dis-
tinguished courtesy and consideration that one ac-
cepts from British gentlemen as one accepts any
other wholly natural manifestation of the nature of
things. It is due that at the outset I record the fact
of my absolute reliance upon their kindness and con-
fidence and my profound gratitude to them.

After a ten days' interval of almost iniquitous
ease on a great Japanese liner I landed at Manila,
and there I transshipped for Hongkong to an Aus-
tralian freighter which was misleadingly advertised
as providing "passenger accommodations/' But it
was quite all right. The dear old tub crossed the
unmannerly China Sea in the wake of the worst
typhoon of the season at the dizzying pace of at

THE LONGEST WAY BOUND

least SIX knots an hoiir» and she was not more than
two days late when she came up in the lee of that
islanded wonder-world oflF the Chinese coast — ^Hong-
kong — ^the terminal port in the Far East for ail
transpacific shipping*

I remember a time when one could go to Hong-
kong without troubling to look up ship schedules
and be perfectly certain of getting away in almost
any direction within a day or two at most.

Did one want to go to the United States? Veiy
well» there was a possibility of connecting two or
three times a week with some big eighteen- or
twenty-thousand-ton ship for San Francisco, Seat-
tle, or Vancouver. To Lidia, or to Europe via the
Suez Canal? One had a choice which made earnest
competition for one^s patronage necessary to a dozen
companies. There were British ships and Ameri-
can ships and French ships and Italian ships and
Spanish ships and Dutch ships and Japanese ships,
to say nothing of the Austrian Lloyd ships to
Trieste. There were even Norw^ans and Danes.
But above all there were Grermans, the Nord-
deutscher Lloyd and the Hamburg-Amerika com-
panies owning some of the best ships that sailed
the Eastern seas and enjoying a patronage that no
German of any generation now living will ever see
re-established.

But what a difference now! The elimination of
the Grerman and Austrian ships alone would have
been enough, but most of the British and French
ships, too, have been withdrawn for service else-
where. There are no longer any Italians or Danes
or Norwegians, while the Dutch, being restricted on

the Suez Canal route and dreading the perils of the
2 5

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

Mediterranean and the Atlantic, are sending their
ships across the Pacific. It is difficult to believe
that the Eastern seas could be so emptied.

According to the original sailing directions which I
issued to myself I was to have left Hongkong on a
French liner of considerable tonnage and luxury of
equipment. But the Germans sank her in the
Mediterranean on her way out to the East, so I had
to change my plans. This involved angling in the
still waters of official reticence for information as to
further possibilities, and it took time.

The information that there would be a Britisher
along in about two weeks was given to me in great
confidence, and I was expected to pretend in a gen-
eral kind of way that I had no idea when or how I
was ever to get out of Hongkong in the direction I
wished to go. The British ship would go to Singa-
pore, they told me, and from there to Colombo and
Bombay. Which was quite satisfactory, as far as I
was concerned. And I could have a cabin to Bom-
bay for the small price of a suite de luxe on a gold-
plated Aquitania. All right. I wanted to get to
Bombay more than I wanted to do anything else in
the world at the moment, and I did not object to
going all the way by sea instead of parboiling myself
on an Indian train from Madras or Calcutta at the
height of India's hot season.

1
\

CHAPTER n

THE SHOBTEST WAT THERE

" VOU may put that in your pipe and smoke it!"
A is what the doctor finally said. Whereupon
the embarrassed little party on deck broke up and
went its various ways. I leaned against the forward
rail and looked thoughtfully out to sea. It had been
a rather unpleasant little scene.

In view of the fact that he had such a story up
his sleeve, the doctor had listened to the groans of
the neutral with admirable self-restraint. Up to a
certain point. And if the neutral had not forgotten
that in British circles a neutral is expected to be at
least neutral, if not pro-Ally, the subject of mines
and mining might never have been mentioned at
all. The doctor felt like being rude all the time, no
doubt, but he assured me afterward that he knew
his duty as a ship's officer and would have let the
"bally idiot" alone if the bally idiot had not "ht
into ike English " the way he did.

He was complaining bitterly about the difficulties
and inconveniences under which all neutrals have
to labor, and he freely blamed the British. He went
further than he really should with r^ard to British
blockading methods in general, and when he came
to restrictions on neutral shipping through the Suez

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

Canal he was anything but guarded in his language.
Then the doctor spoke up:

"If I had my way/' he said, "there are some
kinds of ships that would never be allowed in the
Suez Canal under any circumstances. I may be
prejudiced, but I just happened not long ago to be
an eye-witness of an attempt to blow the canal up —
along with some three thousand British troops —
and it made me rather cautious in my opinion of all
neutrals.

" Unfair!*' he added, "unfair, of course! But you
will admit that it is somewhat natural."

The passenger was a nice kind of person in spite
of his lack of judgment as to topics of conversation.
And it was not to be supposed that he personally
had ever tried to blow anything up, or that he had
guilty knowledge in any such connection. But the
doctor was speaking of his countrymen, and his
face j9ushed the color of his red, red hair.

"It isn't true!" he exclaimed.

"I said eye-witness," the doctor murmured.

"Then you were mistaken!"

"Possibly. But I afterward gave evidence which
helped to get for your skipper exactly what was
coming to him. They stood him up against a wall
and shot him — ^and if I had been ptonoimdng
sentence he'd have had his whole crew to bear him
company. But he was dealing with the weak-
minded British, you see, so he was the only one who
had to suflfer."

Then he told the story, and we all listened.

" I was senior medical officer in charge of a trans-
port," he said, "and we were bringing three thou-
sand men out to Mesopotamia. We got round from

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

London and tlirough the Mediterranean all right,
and we brought up at Port Said one morning, feeling
mightily relieved. We thought the danger was all
over. I noticed the neutral ship principally because
when you are partly responsible for the safety of
three thousand-odd men these days you get so you
notice everything.

"She was lying just ahead of where we dropped
anchor, and I probably should have thought noting
in particular about her if some one hadn't told me
that she had been there three or four days. Then
I wanted to know why she had not gone on, and
nobody seemed to know. Big troop-ships are big
game — and legitimate game, too, but not for neu-
trals — and on board a troop-ship you come to a
point where you sniff at your own shadow. I don't
mind telling you that I sniffed at her, and it was
rather a feather in my cap afterward that I did, too,
because nobody else had the slightest suspicion
about her.

"In some way or other she got out just ahead of
us and we followed her at a distance of less than half
a mile. If we had been much farther behind her
it would have been a different story and I might
not be here to tell it.

"I don't want to pretend that I was so suspicious
that I set myself to watch her. My suspicions and
my watchfulness were both purely casual. But I
just happened to h* . • ' Vinp forward

through the chanmi, <i ;. . •. i.appened as

plainly as I see you now. Someliiing was lowered
over her stem.

"We signaled her to stop, which she did, and
everything behind us stopped. Then the canal

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

patrol came down and got the thing. It was a
mine, right enough, and if we had struck it it would
Ve blown us to Kingdom Come and blocked the
canal for no telling how long.

"If the skipper hadn't waited at Port Said for a
trooper he might have succeeded in sinking some-
thing else and accomplishing his main purpose —
which was to block the canal, of course. He didn't
need a twenty-thousand tonner loaded with human
freight to do that. But it seems he was greedy.
And now with all our vigilance in the canal zone
the approaches to Colombo and Bombay are regu-
larly mined by some one, and we know mighty well
it's not the Huns!"

It was then that he muttered, "You may put that
in your pipe and smoke it!" The while he skilfully
shielded a match from the wind as he applied it to
his own burnt and blackened brier.

Our ship was a curious old relic of somebody's
marine scrap-heap, and I climbed her gangway with
all my natural fondness for luxurious surroundings
carefully stowed away in the depths of my inner
consciousness. But she was the best Britisher left
on the run down the coast of Asia, so I was not just
b^ng conversationally agreeable when I told the
captain the first day out that I was glad to be
aboard. I really was; and, though I knew that only
a short time before a ship had been sunk in the
Bay of Bengal, I felt a sense of perfect security
which was proof against even the doctor's disquiet-
ing story.

Subsequent life-belt drills, the sight of out-swing-
ing life-boats, loosened rafts, and rope ladders sus-

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

pended from the deck rails may have given me a
few inward quahns, but good ship manners forbid
even a reference to a feeling of nervousness these
days. We laughed at the intricacies of our life-
preservers and made a^kind of bugaboo play out of
all the grim preparations for an emergency. The old
battle-gray merchantman was not steering a straight
course for the port I wanted to make, but she was
headed in the right general direction, and when it
comes to sea-voyaging the character of Hun war
has made that about as much as any one has reason
to expect.

The evening before we reached Singapore an
Australian who ''traveled for a patent sun-deflecting
roof material ** — ^in his own briefly explanatory lan-
guage — and who filled all the interv^s of his daily
existence with picturesque invective against a padc
of unfit officials who had refused to accept him in
any capacity for service at the front, held forth to a
group of passengers, who had nothing better to do
than to listen to him, about ''some of the purtiest
islands in the world" which lie north from Singa-
pore and through which a ship must "thread its
way '* into the harbor. He was going to be up early
next morning for a view of them, because nobody
could see them too often.

"And,'' thought I to myself, "I, too, will do that
highly commendable thing/'

It is my opinion that a lazy attitude toward such

things results for a traveler in the kind of fatigue

that no traveler should ever feel. In the wide

round of the world's wonders to be bored is to

reveal one's own shameful limitations.

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

So at the bewitching hour of about half past five
I shook myself out of a sound sleep that I might
see '"the rose light of an equatorial sunrise bath-
ing palm islands afloat on the surface of a silver
sear

I learned afterward that the Australian had never
been tha*e before and that aU the time he was quot-
ing a lot of ""fine writing^' he had found in a Singa-
pore "boost-book" filled with advertisements of
real estate and rubber-plantations. As for "thread-
ing/* there was never an island less than a mile
away, and when one showed itself at all it was noth-
ing but an indistinct mass in a white equatorial
haze. Incidentally, when the rose light of simrise
began to get in its morning's work it melted the
calking in the seams of the decks.

It was late in the day before the southern hori-
zon — ^a long, flat, purple line — ^began to approach
us; then we knew we were getting into Singapore.
Ordinarily it is about a four days* run from Hong-
kong, and, it being only our eighth day out, we
thought we were doing very well indeed.

I asked the captain all kinds of questions. One
is not supposed to do this, but one does. In any
case, thinking up reasonable answers keeps a cap-
tain's mind active; and in trying not to show how
annoyed he is he gets exercise in self-control.

I wanted to know all about the uprising in Singa-
pore — ^how many were involved in it; how many
were killed; how many were subsequently shot or
hanged; what influence brought it about; how
much German money it cost; whether Washington
was headquarters and Bernstorff head paymaster;

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

and whether any German agents had been caught
in connection with it. But nobody knows any of
these things. Least of all, sea-captains.

There was an insurrection. Everybody knows
that, murderous gun-shots having a way of rever-
berating round the world even in war-time. The
British troops of the Singapore garrison had been
withdrawn for service in France or Gallipoli or
Mesopotamia or East Africa, and only native
troops — ^in whom the Britons had the fuUest confi-
dence — were left to guard the colony. It was along
late in the afternoon and nearly everybody was at
the Country Club. People were playing golf or
tennis, or were sitting round in white flannels and
frilly frocks, having tea, when suddenly the finely
armed and fully equipped native soldiers broke from
their barracks, or from wherever they were, and
started in to murder every white man, woman, and
child in the community. That seems to have been
the program.

Just how it was stopped I do not know; as all
such things are stopped, I suppose — ^by quick action
guided by superior intelligence. There was after-
ward another kind of shooting, with human targets
in squads of so many. And that we know. And
we know we feel great pity for the |X)or misguided
offenders. But if one is told the number of those
who paid the penalty for armed treason — which
proposed to express itself in wholesale murder — one
is told also that this is no time to write detailed and
definite history. So let nobody in future regard
this reference as reliable information. Regard it
rather as a kind of camouflage background for a
reference to the compidsory-service act which was

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

immediately passed by the Singapore govermnent»
and which applies to every man in the colony who
is able to hold a gun and see a target.

A number of these men took a hand in the job of
putting down the uprising, but it is recorded with
a good deal of derision that not one of them ever
hit anything he aimed at, so now they all have to
spend a certain number of hours each week in
military drill and gun practice. They wear smart
uniforms, pride themselves on their mature ef-
ficiency, and are altogether keen about themselves
as a home-guard. They are to be seen in com-
panies almost any afternoon, not at their accus-
tomed golf, but at grilling drill on the hot rifle-
ranges out on the hills behind the city.

But that is getting rather ahead of myself.
However, I may as well go directly on, though I do
rather regret slipping so smoothly in the telling of it
through the tedious hours of medical and passport
examination at Singapore, and the slow process of
being nosed by puffing and hot-smoke-belching tugs
up against a long dock which lay blistering in the
sun. It was "equatorial," right enough. One gets
tired of that word in these regions, but there is no
escaping it. It would be as easy to escape the word
"cold" up at the undefined and fade-away-into-
nothing end of Greenland. On the map it is only
the distance of a pin-head's width from Singapore to
the equator. In reality it is about forty miles.

I saw all the passengers go ashore and watched
an exuberant American woman hurl herself vio-
lently into the arms of a handsome British army
officer before I did anything else. The British army

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

ofiSoer was her husband, of oourse. Then I
to go up-town.

Singapore has been British for a very long time.
As a matter of fact» they will have to 'Mo something
about it'' at once. On the 29th of January, 1919,
it will be just one hundred years old. On that date,
in 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles, who had been sent
on a voyage of discovery looking to the acquirement
of a British port somewhere in this vicinity, landed
on the then practically uninhabited island and
hoisted the British flag.

The principal thing he discovered-^de from
the magnificence of the harbor — ^was that the Dutch
had not nabbed it, which was then, and is now, a
thing to wonder at. Though it seems they were un-
der an impression that they had. The island was
among the useless and wholly neglected territories
of the Sidtan of Johore, one Abdul Rahman, and
the Sultan of Johore was a mere figurehead up-
holder of the supremacy of the Dutch and was sup-
ported by them in a way that woidd have made any
defection on his part fatal to his own interests.
And at once they said to him:

"Of oourse our treaties with Your Highness cover
the island of Singapura?"

And His Highness replied* *'Why» certainly they
dor

But there was a Datto of Johore — ^a lesser high-
ness — ^whose name was Temenggong, and Temeng-
gong hated the Dutch. Some persons might write
that he liked and admired the English, and that,
therefore — But he didn't. He merely hated the
Dutch. So he came to Raffles and told him that
Abdul Rahman was a usurper; that he was a

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

younger brother and had no right to the throne;
and that the elder brother and rightf id heir, whose
name was Tunku Hussein, was over in Riau and
powerless to assert his rights.

"Is that so?'* said Raffles. **Well, you go right
along over and get him! We*re friends of his.**

And Temenggong did it. Whereupon Tunku
Hussein was duly and solenmly proclaimed Sultan
of Johore — ^without reference to the opposition
camp — ^and a treaty was immediately n^otiated
which gave the Englishmen rights of residence on
the island. That was all. Raffles may have had
visions of eventual British sovereignty in Singapore
— ^then a city of dreams in nobody's mind but his
own — ^but at the moment he was asking for nothing
but the privilege of establishing a trading station
and a kind of half-way port between India and the
Chinese coast.

The definite occupation of the island by the
British did not occiur until 1824, and by that time
it was a growing concern, wholly British in charac-
ter, with a dozen or more European business firms
solidly established, and with a population of more
than ten thousand. There were as many as eight
thousand Chinese on the island as early as 1826,
and they have since continued to maintain their
majority, attracted, no doubt, by the opportimities
oflFered for trade and all kinds of enterprises within
the security of British law. The city now has a
population of about three hundred and twenty-five
thousand.

In Singapore one is impressed by the fact that a
very large number of the men who look like leading
citizens are Chinese. There are more handsome

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

and high-class Chinese in evidence than anywhere
else I know of except Peking. In Singapore they
are seen riding about in fine motor-cars, attending
to business in splendidly equipped ofBces; running
banks, factories, large shipping concerns, import
and export houses, and every other kind of enter-
prise that would help to make up the sum of a city's
conmieree and trade. Moreover, they are the
owners of a majority of the big rubber-plantations
and tin-mines throughout British Malaya. They
are represented on the colonial councils, have a
large share in all municipal governments, and are
r^arded by the British as citizens of the highest
value. They are altogether an interesting evidence
of what the Chinese are capable of being under de-
cent and honest government.

The British have made Singapore a fine and
rather beautiful city. There are splendid govern-
ment buildings, educational institutions, churches,
business houses, clubs, and hotels; the parks and
open green spaces are many and magnificent; the
streets and tree-bordered drives are well metaled
and well kept; there are sea-walls and breakwaters
and piers, and everything else, in fact, that is
Occidental, and therefore an evidence of unsparing
energy and far-sighted ambition.

The English colonials, and many of the Chinese,
also, live in handsome residences and picturesque
bungalows set in large gardens which line broad
avenues running in sweeping curves far out into the
country, where they join perfect highways over
which one drives to see the hills — Chills rolling into
lulk and stretching away for miles on miles to meet
the wonderful blue arch of the sea; hills planted

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

in neatly set rows of rubber-trees which run down
through the valleys and up over the crests, down
into the valleys again, and still up and on as far
as one's eye can reach, that being one of the most
extraordinary sights on earth! And one wonders
what this pafft of the world would be like to-day if
it had not been for pioneering, energetic, nonchalant,
sporting, indifferent, high-minded, more or less
altruistic and altogether wonderful little England 1

When I returned to the ship the second afternoon
they were just getting ready to take on what the
captain called '* queer cargo/' It was lying along*"
side in a number of great flat barges and consisted
of cranes and engines of immense size and extraor-
dinary awkwardness. The native cargo-coolies did
not know how to handle it, and, for that matter,
neither did the captain. The coolies sat in rows on
the barge rails and regarded it with woebegone ex-
pressions, while the captain leaned against the ship's
rail and muttered maledictions.

'*And Fm already a day late!" he said.

'*Is that all?" I innocently inquired.

••Well, this is not the ifaurctonta."

••No, Fd noticed that."

••AH right, chaff if you feel like it, but if I have
to take that stuff on we'll be here a week. And
then I've got to go off to a bally island and take on
a cargo of oil."

That was serious, and the fact that I only then
learned about it goes to show how secret and well*
guarded sailing directions are. By that time the
only women passengers left aboard were my unim-
pwtant self and the aIw*aA's smartly garmented,

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

languid, and caref ul-of-herself wife of an army o£Ei-
oer who was bound for Bombay with a fixed inten-
tion of breaking through all the barbed red-tape
entanglements that lay between her and her hus-
band's station at Muskat.

''And where is the bally island?" I asked.

**0h, off sou'east. It isn*t even on our course.**

*'How long will it take to get the oil aboard?"

"About twelve to fourteen hours."

"Well, don't mind me. I knew when I came
aboard that I was not starting on a pleasure trip.
Are there any more delaying surprises?"

"There are. When we leave the oil island we go
to Penang."

"Oh, we do, do we? And at such a rate, when are
we likely to get to Bombay?"

"About three weeks hence — ^if we're lucky."

"Well, come on," said I, "let's get this cargo
aboard. What are we standing round like this for?"

But it was no use. The question was where to
put the imwieldy articles even after an apparatus
had been rigged up to handle them. I offered to
let him put one of the cranes in my cabin with the
long end of it sticking out through the port-hole,
but he only growled at me. Anyhow, the port-hole
was probably not large enough. It was a very
dinky ship as ships go. But I will say for it that
before it started on the final perilous lap through the
Mediterranean and on round to London it had a
cargo aboard to the value of more than a million
pounds sterling.

I could write a volume about the way we loaded
up, but perhaps I had better not. We managed it,
at any rate, and I assume a pronominal share in it

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

because before we were through I was so interested
that I felt as though I carried the whole tremendous
responsibility on my own shoulders.

We finally weighed anchor and plodded off to
the oil island. Our course lay through a dose-set
little archipelago which brought to mind all the
dreams one ever dreamed about owning an island
oneself. I shoidd like to own an island. And I
should want it to have long, shining white beaches,
a mysterious-seeming mangrove swamp at one end»
and fringes of tall, wind-bent palm-trees. But I
think I should want it to rise up out of the sea for
me somewhere in the vicinity of New York Harbor.

The oil island was a scar on the dream canvas,
except that down on a long point to the westward
there was a thick grove of cocoanut-palms with all
the trees at the water's edge leaning toward the
sunset. Otherwise it was a collection of unsightly
tanks set in gashes cut in the hillsides.

We groaned our way up against an expensive
and up-to-date-looking concrete dock, and they
carried a four-inch hose through a hatch and at-
tached it to a tank in our hold. Then they began to
pump. The last thing I remember was a curious
rhythmic sound — ^a combination of chug-chug and
gurgle-gurgle — ^which went on far into the night.
I know, because far into the night I wandered round
the ship, trying to find a spot where the temperature
felt like something less than one hundred and ten.
I fell asleep in a deck chair as I was wondering what
it would be like in my cabin.

I think I shall have to pass Penang without com-
ment. Though, come to think of it, I cannot. It

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

was at Penang that I gave up ten dollars for a
pagoda. It would be better to pass Colombo. At
G>lombo I got my only excitement out of an
insect.

It is called the leaf -insect, and until it starts to
crawl it is quite impossible to tell where the leaf
leaves off and it begins. It comes in all sizes from
three inches long to the length of a little-finger
nail. And it is not a leaf come to life, though that
is what it looks like. It hatches out of tiny, square,
brown eggs. What would be the leaf stem is its
backbone, and the point where the leaf attaches
to the twig is its head. Its legs look like bits of
decayed and ragged leaf, and no two of them are
identical in length, size, or shape. Its wings are
irregular and veiny and have small discolorations on
them, as though they had been touched by early
frost. You could not tell the creature from the
leaf it was sitting on to save your eyes. Most
extraordinary thing I ever saw! It gave me the
creeps and made me think of horror stories I have
read about vampire orchids and boa-constrictor
vines that yearn for human blood.

If I could have taken my eyes off the thing I
might have seen more in Colombo, but we were
there only long enough to take on a few barge-loads
of tea, and the only other thing I did was to drive
out to a hotel on a rocky point overlooking a storm-
swept bay where hundreds of catamarans go fishing
and scud home before the wind, with one huge
brown sail on each bellying as though it woidd burst.
You sit and watch them with a thrill in your blood
as they fly before the darkening clouds and ride
the high breakers to the long curving beach. And

3 21

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

there they are pulled up under the bending cocoanut-
palms, to be secured for the night. You sit and
watch them and drink Ceylon tea, while, by way of
variety of entertainment, dozens of head-nodding,
soft-spoken crows crowd dose about you to watch
every mouthf id of toast and cake that you eat and
to beg for scraps like a lot of pet kittens.

"Kaw-kaw?" says one, very gently.

^*No, I want it myself,** says you.

"Kaw-kaw!** not so gently.

"Oh, very well! You may have a bit if you will
take it out of my fingers. But, careful now!**

And as you bend down one of the others leaps like
a flash to your table and grabs your cream-puff.
At least it was my cream-puff that he got; then
the black rascals gathered out on the lawn with it,
looked at me out of the comers of their eyes, and
laughed !

The knifelike catamarans with their great, square,
brown sails and wide-curving outriggers scudded
before the wind; storm-clouds rolled black across a
rose-shot sunset sky; the tall, tortiu^ palm-trees
lining the long white beach lifted their heads before
the wind gusts and bowed before the onrush of the
foaming breakers — ^and the friendly crows tilted
their heads at me and wondered what it coidd be
in their familiar surroundings that made me look
so enthralled.

After all, that was not much to see in Colombo,
was it? But it took time, as a dream takes time.
A swift hour, perhaps, and life*s gallery the richer
for one more unforgetable picture. At any rate,
when I come to it I shall be able to pass Colombo
without comment.

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

But Penang. At Penang I gave up ten dollars
jor a pagoda. I could not very well give up less,
because in the subscription-book the Buddhist
handed me ten dollars was the smallest recorded
contribution. There were many sums in three
figures set opposite the names of Christians, but the
ones, twos, and fives must have been rubbed out as
fast as they were put in.

"We are trying very hard," said the Chinese
monk, "to turn th^ thoughts of our young men
back to religion. The youths of the Buddhist faith
have grown worldly beyond belief, and they almost
never come to the temple to pray. So we intend to
erect a magnificent pagoda, a thing of beauty and
inspiration that they cannot escape* Whenever
their eyes rest upon it their thoughts will turn in
spite of themselves to the gods. It will be only
through the gracious benevolence of our friends and
visitors that we shall be able to do this.'*

And that was where he passed me the book. I
looked through it and saw all the big figures. There
were pages of them, and I am sure he had collected
thousands upon thousands of dollars. I hesitated
a moment, but I finally said :

"Oh, well — " And as I put down the figure ten
and made a dollar mark I murmured to myself,
"There goes a neutralizer for every mission-Sunday
penny of my entire wasted Christian childhood!"

It was in the monks' refectory attached to one of
the largest and finest Buddhist temples in the world.
To see it I had climbed a mountain-side, up hun-
dreds of moss-grown steps imder the interlacing
boughs of giant deodars. I had paused at the pool
of the sacred turtles and had bought fresh, cool,

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

green weeds at a little booth on its edge to feed to
the monstrous, slow-moving creatmes. Thai I had
climbed more steps to come to the brink ci the
basin of the sacred carp. There I bou^t small
sweet cakes and crumbled them on the scummy
surface for the sake of seeing fins flash and fish
tails whisked in the air. More steps and more —
on up the templed mountain-side; past rich, red,
uptilted roof-lines among the tree-tops; throng
red-laoquered and tinsel-hung interiors shdtor^
ing great Buddhas asleep and great Buddhas
awake and innumerable small Buddhas passing
throng the agonizing stages of life unto life
unto — nothingness!

And then the monk got me. A monk upon
whom hung long, white, softly falling robes. He
was a Chinese who spoke almost faultless English,
who was handsome in an altogether Western sense,
and who had the manners of a chamberlain of the
Court of St. James's.

** It will be only through the gracious benevolence
of our friends and visitors that we shall be able
to do this,'' he said.

To build a pagoda! To turn the thoughts of
Buddhist youth back to the gods! And down in
the town, as I was driving along toward the jetty,
I passed a fine modem building which had chiseled
in the stone above its wide entrance:
YOUNG MEN'S BUDDHIST ASSOCIATION

Flattery in its sincerest form!

Penang is an island on one side of a narrow strait,
and a concession of about two hundred and eighty
square miles on the other. It is the oldest British

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

settlement in the Straits of Malacca, predating
Singapore by twenty-three years, and it was
founded by Francis I^ht, father of William light
who founded Adelaide, Australia, and whose por-
trait hangs in the National Gallery in London.
There is a reproduction of the portrait in a stupid
big ** boost-book** I found in the ship's little library;
and a wild-eyed, rumple-haired man son William
was! His mother was Malayan.

Penang has a population of about twelve hundred
Europeans — ^British, mostly — ^and more than one
hundred and eighty thousand Asiatics, a very large
percentage of the Asiatic population being Chinese.
The Chinese are the rich men. They own prac-
tically all the great cocoanut-plantations through
which one must drive to reach any point on the
island or on the mainland opposite, and, while
England maintains law and order, it is they who
export much of the tin, rubber, coflFee, spices,
tapioca, copra, sago, and other products which con-
stitute the wealth of the Settlement.

It was between Penang and Colombo that Bar-
retto first began to worry about my life-preserver.
He came into my cabin one day and took it down
out of its rack over my berth, and, carefully placing
it where it woidd take up the most room and be
most in the way, said, solemnly, ''I think more
better you keep dose by now.** And after that he
woidd have followed me around with it if I had
encouraged him.

Barretto was my cabin steward. He was what is
known in this part of the world as a "Goa boy.'*
That is, he was a mixture of Indian and Portuguese

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

and came from the little Portugue^ colony of Goa,
which supplies nearly all ship and hotel servants,
for the reason that, being neither fish, flesh, fowl,
nor good red herring — or, in other words, having no
caste to lose — ^they are able to handle any kind of
food or do any kind of work without polluting
themselves. They are supposed to be Christians.

Barretto had adopted me after the manner of the
**dog that adopted a man." He was forever at my
heels, offering lip solicitude and trying to square
himself. This all came about through my having
casually remarked to the chief steward that I
wished the creature would condescend to sweep my
cabin at least once a week, give me an occasional
drop of water for face-washing purposes, and not
act as though he expected me to wear out a bath-
towel before I could get a fresh one. The chief
must have had him "up on the mat,** because he
came into my cabin one day when I was busy writ-
ing and dropped on his knees before me. I was
never more surprised in my life. He put his little
brown hands together in a "now I lay me** fashion
and b^an an incoherent recital in which I caught
such phrases as "Wife and chil*ren,** "L*il* son —
so high, "One baby dead,** "Earn l*il* money,*'
"Li*r boy — so high — oh, memsahib!**

"Rise, little black-and-tan friend,*' said I, "and
make your apologies on your two feet.**

He would not understand such English, of course;
otherwise I shoidd not have used it. But he saw
that I did not laugh and he must have thought my
smile was one of benign sympathy. In any case, he
adopted me, and after that he was always leaving
brooms and dust«cloths around where I could see

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

for. myself that he had been using them. And
bath-towels! From Hongkong to Singapore I had
only one; from Singapore to Bombay I had a stack
of them in my cabin all the time, and always osten-
tatiously displayed in some spot from which I had
to hurl them in order to get at something else.

It was a danger zone mto Colombo, but it was a
far more dangerous zone into Bombay. Forty-odd
mines had been swept up within a certain area
round the port — and the doctor had told us they
never were laid by the Huns! — so it was necessary
that every ship shoidd enter through a defined and
carefully guarded channel.

It was about ten o'clock in the morning when we
came up to the point indicated in our sailing direc-
tions as the foot of the lane of safety for us, and
there we joined an interesting company of ships.

One of them was on fire— a big freighter down

from the Persian Gulf. A ghastly sight she was!

Everything above her huU had been binned away

escept her funnels, and she was belching'great clouds

of smoke and occasional long licks of flame. Her

crew and some passengers, I learned afterward, had

taken to the life-boats and had been picked up by

the big ocean-going tugs that had come in response

to her wireless call. These tugs now had her in

tow and the intention was to beach her, but she

had a fearful list and looked as though she might

capsize at any moment. Some of us stood by the

deck rail and watched her intently for an hour or

more, thinking we were going to see her sink.

She looked as though she could hardly be worth

beach room even on an empty beach.

«7

fW^

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

Hien there was a troop-ship from East Africa
lying off our port bow, filled with happy men in
khaki who crowded the rails and shouted across at
us; and a short distance away lay a big hospital-
ship from Mesopotamia. A half-dozen small cargo-
carriers and a full oil-tanker, all low in the water,
were up ahead, while beyond a little way another
tanker, outward bound and evidently empty, was
speeding along in defiance of mines and kicking
her propellers in the air as though she were having
the time of her young life. The tankers were
painted black and vermilion, the hospital-ship was
in the white and red of the Cross of Mercy, the
trooper was grotesquely camouflaged, and every-
thing else was battle gray. The tropic sun was
beating eye-searing sparks from a shimmering sea,
and all round hovered a wonderful silence. The
scene was a study in unbelievable qolor.

Then down came the little black mine-sweepers.
They were very efficient-looking and just a bit
cocky about themselves.

''Here, you chaps, stand about now, will you!'*
they seemed to say. "Let the hospital-ship go
first. Look alive there, little tanker! What d'ye
think you are — ^royalty? Move over to starboard
and make way. That's right! Troops next! And
now you dilapidated old merchantman" — ^this to
us — "move along. No need to tell you to keep
your speed down. You couldn't make more than
six knots to save your bloomin' old hull! Be off
with you, all of you ! You've got a dear way up to
the docks now, thanks to us as risks our lives for
you! If it wasn't for us you'd all be down with
Davy Jones!"

THE SHORTEST WAY THERE

And the old merchantman, weighed down with
cargo worth more than a million pomxds sterling,
puffed a humble response from her big bass horn
and churned slowly away in the wake of the trooper
— the old merchantman that would go on from
Bombay, through Suez, across the Mediterranean,
and round through the dangers of the Atlantic to
London !

And it was just twenty-seven days since we left
Hongkong!

CHAPTER m

THE BOMBAY SIDE OF THE PUNKA

IT should have been cool in Bombay. It was not
cool. I have set at the head of this chapter a
phrase which is supposed to mean "cool/* but it
is a phrase which must have been invented by some
one in a moment of derisive delirium induced by
hot atmospheric pressure. It refers to the side of
the punka opposite the ropes where the strongest
and coolest breeze is to be enjoyed, but, so far as
my experience goes, it suggests an absolutely false
idea of the Bombay climate.

It is said that the cool season is due in Bombay
along in October. And this may be true. But I
can testify that it makes its way in very cautiously
and that in its earliest efforts it likes best to catch
the stranger imawares along about three o'clock in
the morning. In daytime it may haimt a few shady
comers, but it is wholly imperceptible in any spot
the Sim touches.

One's attention is sometimes called to cmiously
convincing evidence that the war has actually
changed the climate in the hitherto temperate re-
gions of the earth, but India is too far from the guns
to get the benefit of any atmospheric disturbance
they may create.

THE BOMBAY SIDE OP THE PUNKA

However, while the physical discomfort of the
white man in the brown man's land is not dimin-
ished, he thinks less about it than he formerly did.
Toil and worry and sustained serious-mindedness
have taken the place of leisure and fascinating
frivolity, and non-essentials have faded for most
persons into the unregarded background of life.
This is true in some degree all over India; it is
especially true in Bombay, which rose at the begin-
ning of the war to pre-eminent importance as the
chief base of the war zones of the East.

The port of Bombay is the front door of India.
Following the long coast-line round the tremendous
peninsula, one discovers no side doors of special
consequence; and Madras and Calcutta open upon
Asia and the realms of the Pacific. That is why
Bombay, destined to become the first city of India,
developed into one of the busiest centers of activity
on earth when India turned to face a European
world at war and to throw her weight into the strug-
gle for the Empire's existence.

On the way round from Colombo I reread some
of Mark Twain's impressions of Bombay in More
Tramps Abroad. A friend in Japan gave me this
old treasure, with which I thought I was entirely
familiar, and I had a delightful browse in its forever-
green pages. It was a great mistake.

Mark Twain had what he himself called ''an un-
regulated imagination." In an instant he saw Bom-
bay as ''a bewitching place, a bewildering place,
an enchanting place — ^the Arabian Nights come
again!" And in an instant he saw all the color and
dash and heard all the wild sounds and the weird

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

music of Oriental life which others must search for
and, having foimd, perhaps may never recognize.
As a preliminary guide he serves prindpaliy to
make one regret one's own sobriety of soul.

However, after we had crept for hours up through
the buoyed channel with nothing at all to see except
a dim, far-away coast-line» I did get a vision of
Bombay. Not a view; a vision. It had been a
long, weary, slow-passing day. By that time it was
late afternoon and a white mist that was lying on
the sea floated up round the base of the city like a
filmy veil. No buildings at all could be seen, but
rising above the mist were many gilded domes,
shining white minarets, and uneven red roof-lines,
all bathed in the glow from a great flame-colored sun
that hung low in the west. It was rather wonderful
and alluring.

Then we steamed up and dropped anchor in a
harbor crowded with ships : hospital-ships — ^I never
saw so many hospital-ships in one port! — battle-
gray freighters and fighters; camouflaged troopers;
tankers and tubs; tugs, scows, baiges, common row-
boats, and many swift-scurrying launches. Where-
upon the doctors and passport officials came aboard
and the stewards began to pile the luggage on the
decks preparatory to putting it ashore. The re-
mainder of the day was taken up with the -usual
inspections of various kinds.

When we got up to the dock it was black dark
and pouring rain, but, having been on the ship
twenty-seven days, I was glad to go ashore under
any circumstances. So I gathered my small be-
longings, gave a grand-looking Indian baggage-agent
instructions with regard to the rest, passed through

THE BOMBAY SmE OP THE PUNKA

the customs-house, signed my declaration of nothing
to declare, and made my way out through the pud-
dles and the downpour to a rickety gharri.

"A bewitching place, an enchanting place — ^the
Arabian Nights come again '7 No, nothing like
that! That for peace-times, maybe, and for the
fortunate few. For me miles of low, black freight-
sheds peered at in the gloom over a dripping, leak-
ing, clammy rain-apron; for me splattering mud
and slush and steaming, intolerable heat; for me a
rattle and rumble and jolt and the crack of a wicked
whip over the flank of a plodding horse; for me
disillusion and vague depression and an eventual
whirl up under the grand porte-cochere of a wildly
ornate hotel, the outer offices of which were
crowded with important-looking Indians in gor-
geous raiment and marvelous turbans and English-
men of the war services — ^the Englishmen all in
uniform. It was difficult to get accommodation,
but eventually they took me in; and I foimd lights
and laughter and gaiety and a feverish kind of rush
that could not fail to lift one's spirits. I knew I was
on the threshold at least of Mesopotamia!

Later I stood at a window of my room and looked
down into a deep court. The rain was falling in
gusts and flurries, washing the wonderful leaves of
giant palms that swayed and rustled in the wind.
I looked out across bands of light that were falling
from a thousand windows and balconies; I heard
the far-away clatter of horses' feet and the honk of
the horns of many motors; I felt considerably like
a stray cat in a strange wet alley, and I wanted to
make lonesome-sounding stray-cat noises, but I
thought to myself:

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

Well, never mind to-day. To-morrow we shall

And to-morrow brought a tel^ram whieh said
Their Excellencies would be pleased to have me
spend the week-end with them. Just that and noth-
ing more. It was indefinite with the indefiniteness
which assumes that one knows all that needs be
known. And of course one should know certain
kinds of things, but one doesn't always. And I
didn't know in the least where Their Excellencies
were to be found. The telegraphed invitation did
not say. The telephone-book and Murray's Guide
both had Government House located on Malabar
Hill, Malabar Hill being the smart residential dis-
trict of Bombay. But my physical discomfort
assured me that no Excellencies worthy of being
Excellencies would stay in Bombay in such weather.
I thought perhaps my telegram of acceptance —
which had to be addressed to a set of initials and
sent out into space — ^would be answered by some
aide-de-camp or other who would know that a per-
fect stranger should be told how and where to pro-
ceed. But, no, nothing like that.

If I did all my roaming ** 'mid pleasiu-es and pal-
aces " and Excellencies and governmental grandeurs
my homing instinct might have guided me, but I
don't mind acknowledging that I had to ask. I
waited until Friday morning, and I was due some
time Friday afternoon to present myself before
Their Excellencies. It was time for me to do some-
thing about it, and to save myself the embarrass-
ment of displaying my disgraceful ignorance to an
Englishman I went to my own American consul, a

THE BOMBAY SmE OF THE PUNKA

fine, upstanding, clean-cut, business-like, and alto-
gether satisfactory gentleman.

"Fm in trouble," I began.

With a look of patient resignation he made a
typically consular gesture which said as plainly as
words: **A11 Americans are when they are away
from home. At least that's the only kind a consiil
ever meets!'*

And I didn't clear up the atmosphere any too
hastily, because I rather enjoyed it; but after a not
much more than merely appreciable pause I eased
his mind by revealing tJie nature of my difficulties.
After which I was a citizen in good standing.

"You go to Cook's or somewhere and get a ticket
to Poona," he said. " Your train leaves at a quarter
to three and it gets you there about half past seven.
You can depend on Government House to do the
rest."

It was then half past twelve and it was a Moham-
medan holiday.

I would emphasize the fact that when a Moham-
medan or a I£ndu takes a holiday he takes it. No
half-holidays or anything like that for him. And
all his holidays that are really holy days are sacred
to him as no day was ever sacred to a Christian.
The Mohammedans in Bombay have a monopoly
of the chau£Feur and gharri-driving businesses, and
there was not a vehicle of any kind to be found
within a radius of five miles. I had been compelled
to walk to the consulate and I would jolly well have
to walk back to the hotel — ^a matter of at least two
miles. I had not yet had time to acquire a sun-
helmet, though one is told at once that it is prac-
tically certain death to go out without one, and my

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

sunshade was a blue-and-white-striped charmeuse
frivolity that anybody could see was far more orna-
mental than useful. However, dying is a process
one is never called upon to repeat. I walked. And,
having nervous qualms about the difficulties I was
going to encounter in getting something to take me
and my belongings to the two-forty-five train, I
walked fast.

In the mean time I had acquired a servant. When
you are traveling in India you simply have to have
a servant. Otherwise you go unserved. You do,
anyhow.

My servant was a Mohammedan and an elderly
kind of gentleman. You do not have women ser-
vants. Only about one and a half per cent, of the
women of India — ^in a population of three himdred
and twenty million plus — ^are literate in any degree,
and the minds of the other ninety-eight and a half
per cent., having become eyeless through eons of
benightedness, are not worth much for anything,
the universal testimony being that for general pur-
poses the average Indian ayah is utterly useless.

My servant's name was Vilayat. An Arabian
Nights kind of person he was, and I think he was
named for one of the forty thieves. He was six
feet three inches tall in his bare black feet, and he
wore a tall white turban on top of the rest of his
tallness. He had a gray beard and great dignity,
and he proved to be an expert at getting other
people to do his work for bakshish, which he freely
and grandly distributed from the expense allowance
I gave him. Having procured my tickets on the
way from the consulate, I handed them to him
and said:

THE BOMBAY SIDE OP THE PUNKA

"We take the two-forty-five train to Poona.*'

Whereupon I did my own packings while he went
off to make himself fit to associate with the govern-
mentally employed. He returned in fine flowing
raiment and a fresh turban marvelously wound
just in time to boss the coolies I had called to
carry my bags down to the motor-car I had myself,
with infinite difficulty, secured. Incidentally, he
solemnly explained that he had been compelled to
go to a mosque and offer a special prayer in order
to be cleansed of the sin of what he called "working"
on a holy day.

Just the same, everybody has to have one of him.
Life would not be worth living without him — ^what-
ever may be said of life with him. He got forty-
five rupees, or about fifteen dollars, a month. And
all the Anglo-Indians — ^Anglo-Indians being people
who really belong to India and are not just tem-
porary residents — complain bitterly about the way
servants' wages have gone up. And justly, too.
One good English servant is equal to at least three
Indians, and in order to get his work done at all
the Englishman in India must have so many of
them that in the end his bill for service often
amounts to more than it would at home.

Five dollars a month used to be excellent wages
for a bearer. Which reminds me that Vilayat was
a "bearer,*' not a servant. I'm sure I don't know
why. It is merely a local name and has no mean-
ing at all, so far as I can discover. I never saw
Vilayat bearing anything heavier than a parasol
or a railway ticket, unless my presence in the offing
might be counted as a burden. Though, come to
think of it, all these servants apply for positions

4 87

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

anned with |iacl:ets of letters ci excessive recom-
mendation; many of them aged and frayed. And
these letters invariably bc^in* "The bearer,** So-aiHl
so. That must be the way they came by thor
curious designatioa.

Poona lies southeast of Bombay about one hun-
dred and twenty miles, and to get to it the nflway
crosses the great Bore Ghat, a ^lat bdng a moun-
tain pass or a range ci mountains or a flight of steps
leading down to a river where Hindus bum thdr
dead and go for holy ablutions, and a number of
other things, for aU I know. It is a little confusing
at first, but one learns to know the difference be-
tween a mountain range and a stairway, even
though they are called by the same name.

When I am climbing a mountain into cod
altitudes I always feel that I am going north.
One goes ''up north** and ''down south,** and it is
humanly instinctive to fed that everything in a
southerly direction should be down-hill. An in-
dividual mental quirk, I suppose. The dimb down
south up to Poona is a steep and winding dimb for
which they have to use powerful engines that puff
and struggle and have brakes that grind and groan.
There are twenty-six tunnels and dght dizzy
viaducts in the course of sixteen miles over the
Bore Ghat, and during the rains one can count as
many as fifty waterfalls pouring out of the gaunt
black rock of the almost perpendicular hills. A
specially magnificent one, up at the head of a vast
panoramic valley, has a sheer drop of more than
three hundred feet.

In the immediate vicinity of this there are a

THE BOMBAY SIDE OF THE PUNKA

niunber of gigantic pipe-lines winding down the
mountain-side, and long converging lines of tall
steel towers carrying wire up over the far-away
crests and off into a world beyond. One wants to
know the why and the wherefore of these, and one
learns that they are the harness of the waterfalls.
An enterprising company has built a great reservoir;
the water is stored in the heights, and when the
rains are over and the falls dry up it is let down as
it is required, and the year round enough power is
generated to light Bombay, run its electric railways,
and turn every wheel in the whole presidency, if
need be.

It is rather a wonderful little journey to Poona,
as journeys go. At Bombay station Vilayat had
watched me secure for myself a seat in a first-class
compartment, had directed his coolie where to put
my dressing-bag, and had then betaken himself to
some other part of the train. And that was the
last I saw of him.

There was an English army officer sitting oppo-
site me and I finally succeeded in making him
realize that he might talk to me without outraging
any very sacred conventions. He was quite con-
servative about it at first and I missed no scenery
on his account, but when he once got going he was
as entertaining as need be. He had been badly
wounded in Mesopotamia, had spent several weeks
in hospital at Bombay, and had just returned from
a month's leave which he spent in Kashmir on a
moimtain lake ^*in a house-boat moored in the wide-
branched shade of a drooping chenar-tree.'' Can-
not say that I was all wrought up with pity for him.

When we stopped at Kirkee he was telling me all

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

about how he hunted big game in the Kashmir
mountains in the daytime and carved wood treas-
ures in the bazaars of the towns in the evenings.

Kirkee is three and a half miles from Poona and
about a mile and a half from (jovemment House,
which is called Ganeshkhind. And Kirkee is the
station for Ganeshkhind. I did not know that*
How should I? You address mail and tel^rams to
"(Jovemment House, Poona." That was what
the upstanding, clean-cut, business-like, and alto-
gether satisfactory American consul told me. But
he did not tell me that when you are a visitor you
get off at Kirkee and go from there to Ganeshkhind.

I was busy listening to my army officer and wish-
ing I owned some of his carved-wood treasures. In
fact, it all sounded so wonderful that I was just
about making up my mind to forget Baghdad and
to go on up to Kashmir. Then I happened to glance
out of the window.

It was about half past seven o'clock, dark as mid-
night, and the usual evening rain of the rainy
season was coming down in torrents. In the gleam
of the station lights I saw a white uniform with red
trimmings and a sort of red flannel breastplate
effect fastened on with brass buttons. It was
immistakable.

"Isn't that a Government House uniform?" I
asked.

The officer peered out into the gloom and an-
swered, "Yes, that's a Government House chauf-
feur."

I had not told him where I was going, else he prob-
ably would have told me where to get off. And
just then a worried-looking yomig man came rush-

THE BOMBAY SmE OP THE PUNKA

ing along the platfonn looking in at the windows.
He had lost something. That something was my-
self. I knew him at once for a secretary. Though
he was not. He was an aide-de-camp out of
uniform. But aides and secretaries are usually of
the same breed of attractive and irresponsible
youth. It was he who had not troubled to tell me
where to go and how to get there. I was glad he
had lost me. He caught my eye.

"Are you for Government House?" he shouted.

With a variety of gesticulation I said, yes, I was.
The train had begun to move and was gaining
speed every instant, so he paid no further attention
to me. He just gathered himself into an energetic
little knot and yelled: "Ya-a-r! Ya-r-r! Stop!
Stop !" And they threw on the brakes.

Somebody dug Vilayat out, and he emerged from
somewhere with my blue-and-white-striped char-
meuse parasol, but my week-end trunk with all the
essentials in it was in the goods-van — otherwise the
baggage-coach ahead. They had not troubled to
back the train up to the station, and the goods-van
was just where a lot of roaring little rivulets were
sweeping down the track-sides. The trunk simply
had to go on to Poona, because by that time the
conductor was visibly annoyed and the passengers
were all gathering on the platforms or thrusting
their heads out of windows into the rain and asking
sarcastic questions.

Vilayat was ordered to go on to Poona with the
trunk, and one of the motor-cars was sent after
him to fetch him and it back to Ganeshkhind with
all haste. It was then nearly eight o'clock, and at
eight-thirty there was to be a grand dinner party

TDE WAR IN TDE CRADLE OF TBE WORLD

with forty guests. This is as good a place as any,
I suf^KMe, to say that I knew aboidiitdy nothing
about Indian GoTemment House iMoeeduies. I^et
nobody imagine that they are like any other i»o-
oedures anywhere dse on earth.

AH this tinie» standing under umbidlas in the rain
— with lips set, no doubt, in patient resignation —
were a colonel and his lady; an ardideaoon, no less!
and a couple of other gu^ts. We all had to crowd
into one autonfobfle, the other one having gone to
Poona for my trunk, and I think they were dis-
pleased with me. I really think they woe. But
as soon as I told them I was a stray cat in a strange
alley and aU about how I had to go to the American
consul to find out where the governor of the great
Bombay Presidency lived, they b^an to feel
better about it. They were very nice, as a matter
of fact, and when we whirled up under the porte-
coch&re of Government House we were all laughing
so much like ordinary humans that the three aides
who came out to meet us in gold rope, yellow
lapels, and clicking spurs had to assume a little
extra dignity in order to bring us down to the
level of decorum requisite to the environment.

And I don't mind saying I was just a little awe-
stricken. I had never seen anything quite like it
before. I have met here and there, in my meander-
ings round the earth, a few notable occupants of
notable palaces. But everything in India is dif-
ferent. I learned that at once. And I learned
why, too. I shall come to that presently.

There were two very tall Indians standing beside
the steps which led up imder the porte-coch^ to
the entrance. They were all dr^sed up in red,

THE BOMBAY SmE OP THE PUNKA

with splendid high turbans, and very gracefully and
statelily they held ten-foot lances with gilded axes
crossing spears at their tips.

My thoughts flew back to the years I once upon
a time spent in Manila, and I made a few swift,
entertaining comparisons. The Philippines have
about ten million inhabitants, and the Governor-
Greneralship of the Philippines is the biggest execu-
tive job that the American President has to offer
any man.

Malacafian Palace, where the Governor-General
lives in Manila, is a rather beautiful and dignified
old Spanish residence, and the gardens roimd about
have been made very fine by a succession of Amer^
ican governors. But as for pageant and parade and
the "pomp of power," there has never been any-
thing like that under American so-called sover-
eignty. Instead of gorgeously uniformed senti-
nels guarding the grand entrance, there is an Irish
policeman.

And pwhat are ye afther wantin' now?*' says he.
Is the Governor in?" says you.

And you never by any chance say "His Excel-
lency." You might very decidedly approve of cere-
moniousness yourself, but you would know better
than to try it on an Irish policeman.

"Well, shure, he may be, an' ag'in he may not
be," says he. "It all depinds. Have ye got an
engagement with 'im now?"

You have, of course. Even an American would
hardly have the temerity to walk in on a governor
without letting him know. Though, come to think
of it, I believe they have been known to do so. And
I don't know about Malacafian Palace now, either.

€4

THE WAR IN THE C!RADLE OF THE WORLD

The Irish policeman was of the old Taf t and Roose-
veltian days. It was democracy carried to its
logical conclusion, but I am not sure that many
persons were entirely satisfied with it.

Our Jacksonian simplicity is probably all a mis-
take anyhow, and especially in our outlands. The
brown peoples love show and r^ard it as an evi-
dence of strength. They respect a combination of
bright red and shining brass, while the dank of
panoply and the dink of ornamentation are music
to their ears. And, for that matter, white peoples
are not wholly immune to the influence of ostenta-
tion and magnificence. The tall red-and-brass-dad
Indians with the long lances certainly impressed me.
They made me feel as though I ought to be trailing
priceless brocades up the imposing steps, cardessly
dropping pearls on the way.

One of these days I intend to write a detailed
accoimt of a number of things, but just now I must
hurry on because this really is not a visit to India.
It is the splendid ceremony of Indian offidal life
that I wish to emphasize. The Viceroy and the
governors of presidendes and provinces are the
direct representatives of the King-Emperor, and it
is definitely a part of their offidal business to main-
tain the dignity of Empire as it is represented in
courtly ceremony and diow. It is not every man
and woman, however highly they may have been
bom and however used they may always have been
to the scenic effects of court life, who can make a
success of it in a colonial environment. England
trains a majority of her colonial administrators in
colonial administration, and once they get into it
and make a success of it it is a life sentence.

THE BOMBAY SmE OP THE PUNKA

My things turned up in the nick of time and I was
able to descend to the grand drawing-room in a
leisurely manner. I was glad of that, because if
there is anything I do not approve of it is de-
scending to a drawing-room in an unleisurely
manner.

I found when I entered, that a majority of the
other thirty-seven guests had already assembled,
and the first person my eyes fell upon was a tall,
stately lady in white satin with a rope of pearls and
a tiara. This was rather disconcerting and made me
conscious of the wrinkles in my gold-brocaded
chiffon over champagne color. Gold-brocaded chif-
fon over champagne color sounds rather nice as a
description, but there are things which no descrip-
tion can possibly describe, and that gown is among
them. I suppose one would hardly be expected to
travel roimd with one's tiara — especially in war-
time — but one might have had along one's new
doth of silver with silver lace and blue net draperies,
if it had not been for the stupidity of a ship's
baggage-master. I forgot to say that my inno-
vation-and-too-big-f or-any-cabin trunk which con-
tained all my best garments was put off the ship by
mistake at Singapore and that I might not get it
for a month — ^if ever!

But to me this tragedy was a mere detafl. I did
not know that I was about to encounter a case of if-
you-have-dothes-prepare-to-wear-them-now. I was
used to war-time simplidty and had come happily
to a point in my spiritual development where
packing for a week-end was the least of my worries,
whether I had anything spedal to pack or not.
However, the tiara lady had fewer companions in

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

her haughtiness than I had in my humbleness, so I
managed not to mind.

The numerous aides went through some adroit
social maneuvers which resulted in the precise but
careless-like circular line-up of the guests round
the room» then the band in the patio — ^I do not
know what else to call a great flag-paved and
beautifully fiu*nished, half-indoors and half-out-
doors space — ^began to play, and Their Excellencies
entered.

At which point I intend to stop being frivolous.
I am not meaning to be disrespectful in any case.
I was surprised, that was all ; and so much so that
I took one of my dinner partners into my confidence
and told him so, saying that it was the first time
since the war began that I had seen anything so
completely normal in the way of social form and
formalities. It was the first time in three years, for
instance, that I had seen a company of women wear-
ing white gloves, and I had spent a good deal of
time in London, in Paris, and in Rome.

"But this is India," said he. "We wanted to
stop all the seeming extravagances here, too, but
if we should let down an inch or give up a single
item of our usual processes it would be taken at
once by the Indians as a sign of weakness."

And that was the explanation. India is proud
of the strength of Great Britain. India loves the
vast confederation of power represented by the
King-Emperor. It has been characteristic of the
Indian peoples throughout their history to desert
a banner that begins to trail, and England^s banner
as it is borne aloft in India to-day is the only sign
by which the teeming millions are capable of gaug-

THE BOMBAY SIDE OP THE PUNKA

ing the might of England. It is necessary to
maintain the immediate and outer semblances of
normality.

I was to learn next morning whence came all the
flowers. There are broad acres, hundreds of them»
within the domain of Ganeshkhind, and the park
surrounding the house, with its stretches of velvety
lawn, its banks of shrubbery, its ancient trees, its
winding, shady walks, its lakes and lily-ponds, and
its unlimited flower gardens, is riotously beautiful.

The long table was ablaze with yellow cosmos
under very high candles, the rays from which shot
upward into the ten thousand reflecting facets of a
row of magnificent old crystal chandeliers. It was
a beautiful scene, and could have made one forget
the war for a moment had it not been that every
man at the table except His Excellency was in
uniform.

And it was a noble room. With a great fireplace
at one end;^ its vast wall spaces were paneled from
floor to beamed ceiling in splendid oak. Within
the panels hung portraits of British sovereigns.

Her Excellency sat facing the Queen on one side,
while His Excellency faced the King on the other.
Not that it makes much difference, perhaps, but I
faced King William — which shows how far re-
moved I was from the seat on His Excellency's
right. I was separated from that honor by the
beneficent reigns of both Queen Victoria and King
Edward, to say nothing of Queen Victoria as a girl.

I had an army officer on either side of me, and
the one of lesser rank, at least, gave an excellent
imitation of a man who knows how to knit up the
threads of conversation even though their other

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

ends were held by a perfect stranger, and she an
impossible American. He of the higher rank and
greater rotimdity had a mistaken idea which he
spent some time during dinner in misadroitly ex-
posing. This idea was that to make himself popu-
lar with me all he had to do was to talk about how
long it took the United States to get into the war.
Some Englishmen are like that. But not mafloy.
Heaven be thanked !

At a certain point at any formal party in Lidia
the host rises to his feet; his guests do likewise;
they raise their glasses and he says, very quietly,
"The King-Emperor!" Then if there is a band
everybody stands perfectly still through the first
three lines of "God Save the King."

Americans used to loll around under the glorious
strains of "The Star-spangled Banner." Then
came a time when the national consciousness b^an
to stir and most of us got so we were able to struggle
to our feet — ^along about " the twilight's last gleam-
ing." After which a quickening of the national
heart under a threat of national danger and a sud-
den realization that the cue upon which promptly
to assume an attitude of reverence is, "Oh, say!"

And that is where we now all stand up. But
to know what yoiu* national anthem really means
you must hear its strains in an alien land over
which your flag flies as an emblem of authority.
Your flag stands for the liberties which it confers
and for the power by which it maintains them, and
if you have seen an unregenerate and chaotic people
rising to regeneracy and order imder its dean and
masterful might, you get a new and a different
feeling for it.

THE BOMBAY SmE OP THE PUNKA

When we rose to "The King-Emperor" at that
table I noticed in particular the long line of gor-
geously attired Indian house-service men who stood
rigidly at attention behind the guests they had
served, and my mind flashed beyond them and out
across the boundless expanse of India with her
three hundred and twenty-plus millions of people
for whom the British flag is a symbol of such
security and internal peace as they never knew
under any other, and it was reverently that I
echoed His Excellency's toast:

"The King-Emperor r*

CHAPTER IV

AN INTEBE8TING BUT ANXIOITS INTERVAL

IN the mean time it must not be forgotten that
I am on my way to Baghdad!

It was in the drawing-room after dinner the first
evening at Ganeshkhind that His Excellency said
tome:

''Welly now that we have you here, what specially
may we have the pleasure of doing for you?*'

*'I want to go to Baghdad!'* I announced — ^just
like that. And I confess that such a desire im-
pressed even me as being slightly unreasonable.
Lord Willingdon laughed in a way that should have
discouraged me utterly, and assured me that he
knew few persons in India who did not want to go
to Baghdad.

''But it is impossible!'* he said. "General Maude
never would consent to it, and without his consent
nobody can get into Mesopotamia at all. And a
lady! Oh no! He wouldn't have a lady within a
thousand miles of Baghdad if he could help it."

"But I'm not a lady," I said. He looked a bit
startled for an instant, but he soon got what to the
average working-woman is an old-time joke, and
he seemed to like it.

'We might ask him?" I suggested.

AN INTERESTING BUT ANXIOUS INTERVAL

And it may be that was the least His Excellency
could have done, but I came in time to realize that
it was a very great deal. He was one of General
Maude's very close friends, but the etiquette of the
situation demanded that he convey my request
through the Viceroy and the chief of the General
Staff at Simla. I began at once to feel very small
and insignificant, and I had an uncomfortable im-
pression that to make such a request through such
a channel entitled me to social ostracism.

However, the request was made, and I sat down
to await the issue.

No, I did not sit down. I explored Bombay.

The British did not take Bombay away from its
original owners — ^whoever they may have been.
The Portuguese did that a whole century before the
little island colony came to the crown of Britain
and it came to the crown of Britain as part of the
dowry of Catherine of Braganza when ^e married
Charles H. That is the picturesque small item of
history which gives Bombay a unique place in the
British Empire. Just a little group of practically
uninhabited islands lying close in against the main-
land of India, they were transferred to England the
same year New York became an incorporated city —
in 1665.

Just a little group of islands lying close in against
the mainland of India, they were separated by shal-
low channels which have since been filled in or
spanned by gigantic causeways, so that now the
island of Bombay, twenty-two and a half squajre
miles in area, looks as though God and not enter-
prising Englishmen had made it.

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

Why the Portuguese should have so greatly un-
derestimated the value of the place would be diffi-
cult to figure out. Those things interest me, and I
want to drag the ancient mistaken ones back and say
to them, "Well, here now, don't you see?" — ^thus
and so. But the Portuguese seem always to have
been bad judges of ports. And always they have
given things up, not reluctantly and with duly filed
protests, but with a kind of confident assurance
that they were getting the better of the bargain.
In the early nineteenth century they clung jealously
to the shallow and useless harbor of Macao on the
Pacific coast of Asia, while they permitted the Brit-
ish to acquire the inestimably valuable near-by
island of Hongkong, along with the mde and deep
waterways surrounding it. And in the seventeenth
century they preferred the unimportant port of
Goa south of Bombay on the mainland coast —
which they still possess — ^to the advantages of the
finest harbor in the East, which the British instantly
recognized.

At least the British traders did. In those days
the British traders — sailing the seas in their picture
ships of imtold and untellable romance — ^were out
for themselves. «They were neither altruistic nor
imperialistic. They thought little of benefiting
the peoples of the rich Eastern lands into which
they thrust themselves, and as little of aggrandize-
ment for the throne of their sovereign. It was an
age of adventure and gain, and adventure and gain
were the twin fascinations the old traders piUTsued,
along with their contemporaries of nearly every
nationality.

King Charles 11 on his throne, waging his unin-

AN INTERESTING BUT ANXIOUS INTERVAL

telligent battle for *' divine right'' against the then
well-developed spirit of democracy among his Anglo-
Saxon people — ^what could he know about the values
of the great outer world then breathing its first
breath of unbelievable life? Pour years after the
islands of Bombay came to him in the dowry of
Catherine of Braganza he transferred them to the
East India Company jot an annual rented of fifty
doUarsl And not so v^ry long before that the Indians
sold the island of Manhattan for something plus a
string of beads!

Bombay now has nearly one million inhabitants.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century it al-
ready had two himdred thousand, and early in
the twentieth century the census-takers counted
959,537 souls. Nearly seven himdred thousand of
these are Hindus and one hundred and fifty thou-
sand are Mohammedans, while less than sixteen
thousand, counting both mixed and pure European
blood, are Christians.

There are about sixty thousand Parsees, and the
Parsees are perhaps the most interesting and im-
portant element in the community. It is to British
initiative and example and to Parsee appreciation,
intelligence, and generosity that Bombay owes the
fact of her present existence as one of the most
beautiful cities in the world. Though I do not
mean to imply that there have not been many
generous, intelligent, and appreciative Hindu and
Mohammedan citizens. It is just that the Parsees
have been peculiarly conspicuous for these char-
acteristics.

Yet they still maintain the unthinkable Towers of

Silence in the heart and center 6f Bombay's most
6 «8

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

fashionable residential district; tlie Towers of
Silence, where the Parsee dead are disposed of by
the forever hovering, horrible flocks of vultures
that, on occasion, grow gorged and careless and
drop human flesh and little bones in the flowering,
fragrant gardens of the great on Malabar Hill.
But what would you? The Towers of Silence are
unthinkable only to the Christian mind. To the
mind of the Parsee all other methods of disposing
of his dead are unthinkable.

The Parsees are Zoroastrians — ^worshipers of the
sun and fire as the truest manifestations of the
Almighty — ^and they came down from Persia into
India about the middle of the seventh century when
they began to be grossly persecuted by the Moham-
medan conquerors of ibe Sassanide Empire. And
they were persecuted always by the Mohammedan
conquerors of Lidia and by the Hindus, imtil the
happy day arrived for all religions when British
power began to be predominant in India. But
Bombay was purely British long before the rest of
India was anything but a happy himting-ground
for English merchants, and the Parsees — ^along
with other mistreated elements in th,e population —
flocked to the sure shelter of the British flag.
There are only about one hundred and one thousand
Parsees in all India to-day, and ninety thousand of
them belong to the Bombay Presidency, while at
least sixty thousand of them live in the dty of
Bombay.

Many of them are gentlemen of the finest type,
and they are distinguishable by their long black
coats and the ciuious, stiff, black, miter-like hats
they wear. Their homes are among the most pre-

AN INTERESTING BUT ANXIOUS INTERVAL

tentious in the city and they control a tremendous
percentage of its commerce and trade.

But they are remarkable principally for their
unusual generosity.

The old-time Britishers in the East India Com-
pany set the example of dvic ambition by building
the great Town Hall, and since then millions of
pounds sterling have been spent by public-spirited
citizens for the erection of all kinds of fine buildings
and institutions such as most municipalities have to
worry along without unless they can be municipally
provided.

One of the most interesting things about Bombay
is the fact that it cannot be governed. It has to
be coaxed and cajoled and at times benevolently
deceived. It can be governed in so far as control
by the police and the courts over individual action
is concerned, but government may not arbitrarily
undertake anything in the way of development and
improvement without precipitating a variety of
riots.

There is a great, teeming, native city lying round
the beautiful modem quarter — ^with its parks and
playgroimds, its deep-shaded avenues, its magnif-
icent asphalted, palace-lined drives, its clubs and
its churdies, and its uproariously ornamental public
biiildings — and in this native city there are large
bodies of representatives of each one of India's
numerous clashing religions. And one might men-
tion first the admirable Parsees.

Does a pitiful small minority of squeamish Eng-
lishmen desire the removal of the fearful Towers
of Silence to some point outside the heart and center
of its domestic life and social activities? To be

THE WAB IN THE CRADLE OF THE WOBLD

sure it does. But a united community of Parsees
stands ready to tell the squeamish Englishmen to
move themselves if they are not satisfied. The
park within which these stand is forbidden ground.
The idea of British oppression and despotism in
India is a curious kind of joke.

Does it seem to the best interest of all concerned
that a series of wide streets should be cut through
the native city and that laige modem tenement and
apartment houses should be biiilt to relieve conges-
tion and to improve deplorable sanitary conditions?
Yes» but in carrying out such projects certain time-
honored citizens' rights might have to be invaded.
In cutting a street, for instance, a Mohanunedan
mosque might be threatened, and if government
wants more trouble on its hands than it can con-
veniently manage, all it has to do is to invade by so
much as an inch the sacred premises of a Moham-
medan mosque.

Then there are the Jains and various castes of
the Hindu faith whose prejudices are deep-rooted
and far more important in their view than life
itself. And these people are dirty. Their city
reeks with filth even to-day, though a battle royal
has been waged for years against their habits and
customs. For example: Since 1896 plague has been
constantly prevalent in Bombay, and it breaks out
every once in so often in epidemic form. The port
has been quarantined time and again and com-
merce has suffered inestimable loss, while hundreds
of thousands of lives have been sacrificed. Bom-
bay would doubtless lead the whole East to-day in
population if it had not been for epidemic plague.

The leading men of the community decided a few

AN INTERESTING BUT ANXIOUS INTERVAL

years ago tliat something would have to be done
to ameliorate impossible conditions. So the Bom-
bay City Improvement Trust came into being, an
organization intrusted principally with the com-
plicated and nearly impossible business of getting
the property-owners and the population in general
, to listen to reason. It has in its membership eminent
and respected representatives of every community
and every sect in the dty, who serve without pay,
and who, for a good many years, have been going
on with the job as diligently and faithfully as
though they were making large private fortunes out
of it. Behind them a Public Works Department
and a body of their own builders and engineers
stand ready to drive a wedge of actual performance
into every breach they make in the compact preju-
dices of the people. And if that is not a curious way
for a government to get along with the governed,
there is nothing ciuious in this world.

But it succeeds by degrees. And it happens that
mthin the past five years splendid avenues actually
have been cut through the native city — ^not straight,
because wherever a Mohammedan mosque lay in
the way a detour had to be made; streets have
been widened; the drainage system has been tre-
mendoiisly improved; congested areas have been
thinned out; fine tenement-houses have been built
here and there, and such projects undertaken and
carried to completion as could not have been sug-
gested a few years ago.

There is a Port Trust also, and it, too, is a trust
in the sense that it is a guardian of public interests.
It is an older institution than the City Improvement
Trust and has more to show for its activities. It

THE WAB IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

has so much, in fact, that I shall not attempt to
write about it. Its members are able to deluge
any visitor who will hold still long enough, with
a flood of statistical narrative that will sweep him
oflP his feet. They like to ** point with pride,'* and
will defy you to name any city on earth that has
finer docks, more magnificent warehouses, a better
system of ndlway communication with the shipping
services, or that has reclaimed from the sea greater
areas of land.

Oh, all right, you say. You give up. Bombay is
in many ways altogether amazing, has more civic
pride to the square inch than any place you know
anything about, and will be a wonderful city when
it is finished. But ambition always keeps a few
laps ahead of performance and the war caught Bom-
bay looking like anything but a finished product.

And, as I have said, the port is the front door of
India. It was without a day's warning really that
that door was thrown open to the greatest influx
and egress of materials and men that the country
had ever known. But the result was that every-
thing went ahead and got itself completed and in
operation in about half the time that ordinarily
would be considered reasonable.

In India's terrific population there were before the
war only about one hundred and twenty-five thou-
sand Britishers all told, and of these more than three-
fifths were soldiers. There were some eighty thou-
sand English troops and one hundred and fifty
thousand native troops in the regular Indian army.
The native reserve forces amounted to only thirty-
six thousand men; there were eighteen tiiousand
Imperial Service troops furnished by the princes of

AN INTERESTING BUT ANXIOUS INTERVAL

the native states»and» in addition, thei^ was a home-
guardy trained by rc^lar officers, of thirty-six thou-
sand European and Anglo-Indian volunteers.

This was the sum total of the Indian military
establishment which kept India's millions quiescent
under the '* galling yoke" of England, and I am
told that when war was declared the whole force
precipitated itself upon the unready city of Bombay
with an evident intention of getting out and into
the thick of the fray without an instant's delay.

An exaggeration, of course. But that was the way
it seemed to the city's suddenly harassed inhabi-
tants. And it means that Bombay was invaded
almost overnight by an unprecedented crowd of
army officers engaged on the never-before-under-
taken-on-such-a-scale task of mobilization and
preparation for transport, while more troops than
the city had ever seen were moved in from canton-
ments all over India in anticipation of immediate
embarkation.

Everything everywhere was more or less muddled
in those days, and there must have been fearful
confusion in India. But Bombay could have been
nothing but thrillingly interesting. In private let-
ters and journals of the time I get a constantly
recurring note of furious impatience with the men
in conmiand, and it is not difficult to imagine the
heatedness and the excitement of luncheon- and
dinner-table conversations.

Nobody knew where he was going, but everybody
wanted to go to France — ^Indians and Englishmen
alike. Then rumors began to float around that a
force was to be sent to the Persian Gulf!

To the Persian Gulf? In the name of all that was

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

unreasonable — why? What good would a force do
off on a side-track like that when every available
man was needed to check the German advance in
the west!

Men who ought to have known better railed
openly at the authorities for not being able to realize
that India was not» as they expressed it, at that
moment the Hub of the Universe. What danger
could India be in from the north? None whatever!
And whatever England required of Turkey or Persia
could be obtained by peaceful negotiation after
Germany was destroyed. And Germany probably
would be destroyed, lock, stock, and bmd, within
three or four months !

What a delusion ! And how convincingly it proves
the innocent ignorance on the part of Englishmen
with regard to Germany's power and intention!
Little we dreamed in those days of what was ahead
of us! And little those men knew what a long, bitter
struggle they were to have to preserve India and
the Empire from the danger they were not able then
to recognize!

One day, along about mid-October, 1914, a great
fleet sailed out of Bombay Harbor. It was the
largest of its kind that anybody up to that time
had ever seen. It consisted of forty-six transports
and three battle-ships — or gunboats of sorts — ^and
it carried India's first contribution to the war.

Forty-two of the forty-six troop)ers carried two
separate forces; one consisting of cavalry, royal
artillery, and infantry for France, and the other
infantry, artillery, and Imperial Service troops for
East Africa. The other four, escorted by one gim-

AN INTERESTING BUT ANXIOUS INTERVAL

boat, were bound for the Persian Gulf — carrying the
vanguard of the army that has held the Mesopo-
tamian zone.

An officer who was in command of one of the
Indian raiments bound for the Persian Gulf — him*
self in a fit of depression at the time because he
could not go to France — ^has sketched for me the
scene of the sailing of this armada in colorful remi-
niscence. H.M.S. SwiftmiTe^ a unit in the convoy,
ran up a signal for all transports to be ready to
heave anchor, and, in quiet, impressive obedience,
each division moved slowly out to position in the
grand fleet. The formation was completed just be-
yond the wide, beautiful outer harbor, and it was
in the orange light of a tropical sunset that the
ships steamed majestically away. They were to
part company when night had fallen, to go their
separate mysterious directions.

One can imagine that Bombay, after weeks of the
excitement and rush of preparation, waked up next
morning with the feeling which has grown familiar
to so many persons in the world — ^the feeling of
being very much left behind.

But there was work to do. England and Turkey
were not yet at war; there was no Gallipoli and no
Mesopotwiia; but there were the German troops
in East Africa on the borders of British East Africa
to be accounted for, and Bombay would have to be
both the base of supplies and the port for casualties
in connection with operations in that direction.

And since England and Turkey declared war
within two weeks it was not long before Bombay
became the pivotal point of the widest-flung war
area of them all. Instantly, unanimously, and with

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD I

the strong support of the central government, the
British in India determined to discharge without
assistance every obligation that could be imposed
by the necessities of this area. And the actual per-
formance has exceeded everybody's original con-
ception of the possibilities.

As I am confining myself to a consideration of
Bombay as a great British city and center of war
activity in India I shall have to expose myself to a
charge of partiality and of neglect of the fine work
done and the sacrifices made in other cities and
provinces of the Empire. But I think no reasonable
person would expect any one to cover such a sub-
ject in less than several volumes.

Through the port of Bombay the armies in Meso-
potamia and East Africa had to be provided with
food, equipment, munitions, and all the parapher-
nalia of war, to say nothing of reinforcements mo-
bilized in India or coming from various directions
for transshipment at Bombay. But the first thing
the city had to face was the necessity for making
provision for the wounded and for meeting demands
for different kinds of relief. They were fairly well
oflf for peace-time hospitals — ^thanks to the gen-
erosity of public-spirited men — ^but a few hundred
casualties would have taxed their capacity, and be-
fore the war-organizers had time to finish their
preliminary discussions they began to get appeals
for help from Mesopotamia, from Gallipoli, and
even from Europ)e.

I cannot imagine how it was accomplished, but
the city now has five or six of the finest military
hospitals in the world, with a capacity of something

AN INTERESTING BUT ANXIOUS INTERVAL

like ten thousand beds. In addition to which, when
Alexandria and Cairo were being swamped by the
fearful backwash from Gallipoli, a full hospital unit
with complete equipment was organized and sent
to Egypt.

There is a Bombay Presidency War and Relief
Fund which undertakes anything from establishing
hospitals to boosting great popular loans, and the
Women's Branch is — ^the Women's Branch. To the
casual onlooker and stranger in the land it looks very
much like the tail that wags the dog. Which means
that a great part of every kind of war work seems
to be done by the women.

The Women's Branch was organized by Lady
^^^llingdon, and Lady Willingdon is a business
woman. She went all over the great Presidency,
which has something like twenty million inhabi-
tants, and organized the whole population of
women, Indians and English together. Then she
instituted a system of not too friendly rivalry be-
tween communities, which has resulted in a perfect
deluge of successful output.

The oiganization has made good with a minimum
of friction, overlapping, and delay, and this has been
due not so much to unusual devotion, perhaps, as to
the fact that everything has been done on a business
basis. I wonder if any one will ever compile statis-
tics with regard to the niunber of pajamas, bandages,
bed jackets, fracture pillows, loimging-robes, slippers,
underwear, sweaters, socks, and various other neces-
sities that have been turned out by the women of
the world in volunteer service during the past four
years. And will any one ever try to estimate the
value of this work? It is beyond calculation.

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

The Women's Branch also accumulates and dis-
tributes both in Mesopotamia and East Africa all
kinds of toilet articles and small things of conven-
ience and comfort that soldiers like and need and
that are not included in their regular equipment.
And there is a department devoted to the accumu-
lation and distribution of periodicals and libraries.
Altogether a most admirable institution.

Another thing which has been undertaken with
great earnestness and with promise of justifying
success is the training of disabled Indian soldiers in
profitable trades. The pension of the disabled soldier
is very liberal considering the average earning capac-
ity of the average Indian, so he is fairly wdl off to
b^inwith. But it is the idleness of the incapacitated
man that is to be dreaded more than the possibility
of his ever being in actual need. So the Queen
Mary's Technical School for Indian Soldiers was
established and now has enrolled a large and very
intaresting company of men; men who are blind,
armless, legless, and maimed in every imaginable
way, and who are learning to do things that will
keep them employed if they wish and add consid-
erably to their resources.

Some are learning to operate looms of one kind
or another; some make artificial flowers; some
raise chickens; some who have both arms but are
legless go in for work on different kinds of electrical
apparatus; and a large number are learning to
use hose-knitting machines. It is only within
recent years that millions of Indians have begun
to wear socks, but they wear them now — with
garments which bear no resemblance to trousers
and which do not cover their calf -clasping garters —

AN INTERESTING BUT ANXIOUS INTEEVAL

and the business of knitting socks can be very
profitable. Each disabled soldier who cares to go
in for knitting socks is given a machine which be-
comes his personal property.

Eventually I began to fear that I was quite right
when I assured myself that it was not even remotely
possible that I would be permitted to go to Baghdad.
Why should Greneral Maude make of me a conspicu-
ous exception to his unalterable rule? During the
first two weeks of waiting I had an unwavering
faith that eventually he would, but I was practically
alone in my optimism.

Then the third week began to drag along and not
a word of any kind had come out of Mesopotamia.
Many of my new-found friends began to look
pleased and to give expression to their sympathies
with a confident finality of tone which drove me
to looking up routes to Kashmir. Also I had an
official invitation to visit the capital of the Mahara-
jah of Mysore, and that soimded almost suffidentiy
alluring to relieve in some degree my pangs of dis-
appointment. Had it not been for the old adage
about no news being good news I should have given
up hope long before I did.

Though I did have one friend who shared my
faith to some extent. Brigadier-Greneral Stukely
St. John, the port commandant, was convinced that
there was no reason on earth why I should not be
permitted to go, and that, therefore — I regarded
him as a most unusually intelligent and broad-
minded man.

He gave me the freedom of his wonderful docks,
and I spent many profitable hours in the midst of

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

the interesting operations which he directs. I saw
troops off to Mesopotamia and troops returning;
I watched on several occasions the orderly and
noiseless disembarkation of ship-loads of sids and
wounded men; I went through acres of freight-sheds
packed to capacity with materials of war and ex-
amined inniunerable card indexes and files of various
kinds in an endeavor to learn something about the
scope of the supply and transport end of the busi-
ness of war. And everything I learned served to
strengthen my desire to follow the hues on up to
the far-away battle-front.

One morning I went down early to have break-
fast with the general and a fine old Australian skip-
p>er who was taking on a load of cavalry horses.
They thought I would appreciate an opportunity to
observe the bewildering variety of dispositions that
horses display on such an occasion. I did. And I
had a most interesting forenoon. But just before
I left the ship the skipper showed me a nice big
empty cabin and said what a pity it was I had not
got permission to go to Mesopotamia. Otherwise
I might have occupied that cabin up the Persian
Gulf. As a matter of fact, the commandant had
been reserving cabins for me quite regularly.

On the twenty-second day of waiting my faith
deserted me and I began at once to make rather
precise arrangements to do something else — ^the
while I struggled with an effort to dismiss from my
mind Mesopotamia and all its works.

I went into the big hotel dining-room for lunch-
eon, and the first person I saw was General St.
John. I was passing his table with a casual greeting

AN INTERESTING BUT ANXIOUS INTERVAL

when he rose to his feet, thrust his hand into a
pocket of his tunic, and drew out a folded paper.
He handed it to me with a kind of ^*we win'' smile
and the superfluous comment:

"I think this may interest you/'

It did. At the moment the only thing in it that
I was able to grasp was the word '^permission." It
was a decoded message — ^marked "secret," for some
reason — ^and it had come to His Excellency, the
governor, from the chief of the Greneral Staff at
Simla, who had received it from General Maude
through London! It bore the indorsement of the
chief of the Imperial General Staff! When I realized
what a gantlet my poor little request had had to
run I said to myself:

"Well, no wonder it took twenty-two days!"

CHAPTER V

TO THE REMOTEST ZONE

IT was Thursday. General St. John told me that
a cabin would be reserved for me on a tnx^>-sli]p
sailing Saturday at noon, and I spent the intenren*
ing f orty-ei^t hours unmaking all the other i^ans
I had made and in getting ready for what proved
to be an ezpoienoe as extmordinaiy as oouU pos-
sibly be

u>.»'-«ii:i..i

My prdiminary arrangements for making this
tnp may be neither interesting nor important to
anybody but mys^, but to me they were both of
these things, exceedingly. I was about to start en-
tirdy alone for regions whidli even in Bombay seemed
rather dismaOv remote, and I had no definite idea
really where or in whose hands I should land.

Though what with all the importance that had
been attached to my going I felt — ^along with an
uncomfortable sense of unworlhiness — a certain
assurance that I would be taken care of. About
the only advice I got from offico* fiiaids who had
served in Mesopotamia was:

**Take everytliing you can think erf that you are
in the least likely to need, because up thefc there is
litany noLhing."

TO THE REMOTEST ZONE

In Bombay they call it Mesopot. Few persons
ever take time to say Mesopotamia. Which is not
to be wondered at, since the English have an in-
veterate habit of nicknaming everything. When
everything in Mesopotamia was confusion and de-
feat, during the awful period when General Town-
shend was besieged at Kut-el-Amara, Mesopot was
thought to be a curiously appropriate contraction.
It is spoken now, however, without a shade of
meaningful emphasis.

Getting ready to go involved the accumulation
of a number of things, including a field kit of bed
and bedding and such camp furniture as I was likely
to need — ^and a servant. Accumulating a servant
was rather difficult.

Vilayat refused to go. When I told him to pre-
pare himself for a journey up through the waters
where the deadly mine is strewn and on to the days-
and-days-away place whence come the men who
keep always full the ten thousand hospital beds in
Bombay, he first got rheumatism in his right knee —
oh, an awful pain! — and then remembered that he
was a "family man.** No, he would not go, not for
three times as much as he was ever paid in his life.

It was pretty short notice. Even if I had had
nothing else to do, there was not time enough left
to sift the population in a search for another man.
But it had to be done. And I did not find it an
uninteresting game.

I learned, for one thing, that in India no "family
man** should ever be expected to take risks. Word
was sent to several employment agencies that I was
looking for a servant, and within an hour a flock
of applicants had gathered in the corridor outside

6 60

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

my door. There was a sample, I think, of every kind
of Indian the country produces. There were I£ndus,
Mohammedans, Christians, and what not; high
caste and low caste and wholly imtouchable; clean
and unclean; well-dressed and miserably clad; tall
and short; black, yellow, and brown; and every
one of them was armed with the usual sheaf of let-
ters which I was expected to read and accept at
their face value.

Some of the applicants were suitable enough, but
every one I looked upon with any degree of favor
turned out to be a "family man/* As soon as they
learned that I was going to Mesopotamia they sud-
denly remembered their wives and children, clutched
their precious letters out of my hands, and backed
away. Not one of them would go. Moreover, I
was assured by friends that it was a hopeless quest.

I was about to give up in despair when Ezekiel
came along. Ezekiel is a family man, too, but he
comes from Pondicherry and boasts that his grand-
father was a Frenchman, so he regards the ways of
the mere Indian with considerable contempt. In
addition to which he was stamped with a certain
glory for having been to Mesopot before. He was
servant to an army officer dming the first year of
the war, and in the first paragraph of his essay on
himself he always refers to "my regiment." It
never bores him in the least to tell in detail about
how valorous he and it proved themselves to be.
And with me he never made capital out of his
domestic responsibilities except on the frequent oc-
casions when I threatened to discharge him for being
the worst servant who ever got paid for making a

general muddle of things. On such occasions he was

TO THE REMOTEST ZONE

wont to drag out an old flat wallet in which he car-
ried a photograph of an interesting family group.
And there was one "wee one — ^ver* white — got
French blood — curly hair — oh, lady sahib! — ^we go
back Bombay — ^I bring — ^you seel" That was
EzekieL

I should not regard it as a calamity if I had to do
all my traveling on British troop-ships. When you
wish to convey a general sum-up of the environment
of an Englishman who is provided with every com-
fort and convenience that any reasonable man could
reasonably require, you say:

"He does himself rather well/*

And the Englishman does himself exceedingly
well when he goes to war. Not that he is incapable
of going to war unprovided and exposed to all the
hardships there are — ^he has done that in Mesopo-
tamia — ^but he can be trusted by his worrying wife
or mother to eliminate the hardships as rapidly as
possible, and he does not consider a fondness for
comfortable surroundings a sign of weakness.

The trooper I traveled on was built for the trade
routes in the Bay of Bengal and used to ply between
Calcutta and Singapore, with stops at Rangoon and
Penang on the way. She is not very large. But
she is seaworthy and has ample spaces between-
decks. These spaces were once used for cargo, but
they have been made habitable now with rows upon
rows of bunks and berths. Many baths have been
built in, and there are large mess-rooms for British
troops.

Officers' quarters are amidships on the main deck
and are the selfsame cabins that American tourists

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

probably complained about in years gone by when
only tourists were catered to and when the armored-
cruiser variety of cockroach was thought in Eastern
seas to be among the necessary evils, along with un-
holy smells and the unrestricted disorderliness of
lower-deck passengers. There is nothing like that
now. No iosects of any kind, no unnecessary
odors, and no confusion at all. The well-being of the
troops is the first consideration of the authorities,
and on a troop-ship one lives under military disci-
pline and enjoys a consequent maximum of comfort.

After bestowing myself in the cabin reserved for
me, I climbed to the spotless upper deck to watch
the men come aboard. There were more than a
thousand of them — ^three hundred and fifty Tom-
mies and the others Lidian troops. And it really
seemed, as they came in unbroken line up the slopiog
gangway, like going off to the war. Everything was
so methodical that there was not even a sound
above the ordinary hum of quiet talk, and the em-
barkation proceedings were over and done with
before one realized that they had more than begun.
We had only to wait for final inspection before
casting off.

The embarkation officers in the port of Bombay
all wear big red or green silk pompoms on their
helmets and are very smart in their get-up generally,
the embarkation service being among the things
to which the busy war-working population of the
dty Kkes to "point with pride.**

Incidentally it is the hardest-worked service con-
nected in any way with military operations. Every
dock in the snug inner harbor — ^and they measure
thousands of feet — was crowded with supply-ships,

7«

TO THE REMOTEST ZONE

hospital-ships, ana transports, while in the wide
outer harbor lay many more at fuichor, waiting for
vacated berths. But the men who are doing this
work have achieved an admirable orderliness and
nobody ever seems to be in a hurry about anything.
It is just that the movement never stops.

A transport with a thousand troops aboard, as
weU as army officers, ship's officers, medical officers,
coolie corps, and crew, is a haven of peace. One
would expect it to be a kind of bedlam. It is not.
Hour by hour I sat on deck reading, and hearing not
a sound but the throb of the engines and the back-
ward wash of the sea against the ship's sides. Yet
wherever I looked there were imiformed figures.
There were a great many jimior officers — very jun-
ior, some of them — ^who behaved with a sedateness
to be expected perhaps of early youth burdened
with grave responsibilities. They stretched them-
selves out in cool corners and slept the hours away,
or they sat in groups flat on the deck, playing cards.

A few senior officers more or less monopolized
the little library and whiled away the time at bridge.
Once in a while on the decks forward, where the
British boys were located, a number of fresh young
voices would be lifted in close harmony, or a shout
of infectious laughter would float up to the regions
of the exalted where I dwelt, but not often.

The Indian troops were bestowed aft and be-
tween-dechs, and they gave the junior officers some-
thing occasionally to do. There were so many of
them that they could not all be on deck at the same
time, so they had to be exercised in squads. They
did not like it, the officers told me, and would have

THE WAR m THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

preferred to lie in their bunks the week through,

but they boarded the ship in the pink of eondi- |

tion and keeping them fit was a part of the day's

work.

Our Indians belonged to what is known as a
mixed regiment, part Mohammedan and part
Hindu. And this kind of mixture complicates the
business of the quartermaster's department in an
extraordinary way. In order to avoid the defilement
which a man of one faith would inflict upon a man
of tlie other by touching his food they have to have
separate commissariat arrangements all the way
through from training-camp to battle-field. They
will train together and fight together, but that is
the extent of their association. So it happens that
they have to have separate galleys on the troop-
ships. Those on our ship were very interesting.
They were common kitchen ranges strung along
the rails of the well-deck aft, with ordinary stove-
pipe hung on wire and projecting rather grotesquely
out over the sides just under the canvas awning.
They imparted to the ship a kind of gipsy air wholly
out of keeping with her serious business.

To add a touch of completeness to the Sabbath-
like calm which prevailed on the ship I read the
Bible. Becoming intensely interested, I tried to
read it through in twenty-four hours. This cannot
be done. Incidentally, I had some difficulty in
finding one. It is a sign of the times, I am afraid,
that one never gets a Bible any more as a going-away
present when one starts off on a long journey.
Tliough I might better say, perhaps, that it was a
sign of unintelligence on my part that I did not

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think to cany with me one of several that were be-
stowed upon me in godlier days.

I was going to Baghdad, was I not? When I
left New York I believed I was, I was on my way
to the Land of the Two Rivers; the land of the
Garden of Eden; "the Cradle of the World"! It
is the land not only of Adam and Eve and Cain and
Abel, but the land as well of Noah and Father
Abraham; the land of Babylonia where Daniel
dwelt in captivity with the Children of Israel and
was delivered from the den of lions because he
served his God continually; the land where Shad-
rach, Meshach, and Abednego were cast into the
furnace heated "one seven times more than it was
wont to be heated" and were delivered without
hurt because they would "not serve nor worship
any god except their own God"; a land about
which no book has ever been written that does not
bristle with references to Genesis, to Ezra and the
Chronicles and the Kings, to Samuel and Daniel
and Jeremiah. So I might have known that a
Bible would be absolutely necessary to me if I ex-
pected to look upon anything with eyes of intelli-
gence.

Parenthetically, I should like to remark that
being chaplain to troops serving in Mesopotamia is
about the easiest billet a man could possibly have.
His sermons are all ready made for him. Talk about
sermons in stones, books in the running brooks!
There is a sermon in every glint of simlight on the
Mesopotamian desert; in every mound of sand that
covers an ancient ruin; in every bend and ripple of
the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.

I found a Bible finally, hidden away with the

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

hymnals and the prayer-books in a wainscot cup-
board of the little library, and, while I intended
merely to get the stories of Babylon and of Ur of
the Chaldees, I became engrossed in the story of
the Children of Israel and followed it all the way
through. Then I had to read the Prophets, and, hav-
ing pondered over their prophecies, I was tempted
to re-examine the fulfilment of them. And after-
ward I was very glad I did. It refreshed my mem-
ory of many things I had thought little about since
the days of my youth.

In Mesopotamia you live the story of the Bible,
and you do not wonder in the least if it is true;
you know it is. You become as definitely acquainted
with Daniel and Ezra; yes, and with Adam and
Eve and Cain and Abel and Noah and Abraham
and Hagar and Ishmael — especially Hagar and
Ishmael — and a thousand others, as though they
were alive to-day. And in a way they are. As they
have come down to us through the ages in tradition
and picture they are exact prototypes of the men
who now inhabit that ancient land.

We came at last into the Gulf of Oman, with the
coasts of Sinde and Baluchistan on one side and
the Arabian peninsula on the other. And it was like
stealing silently through a great silence. The glassy,
glaring surface of the sea was disturbed by nothing
but an occasional flying-fish leaping out of the ship's
path and skimming away to safety. The distant
shores — rugged, precipitous, and forbidding — ^were
like imagined abodes of the dead. And even the
^fishing-junks were lifeless. They lay becalmed on
every side, widely scattered over the sea; high-

TO THE REMOTEST ZOSk

prowed, heavy-hulled — of another age than this —
with great brown sails hanging limp on slanting
masts.

Over to the westward on the Arabian side lay
Muskat. We could not see it, but we knew it was
there — a British naval station prickly with un-
pleasant memories. We knew all about the scorch-
ing, soul-withering dreadf ulness of it and about the
gaunt, jagged cliffs that ring its harbor. On the
sheer outward wall of one of these is carved the
name of every British fighting-ship that ever sailed
or steamed this way.

Motionless we seemed to lie in the midst of a
world that had halted to the command: Peace!
Be still ! But we were moving slowly onward and
eventually rounded a sharp headland on the Ara-
bian coast and came into the Persian Gulf. They
were storied waters we were steaming through;
waters that have sent back crackling echoes to
many a gun.

British *' occupation" of lower Mesopotamia and
the country immediately round the Persian Gulf
antedates the war by several centuries, and the story
of it begins with the dislodgment of the Portuguese
from the now deserted island of Hormuz. K I ever
knew, I have forgotten why the Portuguese had to
be dislodged. But those were the days of uncharted
seas and of merchant adventurers who sailed them
in search of adventure and who needed httle excuse
for warlike demonstration.

The British East India Company had reached a
trade agreement with the Shah of Persia, and one
naturally supposes that the Portuguese sought to

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

interfere with the legitimate advance of British
interests. The only easily rememberable item in
connection with the first British engagement in the
gulf is that one of the two Englishmen who lost
their lives in it was William Baffin, the discoverer
of Baffin Bay.

"Master Baffin went on shore with his geomet-
rical instruments for the better leveling of his piece
to make his shot," writes a contemporary corre-
spondent, "but as he was about the same he re-
ceived a small shot from the Castle into his belly,
wherewith he gave three leapes, by report, and died
immediately."

And so passed William Baffin. This dramatic
small incident could hardly be improved upon as a
b^inning of England's dramatic record in this part
of the world, and it might interest Master Baffin
to know that the desolate coast of his last earthly
vision is now landmarked for Englishmen by many
tragic, mud-waUed, small Grod's acres filled with
white crosses and shafts of marble brought from
over the seas he sailed. It is said that at many a
point on the shores of the Persian Gulf "the dead
alone guard the colors that are being borne afresh
in Mesopotamia to-day."

For generations the favorite occupations of the
coast Arabs in these r^ons have been piracy, slave-
trading, and gun-running. And it must be taken
into consideration that Turkey's notoriety for in-
iquitous governmental methods is no new thing and
that Turkish overlordship in the Arabian peninsula
has never been a success. It has never been a suc-
cess up along the Tigris and Euphrates, either, but
in those regions there has been some semblance of

TO THE REMOTEST ZONE

oontroL At Basra and at points above there have
always been Turkish pashas representing the Sub-
lime Porte as resident governors, and they have
been backed by military garrisons.

Below Basra there are two great divisions of the
Arab peoples. They are themselves divided into
many tribes and tribal groups, but are allied in
strong confederations — on the Mesopotamian side
of the gulf to resist Turkish aggression, and on the
Persian side to resist Pjersian interference with
ancient rights and liberties — ^and they have never
acknowledged any authority except that of their
own sheikhs.

The two most important of these Arab chieftains
are the Sheikh of Kuweit and the Sheikh of Muham-
merah, and if these two had not been lifelong friends
of Britain, upholding a traditional friendship of
their fathers before them, the occupation of Meso-
potamia by British troops would have been much
more difficult.

The prindpaUty of the Sheikh of Kuweit— ex-
tending one hundred and sixty miles in one direc-
tion and one hundred and ninety miles in another —
lies on the Mesopotamian side of the upper gulf and
has been ruled by the family of the patriarchal old
Jabir-ibn-Mubarak, who rules it now, since the
middle of the seventeenth century.

The territories of the Sheikh of Muhammerah
are in Persian Arabistan, just across on the other
side, and together these two picturesque rulers can
provide a force of fifty-odd thousand men armed
with good serviceable rifles.* They have provided
no force to support the British, but they easily could
have provided such a force to oppose them had

THE WAR m THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

they been persuaded to ally themselves with the
Turks.

But it is due almost entirely to England's friendly
assistance in the past that Uiese sheikhs are what
they are and that they are able to exercise even a
partial control over their numerous and turbulent
tribes.

It was to the interest of everybody economically
concerned in the regions round about, and especially
of the Sheikh of Kuweit, that piracy should be sup-
pressed in the Persian Gulf. Pearling is one of the
chief pursuits of the coast Arabs — ^there being the
two wonderful little islands of Bahrein and Mubarak
just south of Kuweit, the pearl fisheries of which
have netted their owners in a good year as much
as half a million pounds sterling — ^and in the pearling
season, particularly, the upper gulf has always been
a pirates' paradise.

Tiu-key could not patrol these waters, though,
considering her claim to sovereignty over them, it
was her business to do so. The Arab sheikhs had
no naval vessels of any kind, and Persia was help-
less. It therefore fell to the lot of England to police
the gulf, just as it has fallen to the lot of England
to police nearly all the otherwise unpoliced waters
of the earth.

Prom the beginning British influence rapidly in-
creased, this being due not so much to the greater
energy and enterprise of the English traders as to
the fact that England was willing to undertake the
establishment and maintenance of peaceful condi-
tions in the ports and the safeguarding of navigation
in the gulf. English influence with the Mesopo-
tamian peoples has been the result of nothing but

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the honorable and generally satisfactory discharge
on England's part of tremendous responsibilities.

During the whole of the nineteenth centiuy the
British army and navy were used unsparingly in a
never-ending effort to suppress the notorious slave-
trade with the east coast of Africa. But it is a
notable fact that before mere British supremacy of
influence gave way in 1914 to absolute British con-
trol in the gulf» the iniquitous traffic in human
beings was by no means extinct. And to realize
the extent of slavery in all parts of Arabia, Mesopo-
tamia, and Persia one has only to observe the evi-
dence of African blood in vast numbers of the
people and the presence among the tribes of iimu-
merable black human beasts of burden.

Mesopotamia is inhabited solely by Arab tribes,
and the Arabs are all Mohammedans. But the
Mohammedans of the world are divided into two
main sects by irreconcilable differences of religious
opinion; sects which in Mesopotamia have in-
dulged in innumerable fearful contests for su-
premacy, all of which have tended to sink the
country further and further into moral ruin and
material exhaustion.

The two great Mohammedan sects are the Sun-
nis and the Shiahs. The Sunnis acknowledge the
succession of the first four Khaliphs and the right
of the Sultan of Turkey to the spiritual and tem-
poral predominance bequeathed by the Prophet,
and the greatest tribe of Sunni Arabs in Mesopo-
tamia and eastern Arabia — ^the Muntafik — ^joined
the Turks at the beginning of the war and have
succeeded, by frequent raids and constant guerrilla

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

warfare, in making things very unpleasant at times
for the British on the River Euphrates.

But the Shiahs deny the succession of the first
four Elialiphs and recognize as the true heir of the
Prophet the Imam Ali, who married Mohammed's
daughter Fatima. The sons of Fatima, Al-Hasan
and Al-Husein, rebelled against the Khaliphate
and, according to Shiah belief, were treacherously
slain. They became the martyrs of the Shiah sect
and the anniversary of their death became the
principal Shiah Mohammedan holy day. It is cele-
brated throughout the Shiah world — ^which includes
a large part of Mohammedan India — ^with proces-
sions of mourning and, in some localities, with a
frenzied fanaticism which expresses itself in self-
flagellation and other forms of self-torture, and in
murderous attacks on men of other faiths. The
Shiahs, of course, do not acknowledge the Sultan of
Turkey. Rather they abhor what they regard as
his usurpation of a holy office. And a fact which
relieves the British situation of at least one com-
plication is that a majority of the Arabs behind the
British lines in Mesopotamia are Shiahs.

The holy cities of the Sunnis are Mecca and
Medina in western Arabia, while the chief places
of devout pilgrimage for the Shiahs are Kerbela
and Nejef , west of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia.
Kerbela contains the tomb of the martyr Husein,
while the sacred shrine of Ali is at Nejef. And these
two towns are now in the hands of the British, who
are adepts from long practice in the gentle art of
respecting other peoples' beliefs.

So much for the general situation. After which

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the German intention. It is known that for twenty-
five years or more the Germans have been lajdng
foundations and developing schemes for the coloni-
zation and eventual control of Mesopotamia and
the lands round the Persian Gulf » and that these
schemes carried with them a direct threat against
British supremacy in the Indian Empire.

The Kaiser bought the concessions involved in
the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railroad project by condon-
ing Abdul-Hamid's fiendish Armenian atrocities in
the Balkans. At that time every self-respecting
nation on the face of the earth was aghast with
horror at the unbelievable crimes of that monstrous
Turk, but we now know the Kaiser believes that
certain considerations justify the massacre of inno-
cents, and we know that by expressing this belief to
the Sultan he was able then to enter into a broth-
erly compact with him. And the first thing England
knew her influence in Constantinople and through-
out Turkey began to be systematically undermined,
while the results of successful Grerman diplomacy
began to be increasingly evident.

It is in a bright white light revealing many things
that we view in these days the historic visit of the
Kaiser to the Turkish Empire and Us brother, the
Sultan, when, in Damascus, he grandiloquently
proclaimed himself the "" Defender of Islam." All of
which was some time after definite German-Turkish
intrigues and conspiracies began to come to light
and some time after it was realized that the Berlin-
to-Baghdad-and-beyond Railroad was to be Ger-
many's political highway to the Eastern seas.

The first conspiracy of any consequence was in
1903, when it was discovered that, simultaneously

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

with a German attempt to get a concession for a
raflway terminus at Kuweit, the Turkish govern-
ment was bringing pressure of all kinds to bear upon
'the independent Sheikh to induce him to accept
Turkish nationality and title along with Turkish
sovereignty over his ancient hereditary domain.
This the Sheikh obstinately refused to do, refusing
at the same time the German demand. But in the
face of an eventual Turkish ultimatimi he had to
appeal to his old-time British friends and declare
his inability to maintain his position without their
support.

It was probably in no altruistic spirit whatever
that the British responded. A German invasion of
Kuweit, with the inevitable result of German con-
trol in the Persian Gulf, was not to be thought of.
And so it happened that they assured the Sheikh of
their unfailing support and declared that they would
tolerate no attack upon him from any direction.

The British senior naval oflScer in the gulf fleet
drew up a scheme of defense and landed some gims
and marines to augment the forces of the Sheikh;
then they sat down to await whatever might come
to pass. But the Turks, not being prepared for
anything so internationally serious, drew back, and
the incident was closed. It had no result except
that it strengthened the bond between Britain and
the Arab rulers. Though it did establish a kind
of recognized status for everybody concerned which
the British did everything humanly possible during
the ten years preceding the war to maintain.

One more item of special interest and importance:
In 1901 an Englishman, Mr. W. K. D'Arcy, ob-

TO THE REMOTEST ZONE

tained from H. R. H. the Shah a concession for
working petroleum in all its forms in southern
Persia. Mr. D'Arcy was "playing a lone hand."
He was a courageous Englishman and iie spent
large sums of money in prospecting from one field
to another, but without success. It was just that
he had unlimited faith. He exhausted his original
capital, I believe, and was then able to interest
other capital in Burma and India as well as in Eng-
land. He went on prospecting, and eventually, in
1908, he discovered the long-sought-for area and
tapped what proved to be an immense and prac-
tically inexhaustible oil-field. This field is in Arabi-
stan, within the territories over which the Sheikh
of Muhammerah exercises control.

The waters of the Tigris and Euphrates join
about one hundred miles above the head of the
Persian Gulf and flow down to the sea in a mighty
stream called the Shatt-el-Arab. And in the mouth
of the Shatt-el-Arab lies an island called Abadan,
on which the Anglo-Persian Oil Company estab-
lished its tanks and refineries. Abadan is one hun-
dred and fifty miles from the oil-fields in Arabistan,
so a double pipe-line was laid to bring the product
down, and the newly created town of Abadan, about
midway of the island, rapidly developed into a
great oil-shipping port. It was one of those curious
swift developments of peace-times. It all took
place after 1008, and by 1012 the pipe-lines and
refineries were in operation. It was an all-British
concern from the outset, the Persian end of it repre-
senting nothing by way of capital, but enjoying a
great deal eventually by way of royalty.

7 85

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

Then early in 1914 the British Admiralty bought a
controlling interest in the enterprise on the strength
of weighty considerations which had to do with the
increasing use of oil in His Majesty's navy and the
rather extraordinary trend of political events in the
immediate vicinity. The Admiralty was roundly
criticized at the time for this seemingly unjustifiable
extravagance, but it was about the only bit of pre-
paredness that England was guilty of, and justifica-
tion has since been overwhelmingly abundant.

Fuel is one of the many things necessary to the
successful prosecution of a war which Mesopotamia
does not possess, and without the plentiful supply
of it close at hand which these Persian oil-fields
fortunately afford, the operations of the Mesopo-
tamian Expeditionary Force would have been much
more dijfficult than they have been, and they have
been dijfficult enough.

There is a bar at the mouth of the Shatt-el-Arab,
a great barrier of silt that has done more to try the
souls of the men responsible for the continuity of
supplies and communications in Mesopotamia than
any other one thing. On account of it all ships,
of whatever draught, must be timed with reference
to the tide, while the larger vesseb of the supply
and transport fleet cannot cross it at all and must
stop outside while their cargoes are transferred to
river steamboats or barges. The volume of desert
sand washed down by the river is so great that
dredging and maintaining a deep channel b thought
to be an operation of too great magnitude to be
undertaken as anything but a permanent develop*
ment. So the British worry along.

to » 3D « »

's\ *

MESOPOTAMIA

From the British Army Field Map

TO THE REMOTEST ZONE

Whether or not we should "get up to the bar
on time'* was a subject of great importance and of
much discussion. If we did not we should be held
up a whole day in the glare and heat of the upper
gulf. We were to cross the bar at midnight — ^the
sixth and the last night from Bombay — ^and the
skipper assured us that we would make it and have
a good hour to spare.

But in my little book of occasional notes which
always intends to be a diary and never is I find two
brief items to remind me that, small as our old
trooper was, we had some difficulty in getting over
the bar. In fact, we must have had a horrible night.

Says the note-book:

12:30 A.M. — ^We are just starting over the bar. The engines
have stopped; the lead is being cast; a musical young voice
rings out in the silence, calling the depths. We move slowly
under our own headway. A final cast; the distant clang of an
engine-room signal; the engines begin to throb again and we
are under way — very slowly, very carefully.

It is a still, hot night, with not a fleck or ripple even in the
path of moonlight which lies across the sea. I am thinking
that for many a young man aboard this ship it really is "cross-
ing the bar," so many of them are likely to find the end of
youth and of life in "the cradle of the world.'*

Somewhat later:

8:00 A.M. — Going over the bar was not so simple, after all.
We are still going over, and the old ship sounds as though she
would break into a thousand pieces at any moment. I won-
der — ! But they wouldn't do it if they didn't think they
could! We're flat in the mud, no doubt about that. And the
feelof it as we creep along inch by inch! Oh — ^h-h! Why should

a ship aground feel like that?

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

The engines pant and puff for a few moments; tlien they are
still as though they had paused for rest. There is a powerful
deep«sea-going tug on either side, and they seem to be tearing
their very hearts out. We'll never do it!

But of course we did, I do not know when or
how. I waked up in the midst of the utmost
placidity and managed to get on deck just as we
were passing the town of Abadan.

Having heard so much about the Anglo-Persian
Oil Company, it was with considerable interest and
curiosity that I looked for the first time upon the
evidences of its greatness. A forest of smoke-stacks
and acres of enormous gray tanks could hardly be
regarded as ornamental in an otherwise alluring
landscape, nor would an ever-present and nicely
blended odor of oils in all the stages of refinement
and unrefinement be an attraction for the seeker
after a desirable place of residence. But when the
concomitant of such undesirable things is an assur-
ance, in these days of economic severities, of a plen-
tiful supply of fuel oil and gasolene at prices
"within the easy reach" and so forth, one is able
to look upon them with a certain degree of ap-
proval.

The company has built for the British martyrs
to the general good who have to live at Abadan
a row of very comfortable residences along the upper
bank of the river. These houses are more or less
cheek by jowl with "the works,*' to be sure, but
they command a view to the north and the west-
ward of a wide sweep of palm-fringed river against a
backgroimd of gray and yellow desert immarred by
oil-tanks or any other evidence of himian activity.

Forty miles farther up — ^about sixty miles from

TO THE REMOTEST ZONE

the mouth of the Shatt-el-Arab — ^is Basra, the port
of the Mesopotamian zone. And the Shatt-el-Arab
is bordered its full length on either side by a mile-
wide band of date-plantations, the tall palms being
set in even rows, between which one gets glimpses
into deep, green, converging distances. In places
the groves thin down to mere river fringes, while
an occasional isolated giant lifts its plumes up to
the blue of the sky, or stately groups, unevenly
grown and wind bent, are etched in fascinating
lines against a desert that rolls away and away to
the ends of nowhere. I think to myself, ^'I'm going
to like aU this!"

But then I remember a young British ofiScer in
hospital at Bombay who had just come down with
his nerves shredded from overwork and his vitality
all burned up with sand-fly fever. He said to me:

"Can*t see why anybody should want to go to
Mesopot! Except, of course, that you are going on
up to Baghdad. That may be worth while, though
I doubt it. Never been to Baghdad myself. No
such luck! The army's no tourist party, you know.
I've had to stick to coolie corps and mule-depots
at Basra. Still, I suppose somebody's got to."

An expression crossed his face whidi conveyed to
me whole volimies of unpleasant recollection, and
he added:

"Mesopot! I assure you that all youll want to
see you can see through a port-hole of your ship.
Then you'll want to turn right round and come
back!"

I laughed and ventured to predict that as soon

as he had recovered a little of his lost ginger he

would be longing to return himself, and in a whimsi-

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

cal kind of way he acknowledged that likely as not
he would.

''It's probably the most unpleasant hole topside
o' hades/' he said> ''but there isn't any doubt that
it has a kind of fiendish fascination. Chaps get
so interested in what they are doing that they have
actually been known to refuse a month's leave when
it was offered to them! They stick it till they get
shoved out on a stretcher, same as me!"

I wondered. Steaming slowly on up the Shatt-
el-Arab and into an area of war communications
that was crowded with a variety of commonplace
and anciently curious craft, I wondered. . . .

CHAPTER. VI

WHAT THE BRITISH FOUND

ACCORDING to advice oflfered in a small book
^ of instructions to British officers with regard
to equipping themselves for service in Mesopo-
tamia:

**To spend a year in this delectable land you will
require three outfits of clothing — one suitable for
an English winter; one suitable for an English sum-
mer; and an outfit suitable for hades!"

So perhaps the tired-out young officer was right
when he called it "'the most unpleasant hole top-
side o' hades/* but one soon learns that it deserves
also his reluctant admission that it possesses a kind
of "fiendish fascination/'

In Mesopotamia climate gets more attention than
any other one thing, and it is the first thing to be
taken into consideration in every move that is
made — ^that is, if such consideration is possible. It
is not that there are so many varieties of climate,
but that the few varieties there are exaggerate
themselves so outrageously.

Believe, if you can, that men are able to live and
work and fight in a temperature which, for months
on end, seldom drops below 110° F., and which
frequently climbs — especially under canvas — to

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

130^. It is not believable, is it? Yet, along in
March the Mesopotamian sun sets in to establish
such records as these, and through June, July,
August, and September the records are held with a
pitiless persistence which tries the souls of men and
often enough wrecks the bodies of the strongest.

So it is that Mesopotamian Horror Number One
is the Mesopotamian sun. During the summer of
1917 five hundred and nineteen men of the Meso-
potamian Expeditionary Force died of heat and
sunstroke. Yet by 1917 almost faultless facilities for
combating these twin evils had been established
throughout the country. Ice is a first necessity,
and there axe certain hydropathic processes which
reduce the fearful temperature of the body and
for which special hospital equipment is required.
In the beginning there were none of these things;
the medical services were practically empty-handed;
and the requisites were provided only with the to-
be-expected promptness which we usually express
with the word "eventually."

Now, however, where British troops are located
there are ice-plants, and there is not a hospital
anywhere, from the farthest evacuation outpost
behind the lines of action to the last convalescent
station on the Shatt-el-Arab, that is not equipped
with special and detached facilities for the instant
care of the man who gets "knocked on the head by
the sun."

When this happens there is no time to rig up
paraphernalia for treating the victim in an ordinary
ward, so in connection with all the hospitals there
is a sunstroke hut or tent — a place set aside and
kept constantly in readiness for the instant emerg-

WHAT THE BRITISH FOUND

ency which sunstroke or heatstroke always pre-
sents.

One wonders how many men the sun killed dur-
ing the terrific campaign of 1915, before England
was prepared in any way to fight in Mesopotamia.

Throughout the hot season — and the hot season
always telescopes the cool season, b^inning with
short periods in the earliest spring and lingering
far into the autumn — ^the British soldier has to wear
the detested and detestable sun-helmet and spine-
pad, and it is a joy to him when, in the orders of
the day along late in November, he begins to get
permission to leave them off after stated hours.

The second, and hardly less to be dreaded, horror
is the pest of insect life. Practically every town on
the rivers is surrounded by groves of date-palms,
while, as I have said, the date-plantations on the
banks of the Shatt-el-Arab extend to a depth of a
mile or more on either side. These groves — or
date-gardens, as they are called — are intersected
by numerous small creeks and irrigation ditches
which, while they axe practically dry for months at
a time, always contain stagnant small pools here
and there that serve as breeding-places for all the
varieties there are of malarial and fever-carrying
mosquitoes.

But fighting mosquitoes is not such a di£Scult
thing. It has been done successfully otherwheres,
and it is being done most successfully in Mesopo-
tamia. Besides, a man can escape mosquitoes, at
l^ast during the night, by being provided with a net.

The sand-fly, however, is a different creature
altogether, and is the worst enemy the Mesopo-
tamian Expeditionary Force has encountered. Next

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

to Germany it is Turkey's most venomous ally and
has incapacitated thousands of men. It is so small
as to be all but invisible, and it mobilizes in the
great deserts in armies of quintillions. There are
times when every inch of air space seems to be filled
with sand-flies. No net was ever made that was
fine enough to keep them out, and it is said by
those who ought to know that ''they can get
through anything but armor plate.'* When they
get a chance to settle on a man they proceed to
dig in and eat him up, producing a variety of
torture that nothing else can equal. Then, in too
many instances, comes a slow, wasting, prostrating
fever which nearly always necessitates a trip on
a stretcher down the Persian Gulf to a hospital
somewhere m India.

The British army in Mesopot now meets the
sand-fly — and the mosquito — ^with all its exposed
surfaces carefully smeared with oily and pungent
lotions which are issued by the authorities as a part
of necessary soldier equipment. But I will say that
it took a long time to discover the right article and
that there is great division of opinion on the subject
even yet, most oflScers, at least, having each his
own pet brand of unpleasant cream.

It would be overdrawing the picture, perhaps, to
mention scorpions and such crawling creatures of
the desert and the palm-groves. They infest the
land, it is true, but not in sufficient nimibers
seriously to interfere with an army that wears
large boots. They are to be dreaded only be-
cause they are such nightmarish things.

Along in October the climate begins to improve
a little, and by the beginning of November it has

WHAT THE BRITISH FOUND

been known to be, in some respects, positively de-
lightful. But by that time the country from one
end to the other is hub-deep in fine dust which
blows up in blinding, stinging clouds; seeps into
everything; covers one's clothes and belongings;
grits in one's teeth; bums in one's eyes; grinds into
one's flesh and irritates everlastingly.

Even so, the dusty autumn with its cool days and
restful nights is greatly to be preferred to the
ensuing short season when the penetrating chill of
a particularly disagreeable winter is accompanied
by deluge after deluge of wind-driven rain which
turns the dust into a sea of a peculiarly Mesopo-
tamian variety of glutinous mud that clings to
whatever it touches, and by miring man, beast,
and vehicle dogs the progress of every kind of
enterprise.

Not a pleasant country any way you consider
it, one might say. Yet, strangely enough, it is a
country of infinite variation and its *' fiendish fasci-
nation " is a subtle, alluring something beyond one's
power to describe. It inevitably "gets" every
foreigner who comes in intimate contact with it.

Fortunately for the British troops, their first
operations in Mesopotamia were carried out during
the winter months. Had it been earlier in the year
there probably would have been more deaths among
them from sunstroke and fever than from Turkish
lead. But as it was, they had only to contend
against such conditions as are brought about by
lack of shelter, inadequate supply transport, adhe-
sive mud or ankle-deep slush, and an almost con-
tinuous downpour.

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

There are ofiScers in Mesopotamia now who came
in with the first expedition, who have been through
the whole big show, and expect to see it through
to the end. And these men like to tell the story of
the first landing.

Of the great armada that sailed from Bombay
in the middle of October, 1914, the four transports
and one gunboat that were bound for the Persian
Gulf steamed up and anchored on the 2Sd of October
off the pearl island of Bahrein.

The general supposition was that this force had
been sent to guard the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's
properties at Abadan, but, as England was not yet
at war with Turkey, nobody knew definitely against
what or whom. The ships lay at Bahrein until the
1st of November, and without a line of news from
the outside world. At a time, too, when the world
was thrilling with the most important events in
all history. The officers passed the time expressing
to one another their disgust and exasperation, go-
ing through unsatisfactory landing-drills, dealing
with discontent among the crews, and writing in
little note-books — some of which I have had the
privil^e of reading — ^luridly vituperative accoimts
of their various tribulations.

Eventually, however, on the 1st of November,
orders were received to move this force on up the
gulf toward Fao, a fortified town on the Mesopo-
tamian bank at the mouth of the Shatt-el-Arab,
which was of considerable international importance
and contained two telegraph offices, one Turkish
and the other British. And not even the command-
ing general himself knew then that England and
Turkey were at war, though a declared state of

WHAT THE BRITISH FOUND

war between them had existed for more than twenty-
foiir hours. Which goes to show what commmiica-
tions were like in those days.

In f act» it was not mitil two o'clock in the after-
noon of the 2d of November that this contingent
was informed by signal message that it had regular
work to do. The message read:

Please inform the troops tliat a state of war now exists
between England and Turkey. Ever since the beginning of the
war between England and Germany England has made every
endeavor to maintain peace and uphold the ancient friendship
with Turkey, but, urged on by German intrigue, Turkey has
made successive acts of aggression and England is now com-
pelled to declare war. This force has been sent to the gulf
to safeguard our interests and to protect friendly Arabs from
Turkish attack.

So far so good! The men now knew more or
less what to expect, and discontent among them
gave way to hope that there would be *' something
doing'' in the very immediate futiu^.

There was. The immediate order was to occupy
Fao, and this order was executed on schedule time.
A landing was effected at Fao on the 6th of Novem-
ber» and the Turks, after a brief resistance, cleared
out and started on their long retreat to the north.
And that they fled from Fao rather precipitately
was proved by the character of the loot they left
behind them for the British to gather up. The
guns they abandoned were practically undamaged,
while those in the old fort were foimd loaded and
ready for firing.

"Myf* said Master Tommy, "those boys were
in a hurry !"

But friendly Arabs of the neighborhood volun-

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

teered the information that the Basra garrison of
eight thousand men, strongly reinforced by troops
from Baghdad, was moving down to join the re-
treating force, and that the British were to be
attacked by vastly superior numbers and driven
back into the gulf.

The British, however, moved on without delay,
the object being to forestall an attack on Abadan.
And this important point they succeeded in placing
behind them within forty-eight hours. The Turks
are said to have dropped just one shell into Abadan,
but if it had dropped on the right spot it probably
would have been sufficient.

On the 14th of November reinforcements, both
naval and military, arrived from India, and the
British b^an offensive operations with the defi-
nite object of taking Basra, an object which they
accomplished in just nine days.

As it is spoken of in a casual kind of way now-
adays, the British advance from Fao up to Basra
sounds as though it might have been an easy per-
formance. It was not. It was the modem Briton's
first encoimter with Mesopotamian difficulties, and,
knowing practically nothing about them, he could
only meet them pell-mell and take the consequences.

The advance had to be made through closely set
date-plantations hung for miles on end with en-
tangling grape-vines and intersected by innumer-
able unbridged creeks and ditches. The whole
country was a morass, while down along the river-
bank were great salt mud-flats that are always
deeply flooded at high tide.

The Turks fought from ambush, behind the thick
boles of the palms, from under the banks of canals,

100

MAHATIAS IN THE SHATT-EL-ARAB

ACENE IN A CROWDED CREEK OF THE SHATT-EL-ARAB, AT BASRA

WHAT THE BRITISH FOUND

and from previously prepared and concealed dug-
outs, while the wounded — shaving been told by
then- German officers to expect no quarter— ac-
counted for many an Englishman and Indian by
rolling over where they lay and shooting officers
and men at dose range. There are recorded in-
stances of men being killed as they were hurrying to
the assistance of a fallen enemy.

Though perhaps I shoidd say at once that, so
far as I have heard, this is the only recorded in-
stance of Turkish disregard of the rules of fair
fighting in straight battle.

"Our men were extremely humane," writes one
British officer, **and not only assisted wounded
Turks, but also gave them cigarettes and any food
they had, and the Turks were tremendously sur-
prised. They were told to sell their lives as dearly
as possible, because if they fell they surely would
have to die. What rotten lies! Our Pathans were
almost too considerate, even halting in important
movements to help the wounded and the dying.**

The Turks did not oflfer a long-continued resist-
ance. They were in overwhelmingly superior num-
bers, but, having retreated on Basra, they imme-
diately abandoned that important base and rather
bolted than retreated to previously prepared posi-
tions to the northward on the rivers Tigris and
Euphrates. The final twenty-eight miles of the
British advance were undisputed, and this distance
was covered in a single day — a performance which
the self-communing officer of the frankest note-
book describes as a disgrace.

"No staff arrangements at all," says he, "and
men, both British and Indian, footsore and weary,

8 101

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

strung out all over the whole wretched country!
There is no doubt that our generals have just been
pushing on as rapidly as they could over the diffi-
cult route, and expecting more of the men than
men are capable of. Twenty-eight miles in one

^ day over ordinary muddy roads would be bad

. enough, but such a march at a fast pace through

the kind of thick, slimy mud we have to encounter

^ here is simply preposterous and enough to render

^ the men useless for a week!*'

, That officer, being an old-timer of the regular

army, was annoyed. But Basra was occupied on

^ the 23d of November and the reckless advance was

accounted — ^as it really was — ^a valuable victory
and a fine exhibition of British grit and deter-
mination.

At Basra, considering the immediate necessities,
the British found Uterally nothing. The old town
has little to do with necessities now, but at that
time it was important. It is about two miles inland
from the river, and to the westward of it lies only
a boundless expanse of sand. It was a typically
Turkish-Arab town, filthy and unsanitary beyond
description, and left inhabited after the Turkish
evacuation chiefly by a mob of surly and truculent
Arabs who, while they had found Turkish misrule
always intolerable, gave promise of finding British
law and order even more so.

But the British were interested in the river-banks
on which they woidd have to establish port facili-
ties. Every man and every animal and every ounce
of food for both, as well as munitions and equipment
and the necessary materials for developing and

WHAT THE BRITISH FOUND

maintaining a war zone, would have to be brought
from overseas, and it was a serious outlook.

There were two or three foreign consulates that
would serve well enough for departmental head-
quarters, and a new custom-house shed that would
come in handy for warehousing supplies. Also —
Basra having been chosen as the gulf terminal of
the Berlin-to-Baghdad-and-beyond Railroad — there
was one temporary German railway wharf, the
b^innings of some freight-sheds, and a few valu-
able materials lying about. Otherwise, as a base
from which to supply and to direct the operations
of an army destined to the kind of service into
which this first force was immediately thrust, the
place was a total blank.

Roads, lights, telephones, vehicles, housing facili-
ties, civilized conveniences of any kind — ^there were
none ! In order to get any conception at all of sub-
sequent events and developments it is necessary to
realize this. After which it is necessary to get, if
possible, a sweeping kind of vision of a country
stretching away and away to the east and the west
in limitless desolation and rolling northward in
waves and wastes of gray and yellow desert through
which two shallow, slow-flowing rivers — empty then
of transport and at times all but imnavigable — ^wind
a tortuous way.

CHAPTER Vn

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

IT was early morning when I arrived at Basra,
and I stood for two hours or more at the deck
rail, wondering vaguely why somebody did not come
to take me ashore, while I watched with intense
interest the disembarkation of the troops we had
brought, and a scene along the river-bank of toil-
some and bewilderingly multifarious industry. It
was war — ^twentieth-century war — ^in the process of
destroying for all time the somnolent peace of a
world that has drowsed for ages in Eastern dreams.

The Arabs — children of the desert and inheritors
of noiseless ease and ancient methods — ^say, "The
British came with the smoke." But it was the other
way round. The smoke came with the British,
and it rolls to-day — in black spirals of industrial
abomination — ^from workshops innumerable, from
electric power-plants, from many steamboats, and
from tall chimneys and funnels of every kind all
round the horizon. And with the British came also
the loud murmur and the clatter and clank of toil,
the shrill shriek of the locomotive, and the honk
of the horn of the motor.

The Arabs say, also, "Leisure is God-given and
haste is of the Evil One." They never worked be-

104

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

fore in all their lives, but they are working now» and
they are working with a rapidity and cheerfulness
which denote much with r^ard to the reward they
get and the character of the discipline they are
under.

But the scene on the amazing river-bank looked
to me like the utmost in disorderliness and confu-
sion. Docks and wharves were lined with ships
and crowded with men and women — coolies — work-
ing ant-fashion, coming and going in endless lines,
carrying on heads and bent backs boxes and bales
of materials and materials and materials. Acres of
low sheds stretching away into the fringes of the
palm-groves; miles of closely tented open space
seen hazily through clouds of dust; pyramids of
hay and sacked grain under light-green canvas;
mule - wagons; motor - lorries; ammunition-carts;
ambulances; an artillery convoy getting under way
out across a baked gray waste in the distance;
automobiles hurrying hither and thither; officers on
handsome horses moving slowly here and there; a
long line of diminutive donkeys tricked out in
brightly ornamented pack-saddles and with jingling
halters and strings of blue beads round their necks;
a longer line of ambling, munching, disdainful-
nosed camels on the way down to the adjoining
dock, where they were being swung up one by one,
like so many bales of hay, and deposited in the
hold of a big gray ship; it was a scene ^to hold the
new-comer's attention and to make the time pass
swiftly.

And across on the eastern bank of the broad
river were peaceful-seeming, long, mud-thatched
and palm-shaded huts that one knew for hospital

105

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

wards because the fled Cross flag and the Union
Jack flew together from a tall flagstaff in the midst
of them. Beyond them stretched the desert,
bomided only by an orange-and-mauve-lit haze on
far horizons.

A smart yoimg oflBcer wearing the red collar-tabs
of staff service stepped up and — with a certainty
that I was the person he was looking for — said he
had come to fetch me. That was nice. I fully
expected, of course, to be fetched by somebody. I
was to be the guest in Basra, he said, of the In-
spector-General of Communications and the In-
spector-General's launch was at the wharf steps
waiting to take me back down-river to headquarters.
And back down-river in a launch meant skimming
a swift way at water-level through the moving
picture of interesting things afloat which I had al-
ready looked down upon from the high deck of the
trooper as she steamed up the six miles of river-
front to a new pier at its farthest end.

About ten miles below Basra there are three
large ships sunk in what was at one time the chan-
nel of the Shatt-el-Arab. The masts and funnels
of two of them and the prow of the other are high
out of water at low tide — ^inviting one to mental
picture-making of what lies beneath them sub-
merged — and form nowadays one of the "sights** to
be seen.

They were sunk by the Turks during the earliest
operations, with an idea of closing the river to the ad-
vancing British gunboats and troop-ships. But the
Shatt-el-Arab is not a dependable stream for any
such undertaking, and, being strong and deep, would
cut for itself a sufficient channel against any imag-

106

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

inable obstacle. The British attached a cable to
the ship in midstream and, assisted by the current,
pulled it round to one side. The river did the rest.
Almost overnight it washed a wide curve in the
eastern bank and the new channel was established.

From that point on up to Basra the river becomes
cumulatively interesting. An almost continuous
procession of ocean-going ships passes and re-
passes, plying mostly to and from the port of
Bombay: hospital-ships, cargo-ships, and camou-
flaged troopers, with now and then a too-busy-to-
get-itself -cleaned-up refrigerator-ship from Australia
with its dirty-gray, rust-streaked hull covered all
over with great splotches of red paint, as red paint
is always laid on rust-eaten patches.

And ships nowadays have an almost hmnan way
of looking more in earnest about the thing they are
up to than ships ever looked before.

The young officer who had come to fetch me was
A. D. C. to the I. G. C, and the launch lying at
the wharf steps was a long, slim, red-carpeted, and
soft-cushioned luxury that was proudly capable of
making twenty-five miles an hour. It was driven
exactly as an automobile is driven, and the man
behind the wheel looked like a soldier chauffeur
crouched to put a high-powered racer through the
enemy*s lines. He seemed to be in a hurry. I was
not. But what with the noise of the engine and the
wash of the high-foaming wake behind us, there was
little chance of making myself heard, however
much I might have wished to ask questions. Five
miles or more we went, at top speed, and through
traffic so congested that we escaped a dozen colli*

107

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

sions only by what seemed to me to be as many
miracles.

There were six or eight ocean-going hospital-ships
lying at wharves here and there, and many strange
flat-bottomed, high-funneled, and imshapely Bed
Cross river-boats were banked in before the long
rows of hospital-huts, their gangways thrown out
across the Bund. These boats bring the wounded
and the sick down the five hundred miles of river
from Baghdad and transfer them to the hos-
pitals on shore or to the ships for Karachi and
Bombay.

Lying in midstream were a number of cruisers of
the Persian Gulf fleet, while, hugging them dose, or
snugging up against either bank to make room in
the river, were a half-dozen monitors and some
tiny gunboats, all bristling with guns that looked
far too large for them. The monitors and gunboats
are painted the color of the desert dust against
which they are seen when they are on business bent
up the Tigris or Euphrates.

There were troop-ships and cargo-ships, smoke-
belching dredgers, and many barges and tugs and
double-decked steamboats. But mostly, it seemed
to me, there were swift-scurrying launches — ^Red
Cross launches, oflScers' launches shining and trim,
and common, gray-brown, and ill-kept workaday
launches — ^all darting noisily here and there, mak-
ing wide billowing wakes upon which slender,
fragile-seeming belums teetered perilously, to be
steadied by the strong paddle-strokes of deft Arab
boatmen. The Arab boatman sits flat on his heels,
high in the up-curving prow of his graceful small
craft, and is a picture man with kuffiyeh wrapped

108

SCENE AT A CARAVANSERAI — A ME80P0TAHIAN COFFEE-HOUSE

This oni! happriui to bo nl Baghdad.

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

under his usually shapely chin and bound round
his head with twisted strands of camel's hair.

Along the banks rose a forest of slender slanting
masts on scores of mahaylas and dhows that were
high and dry in the mud of low tide. These curious
vessels loom large in one's life in Mesopotamia and
are as much a part of the general scheme of things
as are the palm-trees and the dust and the desert
sands.

The belum is the sampan, or the used-for-every-
thing canoe, of the country, while the mahayla and
the dhow are great, massive-timbered cargo-boats
modeled on fantastic lines that must have been
familiar to the people of the days of Abraham.

I found the I. G. C. and the lines-of -communica-
tion staff housed in a rather pretentious, much-
balconied, and many-windowed building on the
Bund, which used to be the German consulate.

When the British occupied Basra the German
consul did not clear out with the Turks and make
tracks for home, as one would imagine he might
have done. He remained to be taken prisoner —
knowing, perhaps, that he would be transferred to
safe and comfortable quarters in India — and, as
the British were advancing up the Shatt-el-Arab, he
sent an app>eal to them to make haste, that they
might be in time to save the Europeans!

The Arabs were on a rampage, looting the town
and murdering the stragglers in the Turkish retreat
— as is their custom — and it is supposed the German
consul was frightened.

Among the Europeans to be "saved" were two
British telegraph clerks from Fao who had been in

109

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

charge of the British telegraph station there and
who were seized by the Turks the minute war was
declared. They were routed out of their beds in
the middle of the night and marched straight away.
They were not allowed even to dress or to gather
up any of their belongings, and were forced to walk
the fidl sixty-odd miles to Basra in their pajamas
and bedroom slippers, one of them even being with-
out a hat. On the way Arab horsemen pointed
rifles at them and threatened to kill them, while
men, women, and children were encouraged to spit
upon them as they passed through the villages and
along the desert trails.

When they reached Basra they were thrown into
the unspeakable Turkish jail and for a week or
more were mistreated in every possible way, getting
nothing to eat but a few dates.

When the Turks started in full flight to the
north — evidently in a ciuious state of disorganiza-
tion for the moment — ^they were released for some
unexplained reason and were left in Basra. And for
this the German consul wanted credit!

Very well. The British good-naturedly gave it
to him and afforded him the most coiuleous as-
sistance in his preparations for departure to the
comfortable quarters in India. Then it was learned
that he easily could have saved the young men from
the frightful indignities and hardships to which they
had been subjected, and that he was the instigator
and financial backer of practically all the Arab
outrages that were committed. In other words, he
was a German consul.

In his one-time consulate there are a good many
things which afford the present tenants considerable

110

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

amusement. The furniture is of a splendid German
heaviness and the decorations are of the "new art"
variety in light greens and sickly pinks.

But he did have some good Persian carpets which
he had acquired during his residence in the Persian-
carpet belt, and about these he is to this day greatly
concerned. He could not take them with him to a
detention camp in India, and as there was no place
to store them in a town newly occupied by a vic-
torious enemy, he had, perforce, to leave them on
the floors. He knew they would be safe enough in
the hands of British gentlemen, no doubt, but he
now has the astonishing effrontery to write occasion-
ally to the I. G. C. to express his anxiety about them
and to ask that they be regularly beaten and aired !

And the curious thing is that the I. G. C. is only
amused by the man's impudence and that he issues
orders every once in a while to have the carpets at-
tended to. In fact, he is so careful about them that
his less meticulous young staff can hardly smoke
in comfort in the mess-rooms.

Compare this with— a vision of German officers
engaged in their favorite pastime of denuding and
defiling the fine homes of Belgimn and northern
Prance! Rather gratifying to Anglo-Saxon pride in
Anglo-Saxon character, is it not?

In the communications mess, besides the I. G. C.
and his A. D. C. I found an assistant quartermaster-
general, a deputy assistant quartermaster-general,
and the Deputy with a capital "D." The I. G. C—
Major-General Sir George MacMunn — ^is a Knight
Commander of the Bath and has enough orders and
decorations to fill three long ribbon bars on his chest

and to make it impossible for any one to write his

111

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

name with its full complement of alphabetical ad-
ditaments on less than two lines.

The A. D. C. is a one-time prosperous barrister
of Calcutta who gave up a lucrative practice at the
beginning of things and volunteered for any kind
of service the medical classifiers might find him
fitted for. They gave him the rank of first lieutenant
and put him in charge of a mide-depot» and he got
the attractive staflf job as a reward for two years*
uncongenial service uncomplainingly rendered. He
has no ribbons at all, but he doesn't mind telling
you that he has a younger brother in Prance with a
Victoria Cross. The A. Q. M. G. is a serious-minded
colonel who went on the water-wagon with King
George for the imending "duration" and the D. A.
Q. M. G. is a major of cavalry in the Indian army
who has the French Cross of War and a record of
thirteen years' service, nearly two of which have
been spent without leave in Mesopotamia.

The Deputy — ^never spoken of as anything else —
is D. I. G. C, understudy to the Insi>ector-GeneraI
of Communications, who holds down the job at
headquarters when the I. G. C. is off on his frequent
trips of inspection up and down the lines of com-
munication, which, starting from Basra, follow the
courses of the Tigris and Euphrates and spread fan-
wise along dozens of avenues to the farthest out-
posts on the battle-lines. The Deputy, a big, white-
haired, Irish brigadier-general, has brown eyes that
smile and a tongue that keeps the community's
sense of humor stirred up to bubbling-point.

And it was with the Deputy, off duty as an un-
derstudy, that I first explored the great city of war
behind the palm belt and got a definite realization

112

U A JOB-GENERAL SIR QEOttOE MaCMTTKN, INSPEtrrOR-OENERAL OF

COM MUNI CATIONS

Talwn at Bun,

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

of the fact that war can be waged constructively
rather than destructively if the wagers thereof
happen to belong to a nation with a modem Chris-
tian soul and a gentlemanly conscience.

Desolation, utter and complete and inexpressibly
dreadful ! That is bound to be one's first impression
of almost any part of M esopotamia» and its curious
charm does not impress itself upon one except at
the day's end when it is flooded with seductive
lights.

It was aflame with a fierce noonday glare when the
Deputy and I rolled out into it in a big gray ser-
vice motor-car, though for a short time we rolled
along over a fine hard-surfaced roadway that was
black with oil. He had to tell me about that. It
was the first road that had been built in Mesopo-
tamia since the year before Adam. It is six miles
long and it cost more than any six miles of road
ever cost before in the history of the world.

There is no stone in the country; not even a
pebble. In fact, there is no building material of
any kind except mud, so everything that went to
the construction of this road had to be brought up
from the interior of India, and at a time, too, when
sea transport was the most valuable thing in the
world. But diflSculty and expense were not to be
considered, the road being an absolute necessity.
During the early months of the year the earth is
covered to an average depth of about seven inches
with the thick, viscid mud I have already men-
tioned, which puts automobile transport out of busi-
ness altogether and in which neither man nor beast

can get a secure foothold.

lis

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

The Turks did'^not believe the British would build
roads. They never had themselves. And they re-
lied with the utmost confidence during the winter
of 1914-15 on the always hampering climatic condi-
tions, believing that the British would be unable to
establish an adequate base, to say nothing of mak-
ing an advance. But the Britisher is just as good
a fighter as the Turk and happens to be a vastly
more industrious, resourceful, and determined indi-
vidual. He certainly did floimder roimd and get
himself in a fearful condition that winter, but his
first call was for labor reserves and crushed rock;
and first thing you know there was the six-mile
road connecting all the points along the river where
cargo is unloaded. In the mean time the river-bank
was being rapidly lined with piers and warehouses.

This highway now connects everything else with
the terminal of a railroad that was picked up some-
where in India where it was not absolutely needed »
brought up the Persian Gulf, and laid down along
the west bank of the Euphrates to supplement that
uncertain river as a means of communication with
the far-away northwestern battle-front.

Long since, however, a reasonably inexpensive
source of supply for road-surfacing material has
been located and developed, and now the six-mile
stretch is only a historic example to be talked about
in connection with the diflScult days. Road-building
is now going on apace in every direction, as one is
made to realize when one's automobile has to skirt
round steam-rollers time and again, or plimge off
into rutted side-tracks and run for miles on end
through dust hub-deep to avoid long stretches of
newly laid crushed rock.

114

NOT THROUGH A PORTHOLE

The Deputy, being more or less used to things
as they are, tried his best to be communicative and
friendly as we drove along through the immensities
and mysteries — ^mysteries to me, at least — ^but the
dust was so terrific that to open one's mouth was
at times to risk being choked to death. Everything
was covered with it, and to a thickness and heavi-
ness that I can best indicate perhaps by reference
to a boy I saw at a Red Cross depot clearing it off
the sagging top of a big storage tent with a shoveL
It had seeped into everything to such an extent that
it was difficult, so far as color was concerned, to tell
where the camps left off and the desert began.
Dust and tents; dust and sheds; dust and pyra-
mids of war-supplies; dust and men; dust and
mules; everything seemed blended together in an
interminable stretch of yellow and tawny gray. It
was desert camouflage.

Within the deep shade of the dust - powdered
palm-gardens there are labor-camps, mule-depots,
remount-depots, veterinary hospitals, and accom-
modation for various native and auxiliary services.
But beyond a sharp line, the palm-gardens leave
off and the desert begins. And out in the desert
the British Tommy and his Indian comrades have
pitched their tents by the tens of thousands. Sub-
stantial huts of wood, with walls of reed mats and
heavy roofs of mud, have taken the place of tents
in one section, and these — ^grotesque to the last
degree — stretch away in even rows across the plain
like a measureless, fantastic kind of dream city»
relieved by nothing but the roimd mud domes of
many incinerators and an occasional flagstaff flying
the colors of some regiment or corps.

115

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

There are Y. M. C. A. centers every so often —
these being mostly an American contribution to
the general scheme of things — ^and there are fre-
quent canteens, the canteen in the British sense
being a small official retail store where Tommy can
buy at cost price various luxuries, such as cakes,
biscuits, chocolates, jams, potted meats, tinned
fruits, and extra cigarettes, as well as many tempt-
ing small items of wearing-apparel not included by
government in his regular equipment. A place, in
other words, where boy or man may relieve in him-
self, to a certain extent, a sometimes intolerable
longing for home and the usual comforts. This
kind of canteen service is a part of the regular Brit-
ish military organization and is not related in any
way to the canteen services provided by war-relief
organizations and carried on by volunteer workers.

Then we went to the prison camp — ^in the same
general desert area. There is a weird fascination
about war prison camps. One sees cooped up in
them, under the covering muzzles of machine-guns,
thousands of men who have met one's own men in
battle, have inflicted upon them inhuman horrors,
and have themselves suffered unfoigetable things,
and one looks upon them with a vague kind of
wonder. I have seen a great many German prisoners
in France and I can never control a feeling of re-
sentment against them, but I felt rather sorry for
the mild-eyed but otherwise villainous-looking
Turks. There were only about three thousand of
them in just then — with a few Germans among
them — ^but the camp can accommodate seven thou-
sand and has done so on a number of occasions.

It is a tremendous square area inclosed in

116

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

barbed-wire entanglements. The prisoners live in
bell tents set in even rows which, running away
and away in converging parallels, give one an im-
pression of great distances. Outside every sixth or
eighth tent I observed a group of men engaged in
chopping up sides of beef. They were distributing
a ration. It was fine, fresh Australian meat and
each man was getting a generous share of it.

I was thinking that coming upon a supply of
such food must have been a welcome change for
most of them. And besides a good and sufficient
meat ration they get excellent white bread — ex-
actly what the British soldier gets — ^and plenty of
vegetables.

They are well fed and well taken care of in every
way, the health of the camp being practically per-
fect; and there is nothing for them to complain
of, really, except the climate. The tents are
bleached white in the terrific sim and throw back
the savage glare of the fine dust as though in a kind
of impotent rage; and that is rather awful!

But that kind of thing the British soldiers have
to put up with, too, and they are less used to it,
perhaps. Though, come to think of it, the Turks
are as much foreigners in Mesopotamia as the British,
and there are many of them from the hills and the
regions up around the Black Sea to whom the desert
is a torment and a torture. They are always de-
lighted when they come to be transferred to camps
in India, as all of them must be sooner or later
to make room for the fresh relays coming in.

After leaving the camps of the city of war we
struck straight out on the way to nowhere — ^toward
which no way leads. There are desert roadways,

9 117

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

to be sure, in one direction or another, but they
are nothing but wheel tracks in the dust and sand
and are not distinguishable very far ahead even at
their best. In a sand-storm they become wholly
obliterated in a few moments.

About five miles out in one direction there is a
wide area of desert fenced in with barbed-wire en-
tanglements, heavily stockaded and filled to capac-
ity with munitions of war. It is a most comforting
thing to look upon. It makes you double up your
fists and say the first thing that comes into your
mind which calls for an exclamation point by way
of pimctuation. And a little farther on we drove
round a detached artillery encampment where sev-
eral hundred new guns were being prepared for
transportation on their own wheels to the far-away
front. There were gun crews drilling, and in the
vast silence one could hear the sharp conunands of
officers from long distances away.

We went on toward nowhere, intending to make
a wide detour and come into old Basra by the
Zobier Gate in the south wall. There was no dust
out there; only hard-packed sand, from which the
fierce hammering sun struck a myriad glinting, eye-
searing sparks. But it was beautiful beyond words
to describe. We spun along at fifty miles an hour
with a cool, clean breeze in our faces.

Then, just over a slight rise in the sparkling
plain, I saw my first mirage. It was impossible to
believe it was a mirage and not really the beautiful
lake that it seemed — ^a lake dotted with wooded
islands and fringed in places with deep green for-
ests. I have seen mirage in other deserts in other

lands, but I have never seen anything like the

lis

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

Mesopotamian mirage. We drove straight on, and
it came so close that I was sure I could see a ripple
on its siu^ace. Then suddenly it went away off,
and where it had been our skid-proof tires were
humming on the hard-packed sand, and I saw that
the wooded islands had been created out of nothing
but patches of camel-thorn and that the trees of
the forest were tufts of dry grass not more than six
inches high.

Off on the far horizon a camel caravan was swing-
ing slowly along and the camels looked like some
kind of mammoth prehistoric beasts, while in an-
other direction what we took to be camels tiumed
out to be a string of diminutive donkeys under
pack-saddles laden with bales of the desert grass
roots which the Arabs use for fuel.

The mirage has played an interesting part in the
Mesopotamian campaigns. In some places it is
practically continuous the year roimd, and it adds
greatly to the diflSculties of an army in Action. It
is seldom mistaken for anything but what it is, but
it does curious things to distances and to objects
both animate and inanimate. Incidentally it ren-
ders the accurate adjustment of gun ranges almost,
if not altogether, impossible.

One of the most curious incidents of the whole
war happened in connection with a mirage, and on
the very spot over which I drove that first day out
in the desert. But I shall come to that presently.

We swung rotmd a circle across the trackless
waste and came up along the south wall of Basra
to an ancient gateway. Seen from the outside, it
is a picturesque old town with — ^what should one
say? — the charm of Oriental unreality. It has flat

119

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

mud roofs, high ornamental copings, romid, low
domes, and slender minarets. And the sun-yellows
and golden browns of it tone with the tawny desert
sands and are flecked here and there with glancing
shadows from tall palm-trees.

I wondered how we dared to drive into the place
in a big seven-passenger touring-car, but the people
had evidently learned how to get out of the way of
automobiles and they showed no resentment what-
ever when they had to flatten themselves for their
lives against walls that our mud-guards barely
cleared. In fact, they seemed to enjoy it, and they
laughed and waved their hands at us. Sometimes
there was not room for both them and the car in
the same street, and they would have to run on
ahead of us and seek safety in doorways or little
open shops. But never mind. It was all very
friendly.

We drove into the narrow, dim bazaar, arched
overhead and lighted only by slender streaks of
sunlight which found a way into the darkness
through clefts and crannies in the vaulting. Every
town in Mesopotamia — ^and in Syria and Arabia
and Persia and Turkey — ^has its bazaar. And they
are all alike except that some are more dilapidated
and more oppressive with dank and evil odors than
others. A bazaar is always a street, or a network
of streets — ^if such lanelike passages can be called
streets — covered from the sun either with stone
vaulting — sometimes very fine and sometimes not
so fine — or with ragged reed mats or old bits of can-
vas or any unsightly thing that happens to be
available. They are lined on either side with small
cubicles in each of which some merchant displays

120

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

his merchandise, while he sits on the floor, as a rule,
with his legs tucked under him, leisurely pulling at
the amber stem of the long tube of a hubble-bubble.

There is a certain fascination in the very word
bazaar, and one expects to catch glimpses of tempt-
ing things that will make one's last dollar seem
ripe for spending. But there are few places left in
the world where treasures do not have to be dili-
gently searched for. The world's collectors have
been everywhere and the people of the remotest
places who own ciuious things have learned the
Occidental value of them.

Not that one would ever expect to find anjrthing
in a town like Basra; yet it is a town now largely
inhabited — on its outskirts, at least — by the kind
of foreigners who buy tempting things, and at al-
most any kind of price. And a majority of the mer-
chants are Jews and Persians who are not cut off
from certain areas of supply.

A great many of the fine things that are sold in
the Near East come from Persia and, the war not-
withstanding, there are no unusual restrictions on
travel or business in Persia.

Nevertheless, one gets an impression that the
whole Basra bazaar is draped in cheap ginghams
and gaudy calicoes, while the only "objects of art'*
to be seen are hideously tawdry Japanese articles
that one knows were turned out in the same spirit
of commercial conquest which at one time caused
the "Made in Germany" trade-mark to stand in
the world's mind for all that is mediocre and
offensive.

Outside of the bazaar Basra is a town of small
pictures and seems to be inhabited chiefly by a lot

121

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

of delightful persons who exist for nothing but to
pose round in attitudes of grace and subtle allure-
ment. There is a winding creek, walled with ma*
sonry, spanned by arching footbridges and lined
on either side with houses that are built of golden-
yellow clay and have projecting balconies painted
green and pink and brilliant blue. And, driving
along the edge of this creek, one sees veiled women
with long-necked, beautiful, brown water-jars,
standing on moss-green steps under bending palms.
Or a long, slender belum may glide swiftly by, filled
with women wearing cerise and gold and bright
purple abaha. Also there are always black-robed
and ebony-faced slave women washing clothing at
the water's edge or playing with small companies
of laughing, half-naked, adorable children.

Then, through a narrow street and round a cor-
ner, where a camel stands mtmching disdainfully
in a queer angle of a crumbling ancient wall, you
come into the city square and up to the old cara-
vanserai. I was interested in that because I had
read in the private note-books a good many frankly
blasphemous accounts of the early days when the
serai was the only shelter the young British officer
had in Mesopotamia.

The lawless Arabs had not then been cleared out
of the population, and the peacefully inclined had
not yet had demonstrated to them the advisability,
not to say the tremendous advantage, of settling
down under British law and order. There was
hardly an Arab who did not possess a gun, and
many of them had well-stocked arsenals, as the
British discovered when they began a systematic
search for arms.

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

It is said that the average Arab's highest ambition
in life is to become the owner of a good rifle and one
hundred rounds of ammunition. These are his
equivalent for our "vine and fig-tree'* or our ten
acres and a team of mules. With a good rifle and
one hundred rounds of ammunition he can go raid-
ing, have a wonderful time, and make that kind
of living for an indefinite period. Or he can join
the "army** of some desert chieftain, be taken care
of, and have all the wild excitement his heart
desires.

When the British entered Basra the town was
being looted and all the peaceful citizens were
either in hiding or had placed themselves on the
defensive. A proclamation was instantly posted
calling upon the people to preserve order and to
observe certain rules laid down. It decreed that all
looting must stop and said that certain crimes —
robbery under arms being among them — would be
punished by established and well-known military
methods.

But it happens that robbery under arms has been
one of the principal Arab industries for ages, so it
was not as easy as one might think to make a de-
cree against it eflPective. There was one case of it
after another; the troops were so busy elsewhere
that an adequate patrol could not be provided,
and conditions became intolerable. It was decided
that something would have to be done about it,
and this is what happened:

A robber was caught red-handed one night in
the act of holding up two Arab dancing-girls who
were on their way home with their earnings from a
party at which they had performed, and the general

123

THE WAR m THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

officer commanding decided that instead of sending
him for a long period to the jail that was already
overcrowded, he would have him publicly flogged
in the open square. He would make an example of
him and put the fear of the wrath of the British in
the hearts of his brethren.

The square is surrounded on three sides by many-
windowed buildings, and along the fourth stretches
the low wall of the caravanserai^ outside of which
there is a coffee-house, or a trellis-covered open
space filled with benches and wooden divans where
the male population congregate every afternoon to
gossip, to smoke their hubble-bubbles, and to drink
innumerable small cups of coffee or innumerable
small glasses of some kind of syrupy mixture.

The population was advised that the terrible ex-
hibition was to take place and the population
gathered at the appointed hour in full force. Even
the roofs were blade with people, and the windows
and balconies were jammed. A cordon of troops
was drawn up round the flogging-board and ma-
chine-guns were trained on the square from roofs
on either side — this to prevent any kind of demon-
stration or disorder — ^and when everything was in
readiness the culprit was led forth and strapped
into place.

Everybody ought to have been horrified. The
British exp>ected everybody to be horrified. But
not at all! The girls who had been the victims of
the robber and on whose, account he was about to
undergo this most ignominious of all punishments
had brought a number of friends to see the show
and had disposed themselves comfortably in a long
window which commanded a perfect view and in

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

which they were the observed of all observers.
They were all dressed up in their best abahs and
veils and were perched on a bench of some sort,
giggling and having the time of their young lives.
And a broad smile of pleasant anticipation illumined
the countenance of everybody present.

The British major who had charge of the proceed-
ings told me about it and said that he felt all the
time as though he were standing on a volcano of
mirth that was likely to explode at any moment.
However, he and his troops were solemn enough.
To them it was a "horrible example" and they
hated it.

He gave the command for the floggers to proceed,
the while, so he says, he gritted his teeth and cut
the palms of his hands with his finger-nails in the
intensity of his disgust with the thing he was com-
pelled to do. But at that moment the bench on
which the girls were squatting — that is what they
do; they squat — gave way and they all fell back-
ward, some of them with their feet waving in the
air, and the crash was the signal for a roar of laugh-
ter from all sides. The wretched creature strapped
to the flogging-board — ^and with a stripe or two
already laid across his back — ^raised his head and
joined in with the utmost heartiness, while the
floggers and the British soldiers, in their amusing
efforts to keep their faces straight, added to the
general fiasco.

After that what could serious-minded Englishmen
do who were determined to see established a reign
of law?

After that they decreed that hanging should be
the punishment for robbery under arms, and th^

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

next scene in the public square was not so merry.
There were two hangings, as a matter of fact, right
there in full view of the whole population. Then
robbery and thieving in the vicinity of Basra sud-
denly ceased. It was as though the Arab had said
to the Englishman:

"Oh, well — ^if you are as serious as all that about
it— !'*

In that dusty and unsightly old plaza I remem-
bered another scene that was very curious. It was
a scene quite forcibly illustrative of British view-
points and methods, and it accomplished a purpose
that was not thought of at the time in connection
with it.

The corpse of a stork on a crfipe-hung bier occu-
pied the center of the stage, and the hmnan interest
consisted largely of bitterness in the heart of a
British Tommy.

It just happens that the stork is a kind of semi-
sacred bird to the Arabs, and the country is filled
with them. They build their great nests in the tops
of the palms, on house cornices, or wherever they can
make them balanceand hold; and they stalksolenuily
about on the river-banks, in the marshes, and over
the flat roofs of the villages in absolute safety and
with no fear at all of human beings.

Whether or not the British soldier who shot a
mother stork nesting realized the nature of his
offense is not shown in the evidence. It is only
shown that wantonly, and to no purpose other than
to display his marksmanship, a British soldier shot
a mother stork nesting. There was a great to-do
about it and Master Tommy was placed under
arrest.

126

NOT THROUGH A PORT-HOLE

The case went up to the same general officer
commanding who had ordered the flogging of the
robber, and, being a G. O. C. with an imagination,
he pronounced a unique sentence. He thought it
would probably do the young Britisher good to be
laughed at by the Arab population, so he had the
body of the dead bird stuffed and laid out in state
in the center of the square. Then he ordered the
boy in khaki, sick with chagrin, to do sentry-go
over it eight hours a day for one week, two hours
on and two hours off, beginning at six o'clock in
the morning.

But, strange to relate, the Arabs did not laugh.
They regarded the strange spectacle with the
utmost seriousness, and, shaking their heads in
grave appreciation, said:

*' These Englishmen are just men. They punish
their own for outraging our customs and offending
us. They respect our beliefs, our laws, and our
time-honored usages as they require us to respect
theirs. At last we have come under even-handed
and impartial justice! AUaJb be praised!"

CHAPTER Vin

STRENGTHENING THE FOOTHOLD

IF the British had been able to settle down at
Basra and do nothing but guard from that
mere foothold in the land the approaches to the
Persian Gulf, the Mesopotamian story would have
been a vastly diflFerent one. If they had been able
to suspend military operations until some measure
or preparation had been made to continue them, the
Mesopotamian story would have been different.
In either case it is not unlikely that the men in
command of things would have been condemned
for inaction.

They were condemned, anyhow, and rightly,
perhaps. But it has to be admitted that up to a
certain point their whole course of action was de-
termined, not by any one's impetuosity or personal
ambition, but by the actual necessities of the situa-
tion.

The Turkish army was divided into three sec-
tions, and after the British occupation of Basra
one of these, under Subhi Bey — ^a former Waliy or
military governor of the Basra district — ^took up a
strong position at Qumah, about forty-six miles to
the north, where a branch of the Euphrates flows
into the Tigris. Here Subhi Bey was in easy com-

128

STRENGTHENING THE FOOTHOLD

munication with Baghdad and could be rapidly re-
inforced.

At the same time the main Turkish strength,
uhder Suleiman Askeri, was in process of concen-
tration and organization on the Euphrates for a
massed descent via the old stronghold of Shaiba,
which lies about twelve miles northwest of Basra
and was held at that tune by a mere handful of
British troops.

The third section, amounting to eight battalions
and some ten thousand weU-armed Arabs, was con-
centrated on the Kanm Biver in Persia, threatening
the Anglo-Persian oil-fields from that direction and
seriously undermining the power of the loyal
Sheikh of Muhammerah by disaffecting thousands
of his tribesmen either through bribery or by re-
ligious misrepresentation. This being at a time
when the Kaiser's "holy war" — ^which puffed itself
out with the foul breath of its own unholiness —
seemed to have a chance of success.

So it happened that the Turks had something
to say with regard to what the British should do.
To establish security of position in the land the
British were compeUed to resume offensive opera-
tions, and at once, the object being to drive the
enemy back on all sides to points as far removed as
possible from the borders and coasts along which
lay Britain's greatest danger. This necessitated a
division of the British troops, and they were so far
outnumbered by the enemy that the entire force was
needed really to attack even one of the Tiurkish po-
sitions. However, no British fighting-men ever yet
hesitated to take the short end'of an uneven stru^le.

The first thing to be done was to attend to Subhi

120

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

Bey, and this they did forthwith. Mud and mid*
winter miseries notwithstanding, it was exceedingly
rapid action. Basra was occupied on the 23d of
November, and on the 9th of December Subhi Bey,
forty-six miles away, was attacked and forced to
surrender with four guns and more than one thou-
sand men.

This was a splendid small victory, but the greater
part of Subhi Bey*s division retreated — or fled —
and, being strongly reinforced, took up a position
early in January about six miles north from Qumah
on the now tragically historic east bank of the
Tigris. And there they were!

In the mean time the enemy on the Euphrates
came down and achieved a surprise attack on the
British at Shaiba, the ensuing battle being, up to
that time, the severest and hardest-fought engage^
ment in the Mesopotamian campaign. It was dis-
tinguished by a number of unique features and cul-
minated in the strange incident of the mirage to
which I referred in the last chapter.

There is a great area to the westward of Basra
that is inclosed within a flood-controlling embank-
ment known as the Shaiba Bund. And this area
was then deeply flooded.

As I have said, the Turks delivered a surprise
attack and the shortest way for British reinforce-
ments to reach the small company of men who were
holding the old fortress was across this basin. Some
of the troops marched across in water that in places
was up to their armpits, while others commandeered
all the belums there were in the vicinity of Basra
and poled themselves across under heavy fire, fight-
ing as they went.

180

STRENGTHENING THE FOOTHOLD

The main struggle, however, was in the dry,
open desert, and for a good many hours it was any-
body's battle. It was going very badly for the Brit-
ish, and, though they were in overwhelmingly
superior numbers, it was going very badly for the
Turks as well. This the British officer commanding
did not realize, and he was just on the point of
giving an order for retirement — ^which probably
woidd have been fatal to the British in Mesopo-
tamia! — ^when, to his astonishment, he discovered
that the enemy was in full retreat*

The British had no reserves. They were all in.
But the Turkish commander, who really ought to
have been more familiar with local phenomena, saw
approaching from the southeast what looked to him
like heavy British reinforcements, and he ordered
an immediate retreat.

Then his already unnerved troops stampeded,
while his demoralized rear-guard was hounded and
harassed all the way to Khamisseyeh, nearly ninety
miles away, by great bands of nomad Arabs that
had been hanging on the flanks of both armies,
waiting to take spoils of whichever side should be
vanquished.

The desert was shimmering with mirage, and
what the Turkish commander mistook for a fresh
British force was nothing but a supply and ambu-
lance train that had made its way around the
flooded area and, being magnified and multiplied
by the deceptive atmosphere, was coming up across
the desert in a low-rolling doud of its own dust.
Suleiman Askeri learned the truth a few days later —
and the British were told that he committed suicide!

And while all this was going on a third British

181

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

force had to be despatched against the Turkish
position in Persia. This operation was also suc-
cessful, and by the end of May the enemy had been
cleared out of Persia altogether. They were thrust
back to the Tigris line, while General Townshend's
army — ^the famous army of the siege of Kut — ^at-
tacked the Turkish force on the east bank of the
river and drove them northward beyond Amara,
covering ninety miles in less than four days.

General Townshend occupied Amara — ^tJie prin-
cipal town on the Tigris between Basra and Baghdad
and one hundred and thirty miles by river from
Basra — on the Sd of June, and he was joined about
two weeks later by the troops that had been operat-
ing in Persia and that had made their way across
the difficult country — ^then imder siunmer floods —
all the way from Ahwaz.

And so began and developed the forever-to-be-
remembered hot-season campaign of 1916 which
was to end in such fearful disaster. At which point
I shall leave for the time being the military opera-
tions, and in doing so I must take occasion to dis-
avow what may seem to be an intention on my part
to write a history of the war as it has been fought
in the Mesopotamian zone.

I do not know how to write military history, and
can only tell a few stories more or less as they were
told to me, while I follow the British army up the
river that is specially interesting now because that
army has made it so. Without a brief review of
the operations it would not be possible to present
any kind of picture of things as they have come to
exist.

There is very little fighting during the hot season

132

STRENGTHENING THE FOOTHOLD

nowadays* It is as though the contending forces
had entered into a sort of compact, the Turks
having as little liking as the British for the mur-
derous Sim and the unbelievable temperatures.
But during that first terrible summer they had to
fight, and under conditions that would now be con-
sidered wholly intolerable.

CHAPTER IX

INTRODUCING THE " POLITICALS"

IT may be that the presence of the Political Com-
missioners in the Mesopotamia war zone im-
parts to the situation a certain air of mystery, but
if so it is only because '^making a mystery" of
things is one of humanity's chief delights.

The Political Commissioners contribute a con-
siderable sum to the general scheme of things and
there is one located at every important point in
the occupied territory.

But their title is an unfortunate one. It is not
improbable that to the English mind it conveys
exactly the right idea, but in the gradually devel-
oped American view the word "political" has come
to suggest something rather impleasantly subtle
— ^not to say underhanded and altogether repre-
hensible.

These men in Mesopotamia should be called
Civil Commissioners, perhaps. They constitute a
kind of balancing-bar between normality of govern-
ment and actual military rule, and their duties are
to see that the life of the people goes on in the
usual way, to introduce necessary measures of re-
form in matters directly affecting the civil popu-
lations, to keep open a friendly communication be-

134

INTRODUCING THE "POLITICALS

tween the Arab head men and the British military
authorities, to collect taxes and to maintain, in so
far as it is possible, the ordiliary routine of govern-
mental procedure.

It is a very useful service, and when the war is
over and the troops are withdrawn it will have
prepared the way for the easy and peaceable es-
tablishment of civil government on a much higher
plane of civic morality than the peoples of Mesopo-
tamia have ever known anything about.

The men are all Deputy Political Commissioners
as a matter of fact; the one and only P. C. being
Sir Percy Cox, who directs the work from General
Headquarters at Baghdad. So throughout the land
they are known as D. P. C/s. There are A. D. P.
C.'s, also — even D. P. C.*s requiring assistants —
and it was an A. D. P. C. that the D. P. C. of the
Basra district took me one day to visit.

We invited to go with us a visiting major-general
from the Euphrates front and a very usef id young
gentleman to whom Arabic is all but a mother-
tongue and who was in Basra fitting out for an
expedition into the depths of the Arabian wilderness.

The D. P. C. and the visiting general and I took
General MacM unn's somewhat rickety but always
reliable Ford, while the visiting general's A. D. C.
and the adventurer-into-waste-places took the D.
P. C.'s big service car, and at an early hoiur we
were on our way.

Basra or Zobier or both was or were the home
port or ports of Sindbad the Sailor. Each of them
claims this honor, but neither of them as it now
exists was the city the Sailor knew. Basra was the

135

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

great ancient city, and the ruins of it — ^a wide
area of ciu-iously mounded sand — ^lie seven miles
or so to the south of the comparatively modem
town of Basra, while Zobier is about five miles fur-
ther on, a walled town in the naked desert. It was
to Zobier that we were going.

We drove through the dingy bazaar and a dozen
winding, lanelike streets of Basra city and came
out at the Zobier Gate in the south wall.

Basra city, incidentally, has something like
thirty-three thousand inhabitants and is rich by
virtue of its date-plantations, there being more
than eleven million trees within the area it domi-
nates. Iif ordinary times its export of dates equals
its import of everything, and the plantations give
employment to thousands of men and women.

The Zobier Gate is flanked on either side by two
old round towers falling into ruin, while a short
distance away ' stands a medieval - looking fort
with battlemented walls, high-arched portals, and
square watch-towers rising from the comers of it.
There are palm-trees behind it and at its base is a
deep hollow, like a great drained basin, in which
hundreds of commissariat camels are quartered.
With the camels are many Bedouins in graceful
long oibdM and with shaggy hair that falls from
under bright-checked kuffiyehs. A picture of the
East most Eastern!

Leading out across the desert from the gateway
there is a track in the deep sands to which the
Sheikh of Zobier likes to refer as one of his "de-
velopments." It is marked chiefly by the carcasses
of dead camels and donkeys and by piles of bleach-
ing bonesy but here and there one comes upon

130

INTRODUCING THE -POLITICALS'*

evidences of scrapings and gutterings which indi*
cate an intention on the part of somebody to make
a road of it. And I was told that Sheikh Ibrahim,
seeing British roadways under process of construc-
tion in and out and idl round the district, decided
that a proper highway between Basra and Zobier
would be a valuable contribution to the general
progress. Whereupon he got his tribesmen out one
day and they began work.

In places they managed to loosen the sand to
such a depth that no automobile could possibly
get through it, so we f oimd it necessary to make
frequent detours out across the unimproved plain.

The road leads directly through the mounded
ruins of ancient Basra, in which archeological ex-
cavators have made great gashes and out of which
for a dozen centuries or more a large part of the
building material has been taken for all the towns
in the immediate vicinity.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Zobier
is that it is built almost entirely of bricks from this
buried city of the early world, and it is to the im-
perishableness of these bricks that it owes its ap-
pearance of excellent preservation and neatness.
Most Arab towns are built of sun-baked mud slabs,
and they soon fall into unsightly raggedness. But
these bricks of Basra were molded and burned
when the world was so young that historical vision
gropes along its then paths as an aged man might
grope in his inner consciousness for glimpses of
his earliest infancy, and they are everlasting.

Mr. Howell, the D. P. C, had notified Mr. Mo-
CuUum, the A. D. P. C, that we were coming,
and if Mr. McCullum had thought it possible that

187

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

we might get lost in the labyrinthine puzzlement
of his old town he probably would have been at
the desert gate to meet us.

As it was, we drove boldly in. Then we stopped.
Mr. Howell had been there only once before and
didn't know in the least how to find Mr. Mc-
Cullum's house. But, having a command of the
Arabic tongue, he could inquire. And any one
would know where to find Mr. McCullum because
he is the only white man in the place.

We stopped an ordinary, every-day, regular boy
and asked if he woidd show us the way. Yes,
he would; and, like any ordinary, every-day, regu-
lar boy he jumped on our running-board and took
charge of the situation.

We learned afterward that ihere was a perfectly
simple route which we might have taken, through
streets that are wide and straight. But the boy
wanted to show himself off where the crowds con-
gregate, so he guided us into the depths of the dim
bazaar, where, having got started, we could do
nothing but drive on with a hope that the way
would open up. It didn't. A terrified p>opulation
began to scatter before us, and we began to worry
about the big car behind us. If it tried to follow
us it would have to be pried out in parts and reas-
sembled. Even our little Ford was soon wedged
in between two shops where its mud-guards had
scraped vegetables off the display stands on one
side and piece goods off a street-side counter on
the other. The boy was scraped off the nmning-
board and fell all the way through the green-
grocer's shop into his back garden. Which is a
bit of an exaggeration to indicate the extreme

138

INTRODUCING THE "POLITICALS

shallowness of the shop and the narrowness of
everything — ^including the boy's escape*

I wondered why the Aral^ didn't get annoyed
and unpleasant about it. But, no. They only
moved themselves and their merchandise out of
our devastating way and laughed with huge en-
joyment*

It was no use trying to go on unless we were
prepared to cut a way through by taking the fronts
off all the buildings, and even a Ford would be
hardly up to that. So we decided to walk, leaving
the diauiffeur to get himself out of his difficulties
as best he could.

Incidentally, it was a mistake to worry about
the big car. The Adventurer knew the way. He
knew nearly everything.

As for the boy, he had greatly distinguished
himself and was for making the most of the memor-
able moment. Also, he was still seriously bent on
showing us the way. He did it somewhat after
the manner of a playful puppy.

We had come to the entrance to an arcaded
footway which wound round fascinating comers
and seemed to be intending to get nowhere in
particular, and naturally we could not rush through
such a place, especially as it was insufferably hot
in the sun, while imder the high ancient-brick
vaulting it was cool with a soothing, shaded cool-
ness.

But the boy thought we were in a hurry, I sup-
pose. Most white people always are. He would
run on ahead a short distance, turn round and look
at us with a reproachful air, then hurry back to
rejoin us. With considerable gesticulative indi-

1S9

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

cation of direction he would say something in
clattering Arab to the D. P. C, then rush on» only
to repeat the process every time we stopped.

When we came out of the arcade we found oiu*-
selves in a wide, open plaza where a sale of camels
was in progress. There were hundreds of the odorif-
erous and extraordinary beasts lolling about in
every conceivable camel attitude, while many Arabs
in rich abahs and aristocratic-looking kuffiyehs went
about among them, feeling their himips and ex-
amining their points with judicious solemnity.

And there were groups of African slave women
here and there, sitting in the glare of the sun
under the almost grim heaviness of the all-envelop-
ing black robes they nearly always wear. As we
passed by they covered their faces with their hands,
palms out, to ward off the evil spell we were sup-
posed to be able to cast upon them.

The A. D. P. C. is a young man who specialized
in Arabic at Dublin University for no reason ex-
cept that he was fascinated by Eastern lore. He
had no thought of tinning Ids specialty to uses
that would be of value to his country — until the
war began. Now he lives all alone at Zobier —
sometimes not seeing a white man for weeks on
end — ^and he makes use of his accomplishment in
language and his love of Arabian life and institu-
tions to the end that Sheikh Ibrahim and his
numerous retainers maintain an active and friendly
association with the British authorities.

When we reached Mr. McCuDum*s house we
had plodded a long way in the hot glare through
a street that was anklendeep in fine sand and lined
on either side by high walls that were utterly

140

INTRODUCING THE "POLITICALS

blank save for a narrow doorway here and there.
But, once inside his courtyard, one could forget
all that. One stepped into a scene of truly Eastern
comfort.

The court was sanded and bare, but skirting
one side of it was a deep veranda upheld by noble
Moorish arches. There were splendid Persian car-
pets on the brick floor, while a small table under
potted palms, surrounded by deep wicker chairs
and bearing cool liquid refreshments, gave just
the touch of West imposed upon East which the
Westerner always manages to achieve in an Eastern
environment.

Sheikh Ibrahim was there with our host to wel-
come us, and the first horrible thing we learned
was that in our honor he had prepared at his
palace a great feast. It was only ten o'clock in the
morning. We had all breakfasted at the usual
hour and we were not ready for a feast. But it
is part of the job of the Political Commissioners to
keep the Arabs pleased with themselves, and I was
assured that there is nothing an Arab likes better
to do than to dispense lavish hospitality. And
when it comes to eating, the time o' day means
nothing to him.

Of course we would have to go, and we would
have to eat any number of curiously prepared
things and do it with a pretense at least of whole-
hearted enjoyment. Otherwise the noble Sheikh
would be grieved, if not actually offended. We
discussed the matter quite freely in his presence
while the A. D. P. C. translated the discussion
for his benefit into something which seemed to
please him and at which he bowed and made

141

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

deprecatory gestui^s. I gathered that he consid-
ered himself unworthy of our enthusiastic appreci-
ation.

Sheikh Ibrahim is all that any one could wish a
noble Arab to be. He is not a great chieftain like
the Sheikhs of Kuweit and Muhammerah, but he
is important. Moreover, he is an Arab of the
desert and not of the coast or the banks of the
rivers, and he has the kind of fine, aristocratic face
that distinguishes the ^^people of the camel/'

I observed at once that his beard grew in the
right division of tufts and noted in detail his splen-
did gold-embroidered raiment. He was charmingly
and completely Arab, and as he placed us with
consiunmate dignity in the position of honored
guests I was hiunbled for a moment by the thought
that in his environment it was we and not he who
were "diflferent." In which connection such men
as he are blessed with a benevolent tolerance about
which we know nothing at all.

He is a very rich man, having great date-plan-
tations, many herds of camels, and the right to
levy tribute from a niunerous tribe. He has always
been friendly toward the British, but at the be-
ginning of operations in Mesopotamia he had to
"trim" very carefully between them and the Turks,
because he knew well enough that if he displayed
any pro-British sentiment, and the Turks hap-
pened, even temporarily, to win, he would pay
with his old neck, while his tribesmen would pay
in other ways with their numerous lives.

His palace is just over the way from Mr. Mc-

Cullum's house and has but one opening on the

INTRODUCING THE "POLITICALS

street, a low-arched but rather beautiful doorway
which leads into a courtyard, and as I passed
through that doorway I felt as though I were step-
ping out of the world that I know and into a re-
gion of such unrealities as fantastic dreams are
made of.

On two sides of the court there were deep ve-
randas furnished with long divans thinly uphol-
stered and covered with Persian carpets. And
tied to short pegs driven in the sand were a dozen
or more beautiful falcons wearing funny little
brown hoods over their heads and eyes. They
are blindfolded thus for some piu*pose connected
with their training, but I don^t know what it is.
I was so busy seeing things that I forgot to ask.
We were promised a hawking expedition in the
desert after the feast, but we lingered too long, so
I missed that.

There were about fifty men in the courtyard,
standing about in picturesque groups or sitting
Tiu*k-f ashion on the divans, and each of them car-
ried a rifle and had a long knife thrust in his girdle.
There were no women to be seen, of course, but
I imagined there were a good many of them watch-
ing us from the high latticed windows.

The table was laid on an inner balcony over-
looking a garden which bore evidence of an am-
bition on the part of somebody to adopt Western
ideas. There were formal and regular flower-beds
bordered with beer bottles, bottoms up, and the
feebly growing plants were set in even, tmhappy-
looking rows. Only the palm-trees seemed to be
at home, and they had a hovering kind of air as
though they were trying to encourage the alien

148

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

things struggling for life in the shade of their
broad, beautiful leaves.

I wish I knew what we had to eat. The table
groaned under the weight of a superabundance and
was the most extraordinary sight I ever saw.

There was roast lamb, for one thing. The Arab
roasts a young lamb whole — ^literally — ^and lays it
out in state at the head of the table. It is the
pi^ de resistance of every grand feed, and — ^hor-
rible detail! — its eyes are regarded as the greatest
delicacy and are gouged out by the host and
offered to guests of honor as ceremonial titbits.
The A. D. P. C. had to explain to the Sheikh that
I had signed the pledge on lambs^ eyes for a month
as an act of spiritual grace, and that the visiting
major-general never ate eyes on a Tuesday. Which
was perfectly satisfactory so far as the Sheikh was
concerned. If he should swear off on lambs' eyes he
would resent having anybody urge them upon him.

Then there were great platters of rice. I thought
I should eat some of that, but I foimd it was cooked
in a curious kind of oil and I simply couldn't do
it. Neither could I eat the white stuff. It was
served in ordinary soup-plates and was a thick,
sweetish paste. It was exceedingly like Hawaiian
poiy but Hawaiian poi always makes me think of
paper-hangers, bill-posters, and cockroaches.

There were many varieties of vegetables, but
they were all done up in little individual packages
wrapped in boiled cabbage leaves and dipped in
oil. And it was not olive-oil. I don't know what
it was. In any case, I didn't like it, and I was
afraid to force myself to eat it because it would
have been too disgraceful to — disgrace myself!

144

INTBODUCING THE "POLITICALS

There was plenty of plain boiled chicken and
a little nest of hard-boiled ^ggs — ^peeled and dirty —
at each plate. I repeeled hard-boiled eggs and
ate them diligently for an hour or more, thereby
making a great show of enjoyment and — I hope —
satisfying my host. But it was an awful struggle.

There were no knives or forks or spoons or any-
thing of that kind. Everybody ate everything —
including the paste and the boiled rice — with his
fingers, and the first thing I learned was that to
eat with the left hand is very bad manners. Only
the low-bred and uncultivated person ever touches
food with the left hand. You eat with the fingers
of the right hand only, and afterward the servants
—or slaves — ^bring round brass basins and graceful
ewers and pour water for you while you clean up.
It amused me to find a piece of toilet soap of
American manufacture on the edge of each of the
basins, but goodness knows we needed it.

The British in their dealings with the brown
peoples of the earth always conform to the cus-
toms of the brown peoples, so I was not surprised
to fiind that our "Politicals'* were able to dispose
of Arab food in Arab fashion, and with a defliiess
that no Arab could surpass. Moreover, they made
no wry faces over it.

There was a Bedouin boy sitting opposite me
who, I think, was the most beautiful human being
I ever saw. He had long, lustrous, heavy black
hair that hung in four braids down his shoulders
from under a splendid huffiyeh that was bound
round his head with ropes of silver brocade threaded
with red. He was very tall, very slender, and his
long black ahah fell in billowing folds from his

145

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

shoulders and trailed along the floor with a lordly
grace.

His features were all but faultless — as dean-cut
as a cameo— and his wonderful, long-lashed eyes
were golden brown. He was as beautiful as a
superb woman, yet he fairly radiated masculinity.

He was a rich retainer or henchman of the
Sheikh and he had come in from the far desert for
a conference and to deliver some desired informa-
tion about conditions among the desert tribes.

"When we had done as much justice as we could
to the amazing banquet we went out into the front
courtyard to see the riflemen dance. They were a
wicked-looking lot, and I could not help thinking
how easy it would be for them to destroy us. If
they had wished to do so it would have taken them
about seven seconds. But they were friends of ours.

Their captain drew them up in a double column
and barked some kind of command. Then to the
accompaniment of a low-toned staccato chant he
began a slow, flat-footed dance. They took up
the weird song and fell into the rhythmic motion.
The chant grew gradually in volume and rapidity,
as though gathering momentum for a mighty out-
burst, while the movement grew faster and faster.
Then the outburst came!

It was the wildest thing I ever saw or heard,
and within a few moments the men were whirling
round the court like mad dervishes, waving their
rifles over their heads and brandishing their knives
like furies making for bitterly hated prey. It was a
bit too thrilling to be altogether pleasant, but I was
assured that on my account it was rather a tame

146

INTRODUCING THE '^POLITICALS"

performance. The men, for instance, were told
not to fire their rifles, though the end of such a
demonstration is always a fusillade in the air for
the sake of the noise. I was quite satisfied.

The Sheikh is a real ruler of his people and is
autocratic, being his own lawmaker, judge, and
jury. Though, to be sure, he has a council and
the laws of the tribes to interpret that are older
than civilization. Moreover, if he did not rule to
the satisfaction of the ruled there would soon be
an end of his power, but he enforces such regula-
tions as are applicable to an imregulated people
with admirable strictness, and he has no fear. He
is a type. There are many like him.

A part of his palace is a prison. And such a
prison! It consists of a few windowless, brick-
walled rooms the heavy doors of which open onto
an inner court and are not even barred for the
sake of light and air. He knows nothing about
prison reform, that is certain.

He turned a great key in one of the locks and threw
back the door, disclosing two malefactors sitting to-
gether, flat on the floor, in stocks ! A most astonish-
ing sight! The eyes of the poor creatures blinked
at the light too suddenly let in upon them, and they
looked very uncomfortable and rather foolish.

And the medieval implements of torture! They
served to strengthen the impression I had that I
had been permitted to step for a time away-way out
of the twentieth century and back into another^ age.

All of which is merely by way of a brief jomney
o£F on a by-path for the sake of acquaintance with
peoples and with certain unique and interesting
features of British occupation of the ancient land.

147

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

On the way back to Basra we struck straight out
across the desert toward the old fortress of Shaiba.
We came up to the wide-curving trench-lines of the
memorable battle of the Bund, and in the white heat
of midaftemoon we got out and tramped over the
whole historic field. We went into the battered
stronghold, now dismantled and empty, and re-
viewed the story of the great fight with much grim
evidence of its f earf ulness before us. A battle does
not have to be fought by millions of men, you know,
in order that it may have all the elements that go
to make battles great historic events. The battle
of Shaiba — ^known severally as the battle of the
Bund and the battle of the Belums — ^fought away
out on the Mesopotamian plain, was a great his-
toric event.

Then we went to the cemetery, as sad a spot, I
think, as there is on earth. It is so far away, so
lonely, and so desolate. Yet there are a few
feathery tamarisk-trees hanging over the graves,
and it is ground in which, some day, grass can be
made to grow.

I looked at the long rows of bare, dry mounds and
read many names of ofScers and men that are
painted on the rough wooden crosses. And I
thought less then of the sadness than of the splendid
heroism of the deaths they all had died. The of-
ficers I was with knew most of the officers who fell
at Shaiba, and to them the visit to the cemetery
was something of a reverent pilgrimage. They
stood beside the graves and talked reminiscently
about first one and then another.

We were very quiet on the road home.

CHAPTER X

HOSPITALS AND THE NURSING SERVICE

IN the b^inningy when conditions were such that
the Mesopotamian campaign got itself listed
among the always freely aired British "blmiders,"
what probably outraged the sensibilities of the
British public more than anything else — ^and
rightly! — was the inadequacy of the hospital
services.

The first expedition was undertaken with the
idea, apparently, that there were to be no casualties
anywhere except in the ranks of the enemy. Then
events transpired with unexpected and unexampled
rapidity, and the hospital services, being the last,
it seems, to receive due consideration from the au-
thorities at the sources of supply, did not keep pace
in expansion with the constantly expanding scope
of the operations* Therefore the hospital services
got a black mark which almost tearful medicos will
now assure you they never did deserve.

In any case, as soon as their inadequacy became
a sufficient disgrace they b^an to get the occasional
undivided attention of the authorities, with the
consequence that they have developed to a point
of excellence beyond which it woiild be difficult
to go.

11 140

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

The first great tented hospital I saw was con-
nected with the army camps in the extraordinary
desert dty of war behind Basra. But it must be
remembered that I am vniting after a rather long
and varied experience in Mesopotamia, in the course
of which everything has come to be connected in
my mind with everything else, so I am able now to
follow in memory a long series of such hospitals
marking distances all the way up the avenues of
commimication^to casualty dearing-stations behind
the battle-lines.

From the casualty dearing-stations the wounded
are transferred by hospital-boats or ambulance-
trains to stationary hospitals that are located at
Baghdad and at points all the way down the River
Tigris.

The ambulance-trains are a new thing in Meso-
potamia — ^the railways being new — ^and are among
the things to be r^arded as extraordinary. The
Mesopotamian services have so few facilities and so
few materials of construction at hand that when
they achieve anything in the way of successful de-
velopment it means more than the same kind of
thing could possibly mean anywhere else.

Housed in the finest and largest buildings in all
the towns there are stationary hospitals of tremen-
dous capadty for British and Indian soldiers;
ofiScers' (lospitals that in general attractiveness and
completeness of equipment could hardly be im-
proved upon; isolation hospitals and convalescent
depots; and everything everywhere that could be
regarded as requisite to the best possible care of the
sick and the wounded. There are between forty
and fifty thousand beds in the country now, and

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HOSPITALS AND THE NURSING SERVICE

hospital expansion is kept constantly a few paces
ahead of immediate demand.

An Assistant Director of Medical Service came
to dinner one evening and invited me to go with
him next morning down-river to Beit Na^amah, a
particularly fine o£Scers' hospital of which the local
medicos — and this A. D. M. S. especially — are very
proud. And with reason.

I had heard much about ^^Baiten Amah" — as I
spelled it in my own mind — and I wondered how it
happened that I had missed seeing it on my way
up-river. Though I know» of course. , I miss any
nimiber of things as I go along, and all through an
unfortunate habit I have of losing myself in con-
templation of fascinating non-essentials. When we
passed Beit Na'amah I very likely was leaning
against the starboard rafl gazing at the opposite
bank of the river and wondering at the fringy
featheriness of the palm-trees and at the silvery
shine of their broad dust-powdered leaves in the
morning simlight.

The word '"Beit" means house, and Na'amah
is the name of the family that owns the great man-
sion which was turned by war^s demand into a
hospital and which has since become famous
throughout this part of the world.

Whether or not the Na'amah brothers were cele-
brated before the war I cannot say. They prob-
ably were on the Shatt-el-Arab, but if their name
had ever gone overseas it was linked, no doubt,
with shipments of dates, and not with any such
association as it now bears in so many minds.

There are four Na'amah brothers, and, as they

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

are very rich, their house is very fine. It was built
to accommodate the entire family and all the family
retainers, and it has an ample wing in which a
harem of more than fifty women was maintained.
The place was "taken" by the British on their
advance from Fao, because it was necessary then to
sweep a dean path up to Basra. But needless to
say the harem was not disturbed by the British
soldiers, and this fact may account for the sub-
sequent friendliness of the family.

It was recognized at once that the building was

admirably adapted for hospital purposes, but it was

* foiu* miles down-river from Basra and very much

farther by road across the desert and through the
J date-gardens. And among the many things the

i British army did not possess in those days was

transportation. So during the first two years
nothing was done with the place.

But came a time when General Maude was con-
centrating his forces in the north for the great
drive which carried him to Baghdad and beyond,
and since the situation had by that time developed
to the "something ought to be done about it" stage,
things b^an to move. Without warning the Di-
rector of Medical Services suddenly issued a per-
emptory order that Beit Na'amah should be made
ready within two weeks for occupation as an of-
ficers' hospital. The A. D. M. S. who invited me to
go with hiTYi on a trip of inspection happened to be
the officer to whom this order was given, and as we
slipped down the river that morning in the I. G. C.*s
trim little launch — slowly, at my request — ^he was
able to tell me in entertaining detail all about how
he had obeyed it.

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HOSPITALS AND THE NURSING SERVICE

The building had no sanitary arrangements of any
kind, and the only water available was in the river,
whence it had to be brought by carriers. The only
lights were oil-lamps, while the windows, being
too small in any case to admit sufficient light and
air, were all heavily barred. It was not only the
house of the family of Na'amah, it was the strong-
hold as well, designed to keep out raiding Arabs and
to keep a too numerous company of women imder
proper restraint.

Operations were complicated by the fact that the
fifty-odd women of the harem obstinately refused to
move out, so the work of establishing a hospital
in one wing of the building had to proceed while they
presumably looked on through the barred and
heavily curtained windows of another.

There was considerable hospital equipment in
Basra by that time, but it had been brought up
by the ships and dumped on the banks of the
river along with a thousand and one other things.
No adequate system for handling materials had yet
been established, everybody's attention being con-
centrated upon the pressing and always increasing
demands of the armies in action.

All of which, in a way, was to the advantage of the
major medico in carrying out his impossible orders.
Constituted authority being very much engaged
elsewhere, he was able to eliminate red tape and to
do as he liked.

He commandeered both labor and materials with-
out asking leave of anybody. At once he put a
small army of men to work cutting out windows,
whitewashing walls, digging sewers, building a
water-tank, laying pipe-lines and putting in plumb-

153

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

ingy installing engines, building and equipping an
operating theater, wiring the building for electricity
and putting in a dynamo — doing, in short, the
thousand and one things needful, and doing them,
literally, all at once.

He went to the supply-dumps without detailed
authority, and, finding what he wanted, took pos-
session of it. He appropriated everything he re-
quired from hypodermic needles to power-pumps
and dynamos, and at the end of the allotted time
he had provision made for one hundred sick or
wounded British officers.

No wonder he is proud of the place. It really is
very beautiful now, and since officers like it better
than any other hospital in Mesopotamia, it has
been crowded to capacity from the beginning, its
capacity having been eictended by this time to in-
clude the entire building. It is a long Arabian
structure, with the usual flat roof and ornamental
coping, and in front of it on the river-bank there is a
narrow, quaint garden set with long, even rows of
low orange-trees. That is one's first impression.
But extending to the rear are three wings surround-
ing two great courts that are flag-paved and have
railed balconies and in the walls of which there are
beautifully arched windows framing grilles of deli-
cately carved wood.

In the harem wing the finest wards eventually
were established, but it took a long time to get the
women to move out. In fact, a bit of dastardly
strat^y was resorted to in the end, which, while it
may have been shameful, had the desired effect of
inducing their men to spirit them away.

The truth is that they were not supposed to be

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HOSPITALS AND THE NURSING SERVICE

there at all. How should anybody know they were
there? They were never seen. And since there
were no nursing sisters in the hospital — only or-
derlies — ^the men felt privileged, perhaps, to re-
lax somewhat their usually strict rules of pro-
priety. Besides, they wanted that wing of the
building.

So a "swimmin'-hole*' was staked off in the river
and a spring-board put in place directly under the
front windows of the harem drawing-room. After
which, at certain hours each day, a number of men
were detailed to parade out in their birthday clothes
and dive off for a swim. The women might have
been able to endure this atrocity indefinitely, but
it was known quite well that their men would not.
And they didn't. There were rustling noises and
much muffled talk at that end of the building one
night, and next morning the harem wing stood
empty. Whereupon the immediate and rapid es-
tablishment of the fine new hospital wards.

It is now a model institution, with eveiything
looking much as though the place had been built for
a hospital and had been in existence as such for
many years. True, there are a few Orientally
gorgeous and gaudy walls left to remind one of what
all the walls once looked like, and there are still
worn mud-brick floors in some of the wards. More-
over, the fanciful ornamentation over the windows
and the wide-arched passages leading from court
to court, is of the East Eastern, while the dust-
harboring but beautiful carved-wood grilles are
most unhospital-like. But scientific exactness and
immaculateness are combined in the place with an
Old World grace and allurement in a way which

155

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

easily explains why officers all make bids to be sent
there when they are ill or wounded.

Aching feet muscles are not among the things
one is expected to mention when one has been per-
mitted to enter a busy and forbidden zone of war> so
I said nothing about mine when the I. G. C. in-
vited me that afternoon to accompany him on a
tour of inspection through the hospitals of Basra.

**0h, very well," said I to myself, **I*11 just make
a hospital day of it," and, thinking I might be
needing one very soon, I was glad they had such
good ones.

The hospitals are a part of the responsibility of the
Inspector General of Communications. I'm sure I
don't know why. Except that "lines of com-
mimication " seems to be an all-embracing title and
that everybody proceeds on the basis, when in
doubt— the I. G. C.

I think I have forgotten to say that few of the
'^finest and largest buildings" in Mesopotamia have
been found adequate for war hospital purposes, and
that in connection with nearly all hospitals for
troops there are acres of hut wards, the "huts" —
each with a capacity of from fifty to one hundred
beds — being long, narrow structures of imported
uprights and crossbeams hung with reed-mat walls
and topped with double roofs of heavy mud thatch
designed to turn the fearful rays of the sun.

At Basra there was one dingy old building on the
river-bank which used to be the up-river occa-
sional residence of the Sheikh of Muhammerah. It
was not very large, and in every way it was most un-

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HOSPITALS AND THE NURSING SERVICE

suitable, but the Sheikh donated it as a nucleus
for hospitals. At least that is what it became, and
in a wholly made-over state it is now the adminis-
tration building of British General Hospital No. 3.

There are between eight and ten thousand beds
in Basra, so, in view of the fact that this old resi-
dence was the only available building, I need no
powers of description to present a picture of the
hospital area. Just as the camps of the soldiers
make a tented city in the desert, so the hospitals
make a unique city of huts on the river-bank.

Attached to British General Hospital No. 3 there
are a number of hut wards for prisoners, and these
interested me particularly. They are identical with
the wards for British soldiers except that they are
guarded and inclosed in barbed- wire entanglements.
Their capacity is seven hundred beds and they have
been full a number of times, the occasion being
very infrequent when there are less than two or three
hundred enemy patients to be taken care of 1

The sick or wounded Turk gets exactly the same
treatment the British soldier gets, and I am told
that usually he is quite pathetically grateful and
seldom hesitates to say that he is much better pro-
vided for than he could hope to be behind his own
lines.

"When the general and I finished our long tour of
inspection we were joined by the D. A. Q. M. G. —
otherwise the major — ^and we all went for tea to the
Nurses' Club.

We were received by the supervisor-general of
the nursing service, and if I were a nursing sister
I suppose I should regard her as the most important

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

person in all Mesopotamia. I think perhaps I do»
anyhow. Her very dignified Christian name is
Beatrice. Nobody would ever think of calling her
Beatrice, of course. It would be an unimaginable
liberty. But behind her back the sisters call her
"Trixie" and talk with a whimsical kind of dis-
respect about her almost superhuman efficiency.

She makes all the rules and is not at all timid
about exercising her rule-making prerogative. With
the result, I would say, that in no war zone in the
world is a girl in the uniform of a nursing sister more
secure than she is in Mesopotamia.

Not to be able to accept an invitation to dinner
at an officers' mess to which a number of girls are
invited and over which a high ranking officer is to
preside? That's rather severe! Not to be able to
so much as stroll with an officer down a dusty street
in the open glare of noonday? That's wholly un-
reasonable! Or is it?

I was only a smiling onlooker and I loved them
all — girls and men. I wondered, and I wondered.
There were those who talked to me about rules that
hurt the pride of full-grown women and make them
feel as though they were in boarding-school or still
in "leading-strings." But there is a good deal of
peevish nonsense about that. They know that the
strong and the stanch have to submit in all walks
of life to regulations intended solely for the safe-
guarding of the — ^possibly weak.

And what interest would there be in the mere
routine of life, anyhow, if there were no rules to
break? The wise supervisor-general decrees that
two or more sisters together may do more or less
as they please during their hoiu*s off duty. Then

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HOSPITALS AND THE NURSING SERVICE

she expresses great surprise that so many of them
get engaged ! — and married ! In Mesopotamia ! It
is all rather wonderful — ^and very nice. Rather a
delicate subject, though? Yes, but I don't mind
touching upon it — ^just lightly.

The Nurses* Club was instituted and endowed by
Lady Willingdon and is in a quaint old baked-mud
building on the Strand. There is a Piccadilly, too, as
well as a Bond Street and a Pall Mall. The Britisher
loves home so much that he takes home with him
wherever he goes.

The Strand skirts Ashar Creek, the principal one
of many small streams that flow into or out of the
Shatt-el-Arab, and is a street I wish I were able to
describe. Mostly I have driven along it with my
eyes tight shut because of the blinding clouds of
dust, but if only once I had seen its blank walls, its
flat roofs, its raggedness, and its occasional pro*
jecting balconies and latticed windows, I should
remember it in its entirety always.

The Nurses' Club is done up in pretty curtains
and cretonne-covered furniture, and it has quiet
comers where sisters may read or write in secluded
comfort; and so far so good. But the general idea
of supervisors and such directing persons is that it
is a place where the young women will be able to
combine their forces for the eitdurance of the
sometimes imavoidable presence of gentlemen and
where they can receive such undesirable persons in
a sedate and proper manner. But it is not antici-
pated by those who are in a position to speak with
authority on this point that the Club will ever
serve this purpose to any alarming extent.

There are many palm-canopied creeks, you see,

150

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

where orioles and kiiigfishers play from curtain to
curtain of hanging vines in the sun-flecks of late
afternoon. And these creeks are filled with belums
that are poled or paddled by picturesque Arab
boatmen — children of the fascinating land who are
imable to understand a single word of an English
conversation.

In a cretonne-upholstered comer of a stuflFy dub
one might perhaps talk interestingly enough about
Corporal Carmichael's wounds, or the best the
Women's Branch of Bombay can do in the way of
new books for its gift libraries. But in the mauve-
lit silence of a placid, high-banked creek . • .

But why be light-minded, altogether? Only be-
cause I met them light-mindedly after I had met
them — so many of them — on their endless rounds of
splendid duty in the wards of the hospitals. One
wants to relax with them and for them.

They really are an amazing sisterhood. In the
beginning it was thought there could be no nursing
sisters in Mesopotamia because the conditions were
such as no Englishman would ever ask a woman to
endure. But the women had something to say
about that, and eventually they began to arrive,
small units now and then. And at once they be-
gan to demonstrate their astonishing powers of
physical and spiritual resistance.

Men by the himdreds get bowled over by the sun,
or die of heat-stroke; the nursing sister miraculously
escapes this greatest of all the dangers. Men by
the hundreds are incapacitated by sand-fly fever
and other maladies peculiar to the climate and en-
vironment; the nursing sister seldom gives up to
anything. Men, suffering in a temperature of one

160

HOSPITALS AND THE NURSING SERVICE

hundred and ten, twenty, thirty d^rees, tortured
by insect pests, overworked, unable to sleep, get
low in their minds — ^hopelessly dejected; the nurs-
ing sister is always cheerful and manages in some
mysterious way to keep fit and to look fit under
any and all circumstances.

Yet she works just as hard as any man and has
had no special provision made for her general com-
fort and well-being. Work? Well, there are be-
tween forty and fifty thousand beds in Mesopo-
tamia, and less than six hundred nursing sisters all
told. It makes a nice little problem in calculation,
even though you do count the nursing sister out of
all the evacuation hospitals.

The general and the major and I said our good-
bys all round, made our variously halting and inter-
rupted ways among the sisters and down the steep,
ancient, mud-brick stairway, and climbed into our
big motor-car with sighs of relief and contentment.

The general gave the soldier chauffeur some orders
— ^I did not notice what they were — ^and soon we
were spinning out over the hard-packed sand of the
desert in the orange light of a marvelous sunset.

Gods of the ancient peoples! No wonder they
were gods of the sun — of vivid and appealing but
ungraspable things! One's heart lifts and sings
its song of the open world !

We swimg round the big circle marked by wheel
tracks and came up past the old fort where the
camels are, and thence to the Zobier Gate, flanked
by the crumbling towers that stand like aged
sentinels at the desert's edge. We thought it
would be a good idea to stop there and dimb to the

161

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

top of one of them, where there is an old cannon
lying deep in the dust» like a crouching blind war
dog with its muzzle nosing the rampart. The
general wanted to show me the arms and monogram
of King George III of England that are engraved
upon it !

"Very likely," said he, "it has been in Boston
Harbor in its day/'

He was never able to forget that I was an Amer-
ican, and was always endeavoring to be polite
about it.

But how did a British cannon of American
Revolutionary days ever get on that old Meso-
potamian tower? It reminded the general of the
well-worn story about the Englishman who was
showing an American girl through St. George's
Chapel — or some such place — ^and who pointed out
a certain tattered battle-flag with the remark:

" We took that away from Bunker Hill."

"Oh, is that so?" said the girl. "But — ^I suppose
you haven't forgotten that we still have the hill?"

The general liked that story and he chuckled
about it quietly — ^rather musingly — ^while the major
sat away out on the muzzle of the old gun and —
with his thoughts far away, no doubt — chummed a
Honolulu melody to the slowly dying lights in the
desert.

CHAPTER XI

GENERAL TOWNSHEND's ADVANCE

tlEUT.-GEN. Sm STANLEY MAUDE, com-
^ mander-in-chief of the Mesopotamiaii Expe-
ditionary Force, had been occupying a position of
first importance in my personal sdieme of things for
a good many weeks, and while I knew I never could
have landed in Mesopotamia at all without his con-
sent, it had been so thoroughly impressed upon my
mind that he was rigidly opposed to admitting to the
zone of his military operations any one not directly
connected with the services of war, that I had some
doubts with r^ard to the quality of the welcome he
might be expected to extend to me.

But the day I arrived at Basra he greeted me with
a telegram which served to dispel all my misgivings,
and by the first boat down from Baghdad he sent
me a letter.

I need not hesitate to say that I stood in awe of
him and that there was very little doubt in my
mind that he had consented to my visit, in the first
place, with considerable reluctance. But I was to
learn afterward that he never did anything re-
luctantly. Indecision and half-way measures were

impossible to him, and he never could have sanc-

los

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

tioned anything in a spirit of compromise. He
wrote to me:

I am afraid you will find things a little bit rough out here,
but I have asked General MacMunn to make you as com-
fortable as possible. You will find him a perfect host and I
am sure he will do everything for you that is reasonably pos-
sible under existing conditions. He will be able to advise you
as to your tour in Mesopotamia, as he knows the ins and outs
of things perfectly. So will you just say what you want to see
and he wiU be able to suggest the best way lor giving effect
to your wishes.

I shall be very glad to see you whenever it is convenient for
you to come, and to put you in the way of seeing what there
is to be seen. I hope, too, that you will come and stay with
me at Baghdad. You will not, I am sure, expect too much,
and all I can say is that we will make you as comfortable as
we can. I hope your visit will be one of great interest, for this
is indeed a wonderful campaign and, with its peculiarities and
difficulties, a much bigger thing than most people imagine.

A much bigger thing than most people imagine!
I began to realize that immediately !

**When Maude went north** is a phrase they use
now. It runs like a thread of something different
through the usual gray fabric of local conversation
about events of former days» and it lifts the hearts of
the men who have been through it all; the men —
so many of them still in the Mesopotamian zone —
who went through the fibrst onrushing advance;
through the ill-advised original attempt upon
Baghdad; through the subsequent retreat and the
long siege of Kut-el-Amara; through the hell and
the slaughter of the repeated endeavors to relieve
General Townshend's beleaguered army; through
the humiliation and heartbreak of defeat and sur-
render; through the test and the trial and the tort-

164

GENERAL TOWNSHEND'S ADVANCE

ure. How different it all became **when Mcmde
went north^U

The operations having landed General Town-
shend in Amara» one hundred and thirty-two miles
by river from Basra, the Turks proceeded to take
up a strong position at Kut-el-Amara, one hundred
and fifty miles farther on, where they commanded
the easiest and most direct routes into Persia.
And it was recognized at once that in order to fore-
stall a possible movement of the enemy back into
Persian territory Kut-el-Amara would have to be
taken.

Amara was occupied on the 8d of June, 1916 — ^I
must repeat dates occasionally, if you don*t mind —
and there Greneral Townshend halted long enough to
enable such communication services as then existed
to establish a base of operations. This involved
bringing reserve supplies of food, forage, and mu-
nitions up-river, and getting ready to meet an in-
evitable demand for rather extensive hospital
facilities.

I am writing about General Townshend as though
he were in command of the operations. He was not.
But to follow the comings and goings of a succession
of commanders-in-chief would be to complicate a
story which I wish to make quite simple and direct.
Sir John Nixon was in supreme conmiand when the
advance on Kut was made. He was succeeded by
Sir Percy Lake, who in his turn was succeeded by
Sir Stanley Maude.

And while General Townshend — ^a division com-
mander only — was reorganizing his forces at Amara,
the commander-in-chief was directing operations on

12 1*5

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

the Euphrates, where a second British army was
pushing north in the f earf uhiess of midsummer heat,
through midsummer floods, and against a more
stubborn and sustained resistance on the part of
the enemy than any Turkish force had previously
displayed.

The "peculiarities and difficulties'* of the Meso-
potamian campaigns have been indeed unique, and
one wonders now that men have overcome them.
In retrospect it is too glaringly apparent that
tremendous and inexplicable mistakes were made in
calculating material requirements, but, as I have
said, necessity urged, and the only instance in those
days when unwise counsel prevailed was when it
was decided to drive on to a spectacular finish an
already splendid victory — ^before adequate prepara-
tion had been made for a further advance. This
was after General Townshend had occupied Kut-el-
Amara.

The original occupation of Eut was a curiously
British performance. It was accomplished really
by a handful of men who were annoyed with the
enemy. It was the evening of September 28, 1915.
The British force had advanced up the river from
Amara and had met the Turks in a concentrated
engagement below Kut, the Turkish force consisting
of three divisions and a moimted brigade under
Nur-ud-Din. As night began to close down the
action thinned to sporadic shelling from both sides,
and a single British colmnn that had been fighting
all day in the desert without water started to
make its way toward the river, only to find itself
in a short time marching parallel with a large force
of Turkish infantry. The situation threatened to

166

GENERAL TOWNSHENDS ADVANCE

develop into a tight comer for the British, and that
was when they became annoyed.

Having fixed bayonets, they wheeled to an order
of "" Right turn!" and marched straight toward the
enemy. The two columns were less than a mile
apart and the British were without so much as a
sand-hill or tuft of desert grass for shelter.

The Turks took cover in a dry deep water-cut
that lay on their line of march and opened a devas-
tating fire which swept the British ranks in their
deliberate advance with fearful effect.

Then came the swift, terrific attack, and the
British line plimged forward. It was too much for
the Turks. Like the Germans, they abhor the
gleam of cold steel. They broke cover and fled in
the utmost confusion, leaving behind them numbers
of guns and much else in the way of valuable im-
pedimenta. And this precipitated a movement of
retreat throughout the Turkish ranks which veiy
quickly developed into a veritable stampede.

And so it was that Kut was occupied. A de-
tachment marched into the town next morning —
September 29th — while the main British force pur-
sued the fleeing Turks to the northward.

From Kut to Baghdad it is two hundred and
twelve miles by river and only one hundred and
twelve miles by the land route. This fact is a suf-
ficient commentary on the extreme crookedness of
the Tigris, and I might add that above Kut some
of the worst shallows are encountered. There are
stretches here and there that are all but unnavi-
gable when the water is low, and the water is at its
lowest just before the rains begin in late November
or early December. And be it remembered that

167

THE WAR IN THE CBADLE OF THE WORLD

the river was the only avenue of communication
with his bases of supply and hospital services that
General Townshend had.

In cold official statements it is recorded that
General Townshend "pursued the routed Turks
with the utmost vigor," but he was a fightin*-man
and, considering the fact that "an army travels
on its belly," one is justified perhaps in siurmising
that he was carried forward by the impetus of
victory farther than he intended to go. Or was
Aziziyeh the first possible place where a halt could
be called? It is such a terrible desert land!

In any case no stop was made until the army
reached Aziziyeh, sixty-one miles by the land route
from Kut and one hundred and two miles by river.
Half-way from Kut to Baghdad!

The Turks meanwhile continued their retreat to
a previously prepared position at Ctesiphon, forty-
two miles farther on.

Then came the fatal decision. General Town-
shend is on record as having been opposed to an
immediate advance with Baghdad as the objective.
He recognized the inadequacy of his communica-
tions and predicted disaster. But, having halted
at Aziziyeh for six weeks while newly captured Kut
was provisioned and equipped as a base of opera-
tions, he moved on — ^in obedience to the order of
the army commander!

The operations were being directed as a matter of
fact by a General Staff located on the Olympian and
luxuriously comfortable heights of Simla. But the
confidence of the General Staff was in a measure
justified. The British in Mesopotamia had been so
consistently successful that nothing seemed impos-

168

GENERAL TOWNSHEND^S ADVANCE

sible for them to do. They themselves were in
exuberant spirits, thrilling to the blare of their own
trumpets of victory and treating with magnificent
disregard every suggestion of caution.

Greneral Townshend proceeded to carry out the
orders he had received, and on the 22d of November
he attacked the enemy position at Ctesiphon.
What does not seem to be very generally known is
that he achieved a brilliant victory.

He captured the first Turkish line almost at once,
taking thirteen hundred prisoners and eight guns;
then he stormed the second line and thrust the
Turks back to their last defense. The action is
described as having been magnificent and he could
have driven straight through if he had had behind
him anything at all in the way of reserves or com-
munications. He had nothing, and there was
no way on earth for him to make victory finally
victorious.

On the 23d — ^the first anniversary of the occupa-
tion of Basra — the enemy was reinforced from
Baghdad and the north in tremendous numbers, and
the tide was turned.

But even against overwhelming odds the British
fought on with the utmost valor and tenacity, and
it was not until he discovered that the enemy was
executing a wide flank movement, with every pros-
pect of cutting him off, that General Townshend
decided to retire on Kut.

Then the fearful retreat b^an — on the 25th of
November. It is difiScult even on the spot to
visualize the horrors of such a retreat in such a land.
Eight days it took, with a rear-guard hammered and
harassed every foot of the way by an enemy that

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

had suffered long-drawn-out defeat and was now
fighting with an assurance of victory and a hearten-
ing knowledge of his vastly superior strength.

There is a story about the medical and communi-
cations oflBcers who were waiting in Kut for orders
to move on up to Baghdad. They had absolute
confidence that Townshend would win, and several
of them were sitting round a table in a mess-room
one day talking about how they would spend
Christmas in Baghdad, when suddenly they heard
the sound of far-away gims.

"My God! what's that?*'

They had not heard even a rumor that a retreat
was in progress until the retreat was almost upon
them. Then the worn-out, heartbroken, bedrag-
gled, unrecognizable remnant of the wonderful
little army began to stritggle into the town.

Kut-el-Amara was invested by the enemy on the
7th of December and the long siege began.

And General Townshend, with nothing in Kut
but the meager stock of provisions that had been
brought up as advanced base supplies, held out
against the constant hammering of the Turkish
army which surroimded him for one hundred and
forty-three days! During which time one British
division after another, as each arrived in Mesopo-
tamia, was sent in, singly and practically unsup-
ported, to hurl itself to destruction in vain attempts
to relieve him.

The siege of Kut was a mere incident, perhaps,
in the great world struggle, but it was spectacularly
tragic, while the besieged in their tenacity and en-
durance displayed a heroism that could not possibly
be surpassed. It was the utmost.

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GENERAL TOWNSHEND'S ADVANCE

On the 29th of April, 1916, General Townshend
capitulated — ^not to the enemy, but to starvation.
And the whole valiant army went into captiv-
ity, having won the profound respect even of its
captors. '

CHAPTER Xn

LINES OF COMMUNICATION

ONE Colonel Chesney, a great-uncle of the In-
spector-General of Communications, led the
expedition which placed the first steamboat on the
River Tigris,

He started in 1835. From first to last it took
him a good many weaiy months— two years, in fact
— ^and the record of his historic achievement reads
like the fevered kind of fiction that is written not to
convince, but only to thrill and to convey one in
dreams to far-away and unimaginable regions.

The expedition started from England with two
boats, which, being landed near Antioch on the
Orontes, were transported in parts across the desert
to the upper waters of the Euphrates, where they
were set up and laimched. Only one of them suc-
ceeded in finishing the trip down to the Persian
Gulf, after which it started up the Tigris toward
Baghdad.

No Arab of those days had ever seen any kind of
steam-run miracle of machinery, and to many of
them the new craft was a thing to fear and some-
times to propitiate with prayers and oflFerings.

But, even so, they were not so very far behind the

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times. This first modem navigator of the Tigris
was bom along about the time the steamboat was
invented; and one remembers that on the occasion
of the Clermont* s first trip up the Hudson the wholly
Christian crews of other Hudson River boats '*in
some instances sank beneath the decks from the ter-
rible sight, or left their vessels to go ashore, while
others prostrated themselves and besought Provi-
dence to protect them from the approach of the
horrible monster which was marching on the tides
and lighting its path by the fires it vomited/* This
being from a contemporary review, quoted in a
biography of Robert Pulton.

Organized resistance against the intrusion of such
a monster in peaceful Arab lands was inevitable, and
the old British pioneer, with his associates, played a
merry game with constant and fearful danger, with
extraordinary hardship, and with heartbreaking
delays in his then imprecedented venture-
But no doubt he had wonderful visions to en-
courage him and keep him going — ^visions of the
rapid development of a great business undertaking
which should bring to early realization the even
then much-talked-of tapping of rich regions as yet
untapped by the unf olders and expanders of world
commerce. He did not live to reap the fruits of his
intrepidity and enterprise, but perhaps his gallant
and courageous spirit stalks to-day up and down
the ancient river and along the banks of the Shatt-el-
Arab in company with his so typically British great-
nephew, to whom, cmiously enough, it has been
given to bring his visions to spectacular materializa-
tion. If so, his spirit should be satisfied.

With him on the expedition was one Lieutenant

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

Lynch, who settled in Baghdad as a trader and was
joined there by his two brothers. These men
started the Lynch Company and secured from the
Turkish government a concession which gave them
exclusive rights to steam navigation on the Meso-
potamian waterways — ^the Tigris and Euphrates and
Shatt-el-Arab.

This is ancient history, but the Lynch Company
is modemly interesting. They were conservative
men who operated conservatively always, but the
greatest "boomers** alive woxdd have difficulty in
finding anything to "boom" on the Tigris and
Euphrates. There were large shipments of native
products — dates, licorice, a few grains, Persian
treasures in carpets and fanciful things — ^to be
brought down-river at certain seasons for the ocean-
going ships at Basra; a few modern things had to be
taken in to the populations along the river-banks
and there was an occasional traveler to be carried
up or down. But there was never anything to
necessitate the establishment of a river service that
was other than leisurely and intermittent. So be-
fore the war the only steam-craft on the River
Tigris were the old boats of this company that for
years had been plying in a stolid kind of way be-
tween Basra and Baghdad.

I really don't know how many there were — ^two
or three, perhaps — ^but naturally anything that
could be of use to the Turks on their hurried retreat
was commandeered, and the British found the con-
quered waterways empty of everything save a few
snail-paced dhows and mayhalas and a sufficient
number of the canoe-like beliuns which are owned by
individual Arabs for the most part and are not of

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much use, anyhow. Though they have played
their interesting and sometimes spectacular part in
the Mesopotamian battles.

From the gulf up to about twenty miles north of
Basra the Shatt-el-Arab is deep enough to admit
ocean-going steamships, but above that point the
shallows b^in, and the Tigris — ^which flows into
the Shatt-el-Arab at Qumah — ^is navigable for
nothing that draws more than three or four feet
of water.

What, then, was to be done for river boats when
the Expeditionary Force, pursuing the Turks to the
northward, got so many miles away? The opera-
tions, which carried the army on and on, proceeded
with a rapidity which could do no less than greatly
strain even a fairly adequate transport service.
What it did to a transport service that was prac-
tically nil is better left to individual conjecture.

It was only ten months after the first landing
was made by British troops that General Townshend
occupied Kut-el-Amara, two himdred and eighty-
five miles from Basra, and by that time — ^thanks
to the contributions of a few near-by ports and
river towns — ^the available river shipping amounted
to something like six steamboats of sorts, a few
barges, and an established chain of mahaylas and
dhows. And when, some six weeks later. General
Townshend began his fatal advance toward Bagh-
dad, the inadequacy of his communications, in com-
parison with present conditions, was all but crinodnal
and wholly unbelievable. For instance, he was pro-
vided wilJi hospital transport for not more than
five hundred wounded; at Ctesiphon he was one
hundred and eighty-two miles by river from his

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THE WAB IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

hospital base at Kut, and in two days' fighting he
had four thousand five hundred casualties.

Moreover, at that time, with every ounce of ma-
terial of every kind being brought in from over-
seas and unloaded at Basra, where the building of
piers and warehouses was only just beginning, the
supply and transport service was taking care not
only of General Townshend*s army, but of the force
as well that had advanced one hundred and forty
miles up the Euphrates.

Those were difiScult days, but I think I must pass
them by; pass by all the worry and the toil of them,
and, incidentally, the disgrace which eventually
overwhelmed the men who were held responsible
for the terrible tragedy of them, and come to the
time when General IN^ude went north. By that
time the British had paid in full for pressing their
luck and for underestimating the strength of their
enemy, and had settled down to the grim business
of exacting payment in return.

It was a little more than seven months after
General Townshend surrendered at Kut when
General Maude launched the victorious campaign
which landed him in Baghdad, and when he started
he had behind him lines of communication fully
organized, with more than one thousand steam-
vessels and power-boats of various kinds plying up
and down the River Tigris. What a difference!
And what an achievement!

There are more than sixteen hundred bottoms
now, and naturally the first question the interested
visitor asks is:

"How on earth did you do it?"

I was standing on an upper balcony of the Lines

176

LINES OP COMMUNICATION

of Commuiiication headquarters, talking with Gen-
eral MacMunn, when I asked him this» and he ran
his eyes up and down the rushing, bustling six-
mile length of Basra's now well-built river-front
and smiled a twisted smile that had in it whole
volumes of unpleasant reminiscence.

"We did it!" he answered, grimly. Then he
pointed out a Thames penny steamer bearing
proudly down the middle aisle of the crowded stream
with two big baiges lashed to her sides. "We did
it!** he repeated.

"But the Thames penny steamer! How did she
get into the Shatt-el-Arab?** I exclaimed.

" Under her own gteaml*^ he answered. And that
is the whole unimaginable story.

Remember there were no railways and no roads;
only a trackless waste rolling away to the north
that was deep in dust in the dry seasons, and during
the rains was in great stretches a hideous and
dangerous quagmire.

River boats were an absolute, a primary neces-
sity. They could not be built in Mesopotamia, nor
anywhere else in time to relieve the desperate situa-
tion. They could not be materialized by the wave
of any magician's wand. Well, what then?

Then they would have to come out of other rivers
otherwheres and make their various ways somehow
— ^no matter how! — across the seas and up through
the Persian Gulf! They were requisitioned from
the Ganges and the Indus and the Irawadi, from
the Nile and the rivers of Africa; from everywhere
they have come. It has been one of the bravest and
strangest achievements of the war, and one hears
with a feeling of specially chill regret that more

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THE WAR EN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

than eighty of them have failed! A few from
everywhere have gone — ^along with the high hopes
of British sailors, and usually with the sailors, too —
to the bottom of the seas they were never meant to
venture on.

But the Thames penny steamers? Where is it
you go on the Thames penny steamers? To Rich-
mond? To Putney? To Henley? To queer little
landings here and there roimd Lbndon where crowds
of people gather on gala days and where happy sum-
mer memories are made? Yes, to places like that.
There is a holiday sound in the very name — ^Thames
penny steamer. They may be used for purely
workaday purposes; I do not know; I only know
I went to Richmond once on a Thames penny
steamer.

But the Thames penny steamers, too, were needed
on the Tigris.

So bravely they set out. Eleven of them started,
but only five of them achieved the impossible.
Five of them got to the Tigris and are now listed
by number in the great fleet under a class initial.

As I watched the curious, flat-bottomed, high-
f imneled, double-decked, paddle-wheeled little craft
churning briskly down-stream with her two clumsy
barges in tow I was seeing visions of the kind of
heroism that makes one prayerful.

I saw first the matter-of-fact, nonchalant British
sailors on her frail decks preparing for such a voyage
as was never before undertaken. Then I saw her,
her sides boarded up and her one-time spick-and-
spanness begrimed with the coal that had to be
stowed in every possible space, moving out of the
snug security of the busy, bustling, city-bounded

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LINES OP COMMUNICATION

Thames into the open, high-rolling Atlantic I fol*
lowed her course across the perilous Bay of Biscay
and saw her creep down the long coasts of Portugal
and Spain and through the straits past Gibraltar.

After Gibraltar would come a hopeful, careful,
long, long crawl across the mine-strewn and sub-
marine-infested Mediterranean. Port Said in safe-
ty! Then the Suez Canal — contributing a brief pe-
riod of relaxation — ^the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea,
the Persian Gulf, and finally — with what a sigh of
relief! — ^the broad current of the Shatt-el-Arab
and the almost rippleless serenity of the blessed
Tigris!

I don't know what happened to the six that
failed, but one hears that '* their backs were broken
by the high seas/' That was the chief danger they
all had to face; they and the himdreds of others
from other far-away rivers, too. More than eighty
of the others went down and six of the Thames
boats! They should be honorably counted among
England's honorable losses at sea, and they never
have been* Nobody has ever paid any attention
really to the wonderful Mesopotamian story.

Then there are the barges. There are a good
many more barges than steamboats on the Meso*
potamian waterways. They represent the spirit
of economy in the transport service, and everything
under its own steam, or under power of any kind —
including dozens of the grimiest tugs that ever
spilled oil on dean waters and filled the atmosphere
with unpleasing odors — ^has one or more of them in
tow. Latterly a good many of them have been
brought from overseas in parts and set up in the new
dockyard on the river-bank at Basra — which might

179

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

have been a German dockyard turning out U-boats
for the Eastern seas but for one fine victory that is
England's — ^but in the beginning numbers of them
made their own way across the wide waters or were
towed over by some of the same tugboats that are
towing them now round about in the placidity of
unruffled rivers. I declare it is a story one cannot
believe! It is just that there is nothing men will
not attempt and cannot do.

Heaven and the secretive authorities only know
how many barges have been lost, but there is one
story I have which throws considerable light on the
performance as a whole and which serves rather
graphically to illustrate some of the difficulties
men may expect to encoimter who go down to the
sea on river barges.

One Corporal James Harte, of the naval engineers,
left Aden on the 21st of May, 1917, in charge of a
refrigerator-barge that was in tow of the tug Harold
for a voyage across the Arabian Sea. On the fourth
day out from Aden Corporal Harte wrote down in
his log a brief statement to the effect that at eight
o'clock in the evening a stiff breeze sprang up from
the southwest. This would mean that the seas
began to roll high and to break in chopping white-
caps which must have looked menacing enough to
men on such a vessel. But as a recorder of events
the corporal seems to have been strangely im-
perturbable, as his next entry in the log, dated the
following day, proves:

About three-thirty a.m. got adrift from tug. The last we saw

of tug she was astern of us to leeward. She sounded her hooter

a succession of long blasts — for alx>ut two minutes. When the

hooter stopped she had disappeared.

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Was ghastly tragedy eoer written in briefer form
than that?

The high wind kept up; on the twenty-seventh
there was a heavy sea running and the barge had
drifted out of sight of land. Then Corporal Harte
and his men rigged a jury-mast and a square sail
and prepared to navigate on their own. The log
continues:

May 28, — ^At daybreak sighted land to leeward about two
mfles distant. Blowing too hard to hoist our sail. When about
a mile from the land our towing-gear got foul on the bottom
and hung us up. By this time the gale had nearly blown itself
out and had shifted so that. we swung clear of the land. About
ten-thirty p.m. our towing-gear came away and we drifted clear.

Maiy 29, — Sighted land again to leewiuxl. Hove up, slipped
our towing-gear and hoisted sail, but could not get the barge
to fall away. Bent S-inch manila to stem anchor and dropped
it, and when the sail filled and the barge swung I cut the hawser
and got clear. The wind was W.S.W. and the land ran out to
the eastward. We just managed to round the point and went
away to the N J).

It was northeast that Corporal Harte wished to
go, and it seems to have been his intention to sail
that unwieldy barge all on its own across the
Arabian Sea and on up the Persian Gulf. He went
ahead for forty-eight hours with nothing happening,
evidently, that was of sufBcient importance, in his
opinion, to set down in the log. Though it seems
to me that if I had been in his place I should have
spent all my spare time writing an account of my
own emotions and of how the other men were bear-
ing up under their unpleasant prospects. But noth-
ing like that for an all-in-the-day's-work Britisher.

On the Slst of May the wind shifted, then died
13 181

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

down, OQd they began to drift in toward land. In
the mere human nature of things land should have
looked to them quite inviting enough to make them
glad they were drifting toward it, but that was
not what they wanted at all. They wanted to get
on with their job. When they got in seven fathoms
of water they dropped their anchor, and there,
hopefully, they dimg for three days.

On the 4th of June the wind came up from west
by south, so they weighed anchor and headed again
for the northeast. But luck was against them.
They were becalmed again on the 6th and began
once more to drift in toward shore. Their doom
was not sealed, however, until the following evening
when '^the wind came on to blow from the northeast
and blew hard all night.'' The next entry in the
log, which the corporal managed to save and in
which he continued to record his adventures, reads:

June 8. — ^At about four jlM. the wind shifted more to the
eastward and we began to drag our anchors. By noon we were
dose inshore. The cliffs were crowded with armed Arabs.
About one-thirty pji. our rudder struck the sand and I hove
in on the anchors in the hope that one of them might catch a
rock. But nothing came of it, and at two pji. we were well
aground and the Arabs swarmed aboard. By three P.M. all
the crew were ashore, the Arabs having taken everything away
from them except what they wore.

When the corporal saw the Arabs coming aboard
he ran aft to his room, with an intention of getting
his rifle and defending himself. But they were
there before him. One already had his rifle and
another his kit-bag, while he was just in time to
find a third tiuning out the contents of his locker.

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I snatched my bag away from the Arab who had it and
threw it on the bunk. Then I tried to take my rifle away from
the other. He would not let go and struck me in the face with
his fist. There was a boatswain's fid lying on my bunk and I
picked it up and knocked him down with it. Directly I did I
got a heavy blow on the head and the next thing I knew I was
being dragged up the beach* The other men made no resistance
and were not ill-treated. The Arabs who helped me up the
heBch were taking no part in the looting and seemed to be
friendly enough. They asked me by signs if there was any
money on board, and I made them understand there was not.
Then they made signs that when the barge was stripped the
looters would come and cut our throats.

I shotild like to tell this whole story in the man's
own language, but it is too long. He managed to
convey to the friendly seeming Arabs that if they
would guide him and his men to Muskat and take
care of them on the way they would be liberally
rewarded by the authorities. And this the Arabs
finally agreed to do. But it was difficult to escape
from the unfriendly tribe; and afterward came a
weary, terrible march of thirteen days.

The first night they lay hidden in a cave in the
side of a hill, and just before daybreak — his interest
in his barge getting the better of his fear of the
Arabs — ^the corporal stole back down the beach for
a final inspection. '^She was lying broadside on
the beach/' he says, **so I went back and we started
oflf.*'

The way lay over hills, across desert wastes, and
along the cliffs of the seashore, and a good part of
the time the men had neither food nor drink.
Moreover, it was June and the heat was the heat
of June in that hottest of all lands. They had one
box of biscuits with them, and at Arab encamp-

183

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

ments on the way they got goats' milk and water.
But the water in the wells they came across on the
long daily marches was nearly always brackish and
they suffered terribly from thirst. Many of the
Arab encampments they had to avoid because they
belonged to tribes unfriendly to the tribe of the
men who were guiding them, and they were afraid
of being held for ransom.
The corporal continues:

JuM 10. — ^The Arabs kept urging us on. They seemed to
be afraid the looters would come after us. After we crossed the
hills it was flat, sandy plain and the heat was terrible. We
kept going until after sunset. Then we stopped. One of the
Arabs went away and after a while returned with water. It
was very bad water, but we were glad to get it. After a drink
and a biscuit we went to sleep.

June 12, — Started at dawn and kept on going until four pjkc.,
when we reached another encampment. At that encampment
they tried to induce our guides to get me to write to Muskat
for money and to keep us there until the money arrived. Our
guides would not agree to that.

June H. — ^We did not start until about nine a Jf . Then we
marched till it was almost dark, when we reached a well. The
well was empty. By that time we had finished our biscuits, so
we lay down and tried to sleep.

It was not until three o'clock in the afternoon of
the following day that they got either food or
water, and by that time they were so exhausted
that they had to lose a day in ordel* to rest. After
which it is a story of a race with starvation. One
day they accidentally discovered a large nest of
turtle eggs, a life-saving incident on which the
corporal makes naively gleeful comment; and at
the last encampment they came across they were

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able to get a few dates to carry along with them.
Then comes a final pathetic brief entry in the record:

J%KM 21. — ^Finished the dates.

Two days after they finished the dates they,
reached their destination — ^just thirty-three days
from the day they left Aden. They were bathed
and fed, looked over by a doctor, and put to sleep.
But Corporal Harte did not seem to be interested
in being invalided. He set to work at once, and
two days after he landed in Muskat he had gathered
together the necessary paraphernalia and, accom-
panied by all the men of his crew who were fit for
service, was off on a naval vessel to rescue his
barge. In concluding his unemotional statement
he says:

I would like to add that from the time we got adrift mitil
we reached Muskat I never had any trouble with any of the
men. In the desert when we were hungry and thirsty and had
no tobacco they neither groused nor whimpered, but took
everything as a jnatter of course.

And it is of such men that the Inland Water
Transport of Mesopotamia is made up. If it were
not so there could not be an adequate inland water
transport, because the difficulties have been such
as only heroic and determined men could overcome.

Brig.-Gen. R. H. W. Hughes, C. M. G., D. S. O.,
the director of inland water transport — and known
in Mesopotamia as the D. I. W. T. — sets the ex-
ample of impertiu'bability and seems to regard the
whole amazing performance as a matter of course.
I tried to get him excited about it so he would tell

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

me stories, but he was interested chiefly in a great
dry«dock they were building at Basra. He could
get enthusiastic about that. The River Tigris with
its shallows and nairows is hard on steamboats and
they get out of repair with irritating frequency.
The custom has been to beach them on a low bank
of the Shatt*el-Arab at Basra and make the repairs
at low tide, but this was far from satisfactory, so
everybody has a high regard for the new dry-dock
that was so difficult to come by in such a land.

The shipping in the Tigris is now divided into
classes, and everything afloat, of whatever variety
of craft, carries in large letters, either on its funnel
or on its bow, a niunber and the initials of its class.
The P-boats and the S-boats are the paddle-
wheelers and stem-wheelers, and when you see
"P-76" or "S-81*' steaming up-river you realize
that these classes are fairly large.

Then there are the S-T*s — ^steam-tugs by the
hundreds; P-T's — ^paddle-tugs; P-L's — ^power-
launches; F-B*s — flat-barges; S-B's — ^steam-barges;
and so on. And there is a new variety of passenger-
steamboat, designed to carry troops and built or
building in India, which are paddle-wheeled, but
with the wheels astern instead of amidships. They
are just beginning to come into the river and they
are principally distinguished in my mind, not be-
cause they are queer-looking structures, but because
they meet with "Yukon's" intense disapproval.

Yukon does not believe in paddle-boats for the
Tigris, anyhow. They draw too much water, in the
first place, and, says he, "once a paddle-boat gets
stuck in the mud there she sticks until a tug comes
alonir and yanks her off f'

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LINES OF COMMUNICATION

He is forever dealing in doleful reminiscence
about the excellence^ as he has tested it, of the
Yukon River traffic and the superior advantages of
the Mississippi River steamboats.

"Them Mississippi boats!" says he, "Grosh!
They carry a thousand ton a clip, with plenty o*
space to spare, an' draw about two foot o' water!
Say! These Britishers don't know nothin' 'bout
rivers, nohow. "When they want a model for a
steamboat why don't they consult some one with
river sense? Look at them new paddle-wheelers
now! Wide enough at the stem to scrape the sides
out o' the Narrers and push everything else out o'
the river! An' say! — down at the head four feet
at least, with nothin' in 'em! Well have a pile of
'em stacked up in the mud along above Qumah
one o' these days, an' we'll have to use dynamite to
get *em out o* the way!"

But perhaps Yukon should be introduced in a
less casual way.

CHAPTER Xm

UP THE RIVER TIGRIS

THEY had told him that I was an American
and that if I could not speak his language I
would at least be able to understand it — which was
more than they could do. So he was what he called
"lookin* forrard to meetin*" me. They had also
told me about him, describing him as a ''character/'
and while I, too, was "lookin* forrard" I really
expected to encounter in him a kind of British
imitation of what they said he was — ^a woolly
Westerner. I was all wrong. I found he was the
genuine article; not so very wild, but certainly
woolly.

"Ye-e-ep,** he said, "been livin* in the great
Northwest since I was knee-high. An' say, if this
or war ever lets up an' I live to get back! Well,
they won't have to tie me to no post! I'll stan'
without hitchin', all right, all right!

"Ever been to Vancouver?" he suddenly ex-
claimed.

I smiled and nodded.

"You have! Well, now, then I ask you! Ain't
that one o' the grandest towns on earth? Say, I've
got six comer lots in that town an' I wouldn't
take less 'n a hundred thousand dollars for 'em!

IBS

UP THE RIVER TIGRIS

They only cost me a hundred dollars apiece, but I
got in on the ground floor. These British army
officers don't know nothin'. I been tellin* 'em
about that country out there till Fm black in the
face. But they think Fm prejudiced. They won't
pay no attention to me. Now you tell 'em!"

I doubt if many persons ever heard his real name.
He is known as "Yukon" from one end of Meso-
potamia to the other, because, once having run a
steamboat on the Yukon River, he is given to com-
paring that stream with the River Tigris on every
possible occasion, and invariably to the great dis-
advantage of the Tigris. Moreover, he has a
Yukonese cast of ruddy countenance, a Yukonese
muscularity and freedom of movement and manner,
and a Yukonese picturesqueness of diction and ex-
pletive that would make him a marked man
anywhere.

I am afraid that as a kindred spirit I disappointed
him from the outset. I could most enthusiastically
back his opinion of His British Majesty's great
Northwest, but my language has been thinned and
clarified by a too long association with the less
fortunate inhabitants of the effete American East,
and I could see that he began at once to regard me
as most unrepresentative of the country he calls
"God's own." And when he says "God's own"
he means "the good old U. S. A." for which he has
an ardent affection.

I did not meet him until he came to the mess one
evening to tell us that the S-1 was all right as to
engine repairs and coal and would be ready to
get away up-river next morning at any hour the
General might wish to start. But after that I saw

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

him, as he would say» "some frequent an' con-
siderable."

The S-1 — otherwise Stem-wheeler Number One —
b the boat on which the Lispector-General of
Communications travels up and down the Tigris;
and Yukon is her captain. She began life as an
open-decked passenger-craft on a far-away river
somewhere, but since she made her own courageous
way into the Tigris fleet she has undergone a nimi-
ber of disfiguring but amplifying improvements and
has had a most thrilling career.

We were to leave Basra at eight in the morning,
the General having telegraphed ahead for a con-
ference with his officers at Qumah at half past
eleven. I was aboard betimes, followed by Ezekiel
— ^that servant of mine — who managed, with char-
acteristic nonchalance and the assistance of about
six coolies, to stow my kit — bed and bedding, camp
table, chair, boxes, and bags — ^in passageways and
deck spaces where it would do the most good as an
obstruction and a nuisance.

Among Ezekiel's other objectionable habits, he
wears European clothes instead of the graceful
draperies of the usual Indian, and he came aboard
the S-1 arrayed in a suit of black-and-white-checked
flannel whidi caused a commotion even among the
animals on the lower deck. The General's and the
Major's riding-horses pawed their stalls and nick-
ered inquiringly, while the plaintive bleats of two
pet Persian lambs were as a kind of 'cello obbligato
to the cackling and squawking of the fowls in their
coops. Yukon remarked:

"Well, I won't have to use no horn or whistle
this trip!"

190

UP THE RIVER TIGRIS

It was the intention of my host and his staff that
I should realize none of my expectations with regard
to hardships and discomfort. I had come aboard
prepared to f mnish a bare little cabin with my own
kit and to make the best of next to nothing. I knew
that was what the Major and the A. D. C. would
have to do» because in Mesopot officers get along
with a minimum of personal impedimenta and they
make that minimum serve on all occasions. Each
has his own camp bed, his own blankets and linen
and everything strictly necessary, and wherever
he goes he takes his kit along and makes ar-
rangements for his own comfort, or lives in dis-
comfort for which he has nobody but himself to
blame.

Nothing like that for their "lady visitor.*^ They
had a surprise in store for me and they proudly
ushered me into a cabin which put me in a class by
myself. It was amusing and wonderful! Persian
rugs and rose-bordered yellow draperies were the
chief items of decoration — goodness knows where
they got them! — ^and against one wall there was a
writing-table on which they had placed a large
square of spotless blotting-paper and a green-
shaded reading-lamp. What more could any one
wish for on the River Tigris? My camp bed was
covered with a gay traveling-rug and an electric fan
was humming in a comer.

The Grenerars cabin and office is a large room up
forward under the bridge, in which he has some
shelves of reference-books, many maps, and a big,
busy-looking desk, while the other accommodations
are a half-dozen tiny rooms down either side of the
deck, which, before the servants got the camp beds

191

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

and tables and things in their places, were as bare
as though they had never been lived in.

The mess-room is amidships alongside the tele-
graph office and the stenographers' quarters, while
down at the end of the deck, just over the great,
churning wheel, are two well-furmshed bath-rooms
— ^** fitted up,** said the General, "with porcelain
looted from an over-supply of hospital equipment
at a time when the authorities seemed to have been
struck with a sudden idea that the way to win the
war was to send bath-tubs to Mesopotamia/* For
a long time Mesopotamia had practically no bath-
tubs at all.

All these living-quarters constitute what I have
referred to as disfiguring but amplifying improve-
ments. They are all built of canvas nailed to plain,
unpainted uprights and cross-timbers, and since the
curious old boat draws only between three and four
feet of water and has a wide-open lower deck, they
make her look top-heavy. But makeshift and
quaint as she is, she is very comfortable.

On the lower deck, besides the horses, the lambs,
the chickens, and the General's automobile, we had
a small host of servants, the Indian crew, and a
Punjabi guard — ^the guard being necessary in case
of attack by Arabs.

Yukon gave me the freedom of the bridge, which
is very high and to which I had to dimb by a
steep ladder, and I spent most of my time in a
comfortable chair in one comer of it, gazing in utter
enthralment at a vast panoramic world that was
new to me.

There is no river anywhere on earth like the
Tigris. Even the Euphrates, its sister stream,

192

UP THE RIVER TIGRIS

which runs through similar country, is whoUy
different.

The main current of the Euphrates used to join
the Tigris at Qumah, but in order to reclaim areas
that were rapidly drying up into a desert waste for
want of irrigation, a British company completed in
1914 a great barrage at Hindiyeh — ^north of Babylon
— which had the effect of turning the principal stream
into a formerly thin and silted-up channel to the
southward. So the Euphrates now flows grandly
into the Shatt-el-Arab about ten miles above Basra,
while the branch running across to Qumah has
dwindled to very meager proportions.

Between Basra and Qumah the banks of the
Shatt*el-Arab are lined with date-gardens, and in its
gentle placidity the broad river reflects everything
very deeply. Its edges gleam silvery green with the
dust-silvered green of the palms, while here and
there a tawny stretch lies under a shelving bank of
clay, on which, perhaps, may stand a row of
ancient brick-kilns which look like castle ruins or
medieval watch-towers. It really is very beautiful.

We arrived at Qumah at the appointed hour, and
while the General and the Major went off for their
conference, the A. D. C. and I wajidered in deep
dust through the lanelike streets and out into the
surroimding palm-groves where the army camps are
located.

Qumah is regarded by the men of the Meso-
potamian Expeditionary Force as the least attrac-
tive place in all Mesopotamia, and that is saying
nothing whatever for the rest of Mesopotamia.
But to be sent to Qumah for service is to be pun-
ished for your sins. I have referred to the fact

198

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

that the summer temperature of Mesopot ranges
between 110® and 180°. At Qumah, where there
is more hiunidity than at any other point on the
river, this is accompanied by a heavy, saturating
mugginess that is fairly prostrating.

In the spring of 1916, when the force was trying
to relieve Greneral Townshend at Kut, a poor
Tommy who was dying of heatstroke called it *'the
hill station for hell,'' but as the simuner wore on
this was improved upon by other Tommies, who
liked to refer to hbll as ''the hill station for Qumah"
and to pretend that a month's leave in hell would
do them a world of good.

Yet hoary tradition — ^the legends of the ages —
has made the site of Qumah the Garden of Eden.
It answers so many of the descriptions in Grenesis
that for a long time it was generally accepted as
the probable scene of that event in human history
known to us as The Creation.

It has its rivals, but not in the mind of any
British soldier who has lived and worked and fought
in Mesopotamia. All such unfortunate boys are
quite satisfied that Qumah is the Garden of Eden,
and being permitted to fight in the Garden of Eden
has been one of their compensations for having to
fight at all in such an ungodly land.

They have given all the principal streets in
Qumah new names, and in order to make them
more or less permanent — since troops come and go
in such a place — ^they have painted them on neat
signboards and have set these up at the comers.
Many of the streets run out from a small plaza
which is as blank and bare and imsightly as any-

194

DP THE RIVER TIGRIS

thing well could be, and this they have named
Temptation Square.

Then there are Eve's Walk, Serpent's Crescent,
Adam's Lane, Fatal Bite Avenue, Apple Alley, and
a number of others that I am not able to remember.
And even the Arabs in a measure have adopted
these names and are tremendously pleased by any
reference to the anciently historic importance of
their most un-Eden-like town.

Back aboard the S-1, 1 went up to the high bridge
from which I could see the whole community and
all that lay huddled round its edges. The army
camps and the corrals and the remoimt-depots
under the palm-trees I could not see, but down the
river-bank were signs of war industry in the form
of pyramids of grain and hay and rough mat-shed
warehouses overflowing with supplies waiting to
be transported up-river, or being reserved here for
possible emergency. Gangs of laborers were at
work laying more sidings and building freight-sheds
for the new railway which now connects Basra
with Baghdad — ^and therefore with the battle-lines
beyond.

The town of Qumah is a kind of baked-mud
horror, with no architectural ornamentation that I
could see to relieve its flat-roofed and almost win-
dowless monotony. It has about three thousand
Arab inhabitants and I think a majority of them
— ^the men, at least — spend most of their time on
the river-front watching the army shipping going
up and down. And truly it is a wonderful sight!
A short way up the Bimd a niunber of them were
sitting, with legs tucked under them, on high
benches in front of a coffee-house, sipping some

105

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

kind of liquid from small glasses, smoking their
water-pipes and talking, no doubt, about the un-
supportable strenuousness and orderliness of life
with Mesopotamia under British control.

Then the Political Commissioner — ^the local
D. P. C. — came aboard to call on me and to offer
me anything he might have in his possession in
the way of information.

I invited him up on the bridge, and the first
thing he told me was that we were tied up in the
shade of the Tree itself. That is, we would have
been in its shade if it had been casting any. It
was high noon, the burning sun was straight over-
head, and the gnarled and knotted branches of the
Tree seemed to be dropping wearily beneath it.
It was very interesting; though it gave me a mo-
mentary feeling that would be difficult to describe
to be told that there was the Tree of Knowledge
of Good and Evil — aright there! It didn't sound
quite reasonable.

"Is it a very old tree?** I asked.

"Well— uh— rather! It's the Adam and Eve
tree."

" Yes, but you know what I mean."

"Of course! And as a matter of fact it is an old
tree. It's older than the oldest inhabitant and he's
over a hundred. And he says it was old when his
great-grandfather was bom. But you see it doesn't
claim to be the original Tree. It's only a descendant
of the original Ttee, though it does stand on the
original spot."

"Oh. does it? But the Bible says *in the midst
of the garden,' and this tree is on the river-bank."

"Oh, well, the river may have been miles away

196

UP THE RIVER TIGRIS

from here at that time! In fact, you can't tell
even nowadays where the Tigris is going to be from
one year's end to another/*

This was slandering the Tigris, but it has an
awful reputation for wandering round at loose ends,
so I had nothing to offer in its defense.

"Do the Arabs really believe in this tree?" I
asked.

"No, not unreservedly. At least it is not re-
garded as particularly sacred. But there is a tree
over there — ^the feathery one hanging over the dome
of the mosque — ^that they do believe in. In fact,
they are tremendously superstitious about it. It
was planted by Noah."

All of which may sound like "kidding," but it
was not at all. We were quite serious. We were
not even smiling. I assure you that in this ex-
traordinary country, where one sees Noahs and
Father Abrahams in real life on every hand, and
where the days of the Flood seem far less remote
than the Middle Ages of Europe, one makes and
accepts such statements quite matter-of-f actly and
without realizing in the least their absurdity.

Incidentally, nobody who has ever lived through
a spring and early summer in Mesopotamia doubts
the story of the Flood. It is accepted by everybody
with the utmost simplicity of belief, except tiiat it
is imderstood that the world the Lord destroyed
was only Noah's world.

The rain does descend upon the earth in sheets
and layers for forty days and forty nights — which is
not such a long rainy season, after all. But it is
not the rains which cause the rivers to spread them-
selves out over the whole visible area; it is the
14 W

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

mdtiiig of the snows up in the Armenian hills
where the rivers rise.

What really happened was that a couple of flood-
less seasons passed during which it was abnormally
cold up around the Black Sea, and Mr. Noah» being
a wise old patriarch, said to himself:

''We're going to have a ripping-hot spring along
about next year and the accumulated snows in the
mountains are going to melt and the waters are going
to pour down into the Land of the Two Rivers in the
worst flood we've had in centuries. I shall build
me an ark and get ready for it."

Which he did. He was at that time about six
hundred years old, you know, so his memory —
enriched, too, by the teachings and traditions of
his fathers — covered a considerable period.

Everything happened as he prognosticated, and
it came to pass that because he could get nobody
else to believe in preparedness he was the only
inhabitant who had a refuge ready and stocked
with enough provisions to tide him and his family
over the drowning-out period.

As for Ararat — ^the whole country is covered with
mounds which are the ruins of ancient mud villages
— or even of great cities — ^and in the language of the
people these mounds are called ^^ararats." There
never has been any building material except mud —
sometimes baked into imperishable bricks — ^and
mud structures fall into ruin very quickly. There is
no reason to believe that before Noah*s time there
were no such moimds in Mesopotamia. And there
is no reason to think that the ararat of to-day was
not an ararat eight or ten thousand years ago.

I myself have picked out of the walls of excavated

198

UP THE RIVER TIGRIS

ruins bricks that had been right where I found
them for something like five thousand years. And
still imbedded in the bitimien which held them in
their places was perfectly good straw-colored straw
which might have been produced with last year's
crop of oats. What are a few thousand years more
or less — ^in Mesopotamia?

Noah's Ark grounded on an ararat and he was
hung up high and dry. He probably tried to get
her off into deep water» but, failing in this, was
compelled to stay where he was until the flood re-
ceded and the ground got into fit condition to be
cultivated.

This ararat theory is really the Greneral's, but it
impresses me as being so entirely reasonable that I
cannot resist the temptation to pass it on.

The men who took part in the first operations
north from Qumah, and in the subsequent opera^
tions for the relief of Kut, knew all about the Flood.
For them "the waters prevailed upon the earth"
during months on end, and the flood was accom-
panied by an intolerable heat against which they
had no kind of protection; also by a plague of
poisonous insects.

It is the consensus of opinion in Mesopotamia
that Noah exceeded his instructions with r^ard to
pestiferous insects, and especially with r^ard to
sand-flies and certain breeds of mosquitoes. There
is one variety of mosquito that is extraordinarily
numerous and particularly detested. It has little
striped legs and is a very pretty insect, but it is
absolutely without sporting instinct — the meanest
thing alive. It has no buzz; it utters no warning
sound of any kind; and it seems even to be at pains

199

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

not to tickle the spot on which it lights. Like
thistle-down it floats in the air and like thistle-down
it settles on any exposed point of hiunan skin and
proceeds to attend to its immediate business with a
vigor and vidousness that nothing ebe could equal.
And it leaves a frightfully inflamed mark which
frequently develops into a shocking sore that takes
weeks to heal and is likely to disfigure one for life.
Since more often than not it finds the face of its
victim the most easily get-atable f oraging-area, it is
a creature to be feared.

But we must get on up the Tigris. Above
Qumah the palm-gardens along the river-banks
leave off and the limitless, mirage-filled desert be-
gins; then for a week one sees only limitless, mirage-
filled desert. To be sure, there are occasional
river-bank oases, and there are mud- and reed-hut
villages, towns, tombs, and mosques. Bedouin
encampments, herds and hosts, army bases and
marching-posts, and the endless moving picture of
busy war life on the river. Also there are flaming
dawns and thrilling simsets.

One day I was reading a book which a certain
Anglican bishop wrote about his connection with
the operations in Mesopotamia, and I noticed that
he liked too well a phrase that he was constantly
making use of in quotation marks. Men marched
off "into the blue"; he gazed "into the blue";
he sent messages which might or might not be de-
livered "into the blue." And there isn't any blue
in the country. At least, not enough to make one
think blue.

There is a steely kind of sky overhead most of

800

UP THE mVER TIGRIS

the time» and the distances into which men march
and into which one gazes are mauve and amber»
dove gray and olive green, with slashes and banks
of burning orange on the horizon at sunset — ^the
effect, they say, of dust in the air.

And the Tigris, lying higher in most places than
the country on either side of it, is a still stream into
which the colors melt in a curious, indescribable
way. But when I speak of the desert as what one
mostly sees I am thinking of the lure of wide-flung
space and of how inevitably one's eyes lift and seek,
above and beyond the inmiediateness of things,
the far horizons. That is Mesopotamia.

I thought, as we went along, what a silent, lone-
some river it must have been in peace-times; how
sleepy the villages; how noiseless the towns; how
somnolent the Arab encampments in the patches of
camel-thorn.

Throughout the river's length one sees at irregular
intervals ancient water-drawing stations. They call
them wells, but they are only cuts in the banks
over which a framework is built to carry goatskin
buckets that are raised and lowered on a windlass.
Attached to one end of the rope is usually a bullock
or a donkey, and as he ambles down the slope of
the embankment and the dripping brown water-
bags rise drearily from the river, the windlass
creaks with a slow, mournful, drowsing sound that
is like no other sound I ever heard. That and the
far-away lost-soul shrieks of many jackals are the
only sounds one hears in the orange-mellow
twilights.

How dark it must have been, too, yet how perfect
the moon and the starshine; and how undisturbed

801

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

dome to prove that it has witnessed some of the
action in the greatest of all wars.

Nowadays it is carefully guarded by British
soldiers who live in a smaU stockade at the edge of
the palm-grove. They were drawn up within their
sand-bagged and wire-entanglemented shelter to
salute the Inspector-General as we passed on up the
river*

CHAPTER XIV

ON UP THE TIGRIS

THE Tigris is a mighty river mightily needed —
a river essential to the successful prosecution
of the war, yet a river devoid of almost every ad-
mirable attribute. It apparently conforms to no
law of nature; it is a profligate, abandoned and de-
praved; a winder and a wanderer in devious ways;
a waster and a slacker.

One gets personal with r^ard to the Tigris.
It cannot be helped. Even the matter-of-fact
British engineers, steamboat captains, and pilots
who have to deal with its idiosyncrasies maintain
toward it a curiously un-matter-of -f act and personal
attitude. It is as though they thought of it as
possessing a kind of hiunan intelligence along with
a disposition to go wrong on the slightest provoca-
tion. Wherefore a tacit understanding that it is
not to be provoked. Any briefest interruption of
its career of present usefulness would be an un-
imaginable calamity, so they take no chances by
assiuning toward it a too great degree of authority.

They coax and cajole it; they go to the greatest
pains to humor its inniunerable moods; and it is
only with the utmost precaution that they imder-
take any measure of interference with its way ward-

205

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

ness, or, as they would rather say, its "general
cussedness/*

It is the most extraordinary river on earth. Of
course it is very old in the service of mankind and
its habits have been fastened upon through ages of
human neglect and abuse, so one really loves it
rather and feels inclined to apologize for it* But
the problem of its reformation is yet to be solved
in the niinds of the engineers.

It is navigable for steam-craft a full four hundred
and fifty miles — or from a point a short distance
above Baghdad to its junction with the Shatt-^1-
Arab at Qumah — ^yet its narrowest and at the same
time its shallowest stretch is within thirty miles
of its mouth. This is against all natural law; but,
as I say, it conforms to no natural law, and in The
Narrows is written the fidl story of it; in The
Narrows is revealed the true character of the imique
and anciently historic stream in all its abandoned
abnormality.

The explanation lies in the fact that in its navi-
gable length it has but one tributary, the Diyala,
which joins it about nineteen miles below Bi^hdad;
while it has innumerable ^^tributaries — ^streams
large and small which flow out of it, emptying it of
its waters without let or hindrance, with an utter
disregard of the consequences to its navigability,
and, since they are uncontrolled, to no purpose but
to create great swamps m the desert. These
swamps have been a fearful menace always to the
armies in operation, and have habits of imdepend-.
ableness and instability no less extraordinary than
the habits of the river that creates them.

The principal distributary is the Shatt-el-Hai,

ON UP THE TIGRIS

supposed to be the ancient Tigris itself, which
flows out just below Kut-el-Amara and, stretching
across the great interland between the two rivers,
joins the Euphrates at Nasriyeh, an important point
which was occupied by the British Army of the
Euphrates in the summer of 1915, when General
Townshend was advancing up the Tigris to Kut*
el-Amara. Most of the distributaries are man-
made; water-cuts and canals that were at one time
a part of a great system of irrigation; but the
Shatt-el-Hai evidently is not, and it is thought also
that the Tigris cut for itself the worst water thief
of them all, the Jahalah, which branches off di-
rectly above Amara and, with a bed six feet below
the bed of the Tigris, carries a tremendous volume
of water out across the desert to the eastward and
deposits it in a spreading, bubbling, fever-breeding
marsh.

After which the river, being tapped at intervals
all the way down, begins to decrease in volume until
it runs spindling into The Narrows; a once splendid
stream reduced to less than two himdred feet in
width and with a depth at its normal best of not
more than six feet. Below The Narrows it begins
to *^come home from the marshes'' in many small
trickling creeks and in a curious seepage which
makes miles upon miles of the country along the
east bank exceedingly dangerous if not quite im-
passable except in the driest of seasons.

In addition to all of which the bottom of the
river is formed of shifting sands that are played
upon and tumbled about by the current, with the
result that no steamboat's prow is ever sure of an
unobstructed course. Yet for nearly three years

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

the main division of the Mesopotamian Expedi-
tionary Force had to depend exclusively on the
River Tigris for communications and supplies.

There is a railroad now all the way from Baghdad
to Basra, and the attitude of strained anxiety and
respectful cajolery on the part of the engineers and
pilots could be relaxed if it had not become a habit.
But it is a habit» and, besides, the river is still of
sufficient importance to occupy first place in the
general scheme of things.

At Amara, where the Jahalah rolls out in such a
recklessly destructive volume, it was decided that
some kind of gently suggestive obstacle across the
distributary channel would be necessary if the river
below was to be kept continuously navigable for
the kind of boats the supply and transport service
had to use. So the river engineers sank an old
steamboat in such a position that it would serve
to deflect the ciurent by the merest fraction. That
was as much as they dared to do. It added some-
thing to the volume of the Tigris without distiu-b-
ing its usual habit and causing it to seek an outlet
somewhere else, as it invariably threatens to do if
it is even harshly spoken to.

Then a river patrol was established and intrusted
with the task of keeping up with the changes in the
main channel and keeping that channel buoyed for
the benefit of traffic, while a small barrage here and
there was constructed for the purpose of coaxing
the more active sand-bars to shift themselves out
of the way.

But perhaps I am managing to suggest that the
ciurent is swift. It is not. Baghdad, five hundred
and sixty-five miles by river from the Persian Gulf,

208

ON XJP THE TIGRIS

is only one hundred and twelve feet above sea-level,
while Qumah, one hundred and twelve miles from
the gulf, is only ten and a half feet above sea-leveL
So one always thinks of the Tigris as a still river,
and it is because it is so still that it has such a
strangely tranquilizing charm.

In The Narrows practically everything afloat in
the Tigris has at one time or another been "stuck
in the mud'' or jammed tight in between the banks
of one of the many sharp bends. There is one bend
known as the Devil's Elbow, and it did not come
by its name through anybody's misconception of its
character. It is an acute angle round which only
the most expert of pilots can get a steamboat with-
out the assistance of anchors and winches, and it is
every pilot's dread.

\'S^en the British were advancing up the Tigris
with more speed than they were really prepared to
make. The Narrows witnessed many a scene that
was equivalent to two trains attempting to pass
each other on the same track. But eventually a
block-signal control was established, and, since the
business of supply and transport goes on night and
day, an electric power-plant was built and the
banks were lined on either side with high arc-
lights.

These banks are now as smooth as though they
had been planed and polished — ^the result of their
almost constant contact with the sides of barges
as these are squeezed through, lashed to tugs or
other small steam-craft.

All of this has to do witn the Tigris at low water
or at normal depth, and is only half the story.

209

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

Along in March the snows up-country b^in to
melt and the floods begin to pour down the two
rivers. At Baghdad the Tigris has a rise and fall
of more than twenty feet and has frequently been
known to rise as much as three feet in one night.

If some of the river's astonishing sinuosities
could be eliminated by means of dams and canals
its length between Basra and Baghdad could be
shortened by at least two hundred miles; but when
I innocently asked one of the engineers why this
should not be done he answered me with arched
eyebrows and an air that I could not fail to recog-
nize as indicating a politely patient tolerance of my
stupidity.

During the floods all trace of the banks along the
middle reaches of the river — and down below Amara
as well — disappears, and at the b^inning of things
it was not at all unusual for a steamboat loaded
with troops or supplies to miss a bend altogether,
keep straight ahead on an overland course, and go
hard aground out somewhere in the middle of a
plain. Grounded on an ararat, all same Noah!

Sdmething had to be done, of coiurse, to decrease
the possibility of such calamities, so eventually
the bends were all marked with channel-indicators
— ^tall poles set at each river angle toward which a
boat's prow should point. And these poles are
usuaUy topped with spreading basket-like arrange-
ments in which the storks — the most nmnerous
birds in Mesopotamia; — build their great, shaggy
nests, thereby adding a touch of delightful pictu-
resqueness to a merely utilitarian contrivance. .

But I must not go on too long with dull details
about a river that is not dull in any sense or degree.

ON UP THE TIGRIS

Yukon was wont to describe it with appropriate
expectorative emphasis as "Phh-t — dum^ similar
and monotonous!''

But I could not agree with him. And especially
in the late afternoons when the sun usually turns the
more or less nothing by way of landscape through
which it flows into a knobbed and hillocked> horizon-
wide plain filled with points and deep cups of in-
describable light. I was always on the bridge for
such hours as these, and one evening when I was
finding it quite impossible to refrain from expressing
my delight in the scene that lay all about us,
stretching away and away to the ends of nowhere,
Yukon, standing behind the big wheel with his
eyes fixed on the river ahead, drawled, in reply to
my exclamations:

**Well, I don't want to be no kill-joy, but if I
live to get back down to Basra it '11 be my fiftieth
trip, an' it didn't take me more 'n about forty-seven
trips to get over what you're a-sufferin' from now."

To me it was wonderful in the pearl-gray and
mauve-shot mornings, too, and there was always
temptation to be up with the dawn. Across the
flats and along the marsh edges beyond there are
thousands of sand-grouse, black partridge, dif-
ferent varieties of duck and other wild-fowl, and
the General liked, whenever a relaxation of business
demands made it possible, to bank in in the early
hours at any casually selected spot and, with a
happy staff and a pleased Punjabi guard in attend-
ance, to trudge off across country on a shooting
expedition. And though he was always good-
naturedly complaining that the troops of the flying

911

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

oolunms and others in garrison along the river
were destro^nng the birds and n4>idly bringing
about a situation that would call for rigid game
laws, he never came back aboard without a fairly
good bag with which to supplement a none too
varied war ration.

On one of these early mornings when everybody
was ashore and a silence reigned on the old boat
that made me positively nervous, I joined Yukon
on the bridge and found him leaning against the rail,
niuttering to himself bitter-seeming complaints.
We could see the shooting-party in the cQstance
tramping homeward across a desolate stretch of
dust and camel-thorn — all there was by way of a
feast of scenery — and Yukon had already given
orders for the engine-room crew to stand by* We
would be off the instant the men got aboard*

Two high-turbaned Indian sentries stood on
either side of the narrow gangway, facing the
desert, and a barefoot, white-clad Arab cabin-boy
was running up and down the clay bank, with a pet
Persian lamb baaing foolishly at his heels.
What*s the trouble, Captain?'* I asked.
Aw, nothin*," he growled, "only I do wish the
General 'd make a plan an' stick to it. But he
won't, so what's the use! Say, when it's a hurry
call from up-river you c'n bet it's a case of push
straight through an' never mind eatin* or sleepin*
or nothin'. An' I don't mind that. I don't mind
bein' rushed. But when they ain't nothin' urgent
I never know where I'm at. It's a case o' stand
by and wait for orders. An' like as not the orders
when I do get 'em '11 be onreasonable. Now he's
asked me to make Amara by eleven o'clock this

212

ON UP THE TIGRIS

morning. Huh! Swell chance!*' He paused and
a gleam of humor b^an to twinkle in his eye.
Then he laughed. ** Suppose he thinks I won't be
able to do it, now he's wasted an hour an' a half
here. Well," he chuckled, "you just watch my
smoke!" And he beamed afifectionately upon the
returning sportsmen.

The last act on these occasions before the gang-
plank was drawn in was always the ceremonious
relief of the sentries on the bank. We might be
in the exact and wholly uninhabited geographical
center of nowhere — ^which is what much of the
country looks like at times — but the Indian oflScer
of the guard never relaxed discipline for a single
instant. I thought to myself, why can't the sen-
tries just shoulder their ri^es and come on aboard?
Why all this R'm-umph ! Sho-rumph! Mar-r-umph!
stuff under such circumstances? It interested me
and I spoke to one of the British ofiScers about it.

"Well, naturally," he said, "discipline is never
relaxed. Besides, the guard is not for ornamental
purposes, you know. You can't tell by a glance
at an empty desert how many Arabs might rise
up out of it, and an Arab raid at any moment is not
the least-to-be-expected thing anywhere along the
river."

We were well under way before the excitement
incident to the morning's sport subsided; then we
got through a leisurely breakfast and the day's
work began. The General retired to his desk in the
big room up forward under the bridge; the Major
and the A. D. C. began, as usual, to labor over code
messages at the mess-room table, while Richard,
the butler, cleaned up and bossed the other boys

15 218

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

around in the process of getting everything ship-
shape. The sergeant - major — stenographer and
wireless^peratoi^with his glengarry cap on the
side of his head, a pencil behind faJs ear, and a
sheaf of papers always in his hand, passed back and
forth between his office and the General's cabin,
while orderlies stood about, waiting for orders.

The sounds to be heard were as grace notes punc-
tuating a great monotone of silence. The steady
tranquil wash of the wheel astern was a part of the
silence itself; but not so the whinny and stamp of
the riding-horses in their stalls on the deck below,
and not so the occasional plaintive bleat of a pet
Persian lamb or the squawk of a chicken in the coop
— one of several that surely would have been
killed for oiu: dinner if the shooting-party had come
back empty-handed.

It was nearly eleven when I suddenly remembered
that I must go up on the bridge and make inquiries
about oiu: prospects. Yukon had intimated that
he would get to Amara by eleven in spite of the
utter impossibility of such a thing, and I was in-
terested. I climbed the steep ladder up alongside
the funnel, which I had learned by that time to
n^otiate with considerable agility, and as I thrust
my head through the trap-door I called out cheerily :

"Hello, Captain! Going to make it?**

**Goin' to make what?*' he growled. As though
he didn't know what I meant !

"Amara by eleven," I hiunored him.

He turned from the wheel and r^arded me
solemnly for a moment, then his face crinkled up
in a fimny smile.

"Amara," he said, "is just round the next

214

ON UP THE TIGRIS

bend. An' say, I bet the General thinks we're *bout
an hour an' a half late and hasn't even looked out
of 'is winda to see where we're at. Not that he'd
know, even if 'e did look. The scenery along this
so-called river 'ain't got many distinguishin' f eatiues
an' I wouldn't know where I was at myself half
the time if it wasn't for the chart. Thot^t I was
bluffin' *bout gettin' to Amara by eleven, didn't
you?"

From his air of boyish triumph one would have
thought he had been pounding the engines out of
the old craft and making unprecedented speed.
But six or seven miles an hour was about her limit,
and especially when the water in the river was low,
or what he called "terrible thin." Only the eve-
ning before he had remarked:

"It's jiist so dum thin that the paddle can't get
no holt at all!"

And I had remembered. He had not been mak-
ing up any time. That was certain.
How'd you do it. Captain?" I asked.
Well, I'll just tell you," he replied, "but you
mustn't tell nobody else. I knowed the General
wanted to be at Amara by eleven an' I knowed
mighty well he'd want to go shootin' in that patch
o' camel-thorn back yonder, so I just slipped a
couple o' hours up my sleeve."

Which meant that he had run farther than he
ordinarily would before anchoring for the night,
and that he had started with the first streak of dawn
when everybody else was asleep.

It was on the stroke of eleven that we pulled in
against the high west bank opposite the town of
Amara, and the boys were just throwing out the

215

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

gangway when the General stepped out of his cabin,
all belted and spurred, drawing on his gloves. He
cast an appreciative smile upon Yukon and said:

"Grood work, skipper! Didn*t think you could
do it by half r'

And the funny part of it was that each knew that
the other knew all about the boyish little game they
were playing. But they were quite serious about
it, and Yukon, who had come down from the
bridge for just that little tribute and nothing else,
turned redder under the red of his sunbiunt skin
and began to shout angry-sounding orders to the
men who were securing the gangway. I was lean-
ing against the rail, watching the performance, and
for further relief he turned to me and said:

"Say, I might just as well be killed in this war,
'cause I*m goin* to get hung, anyhow! I'm goin*
to murder seven Airbs infold blood 'fore Fm through
'th this show!"

I laughed in hearty appreciation of his laudable
intention, and groaned a suitable comment as I
coimted just seven waterside coolies awkwardly
engaged in the single simple act of attaching a rope
to a peg in the ground. The peculiarities of coolie
labor corps are far too peculiar and complex to be
dealt with parenthetically, so I shall resist the
temptation that assails me to enumerate them. If
withering sarcasm and forceful expletives of ex-
asperation could slay, Yukon would have rounded
out his useful career right then and there.

The horses were led ashore, and the (Jeneral and
the Major swimg into the saddles and started off
on a tour of inspection round the camps — ^the sheds
and railway yards, the acres of piled and pyramided

216

ON UP THE TIGRIS

supplies, the mule and remount depots, the artillery
and munitions areas, and a nmnber of great tented
and hutted and handsomely housed hospitals. The
A. D. C. and I were at liberty then to go wherever
we Uked.

Amara is somewhat of a dty, and it is somewhat
surprising to come upon it in the midst of the bar-
renness and the aridity of the land through which
the Tigris flows in its middle reaches. It came to
Abdul-Hamid, I believe, as a sort of dowry with
one of his many wives, and he conceived for it a
special fancy along with an idea that it might be
developed into a valuable trade center and point
of strategical advantage. It is connected by caravan
routes with points in Persia and is the center of a
sanjaky or governmental district. It has fine bar-
racks and was a Turkish military post before the
war where a battalion at least was always quartered.

The town lies on the east bank of the river and
has a good brick-faced pier that is a half-mile long.

There used to be a cimous old bridge of wooden
boats across the two hundred and fifty yards of
river, but this has been replaced by a modem
structure of great steel pontoons which swings back
quite majestically to let the river traffic through.
It is named the MacMunn Bridge in honor of mine
host, the man who has developed the lines of com-
munication in Mesopot.

A row of fine two-storied houses with projecting
latticed windows forms the river-front, while a
single tall and slender minaret lifts itself above the
flat expanse of mud roofs. Extending eastward
through the heart of the city is the most pretentious

217

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

bazaar in all Mesopotamia. This was built by
Abdul-Hamid, who is supposed to have paid out of
his own private purse for its lofty and splendidly
constructed brick vaulting. All of which is re-
markable only because in all the land there is no
other example of Turkish enterprise and right-
minded ambition.

Amara has been in British hands since it was oo
cupied by Greneral Townshend on June 8, 1915,
and has diways been the principal base between the
battle-lines and Basra.

Having had its baptism of British blood, it has
become regenerate. Its cleanness is as the clean-
ness of the new pin — ^this, perhaps, being due to the
fact that it is one vast hospital. Nearly all the fine
river-front buildings are hospitals these days, and
there are acres of hutted and tented hospitals lying
out around the city's edges. There are between
fifteen and twenty thousand beds in Amara, and
medical ofiScers and nursing sisters like it better
than any other place in Mesopotamia because its
climate, for some reason, is just a degree or so less
intolerable than the same climate elsewhere. And
what with its railroad and repair shops and its new
smokestacked industries of various kinds, one
would be inclined to think that its age-old sonmo-
lence had departed from it for all time.

And it is a fact, siu-prising under the circmn-
stances, perhaps, that few things the British have
built in Mesopotamia, few of the improvements they
have made, have the appearance of being for tem-
porary use. Surprising under the circumstances?
No, that is not true. Anything ebe would be sur-

218

ON UP THE TIGRIS

prising, the British being incapable of building any-
thing flimsily when it can be well built with the
same expenditure of time, labor, and money.

A recently captured and impudent Turkish of-
ficer» in conversation one day with the British
officer who had him in charge^ grew confidentially
exultant over the developments that are going on
in the coimtry.

"You British," he said, "are doing for us in
Mesopotamia all the things we want to have done,
but probably never would have been able to do for
ourselves. At Basra you have built hard-surfaced
highways, acres of warehouses, and enough piers
and dry-docks to make it one of the best equipped
minor ports in the world. Then you have filled
in all the lowlands, stamped out malaria, and pro-
vided any number of fine hospital buildings that
will make excellent barracks one day and serve
many other useful purposes,

"You have completed this end of the Berlin-to-
the-Persian-Gulf Railroad and are even building
good permanent stations and freight depots all
along the line, in which you are graciously pleased to
conform to the architectural style of the country.

"Moreover, you have built branch roads here and
there which tap big areas of production, and your
bridges can meet with nothing but our heartiest
approval. Having to import all the materials for
them must have cost you something. It was more
than we could ever afford.

"Then there are your great power-plants and the
whole country lighted up with electricity — ^to say
nothing of telegraph and telephone lines on good
steel poles running in every possible direction.

919

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

"You have mastered the intricacies and idiosyn-
crasies of the River Tigris and have filled it with
barges and boats of the latest type and pattern;
and now I am told you intend to undertake a great
irrigation development for the purpose of putting
large areas of desert under cultivation!

"It is marvelous! You have done more in two
years than we have done in all the centuries of our
sovereignty and more than we probably ever would
have done. It*s perfectly splendid, really, and the
longer it takes Germany to win the war the better
off we will be in the end.

"If we had been fighting on your side poor old
Mesopotamia would probably have gone on without
any improvements to speak of for perhaps another
century, I wouldn^t have you driven out for the
world. Not yet. Give you another year or two,
and you will succeed in restoring all the country's
old-time progressiveness and prosperity. Then it
will be worth something to the Turkish Empire."

Queer kind of Turk he was. And he said a lot
more than this; but the ofiScer to whom he was so
freely expressing himself, and who repeated the
conversation to me, quoted him only in a general
way. I wanted to talk with him myself, because
the question always in my mind was, "What do
the people think of it all?" The Arabs, they say,
think the British are all quite mad, but the Turks
know better than that. They know they are merely
industrious and given to doing things in a sub-
stantial, methodical, and honest way.

The A. D. C. and I swung round the big circle of
war interest in and on the outskirts of Amara and
drew up finally at the entrance to the bazaar* The

ON UP THE TIGRIS

terrinc glare of the midday sun had half -blinded
me, so that walking into the dim arcade was at first
like walking into utter darkness; and in the shad-
owy depths of the bazaar, where the sun never
shines, the air was penetratingly chill. It is only
in the furious, unendurable heat of midsummer
that the invading white tribe — ^natural sun-lovers
— ^is able fully to understand why the Arabs and
their kind choose to live like mole^.

In winter they sit in their tiny open cubicles in
the bazaars, wrapped in coats and furs and looking
anything but comfortable. In this particular
bazaar Abdul-Hamid's vaulting is very high, like
the vaulting of a vast cathedral aisle, while in the
commonplace little booths which line it on either
side one observes a neatness which is evidence
enough that the Arab and the Persian can be
orderly if they are compelled to be.

Toweling and trinkets; calicoes and cloths; boots
and shoes of supposedly Occidental style, and
festoons of colorful native footgear; Persian lamb-
skins and lambskin garments; hats and helmets,
woolly caps and the tasseled tarboush; cheap hand-
kerchiefs and mufflers; Kashmir shawls and bright
silken things; all these to begin with. Then comes
the vegetable section where piles of green things,
plentifully sprinkled to keep them fresh, fill the air
with musty earth odors. After which the meats.
The British have had the meat section screened,
and imder their constant supervision it is kept
spotlessly clean. And the Arab butchers, too, are
clean, while they handle the meats with an un-
natural nicety that must be a soiux^e of endless
wonder to the native consumers.

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

In narrow passages running off at right angles
from the main street are the familiar little filthy
dens, five feet by six, perhaps, or even smaller,
blackened by the soot of tiny forges and littered
with nondescript rubbish, where the artists and
artisans sit on their heels and ply their various
handicrafts.

And not so various, either. There are just three
conspicuous occupations. One of them is twisting
and ornamenting with silver or silken threads the
curious ropes of goats' wool or camels' hair called
agal, that are used to bind the kuffiyeh round the
shaggy and shapely heads of Arabs. The second is
hammering out the tin and copper utensils of every-
day use in Arab households. There are circular
deep pans and deeper pots and many small things,
but chiefly there are the long-necked, single-handled
water-jars which the women — ^walking majestically,
with graceful and evenly measured stride — carry
on their shapely shoulders down to the wells at the
river's brink. These articles are common in Meso-
potamia and probably have been for a millennium
or so, but to see them made is to list them in one's
mind among things akin to works of art; and many
a British soldier boy has carried home with him an
old water-jar to be proudly placed, when he gets
it there, among the ornaments on the mantelpiece.

The third industry belongs exclusively to the town
of Amara. It is the production by a few individuals
of articles of silver inlaid with a black enamel of
some kind. It is said that the secret of the art
has been handed down to the tribe to which it be-
longs from the days of the Babylonian Empire, and
by way of proof it is pointed out that the articles

ON UP THE TIGRIS

produced are almost identical in workmanship with
articles discovered in the excavation of some of the
ancient ruins — ^notably Babylon. I was told that I
really must get a piece of Amara silver as the only
unique thing in the way of a souvenir to be found
in the country, and I said to myself, "Well, Til
just do that/*

But I didn't. I foimd the workers at their little
black foi^es turning out nothing but cuff-links and
napkin-rings of the most commonplace pattern.
Also an occasional bad cigarette-case or a wabbly
stemmed egg-cup. They were catering to the
British Tommy and they were doing it with all
their dishonest might. They were bent not on
delicate artistic endeavor or on keeping up their
Babylonish reputation, but solely on robbing the
financially reckless white stranger of every penny
they could get out of him. And at that they can
get all he has without half trying.

Tommy is not a hoarder of the fabulous stipend
his country bestows upon him, nor yet of other
siuns he acquires from other sotux^es. But often
enough he is a model of thrift in comparison with
his superiors. For a man who knows nothing about
the value of a shilling, and cares less, commend me
the average bachelor British army officer, and
especially those of the old regular army. When
he is on active service the officer has very little
opportunity to spend money after his small mess
bills are disposed of, so his pay acciunulates. And
first thing you know he is out looking for some one
who will consent to relieve him of it. If he is on
a two days' leave in London he is likely to engage
the most expensive suite in the finest hotel in town,

22S

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

treat himself to all the millionaire luxmies he can
think of, and buy himself fancy raiment.

"And why not?" says he. He may not live to
enjoy another two days' leave.

This for the officer fighting in France, of com'se.
In Mesopotamia there is no such thing, alas! as
two days' leave in London. But in Mesopotamia
there are odd^ and ends of curious things to buy —
mostly Persian — ^and a goodly store of very mediocre
Persian rugs that the collectors have passed by,
and the native merchants know that, after a little
cheerful haggling for the fun of it, the average
British officer will buy these things and at almost
any kind of fantastic price. Why don't they do as
the Germans do and just take them, if they want
them? Is it not extraordinary that men can be so
naively, so naturally honorable!

The Arabs in the Amara district are a thieving
lot, anyhow, and are distinguished by a good many
other low-down characteristics. They are for the
most part of the notorious Bani Lam tribe that
joined the Turks against the British at the beginning
of the war and deserted to the British side as soon
as the Turks began to lose. An Englishman, in
consequence, would trust one of them about as far
as he could throw him. They are cultivators of
rice-fields in the marshes a part of the time, but
generally they are nomads, living in tents or reed-
hut villages, and roaming the desert with small
herds of camels, flocks of sheep, and a few horses,
donkeys, and buffaloes.

Among the events to be expected in Amara is an
occasional raid, the Arabs being lured by visions
of plunder in the form of rifles and ammunition and

ON UP THE TIGRIS

other army supplies — ^principally rifles and ammu*
nition. Apparently they have no real wish to kill,
but cutting up an outpost or slaying a few sentries
may be necessarily incidental to their operations,
and of these things they seem to think very lightly.
In fact, they bitterly resent the British method of
retaliation.

The Britiah always begin by demandii^ the siu:-
render of the guilty parties, this demand being
almost invariably met by a declaration that there
are no guilty parties.

Then a flying colunm marches out and adminis-
ters what is humorously described as "a little
injustice." That is, they bum a reed-hut village
or two and maybe gather up some plunder on their
own account in the form of flocks and herds. It
is a cheerful little game, but it is very rapidly losing
its popularity among the Arabs. They find sneak-
thieving more profitable and less dangerous. And
at sneak-thieving they are almost miraculously
adept.

I know an ofiScer who had his front teeth stolen.
And a good haul it was, too. Three of his teeth
had a chance encounter with a bullet one bullet-
raining day when he was out in the midst of the
storm, and after he got out of hospital with a fine
big scar just under his jaw the regimental dentist
fixed him up with three perfectly good substitute
teeth on a handsome gold plate. He was on a
special mission of some kind down the river from
Baghdad and was traveling in a big laimch. He
reached Amara late one evening, and, having sent
his engineer and pilot ashore, decided that he would
rig up his own cot and sleep on deck.

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

He undressed and crawled under the mosquito
net, and the last thing he did was to remove that
gold plate and place it with the rest of his duffle
on a chair beside his pillow. Next morning the
chair was empty and he was minus everything he
owned except the pajamas he was wearing, the
launch having been stripped of everything, includ-
ing kit-bags and all its rifles and ammunition. The
Arabs, with matchless stealth, had slipped out to
the laiurch in belmns and had got away with the
job without making a sound.

The officer was exceedingly thankful that he had
not waked up, because, being all alone, if he had
made a move of any kind he very likely would have
felt the swift slash of a murderous knife across his
throat. He didn't mind faring forth in his pajamas
to look for something to wear, but he says he did
feel horribly unclothed without his teeth, and, since
they don't keep such things in assorted sizes in the
general stores, he had to go without them a long
time. He felt very strongly that the thieves had
not a gentlemanly instinct with which to bless
themselves.

There is always a lot of shipping in the river at
Amara these days, it being the principal, base of
supply between Basra and Baghdad, and usually
there are one or two monitors lying in against the
bank and a "fly-boat" or two scudding up and
down. The "fly-boats" — ^so called because each
one is named for some kind of stinging insect —
are very tiny craft mounting very large guns and
seem to afford everybody a vast deal of amusement.
It is supposed that there is nothing they can't or
won't do.

ON UP THE TIGRIS

I think I must record briefly the story of a visit
I made to one of the monitors. I had been all
over her and had expressed a requisite amount of
pleased surprise at her compactness and shining
shipshapeliness, and was talking with a couple of
young gunners while I waited for the Commander,
who was going with me back to the S-1.

The time was late in the afternoon of a swelter-
ingly hot November Sunday, and I was sitting in a
canvas chair, leaning against the metal coolness of a
desert-yellow gun-turret. At my invitation the
gunners had seated themselves — sailor fashion,
hugging their knees — on a strip of coir matting on
the immaculate deck, the deck being within three
feet of the surface of the river, which slipped by
rippleless, reflecting in long, slanting, oily streaks
the orange-shot lights of a seemingly belated sun
that was hurrying down the western sky. The
only sounds were the muffled throb of a quiescent
engine somewhere and the squeaks of two pet mon-
keys that were playing perilously, as it seemed to
me, along the low deck luil forward.

We had been discussing the war in a general
kind of way, and had talked in a particular way
about how the monitors and "fly-boats" had
helped to chase the Turks up the Tigris when Gen-
eral Maude took Baghdad. Their own boat had a
few honorable battle scars of which they were
gloriously proud, and there was a story of how,
during a hot running fight, the man at the wheel
was killed by a bullet that happened to snick
through his observation aperture at exactly the
right angle to strike him square in the temple.

She was running full speed, head on for a curve

S27

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

in the bank, and was saved from going smash by
the captain, who recognized at once by the feel
of the deck under his feet that something was
wrong, and rushed to the wheel.

After this story there was a thoughtful pause,
then:

"I've just been thinking," said one of the boys,
"that if it hadn't been for Nebuchadnezzar and his
wickedness there wouldn't have been any war and
I'd be cruisin' somewhere round old Blighty this
very minute."

"Balmy! Balmy!" murmured the other one,

A pause for apparently deep cogitation. I was
waiting. Then :

"I say, swing round about forty-five degrees and
lift a bit, will you? What d 'you think you're
shootin* at?"

"I'm shootin* at what the padre said this morn-
ing. Weren't you at the service?"
No, it was my watch."

Well" — ^he spoke very slowly and as though
he were searching his memory — "he told about
how this *land acciu'sed' was once *the granary
of the world'; how the River Tigris was a more
generous mother than the Nile and spread its
waters through the greatest system of irrigation
that was ever known; how there was no swamps
and how the thousand and one water-cuts that
make the going so hard for our armies nowadays
were the canals that carried the water to the land
in controlled quantities and made the' desert
* blossom like a rose.' And he said that Nebuchad-
nezzar was the first king who began to neglect this
system and that his neglect contributed to the down-

228

ON UP THE TIGRIS

fall of Babylon; that after the downfall of Babylon ,
things went from bad to worse, with wars and
devastation and all that sort of thing, until the
Turks got hold of the country and abandoned it
altogether. And now look at it !''

I thought that whatever the plural of hiatus
might be there were a good many of it in his sum-
up, but I said nothing. I wanted him to go on.
He was a tall, lanky Welshman. His companion
was a smaller youth, of rounded but firm contours,
who had a shock of unruly straw-colored hair and
a soft Scotch bur in his tongue.

"Interesting if true,** he replied. "When was
Nebuchadnezzar?" They both appealed to me
with uplifted eyebrows.

"About six hundred b.c.," I hazarded.

"Twenty-five himdred years ago!** exclaimed the
smaller one. "Well, I can get his connection with
what*s the matter with this country right enough.
But did the padre say he could have prevented this
war?**

"No, he didn't. I just figured that out for
myself.**

"Oh, you did! Well, of course you*re wastin*
your time on a gunboat — ^but I*m afraid I don*t
quite get you.**

"You don*t seem to know what this war*s about.*'

" I do, too ! It*s * to make the world safe for de-
mocracy.* ** And he glinted mischievously up at me.

" Well, with all due respect to the great American
President, that may be what it*s gettin* to be, but
that ain't what it was started for. It was started
by the Kaiser so he could grab Mesopotamia. And
if he had grabbed Mesopotamia he could have gone

16 229

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

ahead and grabbed Egypt and India and the whole
bally world. We were figurin' it out with a map
the other day, and one of the fellows had a book
about the Baghdad Railroad. Best thing I ever
read on the subject. U-huh! It's easy enough to
see that we fellows down here are doin' oiur bit
where it needs doin'. **

'* Yes, that's all right, but where does Nebuchad*
nezzar come in?"

**0h, that?" He had nearly lost sight of that.
** That's just a sort of fancy I got. You see, the
industrial and commercial possibilities of this
country are unlimited. That's what the padre said.
It don't look it, but they can prove it by teUin'
you what it used to be like and by sfvyin' it's a mis-
take to call it a desert. It's a vast ^Jluvial plain!"

"Yes? And Nebuchadnezzar?"

"You're a man without much intelligence, but
I'll try to be patient with you. Don't you see that
if the country hadn't been neglected, if it had been
kept up in what the padre called ^all its old-time
wealth and prosperity,' it would be thickly in-
habited now by the kind of people who'd know how
to hold it? U that had been the case the Kaiser
wouldn't 'av' tried to grab it, India and the rest
of the world wouldn't 'av* been in danger, and
there wouldn't 'av* been any war. Now do you
see where Nebuchadnezzar comes in?" He joined
in the laugh aJt his own far-fetched fancifulness,
then, as though he were a bit embarrassed, but
with entire solemnity, he said: "Of course I know
it all goes back a long way before Nebuchadnezzar.
If this river wasn't the kind of river it is and this
bally country the kind of country it is, Cain prob-

S80

ON UP THE TIGRIS

ably never would have killed Abel, and then every-
thing would have been different."

"That's an interesting idea," I said* "How do
you make that out?"

"Don^t you know how Cain happened to kill
Abel?"

"I know only what the Bible says."

"Well," he drawled, "the Bible's all right, but
it doesn't give natural phenomena its full value."
One could tell he was quoting and being somewhat
uncertain about it.

"It was this way: Cain was a farmer and Abel
was a herdsman. Don't we see Cains and Abels
by the thousands up and down this river? Abel
was better off than Cain and the neighbors all
talked about what a fine chap he was until he got
cocky about himself, and Cain got moody and
despondent. Abel had his cattle grazing on Cain's
land down here on the Tigris somewhere, and the
time came when Cain had to turn the water on and
get his land ready for crops.

"'Don't you turn any water on that land,' Abel
said.

"*I've got to,* said Cain, *so please take your
cattle away.*

"*I will not!* said Abel.

"*Yes, you will!' said Cain. Then they got to
quarreling, the way brothers do about things like
that, and Cain, all wrought up, anyhow, over not
having his sacrifices appreciated, got violent and
hit Abel over the head. He didn't mean to kill
him, and there wouldn't 'av' been much said about
it if they hadn't happened to beloog to the leading
family round here those days.'

y^s,"
231

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

Just then the Commander came up through the
little round opening at the head of the companion-
way and the gunners sprang to their feet. They
controUed their merriment instantly and were as
solemn as owls when they saluted the officer. But
I was still laughing as he helped me down into the
waiting launch, and I waved a laughing good-by,
at which the gunners grinned and saluted as we
started off up-river.

"What were they telling you?" asked the
Commander.

"Oh, 1^ number of things. We were discussing
the war and I got some absolutely new ideas."
And I recoimted briefly the theory of Nebuchad-
nezzar^s re^>onsibility.

"They certainly are getting to be a lot of unique
Bible students," he laughed. "And the men of the
army are just like them. The padres nearly
always hang their sermons on the history of this
country and they make it all so simple and familiar
that the boys get interested. They sit around for
hours with a Bible and a map and reference-books
and work out some of the craziest explanations of
things you qver heard. Funny thing is they get all
out of focus. They talk about the Flood and
things that happened to Abraham and the Prophets
as though they were the events of year before last,
so, where history is concerned, when they try to
focus on anything close up they get cross-eyed.
It is most amusing."

Amusing, yes, but thoroughly comprehensible
from my standpoint, because in Mesopotamia I got
that way myself.

CHAPTER XV

FROM AMABA TO KUT-EL-AMARA

ABOVE Amara the great sand-drifts in the river
r\ begin and the navigator b^^ to prove his
qualifications, while he exposes his real character in
frequent threats to commit heinous crime. And it
was above Amara that the boys began to measiure
the river's depths and to fill the all-pervading
desert silence with their weird cries. There were
two of them — one on either side of the bow. They
sat on the edge of the railless deck with their feet
hanging over, and at intervals of about one minute
plunged long plumbing-poles into the water, then
lifted their yoimg voices in a curious musical chant,
calling the depths. It was a long time before I
could make out what they were saying, but that
was because I was trying to catch what I supposed
were Arabic words. Then I suddenly discovered
that they were speaking English.

"Fow-er-fate-a-a-!" in a high-pitched, long-
drawn-out melody sounded so little like "foiur feet"
that I wondered how the skipper could understand
them. But he had no need to imderstand the
words, since he listened only to the sounds they
made, their tones changing definitely with every
change in the depths.

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

<«

Pow-er-fate-a-a!" The man on the port bow
flourished it in a dozen mellifluous tenor notes,
while the man to starboard answered with a shorter,
sharper, more positive cry that had in it a sound of
confirmation. But it was not always four feet or
any other depth on both sides of the boat at the
same time.

"Five-a-fate-a-a!" the man on the port might
call out, to be answered from starboard by a doleful
warning:

"Two-a^fater

Then Yukon — always on the bridge for "the
ticklish bits"— would jerk the engine-room signal
to the half -speed indicator and frantically whirl the
big wheel to point the boat's prow to port. But as
often as not we were just an instant too late and
zhr-r-o-Qg! we would go into it. It's a horrible
sensation, grounding on a sand*bar!

Yukon had a very amusing trick which re-
quired quick action and considerable skill. If he
wasn't "in too Dutch/' as he expressed it, he would
reverse the paddle, chum up a big forward wave,
and glide over on it, and his grin of triumph when
he succeeded in doing this was worth living to see.
We had to struggle a number of times, but we never
had to call for a patrol tug, and in consequence we
were able to pass a few less fortunate or less skil-
fully handled boats with an air of lofty disdain.
All of which is mere brief illustration of some of the
daily and commonplace difficulties.

llie serene hours were those we spent on broad
and sufficiently deep reaches of the river, when the
boys with the plumbing-poles sat and chanted back
and forth a never varying call in their own language.

2S4

FROM AMARA TO KDT-EL-AMARA

"Ba'hiU 'paniy^ is what they said> and it means
literally "plenty of water.** They never began to
sing ^'Bd'hut panV until they could no longer touch
bottom, but the suddenness with which we struck
shallows or sand-drifts proved the tremendous
treachery of the river and the necessity for ceaseless
vigilance. Among my memories of the Tigris I
shall always retain the melody of that slow chant,
"-Ba-a-*Atrf porTiee-e^r* ending in a long, sweet,
lingering note and being answered by, ^^Ba-a-'htU
pa^neel** -in a lower but no less musical key; the
mingled sounds banking in against the high shelving
ledges of current-cut clay on either side and spread-
ing out over the surfaces of the slow, still river in
ever-receding, ever-renewed waves of lonesome-
soimding music.

Just before we reached Kut-el-Amara we came to
the battle-field of Sunnaiyat, one of the ghastliest
of all the historic fields of Mesopotamia. For my
benefit we banked in and went ashore. I had heard
the fearful tales and I wanted to see the fearful
setting of them. I climbed the camel-thorny slope
of the high Bund and stood for a moment gazing
across the far-flung network of crumbling, shell-
riven trenches. That is all Sunnaiyat now is. All
— except that the trenches are filled with dead
men's bones. Smmaiyat — the name of a waste
place where men have suffered as men have suffered
on few other spots on earth — even in this war.

Within hearing distance of Kut, the men be-
sieged at Kut listened to the thunder of the guns of
Sunnaiyat for weeks on end — and with what prayer-
ful hope who has the power to imagine? And it

«S5

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

was at Sunnaiyat that the Turks made their last
desperate stand against General Maude's victorious
army in February, 1917, the three days' battle that
raged then over the ab?eady blood-drenched and
historic ground being one of the fiercest and costliest
fights of the whole campaign.

This was the fourth battle of Sunnaiyat, the first
three having been fought in April, 1916, during the
course of the last tremendous effort the British
made to relieve (Jeneral Townshend.

It was high noon when we landed, and the sun,
searching through thick sweaters and coats, burnt
one's skin with a dry, prickly binning, while the
wind blew penetratingly chill across the mournful
waste. And I was glad of the healthy discomfort
because my flesh crept with the horror of the
things I saw and the things my mind was forced to
visualize. The Arabs have always searched and
looted the battle-fields — and they do not rebury the
dead!

I have been on many battle-fields before — ^in
Prance, in Serbia, in Belgiiun. But they were
battle-fields eloquent of living love; clothed for the
most part with green things and having white crosses
himg with immortelles to mark the graves of the
fallen who -were buried where they fell. They
seemed, those battle-fields, as thresholds between
suffering faith and triumphant realization, and I
remembered thinking in the scarred but sweet
green fields of French Lorraine that I might lie
down with my ear against the wholesome earth and
hear God's heart beat.

But Sunnaiyat, in Mesopotamia — ^land of ancient
battles and Cradle of the World — Sunnaiyat is

236

KDT-EL-AMARA — THE SCENE OP THE OBEAT SI&QE

ON THE BATTLE-FIELD OF BUNNAIYAT — AJT ARAB CHOCL

FROM AMARA TO KUT-EL-AMARA

gashed and ghastiy, naked and piteonsly ashamed.
To have marked the resting-places of the dead on
this or on any other remote field of heroism in this
unholy land would have been only to invite an
even more hideous outrage. So trenches were
filled and great levels were made, and one can only
thank God that the British graves are left prac-
tically undisturbed.

Yet, one wants to cover the bones of the Turkish
dead, too. One wants to say to them: ^^Rest in
Peace! Boys of a people at war^ with invincible
human right, you fought for the triumph of your
own beliefs, or as you were commanded to fight;
as it was given to you to win your badges of hero-
ism, you have won. Rest in Peace!"

Out on the edge of the intrenchments there were
creeping figures bent over in eager search of the
sacred ground. Arab ghouls! Not yet satisfied
after so many months? No, not yet satisfied.
They would pick up something and gather in an
eager group to examine it in the sunlight. Nothing.
They would toss it aside and go on creeping —
creeping. . . •

I wonder how many of them had tossed aside the
precious thing I found. It was lying near the
entrance of a British trench — ^an old leather
bayonet-scabbard all burned and blackened at the
end, as though some one had been poking a fire
with it. And of course some one had. Some
blessed Tommy, perhaps coaxing the coals under
his supper while shells whistled over his head. He
had either died or he had thrown it aside in a rush
to meet the enemy hand to hand. So much of this
fighting was hand to hand.

2S7

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

I stood and pondered over the old scabbard,
looking at it and then at the fearful scene around us.
And in my mind I saw two boys; one — ^stUl in the
ranks fighting the great fight; the other — ^his head
held high in the shining column of the Forever
Beloved host. Which of them threw the scabbard
away?

The British held this position from the first
disastrous attempt to relieve General Townshend
until near the end of the campaign which cul-
minated in the capture of Baghdad, and for sheer
horror and immitigated hardship nothing could
possibly surpass the thing they lived through.

The men engaged, already worn with battle, were
compelled to hold on week after week without hope
of respite or relief. And there was not so much as
a blade of grass for them to rest their eyes upon;
only the terrible desert under a pitiless burning
sun. They were hemmed in by the river on one
side, and on the other by a vast marsh which, when
the wind was right, had a mystifying habit of
moving in on the position and flooding everything,
that being one of the peculiar habits of the marshes
that I have spoken of. They literally do blow
about the desert, spreading with terrifying rapidity
even before a light wind if it is steady enough.
So a company might be intrenched in comparative
comfort one hour in a position where it would be
in danger of drowning the next, and with never a
drop of rain to clear the air of the blinding, choking,
torturing clouds of fine dust that the desert winds
always carry before them.

Nobody can tell me that the men who have
fought in Mesopotamia do not deserve some

83S

PROM AMARA TO KUT-EL-AMARA

special kind of recognition — which they never
will get!

Leaving the British position, we walked a long
way across the one-time No Man's Land — ^now a
tangle of rubbish and nist-blackencd barbed wire —
and came up on the Turkish parapets. And there
I saw evidence enough that the Arabs bestow their
ghoulish attentions chiefly upon the Turkish dead.
It is not thought that this is because the British are
more respected. It is only that more of value is
to be found in the Turkish graves. The British
search the bodies of their own dead before they bury
them. This is done on order and for what are
officially listed as ** objects of sentimental value/*
all such objects being returned to the family of the
fallen man. But the British do not search the
bodies of enemy dead, and in their final victorious
advance over this field it fell to their lot to bury
hundreds of them.

So one finds a fearful story written in the tragic
gullies of the Turkish position. No need to write
it out. Heaps of moldering soldier clothes and
dead men's bones scattered and kicked about!
Such things cause waves of shuddering nausea to
sweep over the normal living human.

Yet the British have buried and reburied the dead
on the field of Sunnaiyat. They have punished the
Arabs and have pleaded with them. But it is an
isolated field. It is far away from any connection
with things as they are to-day and there is not a
human habitation within many miles of it, unless
it be an Arabs' tented encampment in the desert.

I was glad enough to trudge back as quickly as
possible across the miles of gashed and ghastly

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

waste, to get back aboard our peaceful old boat,
and to let myself rest in a deep deck chair while the
deptb-measurers filled the evening with the monot-
onous sweet melody of ^^Ba*hvt panil**

And perhaps I should not try to write about a
sunset. But when ail is said it is nothing but the
divine intoxication of the Mesopotamian evening
lights that gets into one's blood and creates in one's
inner consciousness an impression that, after all,
Mesopotamia is a land to love.

The desert is horizon-wide; it is dotted here and
there with the black goatskin tents of Bedouin
encampments and is filled with slanting sun rays
that turn ail the hollows into lakes of mauve and all
the knolls and high places into points of flame-shot
amber. The sky and the broad reflecting ribbon of
the Tigris are ail wonderful orange, deepened by
low-hanging clouds that are blue with the blue of the
sapphire and are outlined with narrow fringes of
glinting gold. The light of a pallid young moon
makes its way into the swiftly gathering shadows,
to lie presently down the length of the moveless
coppery river in a band of palest yellow.

Colors! I never saw such colors! And in the
path of moonlight, with the sunset lights still glow-
ing on the edges of the darkening plain, a great
high-hulled and tall-masted mahayla swings round
a bend, its broad brown sail softly bellied by the
almost imperceptible breeze.

Then: *^ Ba-a-hvi pornee-e-e! Ba-Or-^hitt porueel
Creeping sweet echoes — ^and the far-away, heart-
chilling shrieks of a thousand jackals greeting the
night wherein they range the boundless reaches of
fearful desolation.

240

>»

FROM AMARA TO KUTEL-AMARA

In the last light of that amaringly finished day
we saw for the first time the — ^th Regiment of
Cavalry that left Basra on the long trail to the
front two days before we started. And it was a
thrilh'ng thing to see. In a final burst of energy
after the day*s weary march they swept up to the
marching-post on the river-bank in a wide-curving
column of fours which stretched away into the dis-
tance in a low bank of fine desert dust that floated
off like a mist doud in the moonlight. And behind
them lay a last streak of orange against the desert's
edge, the sky above them a pearly gray in which
one great star shone. What a picture!

We watched them from the bridge until we
rounded a wide bend in the river and could see them
no longer; then the cheerful sounds they made in
their methodical preparations for the night followed
us a long way in the wonderful silence.

CHAPTER XVI

A NEW KUT

THE Mesopotamian war zone is far away from
the great centers of war and intense world*
interest, and subsequent tremendous events else-
where have made the days of Townshend and his
unyielding small army seem remote.

But on the River Tigris — ^its bed metaled with
shot and shell and strewn with the debris of war —
one remembers those days with compelling vivid-
ness and attaches to them their just measure of
importance.

Mesopotamia is a sacred land. It is sacred to
some of the strongest nations and the greatest re-
ligious sects on earth. It is a land wherein the
voices of the deities of many peoples have been
heard. It is filled with shrines and sacred cities.
It is a land of devout pilgrimage.

And Kut-el-Amara, I think, will always be
sacred to the British. At Kut their pride was
crucified, and at Kut their pride was eventually re-
deemed and rose triumphant, a shining thing which
shines in Mesopotamia to-day in the finest demon-
stration of high morality and right purpose that I
have ever seen.

A NEW KUT

The first thing one observes on approaching Kut
from the south is a tall obelisk* It stands out in
the general scene, rising in the center of things on
the peninsula that is formed by a great bend in the
river and on which the town of Kut is built. The
obelisk was raised by the Turks to commemorate
the surrender of (reneral Townshend and their vie*
tory over the British forces that had tried so long
and so heroically to relieve him. When I saw it
from far down the river I asked:

"What is the monument?**

They told me. And it became at once to me
as an exclamation point to punctuate my own
astonishment!

Was ever anything quite so premature? It makes
one realize as nothing else could how confident the
Turks and the Germans were that they had the
British in Mesopotamia permanently defeated.

Defeated! It is incredible that any one could
have imagined it! In the face of thhigs as they
have become that obelisk seems to me to express
a kind of whimpering entreaty^ as though it felt
itself strangely inappropriate and would get away
if it could to follow its builders on the long trail of
retreat to the north. It is a moniunent to monu-
mental misconjecture, the ironic humor of it beiag
unique and a thing in which Englishmen may now
rejoice.

Kut-el-Amara!

But first comes new Kut, and we stop there. It
is another busy base of supply and transport ac-
tivities, a main junction in the vast veinage of com-

248

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

munication with the front and, to my mind, at
least, the most interesting of them all.

When we arrived at Kut we drew in against the
bank and made of ourselves an instantly interesting
addition to the conglomerate scene along the river*
front. Interesting we always were, of course; it
being m the nature of things that the arrival of the
Inspector-General of Communications should be re-
garded as somewhat of an event. Having just re-
turned from a trip to India, it was six weeks or
more since he had been up the river, and there was
much to make long conferences a necessity. The
base commandant and a number of other officers
came down to the river-bank to greet us, and the
General, accompanied by the Major, was soon off
to base headquarters for the inevitable consultation.

By that time, having come all the way up the
Tigris at the rate of about six miles an hour,
traveling most of the way by daylight and stopping
everywhere, the work of war as it is carried on
behind an army on active service had ceased to
bewilder and astound me. It had not become
commonplace and uninteresting by any means.
Quite the contraiy; it continued to enthrall me
absolutely.

But it was as .though there never had been and
never could be any other kind of work in the world,
and I had come to a point where I could witness its
inunensities without expressing the emotions that
arose in me altogether in terms of exclamation.

They told me that Qumah was the worst place
on the river, and Amara the best, and the spirit
of local jealousy and pride with which such

A NEW KUT

dalms are made and maintained is a most amusing
thing. The British soldier stationed at Qumah
boastfully enumerates its horrors — and the wonders
he performs in their midst; while men of Amara
dwell at length upon the superior advantages of
their post — ^advantages that could never get them-
selves so listed if there were no such horrors as
Qumah's in the near vicinity with wiiich to com-
pare them. Whatever Qumah and Amara may be,
I decided for myself that Kut — ^new Kut, that is —
exceeded them both in dust and dreariness and in
its incessant rumble and rush of toilsome industry.
Kut is the last base behind the advanced base,
which is located far up the river and is connected
by branch railways with the outposts of supply
behind the wide-curving line of defense round
Baghdad.

It surely would surprise Khalil Pasha and his
Turkish legions if they could see this place now.
It stretches along the grimly historic river-bank,
covering an area that was a No Man's Land dining
the long siege — ^a No Man's Land lying under the
guns of General Townshend's hemmed-in but val-
iant and defiant little army; and it has a popula-
tion of hardly ever less than twenty thousand.

True, it is for the most part a city of tents —
and an amazing sight it is! And true, the in-
habitants are mostly coolie laborers of every
nationality on earth that produces coolie labor;
but in addition to the acres upon acres of tents
there are long streets of fine hospital huts and
many good permanent buildings for railway offices,
construction and repair shops, engine-houses, and
working quarters generally.

17 245

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

The permanent structutes are all buQt or are be-
ing built to type, with a view to future necessities
and the development of a real town. The im-
pudent prisoner must have had Kut in mind when
he referred to British building plans as conforming
to the architectural style of the country. But how
would he expect Englishmen to build?

To the mind of the interested observer their
manner of doing things suggests thoughts of a pos-
sible future Peace Conference and leads to specu-
lations as to what may be the fate of poor old
Mesopotamia as a pawn on the international
chess-board. But the men who are doing the
work seem to concern themselves very little
with such speculations, though they may have
faith that at the war's end such principles will
prevaS as will make the greatest good of the great-
est number in every coimtry the predominant con-
sideration.

They are interested chiefly, I think, in the eflfect
they hope to produce on the viewpoints and dis-
positions of the native populations. They are all
anxious to do what they can, while the opportunity
lasts, by way of humanizing and civilizing the Arab,
and every change for the better which they ob-
serve in his attitude they regard as so much gained
for the general good. They are bent on showing
him such fleshpots of Egypt as will tempt him to
sustained industrial effort, and at the same time
they are training him in righteous governmental
methods. When the profits and losses of the war
shall come to be added up and apportioned to the
various cotmtries involved it will be found that
Mesopotamia, regardless of what her eventual fate

246

A NEW KUT

may be, will have benefited immeasurably. And
so much for British occupation!

The electric power-house at Kut is as yet only a
corrugated tin shed, but out of that shed run many
wires which branch off and spread out all over the
great area, carrying current to hundreds of high
arc-lights which sputter and spurt, collect clouds
of insects — ^which might otherwise be more pestifer-
ously engaged — and turn darkness into something
very much better than the noonday glare. And
at Kut, as at Basra and Amara and other important
points along the river, the working-day — in some
branches, at least, of the multiple enterprise of war
— ^is twenty-four hours long.

We had pulled in alongside a wide cut in the steep
bank through which automobiles and other vehicles
are landed from boats when the river is low, and the
A. D. C. and I, climbing up the long incline into
the glare and the mysterious shadows of the night,
went wandering.

The dust was literally ankle-deep, but one learns
to pay no attention to that sort of thing. It is one
of the principal duties of every personal servant in
Mesopot to keep a plentiful supply of cleaned boots
on hand for his employer and to be always ready
to take advantage of any opportunity that may
present itself to dean said employer up a little with
brushes and polishing-cloths.

The wily and soft-spoken Ezekiel always made a
great to-do over brushing me, and invariably tried
to maneuver me out into a bright white light some-
where so that everybody would be able to observe
his excellence and humble devotion. lilwa, the

247

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

Major's boy, was forever sitting in some con-
spicuous spot on the deck, brooding over a row of
high military boots — ^polishing them with loving
care until he could see his own smileless face in
them; while the General's gentle slave simply
followed him arotmd.

One of the usual sights to be seen on the S-1
was the great, gruff Major-General standing in
deep consultation with a group of other officers —
on matters of serious moment, no doubt — ^while his
boy sprawled at his feet, plying oily flannels and
whisk broom on dusty boots and breeches. The
General would walk off, apparently "unconscious of
the boy's existence, but the boy always ran after
him for a final whisk or vigorous rub, then lounged
lazily back to other work, muttering to himself.
About the uselessness of his ^ectionate care?
Probably. He always knew the General sahib
would be back in a short time, dustier than ever.
Everybody was always dusty and, as I huve said,
nobody ever paid any attention to it.

The A. D. C. and I had just time to make a
round of the works before changing for- dinner.
We walked round a dozen young pyramids of hay
and sacked grain, out to the railway sheds and sid-
ings, where hundreds of laborers were filling cars
with supplies for advanced base and the front,
and where a fine new hospital-train was just having
its precious load transferred to stretchers and motor-
ambulances; through the engine-houses and work-
shops; past long rows of hospital tents, against the
canvas sides of which soft lights gleamed palely;
to the railway station farther up the line, where
we glimpsed through the windows khaki-dad boys

048

A NEW KUT

bending over tel^raph instruments; out round
remount and mule depots and the veterinary hos-
pital; to the river-bank, where lines of ooolies
laden with sacks and boxes were coming and going
in unbroken p]t)cession» loading baiges for up-river
and transferring the cargo of other barges to the
big orderly supply-dumps over by the railway sid-
ings; up to the power-house, where the dynamos
were humming and the garish green lights were
shining; and so to the high Bund by oiur own river
landing, where we stood for a while to watch an
artiUery convx)y getting under way for the front.

There were many screaming mules, whinnying
horses, and men barking low-toned orders and
moving with the precision c^ inspection drill. The
wide dusty field was packed dose with orderly
rows of guns, mimitions- and kit-wagons, am-
bulances, and all the paraphernalia of an artillery
regiment on the march.

And with what an inspiriting rattle and dank the
swift, methodical business was accomplished ! Four
mules to a caisson, they were brought up in their
jingling harnesses, snapped into their places, their
riders were in the saddles, and they were trotting
off to join the long colimm trailing out through the
dust-laden electric glare and on into the dim moon-
lit desert gloom be^^ond before one had time more
than to glance at them.

We hurried back aboard then, to get ready for a
dinner-party. And this reminds me that there
was just one thing I wanted in Mesopotamia that
I did not have suffident assiurance to ask for — ^I
wanted a temporary suspension of the regulation
that forbids nursiog sisters to dine out.

249

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

At the various base headquartens^ at naval head-
quarters, on gunboats, at interesting officers' messes
— everywhere that hospitality could possibly be
dispensed — ^I dined as the guest of the most alto-
gether delightful hosts I ever encoimtered any-
where. And though I made considerable progress
in the gentle art of acting as though being the only
woman in a world inhabited solely by men was
what I had been brought up from my youth to
regard as the only desirable fate for me, I did wish
sometimes for at least one other representative
of my kind — even if she had to be a rule-making
supervisor. But, no !

The rule whidi forbids nursing sisters to dine
with officers can be broken in only one way. Once
in a great while an officer invites some sisters to
dinner and calls it High Tea — ^with capital letters.
On such an occasion sisters have been known to
linger in an officers' mess as late as nine o'clock.
But no man with less rank than a Major-Greneral
would dare make himself responsible for such an
unseemly irregularity, and base commandants are
only colonels, sometimes even majors. So at Kut
it was not High Tea and there were no nursing
sisters. Aside from the sisters, you understand, I
was the only woman in existence on the River
Tigris.

My dinner-parties were all memorable events, but
the one at Kut was, I think, especially memorable.
The commandant's mess is in a building which is
like a hospital hut about two-thirds btuied. That
is, it is built on the general plan of a hospital hut,
but is sunk about eight feet in the ground. This

250

A NEW KUT

style of temporary structure is cooler in the sununer
than any other, but the early dinner conversation
was largely about how scorpions — ^and other poison-
ous creeping creatures — ^f ound it such an easy house
to get into that they made it a kind of rendezvous.
My chair had no rungs for me to hook my heels on,
so I just had to sit and suffer. Scorpions are much
too numerous in the desert wastes. And they creep
round regardless, you know, having no respect at
all for human beings. They have no intelligence.
It was rather awful !

The dust, too, rolled in without encountering any
obstacles. It came down the sloping cuts in the
earth to the open windows in rills and runnels and
swirling clouds, as though it had just discovered a
hole in the ground which it must make haste to fill
up, and with it would have come clouds of little
stinging sand-flies if it had been the sand-fly season.

"Can't you find a better place than this to build
a town?'* I asked.

A better place? No! It was an ideal spot!
A wonderful coxmtry lay all roimd about!

Wonderful? Why, it was the bleakest, loneliest,
most dismal stretch of desert that ever seared hu-
man eyesight. It had been making my soul ache
the whole afternoon — ever since I had looked out
across it in the brazen glare of midday from the
naked trenches of the battle-field of Sunnaiyat.
It is a land accursed — the land of Babylonia.
"Because of the wrath of the Lord it shall not be
inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate." Thus
saith the Lord of hosts.

But where the blood of the Briton is poured out
there the earth brings forth rich harvests. Behold

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

you any spot under the sun where the blood of the
Briton has been shed and deny that!

Besides, there is such a thing as modem irriga-
tion. Whether or not it has anything on ancient
urigation is very doubtful, but it is the thing we
know. The ancients knew the art of conveying
water to the land, and the land of Mesopotamia is
seamed to-day with ditches that were made when
the world was young. Mesopotamia was once the
granary of the world. It can be made again the
granary of the world; and Kut, the sacred city of
the longest and bitterest siege of the greatest
and the crudest war, lies on the direct highway of
the world*s future development. From Kut the
ways run out — caravan routes now, but to be
tremendous railroads in your time and mine — ^to
tap Persia and the splendid treasure world of
Central Asia beyond. Mind you, this is not my
talk; it is the talk of the dinner-table.

Then there are the Arabs, children of Ishmael;
it is time the curse of the Lord were lifted from
them; time that Abraham, from wherever he keeps
his bosom, should cease to be able to recognize
them at a glance. What are we fighting for to-day
but to lift the ancient curses from the children of
men — ^the curses not only of arrogance and in-
human greed, but the curses as well of ignorance
and poverty, and the sins begot of those always
coupled sins?

"Oh, but really—"

"Well, never mind! We haven't licked the
Huns yet, but with the United States with us —
God! I wish I had a hundred years to live!"

They were always being nice like that, making

252

A NEW KUT

me feel that it was quite all right to be an Amer-
ican. And I suppose I never should have noticed
it if it had not been for a few former experiences.
During the first two and a half years of the war I
traveled in nearly all the Allied countries as a more
or less, and righUy, despised neutral; and always a
suffering neutral — ^because I myself have never
known a neutral hour since the first German gim
was fired across the Belgian frontier.

When an Englishman in those days pronounced
the word "American" with — ^what should one say
— a difference? — ^I could only feel sorry. It never
made me angry because from the outset I had to
recognize that my country had failed to fall in line
in the greatest struggle for the betterment of all
men that hiunanity has ever witnessed. Much of
the time I was close up, you see, and dose up one
loses sight of everything but the fact that the war
on the Allied side is and always has been an al-
mighty defense of great principles that are the
rightful heritage of us all!

For an American it is different now. And how
the wonderful difference makes a once heavy
American heart lift!

The padre sat next to me, a handsome and charm-
ingly vehement yoimg divine, who could utter
maledictions and prophesy world strides in the way
of right with a nicety of diction and a sof t-voioed
nonchalance of drawling fervor that were almost
enough to make me forget the creeping creatures.

"The United States with us!" Is there an
American or Englishman anywhere who fails to
understand what that means? We are coming
surely into the benefits of our own, and our own

253

THE WAIl IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

has always been blood brotherhood. We have
everything in common — ^laws, language, literatiue,
ideals of governmental morality — generally lived up
to and always stoutly proclaimed — and bulldog
jaws. We are the only two peoples on earth that
can make a matched team. And it is our destiny
together to defend all that the world has achieved,
that the world's conscience approves.

And France! But France — ^is France! And is
it not strange that France is always depicted as a
woman? A goddess of all the high liberties of mind
and soul ! And on either side of her in all the pict-
ures that express the thoughts of men stand Unde
Sam and old John Bull !

Dinner-table conversation? Yes, of course. One
American woman and about ten British army
officers in a desert dugout in the Cradle of the
World.

Then we had a geography lesson. Nearly all the
British officers I met in India and Mesopotamia
are making plans to go home via the United States
when the war is over.

Heretofore they have taken the shortest route,
via the Mediterranean to Marseilles, and then the
fastest express to Calais or Boulogne. But they
want to see the United States now. They are in-
terested. I have mapped out routes for any nmn-
ber of them, enjoying to the utmost their abysmal
ignorance of American geography.

One young officer, who holds an Oxford degree
and is exceedingly learned in his line, 'lowed as how
Washington City was in the state of Virginia.
Which was a close-enough guess and proved that at
some time in his life he had occasion to glance at a

A NEW KUT

map of my comitry. I asked him what he thought
the I>. C. stood for, but he had never thought of that.
When I explained it to him he said he thought it was
deuced clever of our old boys to fix it that way.

"Just stands off by itself and belongs as much to
one state as to another, eh? Long heads those
British fathers of your coimtry had."

"Yes, hadn't they! What state is Kansas City
in?"

"Kansas, of course. I say, I know something
about the United States!"

"Yes, I see you do. What state is St. Louis in?"

"Well, I don't know everything." Then he
switched the cut. " Which is the smallest county in
England?" he asked.

"Good Heavens! Has England a smallest coun-
ty? How dreadful!"

I have sent them all a zigzag course across the
United States. I have regretted the necessity for
cutting out the great Northwest, but there is a
supreme thrill in the Grand Cafion of the Colorado,
so I have sent them that way, via southern Cali-
fornia, then up to Denver, and on to Omaha,
Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buf-
falo, Niagara Falls, Albany, and down the Hudson
to New York. Then I have recommended side
trips to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and the
Virginia of their romances and most accurate
knowledge.

Going still farther, I have advised a return via the
United States — ^instead of wasting time through
the Mediterranean and the familiar Suez — and a cut
out through the Northwest to Seattle or a trip
down through the sweet South to New Orleans

THE WAE IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

and on across the great state of Texas. It be-
wilders them utterly. And they usually ask if our
railroads give tickets away to nice, penniless British
anny officers who are anxious to learn. One thinks
they might.

The padre walked with me back to our boat-
landing, and he gave me some bullets that the
Turks shot into Kut during the si^e. They are a
rare kind of souvenir, but I will say for them that
they look more or less like — ^just bullets. And con-
sidering what the si^e was, there must be millions
of them somewhere.

He told me it was against the regulations to give
such things away to bp carried out of the country
— ^he didn't know why — ^but I suppose a sufficiently
popular padre can break almost any kind of
regulation.

One of the base conmiandants gave me a beauti-
ful brass shell-case that was shot across the Shatt-el-
Hai when General Maude was hanunering his way
to Baghdad. And now that I have gone and told
about it I suppose he will get hanged, poor man!
If he does I shall be very sorry, because he was just
about the nicest and genialest old colonel I ever
met. He knew he was conunitting a crime, but I
did all I could to convince him that it was justifiable.

There was a nearly full moon high overhead in a
fleckless sky; the bluish arc-lights sputtered and
flashed on their tall steel poles, and the scene was
shadowed and alive with the figures oi men moving
in long lines, laden or free, to and from the river-
bank where numbers of steamboats and mahaylas
lay. In the wonderful night silence an occasional

256

A NEW KUT

murmur floated to one's ears, and from afar off
came the wild call of the desert jackals.

We met two nursing sisters coming out of their
hut quarters and stopped to talk with them. They
began at first to rail at "Trixie," the incomparable
genera] supervisor, but thought better of it and,
after the usual gamut of unthrilling pleasantries,
ended by wishing to goodness they could get the
fearful dust out of their hair. They were on the
way to night duty in the great hospital of tents that
lay off at the edge of the encampment.

A queeir world to live in — ^the war-time Mesopo-
tamian world!

CHAPTER XVn

^mS SCENB OF THE TEBRXBLE SIEGE

IT was late in the afternoon of another day that
the A. D. C. and I took the base commandant's
laimch and went up-river to old Kut. The obelisk
of Turkish victory shone palely yellow in the smi-
light, and the date-palms, sheltering the town and
fringing the river-banks, gleamed silvery green
under their coating of fine desert dust. It was not
until we rounded a wide bend that the town came
into view, and I approached it with a strangely
tight feeling round my heart — in reverent mood.

We climbed the high bank and came up into the
open space that lies' along the river-front of the
curious old town, and I felt as I think a man must
feel when he involuntarily removes his hat.

This plaza-like area is being made to grow grass
now, and some day, if British influence continues to
predominate, it ^rill be a beautiful park filled with
palms and shrubs and flowering things, where the
people will walk and rest in the quiet and the cool
of evening while they watch the desert sunsets
across the wide, still river.

But the men of Townshend's army will always
remember that during the si^e no one dared to

258

THE SCENE OF THE TERRIBLE SIEGE

venture on that river-front, even to go down to the
bank for water. It lay under the guns of the
enemy on the other side and was within easy snip-
ing reach.

They will also ifemember, perhaps, that the first
thing they saw on it, and the last, was a gallows.

Before the British captured the town in 1915
the Turks kept a gibbet there for the benefit of
doubtful Arabs, and after Greneral Townshend's
capitulation their initial act in the establishment
of their control was the erection of a new one, on
which they summarily hanged a number of Arabs
who had made the terrible mistake of believing
that the British force would be relieved.

Our launch pilot led the way for us into the town
and through an intricate maze of narrow streets
to the house of the resident commandant, an of-
ficer whose administrative function is purely civil,
nothing of a military character being permitted
now to touch old Kut at any point.

His name is Captain Wilson, and he belonged to
General Townshend*s army. His regiment went
through the siege and into captivity, but he was
among the casualties of the battle of Ctesiphon and
happened to be in one of the boat-loads of wounded
that got away down-river while the retreat was in
progress.

He speaks Arabic and seems to be eminently fitted
for his job, which is to restore Kut, to receive and
resettle in their homes the returning inhabitants,
and to administer their numerous and tremendously
disturbed affairs. It is not an easy billet, but,
thanks to the young man's industry and capacity
for organization, coupled with the support of the

259

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

generally benevolent British intention, it is getting
easier all the time.

The town, of eoitrse, was literally shot to pieces,
there being large areas that were nothing but piles
of broken brick and dusty rubbish. A house here
and there may have come through in fairly good
condition, but I saw none that bore no marks of shot
and shell.

We found Captain Wilson at headquarters — ^the
same house Greneral Townshend used as head-
quarters during the si^e. And I really ought to
write that in such a way that I could use an ex-
clamation point by way of emphasis. There is an
exclamation point in my mind, and there was when
I walked up to that historic door. I stopped a mo-
ment outside it, while in a flash of visions I saw —
many things! I am not given so particularly to
thrills, but the living white man or woman who
could enter that doorway without a lift of the
heart is carrying roimd for a heart a Imnp of some-
thing wholly without Vibrant quality.

It is the usual four-square Arab house with the
second-floor rooms opening onto a narrow balcony
that hangs over a brick-paved inner court. The
first thing the commandant did was to apologize
smilingly for the general dilapidation. The whole
court was a wreck. The walls were nicked aifti
chipped, the balcony rails were broken, and there
was not a piece of glass left intacft that was as
large as the palm of one's hand.

**We have not yet b^gun to bring in window-
glass," he said. "It is not a necessity, you see, and
we are not yet dealing in anything but necessities."

Not a necessity? I was not so sure about that,

260

THE SCENE OF THE TERRIBLE SIEGE

There is a short but rather bitter winter in Mesopo-
tamia, and it was coming on apace. It was cold
enough even then. The captain, ^t work in the
underground room that had been General Town-
shend^s office, sat at his desk with an overcoat on,
while out in the court a crowd of Arabs shivered and
hugged themselves for warmth, with their hands
thrust up the wide sleeves of their thin bumooses.

They were waiting to interview their British wait,
or governor; their father, friend, boss — everything.
That is what the commandant has to be. And each
of them would prayerfully present a claim or peti-
tion of some kind, which it might or might not be
possible for him to meet or grant. He would do
his best. A friendly and satisfied Arab is a better
citizen than an Arab with a grievance.

As we came out into the court he quickly ex-
plained my presence, saying that he intended to
escort me round the town and out to the battle-
lines. They must either wait for him awhile longer
or go away and come back again next morning.

They looked at me with grave curiosity and
seemed quite cheerful about being put off. All
but one. He followed us out and down the long,
narrow street, coining up beside the captain and
talking to him rapidly in a low, insistent tone.
I was surprised at the patience with which the
captain listened, and when he answered the man
threw his shoulders back with a smile of satisfac-
tion, then, with a low salaam, turned and rejoined
his companions.

"What is his particular variety of trouble?"
asked the A. D. C.

"Oh, a dispute about one of the old gates. I

18 261

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

fancy it belongs to him, all right. He's only been
back a few days/*

"What old gates?*' I asked.

**Some oiur chaps saved. There were a number
of fine ancient doors and gates — carved and nail-
studded and copper-bound and that sort of thing —
and they didn't like to see them destroyed. So
they took them down and put them in a safe place.
Some of the men who were exchanged knew where
they were — ^in a hole in the ground — ^and we are
putting them back now."

Quite matter-of-f actly he offered this small con-
tribution to history. I laughed with ft kind of
heartaching joy.

"'But I thought there was a fuel famine, among
other things, and that they burned everytliing fire
would consume!" I answered.

"Oh yes, so there was and so they did. But they
couldn't bum that kind of thing, could they?"

A great many Englishmen would have added,
** We're not Huns or vandals, you know!" But he
didn't.

I saw one of the old doors a few moments later.
It was dignifying the patched-up ruins of a mud-
and-reed-mat hoilse; a fine thing in a curious set-
ting. Likely as not it dated from the days of the
Kaliphs of Baghdad.

But imagine, if you can, such sentiment in the
minds of men besieged. They burned their own
hospital huts and all their vehicles. A packing-
box or ammunition-crate was the most precious
thing in the world, and when a house was brought
down by a bomb or shell its few timbers and laths
were r^arded as a godsend. Fuel was exhausted

262

THE SCENE OF THE TERRIBLE SIEGE

long before food began to run short; they were be-
sieged through the winter months — ^from the 7th
of December until the end of April — ^but nobody
thougjit of requiring physical comfort* They
needed fuel for their mess fires.

They began eventually to eat their mules and
horses, and the raw flesh. • • . They had practi-
cally no fuel at all, and C. B., a medical officer who
went through the siege and who has written such an
illuminating and inestimably valuable account of
it from a medical officer's standpoint, tells about
how they found one day some old Tm-kish bread
which, being unfit for human consumption, was
yet priceless, because it would bum. They burned
it, and were very sorry afterward when they began
to realize that the phrase "unfit for human con-
sumption" is unlimitedly comparative.

The bazaar and the serais of old Kut skirt the
plaza which lies along the river-front, and they
were riddled by shot and shell. Because the life
of an Arab town is centered in its bazaars, the first
important thing to be undertaken was the rebuild-
ing of the long arcade and the restoration of the
vaulted streets^ which are lined with small booths
for the accommodation of the merchants. This is
finished now, or nearly so, and life has begun to
resume its normal course — with the big city of war
an easy walk down the river-bank to contribute to
its intensity and interest.

The reconstruction is all done with materials
sifted out of the crumbling ruins, and advantage is
taken of the opportunity to widen the streets and
to build with improved sanitary conditions always

263

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

in view. It is all very fine, and one warmly ap-
proves the right-mind^ ambition that inspires the
builders; but, save for its too evident newness, it
will be difficult soon to realize that Kut was ever the
scene of an unparalleled torture of men and a town
laid waste.

On the way out to the lines of defense we passed
through a still untouched section of ruin and rub-
bish, and stopped in open spaces here and there to
examine the pitiful holes in the ground where the
men lived most of the time to escape the peril of
constant bombardment and the too frequent bomb-
ing from the air.

Along toward the end of the siege they began not
to bother much about moving round or even about
relieving one another in the trenches. One place
was as good as another as far as comfort and safety
were concerned, and the men in the front lines
simply stayed where they were. They could hold
guns to the end and defend the position, but they
were too weak to walk back the length of the
peninsula to the rear lines.

For weeks they had just sufficient food to sustain
life, and it is told of them that they chewed the ends
of their fingers until they bled and became very
sore.

Horrible? Yes. But it is also told of them by
comrades, who were sent back after the surrender
in exchange for Turkish prisoners, that not one of
them ever whimpered or complained. Not once
did any man, Indian or Englishman, voice a desire
to do anything but hold on and hold on. They had
sublime faith that the relief force — ^the music of
whose guns thrilled in their ears day after day —

THE SCENE OF THE TEKRIBLE SIEGE

would succeed; and General Townshend was the
courageous hero of their utmost idolatry.

When we came in from the tragic lines of defense,
dominated now by the Turkish obelisk of victory,
we turned into the cemej^ery which lies at the edge
of the town, with the wide waste of the desert
stretching out to the eastward beyond it.

And what a cemetery ! It is surrounded by a ncM^
mud wall that the conmiandant has built, and there
are a few drooping, tired-looking, transplanted
palm-trees hanging over the graves. But I looked
across it and wondered what it was that I missed.
The dreadful nakedness of it hurt me, yet I did not
grasp at the moment what it was that gave me an
impression of dreadful nakedness. Then I realized.
The graves are not marked!'* I said.
No,'' answered the conmiandant.

There was a long pause then, during which the
three of us — ^the A. D. C, the commandant, and I —
stood by the mud wall looking out across the deso-
late stretch of six-foot mounds, thinking each his
own thoughts.

"They were all marked as they were made, of
course," the commandant finally said. "And the
only explanation we can think of is that the Turks
had German o£Scers. The Tiu*ks have a good deal
of respect for anybody's dead, and, so far as we have
known, they don't do that kind of thing. But they
took away all the crosses, and now it's impossible to
tell where any man is buried. And there's a
major-general in here, and a number of other
officers — "

The hospital at Kut is a civil institution estab-

265

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

lished for the benefit of the native population. It
is in the partially patched-up ruin of one of the
larger buildings which stands near the one mosque
of the town, the single slender minaret of which
miraculously escaped destruction.

The doctor, a Scotchman with a delightful bur in
his tongue, was in his dispensary, putting up
medicines for a line of waiting Arabs. He apolo-
gized at once for the unhospital-like dilapidation and
disorder of the place and was not siu*e that he
would consent to show it to me. It was a trial
to his medical officer's conscience, and as soon as
he had, by degrees, taught the natives not to be
afraid of him and his works, he was going to make
the conunandant provide him a suitable building.
But for the time being his rows of bottles, cases of
instruments, and the medical smells which envelop
him are, to the native mind, evidence enough of his
wizardry; and anything in the nature of spotless
and light, airy wards filled with rows of stiff little
white beds would simply frighten them away.

Most of his patients he treats and sends back to
their homes at once, but a few cases which require
special attention he keeps in some dark, dismal
rooms up-stairs, which are all he has at his disposal.
A majority of these are eye cases.

Among the Arabs there is an appalling amount
of blindness. Much of it is caused, perhaps, by
the glare and the dust of the desert, but a larger
part of it is attributable to the fact that mothers
know nothing about the care of the eyes of infants.

It seems to me I have seen literally hundreds of
blind children from five to ten or twelve years of
age, and most of them utterly hopeless. There are

266

THE SCENE OF THE TERBIBLE SIEGE

a great many cases of simple cataract, and these the
big Scotch medical officer can handle with what the
Arabs regard as miracidous success. He has per-
formed dozens of operations and has sent a number
of men and women who had been blind for years
back to their homes or to their tents in the desert
with eyes as clear as anybody's.

But the result is that he is beset by the blind.
People come leading blind relatives and friends
from miles and miles away, and more often than
not there is no sight left to them to restore. Their
eyes are completely gone. And this is a fearful
trial for the doctor, because they think he coidd cure
them all if he wanted to. They even go so far as
to make prayers to him and try to propitiate him
with gifts, as though he were some kind of wrath-
ful and unreasonable god.

The I. G. C. says that as soon as it is possible
he is going to organize small units of doctors and
oculists and send them out all over the country on
medical missionary tours. They will perform oper-
ations, attack disease of all kinds, and imdertake to
hammer into the heads of the people a little in-
formation about preventive measures, especially as
regards the care of the eyes of small children.

When we left the sad little hospital we went back
to headquarters and climbed to the roof, from
which — with what emotions who can say? — General
Townshend watched for weary weeks the enemy
surroundiDig him and the repeated efforts of his
own people to rescue him. And there we stood
and reviewed the tragic, tremendous story, with the
whole scene of it lying before us like a map.

It was not until the sun had sunk in the far-away

267

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

desert glories of evening and the moon had begun
to shine palely on the river that the A. D. C, and I,
with subdued minds and saddened hearts, bade the
commandant good-by on the river-bank, boarded
our launch, and slipped down round the great bend
to where the comfortable old S-1 lay moored before
the bustling new Kut — ^a new Kut ablaze with a
myriad cheerful lights.

CHAPTER XVm

WITH GENERAL BIAUDS IN COMMAND

TIEUT..GEN. SIR STANLEY MAUDE took
^ command of the Mesopotamian Expeditionary
Force on the S8th of August, 1916, and according
to his own report to the War Office he devoted him-
self up to about mid-December to preliminary
preparations for a resolute oflFensive, the enemy's
intention apparently being to hold him on the de-
fensive in the Tigris River region below Kut while
they developed a big drive down through Persia —
this being a revival of their original plan.

Maude had first to develop adequate base sup-
port, and then to get into utmost fighting trim
large bodies of men who had suflFered not only the
fiber-destroying tortures incident to a record hot
season, but the demoralizing effects of defeat.

By December he had accomplished the concen-
tration of his forces near the enemy positions south
of Kut. On the night of December 13th the Big
Drive began. Until those forces surrounded and
passed north of captured Baghdad on the 11th of
March, 1917, they were in practically continuous
action.

There were four divisions of infantry and one
division of cavalry; the corps commanders being

269

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

Lieut.-G€n. Sir A. S. Cobbe, V.C., D.S.O., astride
the Tigris, and Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Marshall
with the cavalry and a strong force of infantry to
the wesftward and on l^e Shatt-el-Hai. The enemy
was strongly intrenched in long-established posi-
tions on the Hai and at Kut-el-Amara, and it is
interesting to record that hordes of well-armed
Arabs hovered on the flanks of both armies — ^as is
their custom — ^ready to fall upon and help to cut
to pieces whichever side should begin to suffer
defeat.

The weather throughout the period of operations
was execrable and managed to contribute to the
grand sum of horror and suffering a bewildering
variety of acute irritations. During the early part
of the cool season it is usually burning hot at mid-
day and freezing cold throughout the night, there
being a daily variation in the temperature of from
thirty to fifty degrees. And there are the sand-
storms which, while they last, put a stop to all
activity and inflict upon human flesh a peculiar and
unbelievable torture. Then, when the rains begin,
the fine dust of the plains is turned into the thick
viscid mud through which neither man nor beast
can make any kind of progress. After that the
floods come down the Tigris and Euphrates and
great areas are submerged, while unsubmerged
areas become untenable from the extraordinary
seepage of the tremendous marshes which lie be-
tween the two rivers and east of the Tigris. In
places the desert bubbles as though in fermentation.

All the way through General Maude's account
of the operations there are references to unfavor-
able weather conditions:

270

WITH GENERAL MAUDE IN COMMAND

Operations were hampered by heavy rains which fell during
the last week in December and the first week in January,
floodvig large tracts of country. • . •

Where the ground was not too sodden by rain and floods our
cavaby was constantly engaged in reconnaissances, in harassing
the en^ny's communications west of the Hai, and in raids,
capturing stock and grain, . . .

The en^ny position in the Khadairi Bend was a menace to
our communications with the Hai, for in the event of a high
flood he could inundate portions of our line by opening the
river Bunds. It was, therefore, decided to clear the Khadairi
Bend. • • •

Intended operations west of the Hai by the cavalry and a
detachment of Greneral Marshall's force were necessarily aban-
doned on account of the mist. • • •

On the 10th of January the attack was resumed in foggy
weather, and the enemy was pressed back trench by trench,
till by nightfall he had fallen back to his last position. . . .
During these operations the fighting had been severe and
mainly hand to hand, but the enemy, in spite of his tenacity,
had more than met his match in the dash and resolution of
our troops. . . .

The movements of the cavalry had meanwhile been restricted
by the waterlogged state of the ground. It had been intended
to move the division via Badrah and Jessan against the enemy's
rear . . . and reconnaissance showed that the proposal was
feasible; but soon after the movement had conunenced a
heavy thunderstorm burst over the district, and the flooding
of the marsh of Jessan and its neighborhood rendered progress
impracticable and the attempt was abandoned.

The most brilliant incident of the whole campaign
was the crossing of the Tigris River north of Kut
in the Shumran Bend. This happened at the end
of two months of terrific fighting and after the Turks
had been driven entirely from the west bank of the
river and had taken up their final strongly defensive
position on the Kut peninsula — ^the scene of the
siege — ^and down the east bank in the maze of

271

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

trenches on the field of Sunnaiyat, which they had
occupied and had been engaged in strengthening
for nearly a year. This position was protected
from flank attack by the great Suwaikieh Marsh,
which lies, miles on end, within easy seeing dis-
tance eastward from the river. As the General de-
scribes it:

The waterlogged state of the country and a high flood on the
Tigris now necessitated a pause, but the time was usefidly
employed in methodical preparation for the passage of the
Tigris at Shumran. Positions for guns and machine-gun crews
to support the crossing were selected, approaches and ramps
were made, and crews were trained to man the pontoons. In
order to keep our intentions concealed it was necessary that
most of the details, including the movement of guns, should be
carried out under cover of night. Opposite Sunnaiyat, where it
was intended to renew the assault, artillery barrages were
carried out daily in order to induce the enemy to expect such
barrages unaccompanied by an assault as part of the daily
routine. Minor diversions were also planned to deceive the
enemy as to the point at which it was intended to cross the
river.

What General Maude calls "minor diversions**
created for the purpose of deceiving the enemy
developed later on, while preparations for the cross-
ing were in progress, into a strong attack by lieu-
tenant-General Cobbe at Smmaiyat, the success of
which so surprised the Turks, who believed this
position to be impregnable, that they became ut-
terly demoralized and broke into confusion — "flee-
ing for dear life away to Baghdad."

The crossing of the river was a wholly impossible
thing — so little anticipated that the enemy was
struck with astonishment and had no time to con-
centrate effective resistance. A captured Turkish

272

WITH GENERAL MAUDE IN COMMAND

officer said they had discussed the possibility of
such a move, but had decided that against sudi re-
sistance as they were prepared to offer ^'olily mad-
men would attempt it."

The river was in flood and was three himdred and
forty yards wide at the point where the bridge was
thrown across. This operation being carried out
under machine-gun fire which swept ferries and pon-
toons and inflicted heavy losses on the British. But,
in the words of General Maude, the men worked
with "unconquerable valor and determination."

They began with the first ferry just before day-
break on February 2Sd, and by 4.S0 p.m. the amaz-
ing bridge was ready for traffic and the Turkish
army was in full retreat toward Baghdad, but
fighting every foot of the way. While the advance
from Kut to Baghdad was accomplished in only
fifteen days, it was made in the face of such stub-
bom resistance as served to cover one field after
another with mingled British and Turkish dead.
In no campaign of the war has there been such con-
tinuous hand-to-hand fighting.

The country, a vast region of yellow sand and
gray-green marsh, stretches away to the far horizons
as level as a table-top and wiUiout so much as a
bit of scrub brush for cover, so the operation was a
continuous performance of move forward and in-
trench. Along the entire distance there are to-day
the shattered and shell-riven remains of a network
of defenses which tell a tale beyond imagining, and
in their stark and glaringly revealed extent they
demonstrate that modem war with all its slaughter
and horror is largely a matter of prodigious physical
labor.

273

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

But to return to the operations. In the mean
time the gunboat flotilla, which had supported the
advance from the river, proceeded upstream, shell-
ing the enemy in retreat and coming itself under
heavy fire from guns of all kinds that were cover-
ing the retirement along the banks.

At Aziziyeh, just half-way to Baghdad — ^the spot
where the original fatal decision was made —
General Maude halted for reconcentration and re-
organization of his lines of communication; but
after a quick readjustment the pursuit was resumed.
Then for two days the armies plunged forward —
eighteen miles one day, seventeen miles the next —
in a blinding dust-storm which limited vision to a
few yards in any direction.

The enemy made a final strong stand in a previ-
ously intrenched position at the Diyala River, and
here for three days the British troops suffered
decimating fire from concealed machine-gun bat-
teries as they worked in vain to force a passage
of the stream by ferry and pontoon.

Meanwhile General Maude, who had taken one of
the big paddle-wheel supply-boats for headquarters,
moved on up the river and at a point a few miles
south of the mouth of the Diyala threw a bridge
across and transferred two infantry divisions and
his one division of cavalry to the west bank, up
which they proceeded to march at a forced pace
toward Baghdad. This flank movement, threat-
ening to cut the resisting Turkish forces off,
compelled their immediate flight beyond Bagh-
dad, their rear-guard engaging the British with ad-
mirable tenacity and tremendous valor all the
way.

274

WITH GENERAL MAUDE IN COMMAND

It was a matter of considerable r^ret to most per*
sons concerned that General Maude made no
triumphal demonstration upon his arrival at
Baghdad. It was thought that a display of pomp
and a parade of victory might have a properly sub-
duing effect upon the native population and serve
to enhance the local prestige of the conquering
forces. But General Maude was undemonstrative
in every way. In obedience to his orders a few
troops were marched through the city from the
south entrance, and a patrol of the streets was in-
stantly established. But as for himself, he ordered
the captain of his floating headquarters to bank
in at the river wall imder the British Residency, and,
accompanied only by his personal staff, he walked
ashore and up into the city as casually as he might
have done had he been only a very tired traveler
arriving under the most ordiinary circumstances.

CHAPTER XIX

IN THE SHADOW OF AN ANCIENT RUIN

AFTER Kut-el-Amara — Ctesiphon, the last point
^ of interest below Baghdad.

Ctesiphon is pronounced as it is spelled, except
that the C is silent. In a philologically ortho-
graphic, or whatever it may be, sense the C prob-
ably has a perfectly legitimate excuse for being
there — ^just as the "h" has indisputable rights in
the middle of Baghdad — ^but it is slightly in the
way, and there are persons who can never avoid
stumbling over it.

Yukon, for instance, was never able to disre-
gard it, so he invented a pronunciation all his own.
I do not know exactly what it was, but it had the
C in it, right enough. In fact, it had it in in several
places, and the effect was rather splendid. It was
something like " Cesticidsphison," and he stuck to
it resolutely in spite of any amount of pointed
reference on the part of others to "Tesifon** in its
simplest form.

There is nothing at Ctesiphon now — ^nothing but
a wide waste of knobby desert, the mounded grave-
yard of a buried city and the lone, marvelous arch
which has stood through so many centuries, offering
mute, compelling testimony to the grandeur of the

«76

IN THE SHADOW OF AN ANCIENT RUIN

Eastern Empire destined to fall before the onrush
of barbarian Arab peoples^ newly inspired by the
Moslem faith and fired with fanatic zeal.

But on the banks of the River Tigris the great
arch of Ctesiphon is a comparatively modem struct-
ure. It belongs to the Christian era, and on the
banks of the River Tigris one begins to pronounce
in a familiar way names that were on the tongues of
men five thousand years ago.

The moimds of the dead cities in the midst of the
desolation have not revealed the story of the infancy
of the human race, but they have revealed one of the
main sources of the cultural stream upon which
hmnanity has drifted and, it may be, is drifting
always toward broader and more tranquil depths.
Even the age of Sargon — ^the twenty-eighth century
B.C. — seems on the banks of the Tigris strangely
recent.

"Sargon was the first great leader in the history
of the Semitic race, and he was the first ruler to
build up a great nation in western Asia, reaching
from Elam to the Mediterranean and far up the
Two Rivers northward. His splendid conquests
made an impression upon the Tigris-Euphrates
world which never faded. ..." So says Breasted,
in his Ancient Times,

But in Saigon's time the legends of the people
with regard to the world's beginning were the
legends we revere to-day, and they were as dimly
remote to them as they are to us. Their gods were
gods of the elements.

About the twenty-second century B.C. a tribe of
Semitic Amorites crossed over from the Mediter-
ranean coast lands and seized what Breasted

19 277

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

describes as "the little town of Babylon, which was
at that time an obscure village ..." and one hun-
dred years later there rose in this tribe a great king.
His name was Hammmrapi, and it was he who first
made Babylon nustress of the then world and welded
together a mighty kingdom under the name of
Babylonia.

This was f oiuteen centuries before Nebuchad-
nezzar was bom, yet archeological research has
brought up out of the buried cities of the Babylonian
plain a written record of Hammurapi's reign so
clear and so detailed that we can follow the life of the
wise and mighty old monarch almost day by day.

The Arch of Ctesiphon an ancient ruin? No, not
at all!

Up and down and back and forth over the face of
the known world the human race moved in in-
numerable waves and distinct divisions, while to the
east of Babylonia those great tribes of Aryan
origin, the Medes and the Persians, advanced to
place and power.

These people already had a religion. They wor-
shiped fire as the truest manifestation of an Al-
mighty Being, and they had evolved a code of
morals quite as fine in many ways as any code that
has followed it.

But came among them between the thirteenth
and tenth centuries B.C. a great mystic and inter-
preter — ^Zoroaster — ^who brought order out of the
chaos of religious fantasies and founded a splendid
faith which lives to-day, its original nobility modi-
fied but little by the superstitious and philosophical
accumulations of the centuries. This faith is

278

THE ARCH <

THE TOMB OF EZRA

IN THE SHADOW OF AN ANCIENT RUIN

founded on a definite distinction between right and
wrong and assumes the existence of two great in*
fluendng spiritual powers; one — ^Ahuramazda — ^the
Lord of Right and Wisdom; the other — Ahriman —
the Spirit of Darkness and Evil. Between them,
as a kind of intermediary deity, stands Mithras, the
Angel of light.

I do not know if offerings of evil things to the
Spirit of Evil are made by modem Zoroastrians as
they were by the Zoroastrians of other ages, but one
does know that from many a fire altar to-day
Mithras carries upward from the minds of men
flames of pure thought and exalted prayer to the
throne of Ahuramazda.

Who can estimate the power of a single life? Of Zoroaster
we do not know the true name, nor when he lived, nor where
he lived, nor exactly what he taught. But the current from
that fountain has flowed on for thousands of years, fertilizing
the souls of men out of its hidden sources and helping on by
the decree of Divine Providence, the ultimate triumph of good
over evil, of right over wrong.^

The stars of peoples ascended in this land, rose
to their zenith, and declined. A long line of
Assyrian emperors marches across the pages of his-
tory to battle chants and the clank and dash of the
accoutrements of war; Sennacherib passes proudly
by to gaze in disdain upon the cities and palaces of
his predecessors and to build arrogant Nineveh,
from whose mighty walls he gazes east and west
across a world within his grasp.

Came an era when Babylonia was no longer
Babylonia, but Chaldea, with Nebuchadnezzar em-

^ Ten Great Reliffums, by James Freeman Clarke.

279

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

barked upon a career of such magnificence and
power that after twenty-five centuries humanity
still stands agape before conjured-up visions of his
splendor. The Chaldeans, allying themselves with
the Median hosts, march against the walls of
Nineveh; and two centuries later Xenophon with
his Greek legions passes by and gazes in astonish-
ment upon the mounds of fluted sand which even
then covered the seats of the once mighty Assyrians
as to-day the sand mounds cover the cities on the
Babylonian plain.

Then passes Cyrus, king of Persia, worshiping
Ahuramazda and hurling his serried hosts against
the Lydians; and finally against the walls of
Babylon — Cyrus freeing the Children of Israel and
commanding that the temple of the Israelitish God
at Jerusalem be rebuilt, while bowing himself before
his altars of fire.

Cambyses, son of Cyrus, conquers Egypt and
the Persian Empire stretches from Elam to the
sands of the Sahara. After whom Darius, Xerxes,
and Artaxerxes; Xerxes carving on the wall of the
great fire temple at Persepolis :

Ahuramazda is a mighty god who has created the earth and
heaven and men; who fias given glory to men; who has made
Xerxes King, the ruler of many. I, Xerxes, King of Kings, King
of the earth near and far, s&n of Darius an Achasmenid, What
I have done here and what I have done elsewhere, I have done by
the grace of Ahuramazda.

Looking down across thirty miles of desert to the
Pusht-i-Kuh, a range of Persian mountains that
lies like a great, long, rugged opal against the
eastern horizon, one sees with the mind's eye the

280

IN THE SHADOW OF AN ANCIENT RUIN

ruins of Susa — biblical Shushan — ^where in his
palace Ahasueras, son of Xerxes, "showed the
riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his
excellent majesty many days" and "made a feast
unto all the people that were present in Shushan
the palace, both unto great and small, seven days
in the court of the garden of the king's palace:.

"Where were white, green and blue hangings,
fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver
rings and piUars of marble. ...»

Shushan — ^wher^ the brave and beautiful Esther
got Haman hanged so high, and where "Mordecai
went out from the presence of the king in royal
apparel of blue and white and with a great crown
of gold, and with a garment of fine linen and
purple '* to smite the enemies of the Jews.

It was a colorful age !

Then Alexander, the great Macedonian, son of
that Philip against whom Demosthenes launched
his "philippics/* What names go hurtling through
one*s thoughts !

Alexander the Great marches down across Asia
Minor, through the Cilician Gates and along the
coast of the Mediterranean, to meet the Persian
forces under the third Darius and to hurl them back
across the plain and the River Euphrates; to refuse
the better half of the Persian Empire, and then to
march on and on, conquering the world and sighing
for more worlds to conquer. Only in the end to
turn back from the far places to Babylon — ^which was
itself a far place to the exalted Macedonian — and to
die there in the palace of the Babylonian kings!

He had conquered the world, and his heirs were

281

THE WAR m THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

his Macedonian generals. One of these, Seleucus,
takes possession of the Land of the Two Rivers and
the rich conquered territories of the Mediterranean
coast. He founds the city of Antioch, and on the
west bank of the Tigris, on the shortest highway
between the two rivers and within a day*s easy
march of Babylon, he causes to be built the city of
Seleucia.

The city of Seleucia ! It lies directly across the
river from the Arch of Ctesiphon — ^a great undulat-
ing mound of sand, like the other mounds. Nobody
has yet delved into it for historic records and treas-
ure. But perhaps it is not worth while. As ruins
go it is such a mo(2em ruin!

Centiuies pass; Rome rises to pre-eminence and
declines, while the fires that Zoroaster kindled in the
hearts of the Persian peoples keep alive in them a
consciousness of race and a will to live.

It was in the third century of the Christian era
that the family of Sassanid arose to the east of the
Mesopotamian rivers and, by an inspired revival
of patriotism among the Persian tribes, succeeded
in establishing the Sassanian Empire.

For a capital the Sassanian kings built the city
of Ctesiphon on the forever strategically valuable
shortest highway between the two rivers.

The Sassanids were mighty, and the Sassanian
Empire continued to grow in might, the Oriental
splendor of its court having been beyond the powers
of men to describe.

The Sassanid emperors were Sun-gods, worshiping
Ahuramazda as that deity's representatives upon
earth. They realized in their forms and ceremonials

IN THE SHADOW OF AN ANCIENT RUIN

what Alexander had designed for himself, and noth-
ing could surpass the magnificence and the color of
the pageant of their lives.

The Arch of Ctesiphon is all that is left of the
audience-hall of the Emperor Khusrau. It dates
from about the sixth century. It is one of the
largest and most extraordinary ruins in the world
and is so massively and so amazingly built that one
looks round and about over the naked desert in the
midst of which it stands and wonders how a city
whose builders were so great could possibly disap-
pear from the face of the earth.

The arch itself was the throne-chamber, and on
the other side of it there was another tremendous
wing like the one which still survives. The arch,
it is supposed, was always open at one end, as it is
to-day, and across it, covering its whole vast height
and breadth, was a jeweled tapestry. On this
tapestry was worked a wonderful landscape in
precious stones.

The Sassanian Empire was overthrown in the
middle of the seventh century by the irresistible
cohorts of the Kaliphs, and Baghdad, in its tiun,
came to be founded as a great capital in the Cradle
of the World.

This war closes one's mind to old historic vision.
It dwarfs the very ghosts of world conquerors that
have loomed so large in the background of the
world's advancing life, and sets a gulf between
itself and other wars the world has seen across
which no one can get a just perspective.

The British troops on the way to Baghdad with
General Maude knew Ctesiphon principally as the

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

field of General Townshend's disaster, and they
knew, too, I suppose, that there was a min there —
even a mighty ruin. But I doubt if many of them
had a mental vision of it that was not wholly over-
whelmed by the reality.

Some of them, it is said, regarded it chiefly as a
much-too-valuable post of observation for the
enemy and wanted to shell it. It is visible from
many miles away down-river and across the plain,
and from its top the view would be imobstructed as
far as the strongest glass could reach. But they
were forbidden to touch it, and after the armies had
passed, the newBritish masters of the immediatedes-
tiniesof the land and its peoples caused to have built
all round it a barbed-wire fence, and notices were
posted to explain to the people the great historic
value of the old monument and to ask them to give
up their age-old practice of taking bricks out of
it for modem building purposes. It is easy to
believe that Ctesiphon was quarried to build
Baghdad as the Rome of the Caesars was quarried
to build the commonplace Rome of later days.
And nothing in Rome very greatly surpasses in
magnificence of construction this wide-flung and
wholly self-supporting arch.

But we must get on now. We are to lunch with
the British Army Commander in the City of the
Kaliphs. The gentlemen with whom I traveled
were greatly concerned lest I should be expecting
too much. They wanted to shield me from in-
evitable disappointment.

"Baghdad is just worse than nothing,'* they said.
"It's a rotten hole !'*

284

IN THE SHADOW OP AN ANCIENT RUIN

If you were on your way to Baghdad you natu-
rally would be expecting too much. You would be
expecting to see something, at least, that would
offer to yoiu* mind a suggestion of the domed and
minareted Moslem city of Oriental story.

But the flat-roofed and mud-colored huddle of
human habitations sprawling along the high wall
which lines the great sweeping curve of the palm-
fringed river would appeal to you at once as being
curiously in harmony with the moods of the country
you had learned on your slow journey up-river to
know so well in its desolate but wonderfully sun-
Ut raggedness.

There are mosques, of course, with minarets
aplenty, but they are all quite ordinary; rather
cheap, in fact. All but one. From far down the
river you look across a wide stretch of open desert
' and see, hovering away off in a blue haze green-
edged with the green of palm-trees, the great round
golden dome and the many slender shafts that rise
above the mosque of Kazhi-main. And if you
know no more than you ought to know you will
take this vision for a first glimpse of Baghdad and
be whoUy satisfied. But Kazhi-main is on the
west bank of the river, foiu* miles above Baghdad,
and before the city comes into view it has dis-
appeared altogether from your range of vision.

When General Maude took Baghdad there came
steaming up behind his floating headquarters the
battle-scarred fleet of monitors and small river gun-
boats and a long line of supply-boats of various
kinds. The S-1, with General MacMunn and his
staff aboard and with Yukon at her wheel, was
among the first to arrive, the (Jeneral having come

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

up directly behind the army with fifty boats
heavily laden with supplies for the immediate es-
tablishment of an advanced base.

As we rounded the last great bend which brings
Baghdad into view they told me how it had seemed
to them then. Not any one of them, the skipper
included, had ever been there before, and they said
the thrill of rounding one wide ciu^e of the river
after another, knowing nothing of what lay beyond
the next, and of coming at last full upon the town
which had been so long the British objective and
for which they had paid such a fearful price, was
overwhelming.

The high banks were black with cheering throngs;
there were people everywhere — on the housetops,
in every window and balcony, lining the river walls.
Their welcome was genuine. When the Turks
left, anarchy was let loose in the dty, and at the
moment the British entered chaos reigned, while
bands of murderous Arabs were looting the bazaars
and scattering terror in every highway and byway.
This state of affairs lasted just as long as it took
British patrols to march through the streets and no
longer, while a few subsequent hangings and im-
prisonments, and the excellent conduct of the
British troops, served to restore almost at once
the complete confidence and serenity of the people.
British occupation of Baghdad was regretted by
nobody but the defeated Turks and the offscoiuings
of Arabian tribes who were halted in their criminal
pursuits by the immediate establishment of British
law and order.

CHAPTER XX

THE MAN OF MESOPOTAMIA

SO I did get to Baghdad, after all!
We anchored a short distance off the bank
in front of General Headquarters, and after a little
while a launch came out to get me and took me
down-river a couple of hundred yards to the landing
at the Army Commander's house. He and his two
A. D. C/s were waiting on the little pontoon
platform to receive me, and as he helped me ashore
he said:

" Well, here you are I That's good ! Come along
in now and let's have some lunch."

That was all. It was as though I had been away
for a few days and had just returned. But it was
peculiarly characteristic of the man. His thoughts
ran in clean-cut grooves and his besetting weakness
was punctuality. It was a quarter past one o'clock
and his luncheon-hour was one. He had waited for
me an imprecedented fifteen minutes!

The house, at the edge of the high river wall and
reached at low water by a flight of wooden and
very rickety steps, was most interesting. It was
bristlingly historic, of course, having been the home
of two German-Turkish commanders before General

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Maude took possession of it. General von der
Goltz Pasha died in it — of cholera, they say — ^and
it was the residence of Khalil Pasha, who com-
manded the Turkish forces while Baghdad was
Turkish headquarters.

We walked across a terrace on the river-bank
and entered the dining-room, where everything was
in readiness for luncheon. This room, a few feet
below the groimd-level of the house, had a mud-
brick floor, and its bare walls were painted a fear-
ful saffron hue, which seemed to have had some
intention of being yellow.

Like all other residences in Mesopotamia, the
house was built round a wide, paved court, and the
living-rooms opened on a second-floor balcony on
the inside. It was not a particularly comfortable
house and was about as elaborate in its furnishings
as a camp in the desert. General Maude occupied
the room in which Von der Goltz died and seemed
rather pleased with the idea of doing so. Then there
was the westeni terrace, with a vineless arbor built
over its railing, from which one got a magnificent
view up and down the wide sweep of the river. But
since the whole river side of the house had to be
screened in with canvas on account of the pitiless
terrific sun, the terrace was not of much use.

There were always impressive-looking sentries
posted on it and also in the corridor outside the
General's room; while on the street side there was
always an adequate guard. There had been fre-
quent plots to assassinate General Maude, and
only a day or two before I arrived a perfectly ar-
ranged scheme had been uncovered by the secret
service, with the result that the schemers got into

288

THE MAN OF MESOPOTAMIA

very serious difficulties and the guard surrounding
him was strengthened.

As for my own accommodations, General Maude
had written that he was afraid I should be very
uncomfortable^ and had then proceeded to have
prepared for me quarters so entirely comfortable
that I felt a definite sense of embarrassment when
I walked into them. It didn't seem quite right,
somehow, that in such a place somebody's time
should have been wasted to make such provision
for me.

After luncheon the General took me himself to
my rooms and made a quite thorough investigation
to see that everything was in order.

This is really no place for a lady!'' he said.
But we've fixed things up a bit — and don't you
go doing without anything we can possibly turn
up for you."

On my packing-box dressing-table, with a mot-
tled mirror propped up on it, and on the desk in
my sitting-room, there were violets. Violets in
mud-colored and dust-enshrouded Baghdad ! They
were small single ones like " Johnny-jump-ups," but
they were fresh as morning dew. I had to exclaim
about them, of course, and then the General told
me how he came by them. He said that so far as
he knew there was only one bed of violets in all
Mesopotamia.

"Somebody must have told the chap who owns it
that I like violets," he added, "so he sends me
some every day. Always have a little bimch of
them on my desk at G. H. Q. Nice, aren't they?"

I write all this principally because by doing so
I am able to throw a brief light on a phase of my

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

host's character with which few persons seemed to
be familiar. I had been told that he was casual to
the i>oint of indifference in his attitude toward
everything but his work, and that I was likely to
find him "diflScult/* With the grave responsi-
bilities of a war zone weighing upon him, one would
hardly expect a man to be anything but casual
toward unimportant persons and affairs, but General
Maude was as genial and kindly a host as I should
have expected him to be under the most conven-
tional circumstances.

He was a very impressive figure of a man. He
was six feet three inches tall, and any one would
have known he was a soldier, whether he was in
uniform or not. His innate kindliness expressed
itself in a gleam of humor that was hardly ever
absent from his eyes, and he was rather fascinating
when he talked, because of a slow drawl in his
speech and a vein of quiet fun peculiarly his own.

At the beginning of the war General Maude com-
manded a brigade in France and was severely
woimded. As a matter of fact, there was a bullet
lodged in his back where the surgeons could not
get at it, and it gave him trouble always. He told
me about this himself and about how, with one leg
temporarily paralyzed, he thought for a long time
that he was done for. For services in France he
was made a major-general, and when he recovered
from his woimds he was sent to conunand the
Thirteenth Division at Gallipoli. After the evacu-
ation of Gallipoli he brought this division to Meso-
potamia and commanded it in all the subsequent
attempts to relieve General Townshend at Kut.

THE MAN OF MESOPOTAMIA

After Townshend's surrender he was appointed to
command the Tigris Corps and later succeeded to
the full command of the Mesopotamian forces,
after which the uninterrupted success of his career
won for him the enviable title "Maude the ever-
victorious/*

He was specially promoted to be a lieutenant-
general for his services in Mesopotamia and was
made a Sjiight Commander of the Bath. He was
also a Companion of St. Michael and St. George
and had a D. S. O. for services in the South African
War. The French government made him a Com-
mander of the Legion of Honor.

Few persons ever referred to ** General Maude.'*
It was always "the Army Conmiander." And the
atmosphere of command with which he managed
to envelop himself was extraordinary. One felt
the tremendous personal influence of the man.
He was in every man's mind — ^the Army Com-
mander; on every man's tongue — ^the Army Com-
mander; a figure so potent that to think of the
Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force without his
calm intelligence behind it» directing it in its ever-
victorious progress, was not possible. He was pre-
eminently the Man of Mesopotamia.

He worked literally all the time he was awake;
getting up every morning at five o'clock and putting
in two hours before breakfast looking over papers
and dictating telegrams.

He breakfasted at seven and was always in his
office at headquarters by eight o'clock. He had a
habit of remarking quite frequently that in war
time was an element of first importance^ and the

891

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

greatest offense any one could commit was to waste
a moment of his carefully planned day by being
late for an appointment with him. The man who
was not punctual to the minute could not hope
to enjoy his confidence. He made every detail of
his operations his personal business and delegated
unshared responsibility to nobody. Yet despite
all this he foimd time to think of and to attend to
all manner of small and unimportant things and to
take an active interest in the life of the community
and in the affairs of everybody around him. If
be had known anything at all about the fine arts of
indifference and of getting other people to do his
work he would have been an imqualifiedly great
man.

His choice of a way to do anything was always the
quickest way and he did not know what fear was.
He hated automobiles and traveled to and from his
battle-lines by aeroplane. For trips up and down
the river-front he used a glisseur, the swiftest thing
afloat.

The attitude of the men of his personal staff
was like nothing else I ever encoimtered. They
were devoted to him without question, and when
he was not present they expressed their concern
for his welfare with the utmost freedom. But they
had perhaps a too profound respect for him to
serve to the best ends the uses of intimate associa-
tion, and they were never able in his presence to be
anything but militarily correct.

General MacMunn's A. D. C. was forever "rag-
ging" him with regard to measures for his own
safety and physical welfare, and I had come to look
upon good-natured scolding as among the definite

THE MAN OF MESOPOTAMIA

duties of an A. D, C. But General Maude would
have considered advice touching his individual
habits an unwarranted interference. In my priv-
il^ed impudence and blissful ignorance of his
character I told him one day that I thought a man
in his i>osition who did not r^ard his health as a
matter of primary concern was guilty of a kind
of treason for which some form of punishment '
should be provided.

When any one made so bold as to protest against
his using an aeroplane he always referred to a
friend of his who "fell down a little stairway and
died of a broken leg.'*

He was going out to Ramadie one day — ^head-
quarters on his western line — ^and one of his
A. D« C/s asked if he would not please have a
message sent through to them as soon as he arrived.

"I will not," he replied. "Why should I? If I
don*t get there they will probably let you know
sooner or later. Then you might send out and
gather up the pieces."

That first afternoon, after he had .looked my
quarters over and I had tried to tell him how
grateful I was to him and how much I appreciated
the privilege of being in Mesopotamia, he asked
what in particular I thought I wanted to do.

"I want to do everything you will permit me to
do," I replied.

"Yes, of course," he drawled, in his delightful
way, "but what, for instance??

"May I go to the front?"

"My dear lady, you are at the front."

"Yes, I know, but may I go out to the lines?"

"You may — ^wherever you like. What else?"

20 29S

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

"May I go to Babylon?'*

"No, that, I'm sorry to say, you may not do. I
shall not knowingly take a risk of having you kiUed,
you know, and the desert between here and Babylon
is infested with hostile Arabs."

"Wouldn't a couple of armored motor-cars be all
right?"

"They might be and again they might not.
Motor-cars in the desert are not invariably reliable.
I nearly lost a bishop in one of them last week.
He thought he had to see Babylon before his educa-
tion would be complete, and the Arabs got after
him. There was quite a party, and a valuable
party, too. They had to make a run for it — ^and
anything might have happened to the car, you
know."

CHAPTER XXI

ROUND ABOUT TOWN

OUR little household for the time being con-
sisted of the Army Commander, his military
secretary, his two A. D. C/s, and my aJways-trying-
to-be-inconspicuous self.

When I arrived General Maude more or less
turned me over to his aides. Or did he turn the
aides over to me? In any case, while I was his
guest he deprived himself constantly of the services
of first one and then the other, each taking his
turn in accompanying me here, there, and every-
where — ^wherever I wanted to go.

I was afraid, in the beginning, that to take them
away from their regular duties was to make my-
self a good deal of a nuisance, but I soon learned
that I was a kind of godsend to a couple of earnest
but average young men who had done nothing
for one solid year but attend to business. The
only other visitor they had ever had to take care
of was the bishop whose adventure had made it
impossible for me to go to Babylon.

Naturally the bishop's chief interest in life was
the spiritual welfare of everybody concerned. All
the bravery and fidelity in this war is not monopo-
lized by soldiers ! I have read what he wrote about

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

his visit and I tibink the task of accompanyiiig him
could hardly have been regarded by any one as a
release from the exactions of laborious and method-
ical duty. He began each day with a dedication
somewhere and ended it with a confirmation, having
filled in the intervening hours with services of
various kinds and with painstaking inspections of
all the chapels, hospitals, and Y. M. C. A. quarters
within a radius of a day's toilsome round. And
he made hay while the sun shone at the rate of
about one hundred and fifteen degrees even in the
shade of the few sheltering palms. But I am not
laughing at him, of course. I am laughing at the
young A. D. C. who had to keep up with him.
The only thing I have personally against him is that
trip to Babylon!

Most of the things the aides showed me they
saw for the first time with me, and they were as keen
about it all as I could possibly be, though they had
been in Baghdad nearly a year. The Army Com-
mander bent his brows in mock severity and
threatened to count against them as leave all the
time they spent with me, but he, too, was interested.
To my surprise, Baghdad as a place to be visited
was more or less a closed book to him as well as
to the rest of us, and after spending the morning
on the big job at headquarters he came home to
luncheon each day with a demand that we tell
him all about our doings.

Baghdad as the City of the Kaliphs and of
Harun-al-Rashid's benevolent strolls is absorbingly
interesting, to be sure, but I was far more interested
in observing the effects of modem events and of the

296

ROUND ABOUT TOWN

occupation of the historic city by a British army.
If you should be carried by aeroplane from a far
place and dropped down bound and blindfolded
into the center of Baghdad to-day, turned round
three or four times and then set free, you would
open your eyes, look about you, and say:

"Well, I don*t know what town this is, but what-
ever it is the (Jermans beat me to it !"

The last thing the commander of the Turkish
forces in Mesopotamia did before he gave up the
fight to hold Baghdad was to send a polite mes-
sage across to Greneral Maude asking him to
refrain from dropping shells or bombs into the dty.
The British thought this rather humorous at the
time, since the most devastating thing their Army
Commander ever dropped or ever intended to drop
into Baghdad was a limited edition of a proclama-
tion calling upon the people to preserve order and
to fear nothing from British troops. But the sub-
lime cheek of it was realized when they began later
to shovel and dig their way into certain sections of
the city through the ruins of British property.

There had been a bank and a number > of good
business and office buUdings that were built and
occupied before the war by British firms engaged
in international commerce, and all these were le-
duced to heaps of dust and rubbish. Not a single
piece of British property was left standing except
the Residency, a rather imposing building on the
river-front which reminds one forcefully of the days
when Great Britain mamtained a special and some-
what stately relationship with the Turkish Empire.
Without a doubt the Residency also would have
been destroyed had it not been in use at the tune

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THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

as a Turkish hospital. It must have cost the
German officers some bitter pangs to leave it.

And at that it was in a sorry condition. As a hos-
pital it was dirty and unkempt beyond anybody's
power to describe, and the British found it filled to
capacity with wounded Turks who had been aban-
doned — ^left behind without a medical officer or
even an orderly to attend to their needs ! — ^this being
one of the few bad counts the British have marked
up against the Turks. And they wonder about it.
One of the medical officers who entered the city
with Greneral Maude's army summed up the situa-
tion as "the most horrible mess" he had ever
encountered. That any army medical service
could perpetrate such an outrage against its own
wounded was a thing beyond his British compre-
hension. He was ready to concede that leaving
the wounded behind might have been a necessity,
but he could imagine no circumstances under which
it might be necessary to leave them without medical
or nursing attendance. It was three days before
the British came in ! My doctor friend told me in
still angry recollection that he wanted almightily
to go on a rampage and soundly thrash everybody
in Baghdad who might have taken care of them
and did not. No wounded men of any nationality
ever got better care than did those Turks at the
hands of the British.

As for the wanton destruction of British private
property, there is no doubt in anybody's mind, so
far as I have been able to discover, that it was
ordered by German officers in a spirit of vindictive
hatred. Just as nobody doubts that the stripping
of the British graves at Kut-el-Amara of the simple

ROUND ABOUT TOWN

crosses that marked them was a German-inspired
outrage. To rob the dead, wantonly, of the sweet
shelter of identification that means so much to the
loved ones left behind — !

It may be that it is wronging the Germans to lay
at their door all such unnecessary outrages against
human decency, but if it is they have nobody but
themselves to blame. The reputation they enjoy
is surely the result of their own unaided efforts;
efforts magnificently organized and ably directed
wherever they happen for the time being to be in
command of things.

But the Tiu-k — :it is rather a curious situation as
r^ards the Tiu-k. In spite of considerable evidence
to the contrary and the number of tremendous
shocks he has received, the average Englishman
has never quite surrendered the idea that in a
general sense the Turk is a gentleman. A gentle-
man, to be sure, who commits wholesale murder
and crimes so overwhelmingly atrocious that they
cause a whole world of men to quake with horror,
but a gentleman, nevertheless, who, as a rule, is
incapable of petty meannesses. Is that not as-
tonishing?

There is no doubt at all that in straight battle
the Turk fights in a spirit of ^^may the best man
win." He endeavors with admirable determination
to prove himself the best man, but he never stoops
to unfair advantage and he never displays in any
way that soul-searing quality of hatred with which
the German people have made the world so appall-
ingly familiar.

I was never more surprised in my life than when
I was told by a British officer that in Mesopotamia

299

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

tlie British do not require gas and liquid fire, be-
cause the Tiu'ks have always steadfastly refused to
employ such things against them.

This is worth a moment's special consideration.
On both sides the Mesopotamian war has been
fought with shot and shell, and, so far as is known —
and aside from the uncertainty as to the fate of
British prisoners in Turkish hands — ^the Turks have
broken no established rules and have refused
throughout to adopt modem German methods of
inhuman terrorism and frightfulness. They have
observed all the hitherto internationally customary
courtesies and decencies with r^ard to the wounded
and the dead on the battle-fields; they have re-
spected the Red Cross as their own Red Crescent
has been respected; and have displayed throughout
a tendency to maintain the conventionalities and
to uphold the ethics of what was once known as
"civilized warfare/'

It is all very curious and one fails somehow to
understand. It would siurprise us very little if the
"terrible Tiu-k" — surely convicted before the world
of terribleness — ^should resort to barbarous methods
even against such a respected enemy as England.
But it seems he has not, and I have yet to hear
an Englishman refer to the Turkish enemy — as
such — ^in any but terms of respect. And always
with the simple idea that he must be "licked into
line" at whatever cost; the ultimate fate of Turkey
being from an international viewpoint one of the
most important issues of the war.

There are a great many thoughtful and intelligent
Turks who realize, as I know from personal contact
with them in Constantinople during the war, that

300

ROUND ABOUT TOWN

Germany is playing with them her favorite bully's
game of '"heads I win, tails you lose/' But for
some unexplained and as yet inexplicable reason
the Turks go on playing it.

The British Residency was soon emptied of its
pitiful hundreds of wounded Turks and became
General Headquarters for the Mesopotamian Ex-
peditionary Force — ^the G. H. Q. of every-day con-
versation. The Turkish infantry barracks inside
the Wall on the river-bank, the tremendous cavalry
barracks outside the old North Gate, and a number
of other more or less suitable large buildings in the
city, were quickly cleaned out and remodeled for
hospital purposes, while the Turkish General Hos-
pital — ^a very creditable modem institution, but
also occupied by deserted Turks and in a very
Turkish state of uncleanness — ^was put in proper
condition almost overnight*

The jimior A. D. C. and I climbed into a
low gray service car in front of the house and
whirled away at the usual nerve-trying speed of an
army car driven by a soldier chauflfeur. We rushed
past G. H. Q. with its mud-brick wall skirting a
ragged, dust-powdered garden; past low-roofed
residences buried in imkempt greenery; past a few
coffee-houses where crowds of picturesquely-dad
citizens sat cross-legged on wooden benches, drawing
lazily at the long stems of naighiles, and so on into
a wide, tom-up, extraordinary street off which here
and there one caught glimpses into deep, dim
bazaars or into side-streets that were piled high
with the debris of deliberate destruction.

801

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

This street is casually known as New Street and
is now Baghdad's principal thoroughfare. It was
cut by Khalil Pasha on the advice of the Grermans,
and it was ruthlessly done. No Turk would ever
think of doing such a thing on his own initiative,
the Turks being partial to narrow, airless ways and
sunless passages. The Germans, however, believe
in wide streets and plenty of room, and they are
quite right.

But to hew a street as with a battle-ax straight
through the heart df such a city as Baghdad re-
quired some lack of consideration for the feelings of
the inhabitants and the property-owners. There
was no question of investigating or respecting
proprietary rights. The street was simply cut
through. And some of the property-owners were
so cast down by it that to this day they have not
troubled to remove from the haJf-cut-away build-
ings the evidences of human occupation. They left
pictures to dangle forlornly on the walls of rooms,
and bits of furniture here and there to become
weather-beaten and unsightly. They look horribly
exposed and ashamed, these rooms do.

Even a mosque which lay in the way of a straight
line marked out for the street had one comer
hacked away, and to so desecrate a mosque is in the
mind of the orthodox Moslem an unforgivable
offense. No more unpopular thing was ever done
in any city, yet on the whole it was a good thing to
do and the British have reason to be thankful for
it — and glad that it was done while the Germans
were in control. The British are reaping a reward
of gratitude and trust by undertaldng gradually
to reimburse the property-owners and to assist them

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AUEKICAN AUTOMOBI1.es in THB M£W 8TBEBT, BAGHDAD

ROUND ABOUT TOWN

in rebuilding and in re-establishing themselves in
business. The street was needed.

Baghdad has a population of about one hundred
and forty thousand, but it is compactly buUt and
overcrowded, and one gets an impression that it is
a small town on a holiday, with everybody in from
the country for miles around. As I drove through
the heart of it I tried to get a vision that would stay
in my mind in photc^aphic detail of the strange
multicolored and intermingled life that I was seeing
for the first time. But it was not possible. There
were too -many different kinds of people and too
many curious angles and contours of life. Then
there were the khaki and gray — ^the colors of war —
that one saw as by far the most important and
interesting thing to be seen, yet that contrasted
so sharply with the general scheme of things.

We had to turn out into a ditch to get past a
long convoy of guns that was lumbering and clank-
ing along, accompanied by many officers on hand-
some horses, while on the other side of the street,
disputing the way with automobiles and donkeys,
was a long line of camels ambling disdainfully
through the mob under heavy loads of army duffle
of varying degrees of limipiness.

In many of the gaping frontless houses and in
tiny bits of garden here and there were Persians
and Arabs and Oriental Jews at their everlasting
drowsing over coffee and hubble-bubbles; there
were women, hundreds of them, unveiled for the
most part, but wrapped from head to feet in gor-
geous-hued and all-enveloping abaks; Kurd port-
ers staggering imder unbelievable burdens, and
other Kurds wearing the same black pot-hat that

308

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

was worn by their forefathers thousands of years
ago — as is proved so often by the picture records
discovered in the buried cities; droves of coolie
women all but lost to view under loose enormous
bundles of twigs and desert grass roots that are
carried in for fuel; lordly turbaned Moslem elders
looking very important in black flowing robes; red-
fezzed Jews in misfit Etu*opean clothing; handsome
Persians in high white lambs-wool caps and long
silken coats of many colors; slaves — slave women
and slave men from East Africa, black as ebony
and with shifty eyes full of inquiry and resent-
ment; and Christians — Christian peoples .from the
north and Christians of ancient Chaldean stock who
are Arabian so far as costimie is concerned, but who
are imlike their Ishmaelitish brethren in that they
are as white as Germans, many of them, and have
eyes as blue.

We came at last to the old North Gate where the
New Street ends. The North Gate is a ragged
remnant of the ancient dty and has great heavy,
nail-studded doors, swung back. On either side
stands a British sentry, and they saluted us as we
passed by clicking their heels together and smartly
tapping the butts of the guns at the shoulders.

Out beyond the North Gate we came into a vast
expanse of nothing, in the yellow, sandy midst of
which stands the tremendous Turkish cavalry bar-
racks which is now Indian Stationary Hospital
No. 61, with a capacity of more than thirteen
hundred beds.

It was our intention to drive round the city on
the outer embankment of the dry moat which

304

ROUND ABOUT TOWN

skirts what was once the Wall, and this we pro-
ceeded very bmnpily and uncomfortably to do,

Baghdad had a wali once upon a time who con-
ceived for some reason the noble idea of destroying
the old Wall, filling in the moat, and turning it all
into one grand boulevard.

A (Jermanly inclined critic would be likely to say.
And were the Germans responsible for that? No,
probably not. Else it would not have been done
in such a delightfully human and haphazard fashion.
It was a laudable plan, perhaps, but it was carried
out with customary Tiu-kish leisureliness and graft
and in the result one sees much more of the pre-
liminary destruction than of the intended subse-
quent improvement.

The road we traveled was indescribably awful,
and the comment of the A. D. C. — ^jerked out rather
comically between bumps — ^was to the effect that
it was "no — kind — o — ^va road — over which to
ta — ^ka lady — ^j — oy-riding!*'

But I assured him it was quite all right because
the view was per — ^f ectly su — ^p — erb !

Looking westward through the afternoon haze
toward the palm-fringed Tigris, the City of the
Kaliphs seemed to be almost all that one might
want it to be. Its domes and minarets are covered
with bright-colored tiles or mosaics, and, viewed
at dose range, they look rather tawdry. But from
out there in the desert one saw the grace of them,
and their colors seemed to blend into a radiant glow.

We rolled, rocked, bumped, and teetered down
off the fearful moat road and came into a vast
Mohammedan burial-ground in the midst of which
stands the mosque-like tomb of the Kaliph Omar.

805

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

Then we plunged up again and on to the one-time
East Gate of the city, through which a succession
of conquerors have marched in triumph into
Baghdad.

It seems a great pity that the Turks did not
realize General Maude's intention. He came up
to the city on a river boat, entered it with a min-
imum of pomp and spectacle, and marched his
troops by the shortest and easiest route on to the
northward in pursuit of the retreating enemy. If
the Turks had known he would do this, the inter-
esting ancient gate of the conquerors might have
been spared. There is a tradition that whoever
marches through this gate victorious in arms es-
tablishes a lasting rule in Mesopotamia, so before
they left the Turks added considerably to its de-
struction and filled in the remaining fragment of
its beautiful arch with a solid block of masonry.
They probably thought General Maude knew about
this tradition and expected him to take advantage
of it, and they were taking no chances on the es-
tablishment of permanent British rule.

A short distance outside the South Gate, at the
edge of a desert that stretches away in utter
emptiness to the eastern horizon, we came upon
two very small, very snug, very curious foreign
cemeteries. They lie dose together, but they are
definitely apart. Each is surrounded by its own
high mud wall and each is shaded by a few tall
dusty palms and low feathery tamarisk-trees. One
is British. The other is German.

One is British; a British cemetery of peaceful
days when Britons lived and died in such far places
as Baghdad in the pursuit of diplomacy, commerce,

806

ROUND ABOUT TOWN

scientific research, or the mere idle delights of
wanderlust. Wonderful German word!

The other is German; a German cemetery of
peaceful days when Germans lived and died in such
far places as Baghdad in the pursuit of the German
variety of diplomacy, of commerce and scientific
research, and of the almost never mere idle delights
of wanderlust^ as we have learned, to our astonish-
ment and sorrow.

In the German cemetery they buried Von der
Goltz Pasha. But his body was subsequently ex-
humed and sent back to Germany, where one
imagines that the Pasha of his Turkish honor and
glory will not be too conspicuously displayed upon
his tomb. Since he was a German, I have only a
vague idea why one should imagine this, but it
is said that the Turks loathed him with a mighty
loathing, and nobody pretends to believe that he
died a natural death.

Five or six hundred — 1 don't know the exact
number — of the men who went into captivity with
Greneral Townshend died when they reached Bagh-
dad, and are buried in a palm-grove on the other
side of the river. They were not given graves;
they were merely put away under leveled groimd,
the location of which the British might never have
learned had it not been for some Arabs who helped
to bury them and some sisters in a French convent
who b^ged and obtained permission to nurse them
when they were dying.

For this devoted service the British government
has conferred upon these sisters a war decoration
of a high order; and they are greatly beloved in
Baghdad. They are just a small company of

807

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

humble little nuns, but they are French, and who can
tell what they must have suflFered during the thirty-
two months of Turkish and German domination!

When the British learned where the Kut prison-
ers were biu-ied a number of them wanted to have
the bodies taken up and reburied with all the honors
of war in the new military cemetery outside the
North Gate. But General Maude said no. He
was strongly opposed to any such course and
positively refused to sanction it.

"Poor fellows," he said, "let them lie where they
are. It is their own spot and nothing we could
possibly do would add anything to the honor that
is already theirs. Some day we will make a little
park of their burial-ground and give them a monu-
ment — ^all their own. That would be better, much
better than to distiu-b them now."

And at once everybody agreed with him.

We had driven all round the city and came at last
to the south entrance, which leads into the wide,
but altogether hideous, New Street. This was the
entrance through which a small detachment of the
conquering British army marched on the 11th of
March, 1917.

We passed our own house, which stood not far
from where the vast reaches of the desert leave off
and the town begins, and went on again through
the maze of things — ^to the mosque of Abdul
Gilahin Quadhir.

We went to the mosque of Abdul Gilahin Quadhir
for no purpose, I thought, but to convince our-
selves of the uselessness of doing so, though I
did catch tantalizing glimpses of a great inner

808

ROUND ABOUT TOWN

court, and of graceful fountains round which many
of the faithful were engaged in devout ablutions.

No "infidel** — ^it does seem strange to be classed
as an infidel — ^is allowed to enter a mosque in
Baghdad, or in any other holy Mohammedan town.
And so scrupulously is this Moslem principle re-
spected by the British that they post Mohammedan
Indian sentries outside all mosque entrances in
order to discourage any Tommy who, in a moment
of exuberance, might be tempted to break in for a
peep at the so carefidly guarded mysteries. They
say the British soldiers have some to-do to restrain
themselves. If the mosques were wide open and
free to any one who might wish to enter, they would
be no temptation at all. But — ^forbidden ground!

And one day a Tommy actually did get into this
most sacred of all the sacred mosques of Baghdad —
the mosque of Abdul Gilahin Quadhir. He went
in disguised as an Arab, with ahahy kufiyehy sandals,
and everything. But his disguise was not perfect
in all its details — one can imagine a young Britisher
trying to act like an Arab ! — ^and he was seized and
dealt with very severely. It is a wonder he escaped
with his life. Then he was imprisoned for disre-
garding regulations and was afterward sent out of
the country in disgrace, while the British officers —
hiding smiles, perhaps — offered gracious apologies
to the Moslem elders, who were graciously pleased
to accept them.

No story I think better illustrates the methods
and the success of the British with subject peoples
whose faiths are different from their own. And no
story serves better to emphasize why with peoples
of alien beliefs the British are always a success.

21 309

CHAPTER XXn

WHENCE HARUN-AIi-RASHID STROLLED

THERE is not much in Baghdad to remind one
of the grandeur and the greatness of its past,
but when I walked lingeringly under the lofty
arched gateway of the Citadel one morning I quite
felt that I was stepping out of the grinding and
grueling Now into the restfulness of the finished
ages. But the first thing I saw was a recently
captured Krupp gun standing out on Harun-al-
Rashid's parade-ground; so I came straight back
to Now.

There is an old bronze cannon just outside the
portal that has been there for no telling how many
generations, and though it would be a wonderful
prize to set up on a British greensward somewhere,
it is perfectly safe where it is because to take it
away would be to rob the women and children.
I don't know how or when it acquired its wizard's
power, but it possesses such power, and no man
child is bom within reach of it who is not brought
by his mother and held for a moment in front of its
muzzle while she mutters the incantation which,
by the gun's magic virtue, puts upon him a spell
of human excellence.

I was comparing this delicately decorated in-

810

WHENCE HARUNAL-RASHID STROLLED

strument of the polite warfare of a better age with
the shining, black, business-like and murderous-
looking Krupp when the commandant came hurry-
ing out of a cavern of early-world wickedness to
welcome me.

It must have been a cavern of wickedness. It is
impossible to imagine its walls echoing anything
but the moans of the tortured and the sibilant
whispers of sin.

The conunandant took me at once to see what
had been detaining him. We walked through a
low door in a massive ruined waU, went down some
crumbling steps, and came into a long, perfectly
preserved, gray baked-brick corridor that could
not have been more than five feet wide and was
certainly not less than forty feet high. And it was
wonderfully vaulted overhead. It was a passage-
way of some sort in the ancient palace of the
Kaiiphs.

Along one side of it there were numerous open-
ings in a wall about four feet thick which led into
the deepest dungeons that imagination could
picture. And it was in the dungeons that the
commandant was interested.

In them the Turks had stored a tremendous
quantity of lead in long round bars that were ricked
in even rows running away into the depths of the
gloom farther than one's eyes could penetrate.

That they should have attempted to destroy
such indestructible material is rather amusing;
but they did, and in doing so they at least gave
the British some extra and arduous labor. Most
of it escaped and was being moved out and stacked
in a courtyard to await the process which would

Sll

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

convert it into bars bearing the stamp of the
British supply department. But in some of the
dungeons the fires the Turks started continued to
bmn untU the metal was melted down into solid
masses. And now these masses were being attacked
with picks and drills and the lead was coming out
in great, ragged, shining chunks. I thought it was
the most interesting bit of mining I had ever seen.

Outside, in the lee of a wall that was built about
the year 800, a number of Britishers were feeding
rubbish and desert grass roots into a long, im-
provised brick furnace, over which were suspended
a half-dozen common-looking kettles fiUed with
molten lead that bubbled and boiled, while a num-
ber of other men were engaged in pouring the
metal into molds stnmg in rows along the ancient
flagstones.

The Citadel is little else but a vast walled in-
closure now, but it once contained a number of
marvelous buildings, as the ruins of the palace of
the Kaliphs marvelously prove. And the walls
themselves are wonderful. They are about forty
feet across and consist within of great chambers that
stretch away city blocks in length, their vaulted
ceilings being upheld by mammoth pillared arches
of brick.

These magnificently built walls surround three
sides of the stronghold, and along the fourth flows
the broad, slow-moving Tigris, held within bounds
by a high embankment of time-pitted masonry
which, continuing upward in a splendid sweeping
curve, forms what was once the outer wall of the
palace and suggests scaling-ladders and all the Old-
World paraphernalia of war.

812

AT BAGHDAD

FORTY THOUSAriD TURKISH RlFLE-BARREld AT BAGHDAD

WHENCE HARUNAL-RASHID STROLLED

Li the inner wall chambers the Turks stored
modem munitions, and there was a fairly satisfac-
tory haul of shells of various caliber to go with
captiu<ed guns.

But the most precious prizes the British got with
Baghdad were the guns that were taken from
General Townshend at Ctesiphon and Kut. The
Tiu-ks did a few things to them and left them behind
in the Citadel. They tmmed out to be rubbish
more or less, but they meant more to the English-
men than all the other loot put together. One of
them was sent home to the King.

Then there was a great arsenal filled with small-
arms and small-arms ammunition, and behind this,
in what seems to have been the area of destruction
and where the British guns were found, was a stack
of about forty thousand rifle-barrels.

The rifles had been fed into a bonfire and all the
wood on them had been burned away, but the
barrels, lying in a huge haphazard heap against a
high wall, were at least interesting. They looked
to me like a mountainous pile of fire-blackened and
altogether useless giant reeds. A number of Arab
coolies were engaged in the task of sorting them
out as to sizes and styles, while inside many others
w;ere deftly sorting ammunition and putting things
to rights generally.

The Turks really attempted a wholesale destruc-
tion before they left, but either they were in too
much of a hurry or the construction of the old build-
ings is such as to defy even high explosives. They
planted dynamite in the pillars of the wall chambers
of the Citadel, but the only damage observable con-
sists of a few cracks and jagged holes.

913

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

Whether or not the dynamite traps that were
found in a number of buildings here and there
throughout the city were purposely left is not
known. It is charitably supposed that they were
all charges that had failed to explode* But they
greatly endangered the lives of hundreds of British
workmen, and it is merely providential that no
serious accidents have occurred.

When they were hastily remodeling and equip-
ping a certain industrial-school building for use as
an automobile-repair shop they came upon dyna-
mite planted in the flagstones of the floor — enough
to blow up the whole neighborhood. This was the
first discovery and you may be sure that thereafter
everybody worked warily in eicplorationis with pick
and shovel.

I was not sure I wanted to visit the prison. Its
sinister walls, seen across the wide parade-ground,
were enough to make me think to myself, ""Oh,
well, prisons are prisons/'

But the commandant seemed to be rather keen
about it. And besides, he had given nearly two-
thirds of the prisoners a half -day off from work on
a new road up the river in order that I might see
them. Moreover, the prison was in a part of the
palace of the Kaliphs and there was no other such
prison anywhere on earth.

So he said. But I always approach prisons with
my heart in my mouth. It is not fear. It is hor-
ror. The thought of a prison is quite enough to
restrain my criminal inclinations. Though maybe
criminal Arabs are not exactly people.

A heavy modem steel door hinged on an ancient

S14

WHENCE HARUNAL-RASHID STROLLED

six-foot wall swung open a few inches and we went
in. We were met by the warden — an Englishman
in Mesopotamia in civilian clothes ! — ^and were con-
ducted into an inner coiui; round three sides of
which the prisoners were standing in an uneven
stoop - shouldered row. They were barefooted,
clothed in heavy gray wool sack-like coats and
short trousers, and a majority of them wore leg-
chains. A more villainous-looking crew no writer
of lurid fiction ever pictm^d.

The warden barked a sharp conunand in Arabic
and they all dropped to their haunches. Another
command, and they spread their hands out, palms
up, in front of them.

Oflf in one comer by themselves were several very
respectable-looking citizens — ^Baghdadi Jews — ^in
their own voluminous and rather attractive gar-
ments, and as they obeyed the warden's order to
sit down and hold out their hands they looked
like nothing so much as a lot of long-black- whiskered
bad boys doing a ridiculous kind of penance.

"What are the otherwise dignified gentlemen in
for?" I asked.

"For not paying their debts to the government,**
was the rather startling answer.

In the good old Turkish days government was
not such a positive quantity as it is now, and it
was not nearly so regularly conducted. Such a
creature as a tax-collector who could not be in-
duced for a consideration to underestimate property
values and to overlook many of a man's belongings
did not exist. In fact there was no fixed system of
assessment. A Turkish collector paid into the
coffers of the state the amount decided upon as his

315

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

district's quota; he collected as he could from the
taxpayers, and kept the margin of personal gain
sufficiently wide to make his job attractive.

The British changed all that. They inst'tuted
a system of equitable assessment on established
British lines, and the taxpayer now gets a notice to
betake himself to a certain place and pay a fixed
sum within a fixed period. Most persons are satis-
fied to accept this innovation because they see in it
a positive benefit. Moreover, they see that all
moneys collected, and vast siuns besides, are being
spent on public improvements. They have been
able to get along always without good roads, clean
streets, decent sanitary arrangements, and all
other modem necessities, but, once these are pro-
vided, they begin to appreciate the value of them.

But these respectable-looking old men in dur-
ance vile were among the few who liked the old
way better and who refused to conform to the
new order of things. Their sentences were inde-
terminate in that they would jolly well have to
stay right where they were until they made up
their stubborn minds to "come across" and ac-
cept the responsibilities along with the privileges
of citizenship. The warden laughed and said they
spent hours sitting aroimd miunbling and grum-
bling about it and going over long colunms of
figures.

We went on round the court, into the immaculate
kitchens and into workrooms of various kinds —
tailor shops and carpenter sheds — ^and at every
door the warden spoke the guttiu*al, harsh-sounding
words that brought the prisoners upstanding with

palms out. I understood the wisdom pf this pr^

910

WHENCE HARUN-AL-BASHID STROLLED

caution when a man in the kitchen — ^a terrible
looking, black-browed brigand with bad-conduct
stripes on his chest — ^laid down a big meat-knife
in order to obey!

A deputy watched the inner court while we ex-
plored the cells that were once dungeons, but that
have been lighted and ventilated for the sake of the
British conscience; then we came down past a row
of large rooms with barred steel doors that open
into the court.

All round sat the awful band of criminals, watch-
ing every move we made, and as we passed one of
the barred doors a long arm reojched out and a bony
hand clutched at mel

I am not trying to be melodramatic, but I never
felt a more unpleasant thriU in my life. Behind
the barred door were seventeen men, and they had
ranged themselves in a line, all leaning suppliantly
forward, while he of the long arm and bony hand
pressed against the bars and whined a petition in
which I could catch but one word — ** Mem-sahibl*^

He was addressing me.

The warden and the commandant stopped and

listened. And I should like to remark in passing

that the British always seem to have good men who

can speak the languages of the tribes they have to

deal with. They showed no signs of impatience or

anger. They merely listened.

What does he say?" I asked.

He says they all want justice, and only justice;

that they can get no hearing; and that if you, who

are the only lady ever seen within these walls, will

appeal for justice for them, they know their cases

lyill b^ t^k^n up and that they will be ^i liberty

917

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

shortly to return to their families." The warden
spoke in a commonplace singsong, as a man does
in translating offhand.

"Who are they?'* I asked.

**A11 men condemned to death."

**But they have been tried in the usual way, have
they not?"

"Certainly!"

"What were their crimes?"

"Murder mostly — ^though a few of them were
caught giving information to the enemy."

"Then what can they hope to gain by such an
appeal?"

"Oh, nothing. It is Arab habit to make appeals.
We leave them practically outdoors, as you see, and
put them under very little restraint of any kind.
And everything they do teaches us something about
the breed. We really want to know as much about
them as we can. It simplifies the task of handling
them justly and rightly."

On the flat roof, overlooking the beautiful, palm-
shaded Tigris, they showed me the scaffold." It
was a double one, but rather antiquated, and they
dwelt at some length on the advantages of a new
one that was about to be substituted. Then we
had quite a conversation about capital punishment
in general, and to my surprise I found that my sup-
posedly case-hardened companions were quite sen-
timental about it. They hated it abominably.
But the warden thoiight that as long as it is re-
tained on the supposition that it discourages
criminal propensities it oiight to be made as un-
pleasant as possible. And he told about a Mo-
hammedan he had to hang once who announced

318

WHENCE HARUN-AL-RASHID STROLLED

from the scaffold that he did not mind in the leasts
because he had killed a Christian, he was dying
with his face to the east, and he was sure he would
go straight to Paradise.

"Whereupon/* said the warden, "so as not to
give his family and friends too much cause for re-
joicing, I readjusted him and turned his back to
the sunrise."

After that the Citadel was a good place to get
away from.

CHAPTER XXin

ACO^OSS AN AMAZING RIVER

THE senior A. D. C. and I started out one morn-
ing to explore the opposite bank. We sent
our automobile across early because the single pon-
toon bridge which spans the river opens at certain
homrs to let the boat traffic through and at other
times is likely to be closed to ordinary traffic for the
benefit of long military convoys. And to break a
military convoy for personal reasons is Offense
Number One in a war zone.

We crossed at om: leisure in the Army Com-
mander's laimch and, being privileged persons, went
cruising on the way through the maze of marvelous
things afloat which make of the Baghdad river-
front a scene of inexhaustible fascination.

First there is the pontoon bridge. Then there
are the goufas. A boat bridge of some description
has spanned the Tigris at Baghdad for ages, it be-
ing impossible, it seems, to build an ordinary bridge
across a river that has an annual rise of more than
twenty feet and that cuts up all kinds of didoes; but
the one now in service is a 1917 British model and
is not too thrillingly interesting after one has seen
some others — ^less substantial, perhaps, but far
more historic — ^farther down, where crossing and re-

820

ACROSS AN AMAZING RIVER

crossing the river under the withering fire of a deter-
mined enemy was so much a part of the British
experience "when Maude went north/'

The gouf as are wonderful ! I suppose I ought to
be reminded by them of something besides the
"three wise men of Gotham who went to sea in a
tub." But nobody else who has written about them
has ever thought of anything else in connection
with them, so why should I bother? For that is
exactly what they remind one of. They are per-
fectly round reed baskets, "pitched within and
without with pitch.'* They have curved-in brims
and look for all the world like enormous black
bowls floating imcertainly about. They are the
only kind of rowboat the Baghdad people seem to
know anything about, and the river at times is
literally crowded with them.

They roll round among the larger and more
possible-looking craft like a thousand huge, in-
verted tar bubbles. And the way they are laden
is a marvel and a mystery. Many of them ply
back and forth as ferry-boats, and it is not at all
unusual to see one of them carrying two donkeys,
half a dozen sheep, a dozen people, and somebody's
entire stock of earthly belongings in bundles and
bales. But they are most pleasing to the eye when
they are carrying reeds from the marshes up-river.

The reeds are cut with their feathery blooms
still on and are packed in a gouf a in upright sheaves,
the effect being a gigantic imitation of a Scotch
thistle, out of the top of which may protrude the
turbaned head and brightly hooded shoulders of an
Arab passenger. The men who propel the amazing
craft squeeze themselves in under its curving brim

381

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

and wield long paddles and poles with surpassing
skiU.

Then there are the mahaylas. On the way up-
river one sees hundreds of these great, high-huUed
cargo-boats, and they creak along under sail or are
towed by long lines of men who, with bent backs
and a steady, trudging stride, labor along a path
on the shelving bank and manage to make of them-
selves such pictures as one sees on ancient pottery —
pottery found in the graves of men who died
thousands of years ago.

When St. Paul was shipwrecked in the Mgean
Sea the chronicler of the incident wrote that "fear-
ing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they
cast four anchors out of the stem and wished for
the day."

The I. G. C. liked to refer to this. And he had
read somewhere that because anchoring by the
stem is against all nautical procedure, this passage
engaged the earnest attention of the wise men who
made the King James version of the Bible, and
that there was much discussion about it.

The wording of it was regarded as either a mis-
take in the original translation or a slip of the pen
on the part of the writer. But the subject, having
been referred in all solemnity to certain savants
of the East, was immediately dropped when it was
learned that even then there were many ships
plying up and down the Mgesjx coast and on the
inland waters of the ancient and unchanging world
behind it that were identical as to bow and stem
and could anchor either way.

For an exciting experience I can recommend a
spin in a glisseur through a waterway crowded with

ACROSS AN AMAZING RIVER

this kind of slow-moving, cumbersome traflSc. The
glisseur — wonderfully descriptive French word! —
and the goufa — ^also descriptive if you get a suf-
ficient oof in it! — are the antitheses of things afloat,
the glisseur being a flat-bottomed siu^ace-skimmer
with a powerful engine which drives a great wind
wheel at the stem. The impertinent, dangerous
thing makes from thirty to forty-five miles an hour
and more noise than anything else that moves.

I went in a glisseur one day to visit the veterinary
hospital about five miles down the river, and when
I pulled up at the bank at the end of about ten
breathless minutes I found the commandant wait-
ing for me. He said that he was sitting in his
office and had heard me start. And that is how
fast and how noisy a glisseur is.

Besides the glisseurs and goufas, mahaylas and
dhows innumerable, there are the monitors and tiny
"'fly-boats'' crouching like terriers of war against
either bank.

All these carry anti-aircraft guns, and when
"Fritz comes over" on a bombing-party — ^all Turk-
ish flying men are German — ^they get busy and
make a noise out of all proportion to their size.
They have never hurt any Fritzes in the air that
anybody knows about, but they bark well.

The A. D. C. and I climbed ashore up the steep
clay bank opposite G. H. Q. and found our motor-
car waiting for us, our soldier chauffeur having just
begun to worry himself with the thought that he had
probably misunderstood his orders and gone to the
wrong landing.

But he had not. I selected that landing myself.

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

It was near the terminal station of the Berlin-
to-Baghdad Railroad, and I was interested in that.
This unpreeedentedly historic railroad, having
been completed by the Germans between Samaira
and Baghdad, is now the main line of communica-
tion with the principal British front in Mesopo-
tamia, and its business end is there at the Baghdad
terminal, where acres of sidings and sheds, long
lines of freight-cars, many shunting engines, and
hundreds of laborers coming and going in the
methodical process of handling supplies, combine
to form a picture which could hardly be expected
to please any German.

And from the terminal of the Berlin-to-Baghdad
Railroad to the tomb of Zobeide, favorite wife of
Harun-al-Rashid !

One's thoughts travel a rapid zigzag course from
age to age in this wonderful land ! Though in con-
nection with the little that is left of old Baghdad it
is very difficult to separate fact from the fascinat-
ing fictions that abide in such delightfuUy hazy
outlines in one's memory.

Zobeide, however, was real enough and one is told
that her almost perfectly preserved tomb is au-
thentic. It is like a gigantic yellow pine cone and
it stands at the far end of a great Mohammedan
cemetery that sprawls, a waste of ill-kept mud-
brick mounds, along the desert roadway that leads
to Kazhi-main.

After skirting the cemetery, this road runs into
the queerest little highway on earth — ^a highway
which follows the River Tigris, is lined on either side
with date-palms and dusty ragged gardens, and is

ACROSS AN AMAZING RIVER

distinguished foe possessing the only street-car
track in the country. The track is twenty-seven
inches wide and the cars are narrow, two-storied
structmres unlike anything else that ever ran on
wheels.

The cars are always crowded inside and out with
a motley throng of pilgrims to and from the sacred-
ness of the ancient mosque, and each of them is
pulled rattlingly and recklessly along the toy track
by two hot, disgusted-looking, knock-kneed dwarf
horses that lean against each other in utter dejec-
tion every time they are told to stop, and whinny
about what an awful place the hell for horses is and
about how they wish they had been good before
they died in a better world than this.

I wondered if those I met on the way knew that
they were serving nobody but the faithful and that
their heavy loads of chattering humanity had
cleansed themselves at holy fountains and had
prostrated themselves in prayer for their own
souls? Foolish mental meanderings perhaps.

Kazhi-main — ^the beautiful shining thing one sees
from far down the river — contains the tombs of two
Imams and is the most sacred mosque in or near
Baghdad. It is only recently that Christians have
been permitted to approach even within sight of
its outer gate, but its outer gate, decorated in
brilliantly colored Persian mosaic patterns, is
worth going far to see.

Its great round dome and lofty minarets are
magnificently proportioned and balanced, the
minarets being faced with Persian mosaics,
while the dome is overlaid with gold leaf that
glistens marvelously in the sunlight.

22 »25

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

But around it has grown up a town that for
dirtmess and dinginess and narrowness of ar-
caded streets is the worst place perhaps in all
Mesopotamia.

On the way back we encountered a long military
convoy lumbering down toward the bridge head
through a narrow lane between the high mud walls
of date-gardens, and we saw at once that we were
due to be held up there in the fine fluffy dust for
two hours or more. The convoy was using the
bridge and it consisted of a great many heavy guns
and caissons, only a certain number of which could
be sent across at one time.

Dear me! What a hopeless prospect! And it
was withm fifteen minutes of luncheon-time. But
to break a convoy? . • •

Once more the fact that there was only one of
me and that it was therefore impossible for me to
create precedents stood me in good stead. The
convoy was broken and we were let in between two
big guns.

Crossing the waving and teetering pontoon bridge
would have been ordinarily quite sufficiently inter-
esting; under such circumstances it became posi-
tively thrilling, and all that was lacking to make me
feel like part of a victorious army entering a capt-
ured city was the sound of the guns of a retreating
enemy.

ROADWAY THROUGH

CHAPTER XXIV

RIGHTEOUS MEN AND SONS OF INIQUITY

THE junior A. D. C. and I went one afternoon
for a browse in the bazaars. I was interested
in carpets. I wanted to find a really-truly old
historic rug of a vintage that would be mellowed
and hallowed by time. Not for myself, of course,
but for a friend who can afford such things and who
had asked me to find for him in Baghdad — ^if I ever
got to Baghdad — ^a treasure of a rug to add to his
already priceless collection.

"We'd better go round and see Colonel Dick-
son,'' said the A. D. C. "He knows all about
where everything is.**

So we made our way out through the winding
maze of narrow passages to where our car was
waiting at the head of New Street, and pretty soon,
on a byway that sloped down to the river-bank,
we were stopping before the entrance to a long
underground corridor dark as midnight.

But there was a perfectly good Britisher in
khaki waiting with a lantern to conduct us through
the gloom, and I wouldn't hesitate to go anywhere
with one such leading the way. And the corridor
was not underground, after all. It was only under
the buildings. And it led at last up into a lovely

807

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

garden — ^a really lovely garden, with arbors and
vines and fresh-lookiii^ palm-trees, and flaming
hibiscus against mellow brick ^alls. Along two
sides of the garden was a weird kind of house,
picturesquely tumble-down and with a wide, railed
balcony running all round it and on out to the river
wall.

And that was where G)lonel Dickson lived.
Colonel Dickson being Director of Local Resources
— ^which aren't! Or which weTen% at least. He
really should be called Discoverer and Developer
of Local Resources — ^the D. D. L. R.

Colonel Dickson is a South-African — ^a man of
laige and important affairs — and he happened to
be in London when the war b^an. As he tells it
himself, he divested himself with a single gesture
of all incumbrances, then ran hot-foot to the War
Office and at the heads of the powers that were
hurled an offer of his utmost services. To keep
him quiet they permitted him for the first year or
so to help along the job of getting mules and other
btu*densome but necessary beasts of burden into
France. Then they shanghaied him on board a
troop-ship and landed him in Mesopot, where they
put him in charge of the job of rounding up the
plentiful lack of local products.

The lack was quite complete, in fact; but never
mind — ^men from South Africa are able to show the
world how to do almost anything. Colonel Dick-
son was convinced that the British army was set-
tled in Mesopotamia for a prolonged occupation; he
had no illusions whatever with regard to the dura-
tion of the war; and nobody could tell him that the
country could not be made to support itself.

328

RIGHTEOUS MEN AND SONS OF INIQUITY

He went at once into rather extensive schemes
of irrigation, and by way of samples of the possi-
bilities he soon had a dairy-farm in operation and
a few broad acres of one-time desert bright with
the luscious green of waving alfalfa.

He organized the native producers and instituted
the process of inducing them to work for a little
more than their daily bread* He persuaded them
to put into grain every acre that would produce
grain and encouraged them with vivid prophecies
of a vast prosperity. And when I ihet him he was
about to start a great poultry-farm at Hilldi, hard
by Babylon, where the chidcens would be under
military discipline imposed by an army officer with
the rank of captain — ^no less.

*^ There's only one rug in Baghdad of the kind
you are after/* he said, **and the pleasing little price
of it is three hundred pounds. George, get out of
here! If you jump on my desk again 1*11 pull
out your tail-feathers! George! He thinks he's
a dainty little ornament, but he's a regular devas-
tation!"

"George" being a magnificent peacock with the
manners of a spoiled and inquisitive child. It was
George's tea-time and it was his habit to get his
tea off the Colonel's desk.

"And where is this three-hundred-pound treasure
to be found?" I asked.

"A little hunchback Persian Jew down in the
bazaar owns . . . Look here, (Jeorge, if you don't
get out of here I'll get the fly-paper."

George turned and stalked majestically toward
the open door, while the Colonel leaned back in his
swivel chair and laughed.

889

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

" That gets lim !" he said, " Wonderful the way
that bird has learned English. But you can't in-
duce him to acknowledge that he knows a syllable
of German.

'^I foimd him here when we took Baghdad. I
came in with Greneral Maude, and, in looking round
for a place to live, I chanced on this. Rather nice,
eh? It was absolutely deserted. Nobody around
but George. He was stalking up and down the
garden, and I said, 'Why, good-morning, George!'
and he said, * Good-morning.' And that was how
it began. My only objection to George is that, like
a lot of people I know, he has friendship defined as
something to turn solely to his own profit.

"About the fly-paper. One of the servants put
a lot of the stuff out along the balcony rail one
day and George jumped up and got caught in it.
It took us half a d^y to get near him, and when
we did he was ready to surrender. He certainly
was a pitiful, heartbroken mess, and he's never
forgotten it."

"How did the little himchback come by the
grand rug?" I asked.

"Stole it, probably. He says it was found in
Kermanshah and that it was pawned there by a
Persian princess who needed the money. It was
one hundred and fifty years in the palace of the
Shah at Teheran. At least that's what he says.
In any case, it's a rare old carpet and it's the only
thing in Baghdad worth carrying home."

He sent with us his own Arab factotxun — ^a man
he described as "a jewel of honesty and intelli-
gence " — and as we made our way back through

the long dark corridor I heard him calling:

sso

RIGHTEOUS MEN AND SONS OF INIQUITY

'^Hussein! I say! Hussein!"
'^Colonel sahib!'' came the answer.

Bring Geoige's tea!" ,

We came finally up against a flat, windowless
house-front under the somber low vaulting of an
arcade, and crept through a narrow broken-down
doorway which led into a small court paved with
unevenly laid and crumbling sun-dried bricks. This
court was open at the top, while round two sides of
it, half-way up, ran a railed balcony. The balcony,
the walls, and the banister of the rickety stairway
were hung with "antique carpets.'* That was
what they were called on the little placards that
were pinned to them, but a cheaper, more tawdry,
more unsightly collection could hardly be imagined.

We climbed to the balcony and went into a dingy
little room the walls and shelves of which were
decorated with a lot of antique junk in the ham-
mered-copper line — ^pelican coflfee-pots, trays, water-
jugs, and vases — and there we were met by two
men. One was the hunchback — ^an unmistakable
Persian Jew — ^and the other was a smug person
wearing a fez and a gray frock-coat of approximate
European cut.

The "jewel of honesty and intelligence" com-
municated the information that we were there to
see the three-hundred-poimd carpet and I rather
expected to be bowed to very low and to have it
trotted right out for me.

Not at all. One would have thought they had
customers in looking for three-hundred-poimd car-
pets every few minutes, and they made a to-do as
though they had mislaid it or didn't know which

881

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

one I meant, or something. One rug after another
was brought out and spread on the slowly accu-
mulating pile on the floor, and time after time I
asked, "How much?" only to get in reply the most
abstu*d attempts at unintelligent hold-up that I
had ever encountered, and I am rather familiar
with Oriental contempt for Occidental judgment.

"I could buy any rug weVe seen from any New
York dealer for a quarter less,'' I said, "and the
New York dealer would have to be counting in
duty and transportation charges/'

"Yes," said the A. D. C, "but think of the
romance of buying it in Baghdad, imd at a time
like this ! That's what these fellows take into con-
sideration. They know our sentimentalities bet-
ter than we know them ourselves."

At last the three-himdred-pounder was brought
out. Fifteen himdred dollars! Four thousand
five hundred rupees I

I was ready to be thrilled — expected to be up-
lifted by the magic spell of divine art; tempted by
the beauty of the thing almost beyond my power
to remember that fifteen himdred dollars is a good
deal of another person's money to spend.

I was so safe that it is absurd to write about it.

If I owned the rug I should put it away some-
where in a safe-deposit vault where I could boast
about it without ever having to look at it. I
believe absolutely that the princess pawned it, but
I think she did it because she was shut up in a
harem with it and just couldn't stand it another
minute. Also I think it remains on the hands
of the little himchback — offspring of generations of
scoundrels who staged its entrance for me with

S82

RIGHTEOUS MEN AND SONS OP INIQUITY

such dramatic skill — ^because no dealer would ever
take a chance on it. It was ancient, right enough;
but it was the ugly duckling in the Persian-rug
family, and it had in it a combination of salmon
pinks and sickly yellows — ^all fine old v^etable dyes
— ^that would spoil the appetite of an anaconda.

The only other things to be found in the bazaars
besides carpets and hammered-copper vessels were
Persian lambskins and abahs.

The abah, draping the head and shoulders of an
Arab woman, is a colorful and rather wonderful
garment* But British army officers buy abahs for
their beloved women at home with an idea that
they will make ^^magnificent opera-doaks." The
best of them cost more nowadays than the finest
French brocade in the same quantity would cost,
and, being rather bizarrely patterned with threads
of gold, they look tawdry. The material might
yield to the prayerful efforts of an Occidental artist
in the dothes-building line, but I doubt it. For
myself, I should always fed that everybody was
staring at me and saying:

''What on earth has that woman got on!"

I coiild have stood for hours on end at a cross-
ways in the depths of the bazaars to watch the end-
less procession and to listen to the weird sounds by
which one's ears are constantly assailed. The
widest street is hardly more than ten feet across,
and in the softly stepping sandaled throngs that
come and go there is every type of Oriental face
that one could possibly imagine and every kind of
brightly embroidered and full-flowing costume that

Arabian dreams could conceive. Nor would a pict-

sss

THE WAE IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

lire of the bazaars be complete if one f oigot to
mention the long strings of camels and donkeys —
the donkeys quick-stepping along under unbdiev-
able bui^ens, the camels moving sedately with
supercilious noses sniffing the air above the heads
of the people.

The Turk, of course, is conspicuously absent;
but one has suspicions that many a plausible-
looking **Arab'* lives in dread of the possible ordeal
of being ^' scratched'^ by the British authorities.
To scratch an Arab and find a Turk would in
ordinary times be most unusual, but the times have
developed the useful art of camouflage.

On my second day in Baghdad the Army Com-
mander asked me if I had taken the cholera inocu-
lation. I had not.

"You wouldn't mind doing it, would you?**

"Not at aU.**

"Then we'll have a little party after dinner this
evening,*' he said. "I'll have a doctor come in
about nine o'clock."

As on the first evening, there was quite a laige
party of officers at dinner, and at half past nine I
was called out of the drawing-room and conducted
to a small alcove where a medical officer was wait-
ing. He attended to me in a very few moments,
and afterward, as though it were a rather amusing
performance, General Maude insisted on having
everybody else inoculated. Everybody but Gen-
eral Maude. He never would take it himself,
though his physician had been urging it upon him
for a year. His curiously unreasonable excuse was
that it would be a waste of serum because no man
of his age ever got cholera!

884

RIGHTEOUS MEN AND SONS OF INIQUITY

There was very little cholera in Baghdad, and it
had never appeared in a particularly virulent form,
but, lest an epidemic might devdop, every pos-
sible measure was being taken to stamp it out.
There were a few cases in an isolation hospital out-
side the walls, and a quarantine camp for suspects
had been established a mile or so down the river.

Nobody thought much about it, but at the same
time every precaution was taken with r^ard to
food, the supplies that came on the Army Com-
mander's table being subjected to special and most
careful supervision.

He might have told the doctors that he was too
well taken care of to require a cholera inocidation.

CHAPTER XXV

A UNIQUB S2NTERTAINME3n?

AT dinner one evening we were discussing^ as
^ usualy my program for the next day, and
General Maude said to me:

"How would you like to see * Hamlet* played
in Arabic by Children of Israel who are direct
descendants of the left-overs from the Babylonian
captivity?"

I thought it was some kind of complicated jest
and answered guardedly, saying something about
the novelty of such a performance.

"Novel it may be/* said he, "but after about the
first roimd it's sure to be a beastly bore. In a weak
moment I promised to be present, however, so I
suppose I shall have to go. I always try to keep
my word. It's an entertainment being given by a
Jewish school to-morrow night and they've be^i
getting ready for it for weeks. Amateurs! And
^Hamlet,' qf all things! I'd like to have you go»
but not unless you think it would amuse you."

I assured him that however slightly I might be
amused I was boujid to be tremendously inter-
ested, and that I should like very much to go.
Then readily enough I fell in with a plot to get
away at the end of the first act in spite of any-

836

A UNIQUE ENTERTAINMENT

thing that might be done to detain us. Little we
knew . . •!

We left the house at half past eight. And it was
very cold. Not being an A. D. C, and having
nothing to fear from the big man, I protested against
his going out without an overcoat, but be only
laughed and refused to send back for one. Even
so he did not consider it necessary to pretend that
he was comfortable. He was cold and his legs
were too long for the automobile and the streets
were execrably rough, and, as I have said, he hated
automobiles, anyhow! He was very humorous
about it and we started off, laughing and gnmibling
with the utmost cheerfulness. It was a curious
mood for General Maude, and a delightful one.

He had no idea, really, where we were going, but
the A. D. C. had, and along the entire route through
the city the guard had been so strengthened that
we might have f oimd our way by following the line
of pickets. All the streets except the wide and
brightly lighted New Street were in semi-darkness,
but our side lights threw long rays into the narrow
passages, while behind us a car carrying guardsmen
had a search-light which seemed to fill the space
all roimd us with a curious glow. All along the
line one sentry after another — dick-dick-dick ! —
brought his heels together and his rifle to salute.
It was rather thrilling.

The ways were narrow and some of them lay
through the bazaars, the vaulting and walls of
which gave back to the soimds we made mysterious
whispering echoes. Many of the turns were so
sharp that we had to back and go forward and back
agam in order to get round them. And in all the

S37

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

dty there was not a sound to be heard except the
whir of our own engines, our own voices, and the
shuffle and click of sentries' salutes.

As we threaded our slow and jolting way through
the ever-changing shadows of the intricate byways
we began to discuss the city's lamentable lack of
architectural distinction and to express our respec-
tive opinions of the dreamers of dreams who are
able to repeople the mud-brick Baghdad of to-day
with the colorful figxu^s which move through the
tales of the Thousand Nights.

But what would you» imder just such drcum-
stancesy when suddenly your seai>ch-light falls upon
a Persian-blue-enameled minaret lifting itself in
alluring grace above a battlemented wall, and you
pass a wide-arched gateway with massive closed
gates of Lebanon cedar, barred with bands of
rusted iron and studded with square, time-pitted
nail-heads, which Harun-al-Rashid himself must
have looked upon? Yes, here and there are a few
suggestions left, we agreed. But not many.

We were finally halted before a brilliantly lighted
doorway in the narrowest street of them all, and
were met by a number of important-looking persons
in misfit European clothes and fezzes. They were
the head-master of the Jewish school and a dele-
gation of his confreres. They led us through the
crowds within the entrance and into the center of
the most extraordinary scene I have ever looked
upon.

I am sure General Maude had no idea about the
kind of '^show" it was to be, because, if he had
known, nothing on earth would have induced him
to go. He was modest to the point of timidity, and

838

A UNIQUE ENTERTAINMENT

if he had been told that in the r61e of a conquering
hero he was to meet all native Baghdad in a bright
white light he certainly would have managed at
that moment to be — somewhere else. . • •

The improvised theater was an open oblong court
surrounded by high balconied houses. The first
impression one got was of gaudily Oriental mag-
nificence. The walls were hung from the roofs to
the ground with Persian carpets, while stretching
from balcony to balcony were festoons of colored
lights and gay banners and pennants. The pave-
ment, too, was covered with rugs, while the stage,
at one end of the court, was built of them, a par-
ticularly beautiful one forming in wide folds a fine
proscenimn arch. Palms and plants completed the
decorations.

The audience, filling every inch of space, even to
the balconies and the surroimding windows, was
startlingly colorful. The middle of the court was
crowded with women in bright silk robes and abahsy
and our attention was caUed to the fact that they
were unveiled. That was extraordinary. It was the
first time high-class Baghdadi women had ever been
known to appear in a public place with uncovered
faces, and it was a subtle acknowledgement of the
trustworthiness of the British. That was what it
was intended to be.

"Under British rule,** said one man, "our women
need never be veiled."

The men in the audience — Jews, Persians, Arabs,
Kurds, Syrians, Chaldeans, and representatives of a
dozen Eastern races, were all in their finest and most
elaborate garments, and there was a variety in

880

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

liead-dress — tarhouah, kuffiyehy turban, and Persian-
Iamb cap — ^positively bewildering.

When General Maude entered, this amazing
throng rose to its feet and cheered him loudly and
long, and I am sure that any one observing him at
the moment would have seen a look of pained as-
tonishment cross his face. They had erected a
little platform for him in the center of the first
row of seats directly in front of the stage. This
was covered with a beautiful Persian carpet and the
chair he had to occupy was draped with stiff
brocade. A lower and less pretentious chair had
been placed beside him for my benefit, and I sank
into it with a sense of helpless inability to escape
from a situation wherein I felt I was conspicuously
superfluous.

A good half -hour was wasted in preliminary
courtesies. One person after another came up and
greeted the General, and there were numerous in-
troductions. The chief rabbi of the city, a large,
black-bearded man in long silken robes and a
white-and-gold turban, took a seat below the other
end of the little platform and assisted in the cere-
monies, while the head-master, a typical Baghdad!
Jew with a French education and old-fashioned
French manners, hovered about and displayed his
pleasure in the occasion by much suave gesticula-
tion and many smiles. Then they brought a small
table and placed it before the Ajrmy Commander
and me, on which were two cups, a pot of coffee,
a bowl of sugar, and a jug of milk.

Before the recollection of that one must pause to
speculate and wonder. Yet one may speculate and
wonder for all time. What can any one ever

840

A UNIQUE ENTERTAINMENT

possibly know? As I write. General Maude lies
dead in a desert grave outside tlie old North Gate,
and the night he died they were saying boldly and
insistently in the bazaars that he was miuxiered!
He drank the coffee and he poured into it a large
quarvtUy of the cold raw milk. I drank the coffee,
too, but wvthovt milk.

When we looked at our programs we discovered
that "Hamlet'' was to be the eleventh number and
that among the ten other numbers — children's
dances and recitations, odes, choruses and solos —
was a French comedy in three acts. All in one
evening? Impossible! But, yes!

The first number was an address to General
Maude delivered in French by a little Jewish girl
who wore a white muslin frock and had a wreath
of pink paper roses round her hair.

She read the address from a piece of foolscap
paper which shook in her nervous little hand until
one could hear it rattle. It was a kind of eulogy
of the Big Chief and of Britons in general and was
full of references to Baghdad's great good fortune
in having come at last under honest and honorable
government. Perfectly sincere, too!

The words *'Mon General'* occurred with great
frequency, and every time the child pronoimced
them she thrust one foot forward and made a
sweeping gesture with her left arm. It was very
painful, but delightful in that it was so friendly,
and so kindly meant. At the end of practically
every paragraph the audience interrupted with vo-
ciferous applause.

Then came several choruses and dances done by

the smallest children in the school. Sweet little
23 »4i

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

tots they were, too, all done up in Frenchy frodcs
with many paper flowers pinned on them. They
did not know their lines in the least, but they were
so charmingly nonchalant about it that they man-
aged to be very amusing.

After they got through they were all brought
down by the head-master and presented to the
Army Commander, who took a huge delight in
shaking their baby hands and telling them what
fine little actresses they were. Then they were
permitted to do exactly as they liked and were not
restrained even when they wandered, in blissful
ujiconsdousness of wrongdoing, out on the stage
while the French comedy was in progress. They
got in the way of the grown-up actors and divided
with them the attention of the audience; but no-
body seemed to mind.

Altogether it was the most astonishiog perform-
ance I ever witnessed, and when one of the actors
who was supposed to remain seated throughout a
long act got suddenly excited and rose to his feet,
thereby disclosing the cramped figure of the
prompter curled up under his chair, I b^an to
realize that I was greatly amused as well as inter-
ested. Unimaginable setting for a colossal crime.
• • . Was it not? The General laughed with the
fullest enjoyment, and I think he did not realize
the lateness of the hour. He was always in his bed
by ten o'clock.

It was eleven o'clock when the comedy came to
an end; then he turned to me and said:

"I don't think we'd better stay for * Hamlet,*
do you?"

He made a motion to rise, but instantly the head-

A UNIQUE ENTERTAINMENT

master was upon him, urging him to stay for the
next nimiber, because it was to be a chorus sung in
Arabic that had been written specially for him.
So we stayed and were interested principally by
hearing the name "Sir Staneley Mod'* breaking a
way occasionally through a long barrage of high-
pitched and curiously syncopated sound made by
the motliest chorus that ever stood behind a row
of footlights. The members of the "Hamlet" cast
were all in evidence — ^Hamlet in buckled shoes and
a red-plmned hat, but otherwise black, and the
King with a gilded-paper crown. The Titania of
one of the dances detached herself and stood off
alone that she might shine more resplendently in
her silver-starred radiance.

After which we went home, wondering at and dis-
cussing the character of a people who could make
"Hamlet," in all its acts and all its scenes, the
eleventh item in an evening's entertainment.

We were told afterward that they finished at four
o'clock in the morning.

«i

CHAPTER XXVI

A day's end

COLONEL DICKSON was going down to
Hilleh with an armored and guarded convoy
to bring back some grain and to attend to some
details witb regard to his poultry-farm. Hilleh is
within a few miles of Babylon, and he saw no
reason why I should not be permitted to accompany
him. A suJ05cient party would take me on over to
Babylon and it would be a valuable experience for
all of us.

No reason at all why you shouldn't go !*' he said.

We'll be strong enough to meet any band of
Arabs that could possibly get together. You ask
the Army Commander if you may go."

"Not I!" I replied. "He told me I was not to go
to Babylon and he told me why, and so far as I
am concerned that's the end of it. I never could
pluck up courage enough to ask him again.'*

"Well, you leave it to me," said he.

And I was quite willing to do so. General Maude
was wonderfully good-natured; he had a specially
warm spot in his heart for the energetic Colonel,
and the Colonel was most persuasive. So I began
at once to regard a trip to Babylon as being among

344

A DAY'S END

the almost inevitable events of the immediate
futiue.

Colonel Dickson was giving a dinner-party that
night which was to be a most interesting event.
The Army Commander seldom dined anywhere
except in his own house, but he had accepted the
Colonel's invitation and it was rmnoied that great
preparations were going forward in the Colonel's
mess. I imagine that nobody who was present at
that dinner will ever forget it.

It was a most unusual occurrence for General
Maude to be late for luncheon. He was late that
day. We had waited about fifteen minutes, when
an orderly came in to say that we were to go ahead
without him. It cast a gloom upon us, though I
don't know why. I don't know why, unless it was
that we all enjoyed the limcheon-hour with him and
disliked having it broken into. There was always
very interesting talk.

About fifteen minutes later he came in by the
terrace entrance. He looked tired and drawn, but
I imagine nobody ever thought seriously of illness
in connection with him. He was so splendidly
stalwart. Even then he was in excellent spirits,
as he usually was, but he rather startled us with an
announcement that he was not going to have any
lunch.

"About once a month,*' he said, "I find it does
me good to go without food in the middle of the
day."

Then he leaned on the back of his chair and made
some characteristically humorous inquiries about

845

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

what I was doing and how I was getting on. I had
taken a glisseur that morning and had gone down-
river to see a large veterinary hospital in a pabn-
garden. I was full of enthusiasm about it» but I
felt, curiously, that something was wrong, so I
had little to say. He excused himself presently and
went down along the terrace to his room. And I
never saw him again. • • .

As soon as he had gone I remarked that he looked
very ill, but was assured that he was merely tired.
His military secretary. Colonel Williams, did say
that he "would soon be done for" if he didn't
give himself a short leave. He had not had a day's
leave since he took command of the army.

The story of the afternoon I got from others.
After a while, it seems, he sent for Colonel WiUcox»
the consulting physician to the Expeditionary
Force, and told him he was "feeling a bit cheap**
and needed something to brace him up. He was
sitting at his desk in his room, working. The
Colonel told him he looked like a man on the
ragged edge and that he must knock off everything
and go to bed.

"No," he said, "I can't do that; Fm dining with
Dickson."

He would not submit to any kind of examination
and merely reiterated that he was "feeling a bit
cheap."

The Colonel did what he could at the moment and
at seven o'clock he went in again to see him. He
was still sitting at his desk. Then the Colonel
literally ordered him to get his clothes off and get
into bed.

846

A DAY'S END

'"I will do nothing of the kind/' he said. '"I'm
going to Dickson's dinner."

Colonel WiUcox, being a member of Colonel
Dickson's mess» was to be in a measiure a joint
host at this party, and he finally took courage to
tell the General that if he insisted on going, he him-
self would get his dinner somewhere else.

"I will not sanction your presence there by sitting
down at table with you."

At that the General gave in and consented to
stay at home and go to bed. But first he wrote a
note to Colonel Dickson, a note that is now, of
coiu'se, among that officer's treasured possessions.
He railed at the doctor a bit, said he wanted very
much to be at the dinner, but was not allowed to
go, then added:

"Takecareof my guest. I know you will. And
don't talk to her about going to Babylon. She
must not go there and she quite understands."

When he laid down his pen his life's work was
over. He had signed his name for the last time.

I went to the dinner with the jujiior A. D. C,
and we had not been seated at table more than
ten minutes when an orderly came in with a mes-
sage for Colonel Willcox, who got up and left
inunediately

It was a splendid company of men and a most
interesting party. The Bed Cross band, stationed
at the far end of the balcony, played a rather
extraordinary program which the Colonel had had
printed. For the times and the place there was
an elaborate menu, and a yoxmg artist member of
the mess had drawn cartoons on the menu-cards,
each one of which struck very cleverly at some

347

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

characteristic of the guest for whom it was in-
tended. It was a jolly party and there was con-
siderable comment about the superior advantages
to be enjoyed by a Director of Local Resoinces.

He had exhausted the possibilities of local re-
sources to make the dinner a success. And he had
done it principally for the Army Commander. But
the Army Commander was — ^not there.

The A. D. C. and I drove up in front of our own

house about eleven o'clock. We were quite hap-

, pily discussing the party — ^a most imusual event in

Baghdad^ remember — and were laughing about

' things that had been said and done.

Colonel Williams came hurrying down the path
from the doorway to meet us, and there was a
sudden hush. The Army Commander, he said, was
very ill.

The younger A. D. C. — ^and very young — ^was
closer to his chief than any one else, loving him
devotedly.

"What is it?" he asked, presently.

"Cholera — ^in its most virulent form!*' said the
Colonel.

CHAPTER XXVn

THE LAST POST

BaUerie$ have iM the listening town this day

That through her ancient gate to his last resting-place

Maude has gone north.

CoLONSL Dickson.

WHEN the city learned next morning that the
Army Commander was seriously ill an all-
pervading hush descended upon it. I passed out of
the house of imminent danger — sent away by those
who wished to save me from a period of quarantine
— ^and went back aboard the S-1, which still lay at
anchor in the river. As I walked through the gar-
dens of General Headquarters on my way to the
boat landing I met groups of officers who were dis-
cussing the grim possibilities. The question they
were asking was:

"If he dies who will 'carry on*?*'

The solemnity of such a question can hardly be
realized by any one who is not familiar with the
quality of the influence exercised by an idolized
Army Commander m a theater of war. General
Maude had brought the Mesopotamian Expedi-
tionary Force out of chaos and had led it on to
Unqualified \ictory; his name was a name to con-
jure with. Nobody knew that better than the

349

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

enemy. He inspired the force with a happy con-
fidence which made itself felt throughout the whole
field of operations from the Persian Gulf to the
last lonely outpost on the far-flung circle of def ense»
and to have him removed was like shutting off the
current in a vast system of gloriously electric enter-
prise. The thought in most minds — ^a thought very
frequently expressed — ^was:

^' Could anything exceed the luck of tne
Germans!"

But, strangely enough and fortunately, no man
is indispensable. That afternoon they telegraphed
for Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Marshall, and he came
in from the eastern front.

The last time the Army Commander roused mm-
self at all was to say to his military secretary:

"Tell them I can't come to the office to-day.
They must just * carry ofCT*

The evening of the third day he died.

General MacMimn's A. D. C. and I had taken a
launch and had spent an hour or more plying up
and down the fascinating river into which the sun-
set colors melt so marvelously, but we did this for
no reason and to no purpose but to get rid of
lingering time and to escape for a little while the
necessity for merely waiting — ^waiting — ^with our
eyes fixed on the house a few yards away where
we knew the tremendous, hopeless fight was being
made. When we got back aboard the S-1 I foimd
my servant Ezekiel crouched in the doorway of my
cabin. His face was buried in his arms and he was
weeping.

350

THE LAST POST

*^0h, lady sahib! lady sahib! England's great
man!"

That was all . I thought it rather wonderful. He
had made friends with General Maude's Indian but-
ler and had had the freedom of the house all the time.

Early next morning the boom of minute gims
began to roll across the dty from one direction and
then another. The sim rose upon the British flag
half-masted in the midst of war.

The only other flag flying in Baghdad was the
American, and the banner of our love, floating from
its staff on the roof of our Consulate next to the
Army Commander's house, drooped its folds on a
level with the Union Jack. And I felt then, with a
thrill of pride, that the two stood prophetically
sentinel over the high destinies of hxunanity which
he who lay beneath them could no longer help to
direct. Together to-day, I thought, they pay
honor to the honored dead. Throughout the world
hereafter together they will "carry on" — equally
dean and lofty in purpose and principle; each
resplendent witii unconquerable power!

It was about midday that ''Fritz came across to
pay his respects." There had been so many gims
throughout the morning that I did not instantly
recognize the difference, but it took me only a
moment to realize that such a quick succession of
shots, and from every direction at once, could
never be intended as a salute for the dead. I was
sitting in my cabin on the S-1 and rushed out on
deck just in time to see him directly over G. H. Q.,
and flying fairly low.

S51

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

He passed over our helpless old boat and we had
a breathless moment wondering if he would drop
something on us. All the monitors and little
'^fly-boats" down along the banks were roaring at
him, but he got across all right, and we watched
him as long as he was in sight. He was flying west-
ward toward the Euphrates front, with every gun
in the vicinity blazing away at him, and with a
sufficient accuracy of range at least to ring him
about with feathery white smoke puffs of exploding
shells.

We wondered then if this untimely visit had any
special significance. Did the enemy know that the
Army Commander was dead? The news had been
flashed to the world and there was little reason to
hope that the German operators had not picked it
up. We only hoped that oiu" own operators had
not mentioned the name of the terrible disease that
killed him. If the Turks and Germans knew he
died of cholera it would be natural for them to
suppose that Baghdad was in the grip of a terrific
epidemic.

But no, the visit of Fritz had no special signifi-
cance. He had merely been over bombing the
eastern front. He had dropped a few bombs^on a
cavalry encampment and had done considerable
damage. But at the moment he could not figure
even as an incident. On the British side the
usually taut muscles of war were relaxed and the
only thought m any man's mind was of immediate
incalculable loss.

There was no suspicion then that (reneral Maude
had been murdered. At least no Englishman ex-

352

3
J

H
h

THE LAST POST

pressed such suspicion; though the native popula*
tion was abeady whispering the sinister gossip.

They asked me afterward, in their mere per-
plexity over the fact that he was stricken with the
disease in an unprecedentedly virulent form, what
he had taken at the entertainment at the Jewish
school. I told them. And then they thought they
knew. The disease developed within the right
period of hours after he alone drank that coffee
and that milk.

It is not true, as has been said, that the coffee
was a cup of particular ceremony and that he was
compelled by respect for custom to drink it. It was
placed before him as a usual and to-be-expected
courtesy. He could drink it or not, as he liked. He
was interested in the performance and in what was
going on aroimd him. He was smiling with genuine
pleasure upon the pretty girl babies of a city he
dominated for England with so kindly a feeling that
he would not have realized that it was domination.
I am sure he had no thought that night of enmity
or distrust. He drank his coffee with a free and
unthinking gesture, as he would have taken after-
dinner coffee in the house of a friend.

I make this explanation, which I believe to be
absolutely correct, because I have been asked so
often. Why — why did he do it?

Why? Because he was a gentleman and, as a
gentleman naturally would on such an occasion, he
had relaxed for the moment a necessarily rigid
\igilance.

I should like to say, too, that to me it seems very
strange that I should be writing all this. It was by
the merest chance that I was there — ^his guest when

853

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

he died — ^and through it all I felt, as I feel now,
curiously like an intruder upon the scene of a great
historic event with which, if there be an eternal
fitness of things, I could have no possible connection.

He was buried with spectacular simplicity.

A deep silence lay upon the town. The sti-eet
through which his body was carried to the North
Gate was banked on either side to the very roofs
with a dark-robed multitude of men and women
who seemed not to move at all and who spoke in
whispers.

Outside the walls, in the midst of illimitable
reaches of blank desolation, they have made a new
cemetery for British dead, and from the North
Gate a roadway is flung out to it in a wide curve
roxmd an area of pitted and city-disturbed desert.

This roadway was lined with Lidian troops,
standing at ease, when I passed through with the
American consul. We went on to the bleak, imbe-
lievable cemetery, in which there are always rows
upon rows of ready and waiting graves, and stood
with the representatives of all the divisions of the
army and all the services of war, beside the grave
that had been prepared for the Army Commander.

And from there we watched the"" slow approach
of the sad burden, draped in the folds of the Union
Jack and carried aloft from the North Gate on the
shoulders of men.

Li the stillness of the desert we could hear the
subdued commands of officers and the quiet, precise
salute — " Present ! Armsl" — ^rustling wave on wave,
rank by rank, down the long unbroken columns of
the honor guard.

854

THE LAST POST

Slowly, reverently, they lowered the coffin to the
trestle over the grave, then — ^a low, sweet monotone
of prayer floating out over the bowed heads of a
uniformed and war-accoutred throng — "dust to
dust" — ^the peace and grace of bur Lord Jesus
Christ for evermore — the last rifle volleys and,
finally, the reverberating blare of many trumpets
rolling out across the boimdless gray waste the
heart-chilling melody of the "Last Post."

It is a desert burial-ground far from the Home-
land. He lies in the circular center space that was
left as a site for a moniunent, and he will lie there
always — ^Maude of Baghdad. And over his grave
the monument will one day be raised — ^to him and
to his army that is with him.

CHAPTER XXVm

AND THEN

I CANNOT believe that any one took up again
the burden of "the day*s work" at that day*s
end without n sense of added burden. But, after
all, it was just that one more of England's men had
died. England's men would carry on.

Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Marshall, then corps
commander on the eastern front, was appointed to
succeed General Maude in full conunand of the
Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, and, because
of my own tremendous interest in all that has been
done and is being done in Mesopotamia, because I
had come to realize the importance of the Mesopo-
tamian zone in the great scheme of world-defense,
I was glad to be able to associate General Marshall
in my own mind with General Maude's expressed
opinion of him.

I was going out one day to have luncheon with
him at his field headquarters on the eastern front,
and to see what could be shown to me in his
sphere of operations — ^f orty miles or more across the
desert to the northeastward from Baghdad. The
evening before. General Maude was discussing with
me at dinner, as he always did, the details of the
plans that had been made for me.

AND THEN

"You are going to-morrow," he said, "to visit a
far better soldier than I am."

It was a startling remark, but if I had had any
impulse to make a banal response his perfect seri-
ousness would have checked it.

That is generous of you," I replied.
Generous? Not at all! Merely intelligent.
He's a splendid officer. Wish I were half as
capable. But this being an office man — ! I envy
him his service in the field. A man likes to be with
the troops, you know. When I was a division
commander I had my best days. Best I ever had
or ever will have. But don't you forget what I tell
you about General Marshall. He's a great soldier."

General Marshall assimied temporary command
while the big fight was being made for General
Maude's life. Then came the day when the drums
were muffled and the gims were made to speak
their measured, heart-chilling tribute to the dead,
but — ^it was as though the armies lost never a step.
General Marshall had taken up the burden.

The Army Commander's last order was:

"Carry on!"

An order to be obeyed!

After a few days I started back down the River
Tigris — ^a long journey; back past the historic
landmarks; past the looming Arch of Ctesiphon;
past old Kut of thrilling memories and new Kut
of the bright lights and the never-ending toil;
past the ghastly waste of Sunnaiyat; past Amara
with its acres of hospitals; past marching-posts at
the river's edge; through the vast silence of the
great desert where the tents of Bedouin encamp-

24 857

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

ments show black against the burning lights of
sunset; past the unending procession of boats
cantying supplies up-river to the far-away armies;
round the wonderful Devil's Elbow in the amazing
Narrows; past Ezra's tomb with its blue dome
lifted under a bending, caressing palm-tree; past
the un-Eden-like Garden of Eden; and so — once
more into the broad Shatt-el-Arab and back again
at the house on the Bund whare live the officers of
the Lines of Communication.

Then a trip up the Euphrates to the British
position at Nasriyeh, an expedition into the desert
to the moimded ruins of Ur of the Chaldees, and
the date came roimd which had been fixed in my
permit as the limit of my stay in the Land of the
Two Rivers.

But with characteristic generosity, and over
the heads of the omnipotent ponfers, the I. 6. C.
decided that I should have two days more in oiider
that I might witness the decoration of an Arabian
knight with the Grand Cross of the Most Eminent
Order of the Indian Empire.

This honor had been conferred upon His Excel-
lency the Sheikh of Muhajnmerah» and the cere-
mony of investiture was to take place at his river-
side palace down on the Shatt-el-Arab.

It does not seem fitting, does it, that Arab
chieftains should live in palaces? They should
dwell instead in the wilds of a wind-swept desert
under wide-spreading tents of camels' hair and
goatskin, hung within with priceless carpets and
the colorful fabrics of one's ideal East. But the
Arab chieftains are in many ways modem and

85S

AND THEN

^* forward-looking" men. Sir Khazal Khan, SheOdi
of Muhammerah, being the principal leader in the
Arab advance, under British direction, toward bet-
ter conceptions of life and civilization.

Even so, he has surrendered none of the ancient
usages of his people, nor has he suffered any reduc-
tion or modification of his Oriental picturesqueness.

Though in a measiu*e he has, come to think of it.
The public apartments of his great palace are
furnished for the most part with plush-upholstered
"parlor suites" and other Occidental abominations.

The party from Basra was to go down to the
palace on H. M. S. Lawrence as guests of Admiral
D. St. A. Wake, C.B., who was in command of the
fleet in the Persian Gulf. But when the Sheikh
learned that he had invited some women there was
a considerable to-do about it. Women? Impos-
sible! His Excellency demurred with the utmost
vehemence and declared it to be quite out of the
question that women should be included among the
witnesses of the momentous ceremony. How could
they be? Never in his life had he received a woman
in his palace, and now, if ever, the eyes of his people
were upon him. All his own wives were veiled and
hidden away behind the latticed windows of his
harem; not even his favorite wife could be present;
and if there were to be women invited there should
be women to receive them. No, the customs of his
people would have to be respected. He was very
sorry, but he was quite sure the foreign ladies
would understand.

The foreign ladies had a friend at court. The
D. P. C. had gone down a day in advance of the

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

party to put the Sheikh through a rehearsal and to
make preliminary arrangements for the occasion,
and he put in a strong plea for us. I can imagine
his method of procedure. His. argument would
have been that it was a unique occasion and for
that reason His Excellency might safely yield a
point to foreign custom without fear of incurring
the displeasure of his own people. And since the
D. P. C. was an old friend, I can hear him adding:
"Besides, why be so old-fashioned?**
It took the Sheikh quite a while to make up his
mind, but finally he gave in. Then he decided that
as long as he was breaking precedents it would be
as well to make a thorough job of it, and on his own
initiative he invited the two foreign women at
Muhammerah and the wives of the men who live
at Abadan and carry on the great business of the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

The palace is about twenty miles down the
Shatt-el-Arab from Basra, while Abadan is about
twenty miles farther on, with the town of Muham-
merah lying half-way between them at the mouth
of the Karun River.

We had to be about betimes that morning, be-
cause the Admiral said the Latvrence would have to
up-anchor shortly after eight. It was to be a
ceremony in the King's name, so nothing could be
left to chance. We should have to be down in
time to see that the scene was properly set and
that all preparations were completed.

It was chillingly cold, the kind of cold that
penetrates to one's chill-centers, but lacks even a
suggestion of invigorating snap. And the sky was

S60

AND THEN

overcast with low-hanging clouds, the first any one
had seen for more than eight months !

"Just our luck," said the General, "to have
chosen for our big show the first rainy day in
modem times. Do hope it holds off until we get
through/*

The General was thinking of personal comfort at
the moment, while the Admiral, who also had his
eye on the weather, was probably interested in the
acre or so of bunting he had out on the Lavrrence.

But we learned afterward that the Sheikh had
greeted the cloudy morning with joy and thanks-
giving and that he had spent the whole of it watch-
ing the signs overhead and praying that something
might come of them. His people were threatened
with famine because of the fearful drought. Their
fields were parched; the crops were dried up; no
kind of planting could be undertaken; and even the
date-gardens were suffering because th^ water in
the rivers was so abnormally low that irrigation had
become meager and di£Scult. If the rains would
only begin on this great day when he was being so
tremendously honored by the King-Emperor of
England and India his people would regard it as a
benediction from Allah on High and his prestige
would be immeasiu*ably enhanced. All in the point
of view!

A quaint old ship is the Lavyrence — ^biult away
back sometime in the nineteenth century. She has
high decks and a curious square-cut stem, the
ports in which look like tiny cottage windows.
They arfe draped with tassel-bordered' curtains
caught back with silken cords. She looks little
enough like a fighting-ship, but she mounts some

861

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

fine modem guns, nevertheless, and in connection
with recent events she has been exceedingly useful.
Everybody loves her.

And she did look gay and festive that morning.
Under an awning of the flags of the Allied nations
which was stretched over the after deck the Ad-
miral had spread many rugs and had set chairs and
couches in tdte-drtdte and other nice arrangements
to make a place of reception and comfort for his
guests, while round a gun a hollow-square luncheon
table had been built and gaily decorated. The
Admiral's part in the program was to be the firing
of a salute at the conclusion of the ceremony.

The unwieldy old gunboat made a very difficult
way through the too-munerous craft of all kinds
lying at anchor or moving swiftly about in the river
at Basra; then slowly enough we slipped down the
twenty miles of wide channel, past the date-
plantations, gray and drooping with an accumu-
lated burden of dust; past a dozen and one narrow,
enticing creeks where one knew the orioles and king-
fishers were playing in the tangled vines; past the
ships the Turks sank to no purpose in the stream;
and past an up-river procession of cargo-carriers,
troop-ships, and hospital-ships from overseas. As
the morning wore on the clouds gathered in banks
along the southwest horizon, and the chill in the
air began to give way before the warming-up
processes of the sun.

'*It isn't going to rain, after all,*' said the Gen-
eral. He was to make the great speech in the Song's
name, and was marching up and down the deck,
practising it, much, I would say, after the manner
of a big, overgrown school-boy.

862

AND THEN

*'*In the name of His Majesty, the King-Em^
peror — ! * Oh, hang it all I * In recognition of your
valued — * I say, I wish somebody else had to do
this! But Tm not going to read it; Tm going to
speak itr*

He could have extemporized quite freely and
easily, but the speech had to be written, and
spoken as it was written, because it would have to
be translated into Persian for the benefit of the
Sheikh, who speaks no English.

It was a great day for the tribes of Muhammerah,
and a greater day for their chief. As we rounded a
big bend in the river his palace came into view, and
I, for one, was seized with the kind of excitement
with which an insane and unsafe Fourth of July
used to fill me in my uncareful childhood. The
palace was draped in bunting, as our gunboat was,
and from comer to comer of the flat roof a thousand
pennants and streamers flapped and fluttered and
curled in the breeze.

In the river lay the Persian navy. All of it I
And a most unseaworthy-looking old craft it ap-
peared to be. A cruiser of the vintage of about
1888, it was purchased for Persia by some patriotic
statesman, no doubt, who needed the difference be-
tween what he said he paid for it and what it really
cost. Among other things, it lacked a coat of paint,
but it lacked nothing in the way of flying banners,
while the curious figures crowding its rails were in
themselves a triumph in decoration.

I will say at once that from first to last not a
joyful sound was uttered; not a shout; not a
single '*Hip, hip, hurray!'' or anything equivalent
to ^^Hip, hip, hurray!" Nothuog! It was as

868

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

though everybody was slightly embarrassed. But
the Arabs are not given to vocif erousness or to any
kind of vocal demonstration. Anything in the way
of a roar of jubilation would be quite foreign to them.

We had some difficulty in getting ashore, having
to dimb from our launch over a line of belums
anchored in the mud near the bank, then walk
across a narrow, slippery gang-plank to a more
slippery landing at the bottom of the stone steps
which led up to the arched entrance to the garden.
At the top of these steps stood a number of most
important-looking men who wore smart European
clothes and Persian turbans. The D. P. C. was
there to do the introducing for us and to smooth
away for them the rough edges of novel social
contact, and we were passed from one to another,
our names going before us, until we came to the
Sheikh himself, who stood just within the garden,
surrounded by his official household.

By us I mean the unwelcome — ^but most gra-
ciously welcomed — ^women of the party. The
General and the Admiral, with their staff-officers,
remained on the Lawrence to come ashore a little
later with proper pomp and ceremony.

I shook hands with the Sheikh, noticing with con-
siderable satisfaction that he "" looked the part,''
and then walked on, as I was directed, down a long
flag pavement on either side of which was drawn
up a double line of Arab riflemen standing at
ease. I could not think of them as soldiers. They
looked like comic-opera brigands ^* dressing" the
stage for the entrance of the barytone. The bary-
tone would be the brigand chief, of course, while
the tenor would have been captured and thrown

364

AND THEN

into a dungeon behind the frowning walls of the
great palace.

We followed the pavement round the main build-
ing and came to a flight of steps leading up into
the Durbar hall. Both these steps and the pave-
ment for quite a distance were covered with rich
Persian rugs, while the balcony skirting the long
hall was not only carpeted, but was himg with
flags and pennants innumerable.

It may have been the general sumptuousness of
things; it may have been the courtly manners of
the Sheikh's Wazir and the tall Arab gentlemen
who received us — ^I do not know; but my Fourth
of July sensations gave way to something else — ^a
kind of stiffness about the knees and a feeling that
my natural dignity was not quite enough and that
I ought to try to muster a little more from some-
where. The way you feel when you meet royalty —
if you ever do!

The Durbar hall, or ceremonial chamber, is a
recent addition to the palace, and looks as though
it might have cost the Sheikh a tidy sum, though
if His Excellency should engage me as stage-
manager and scene-shifter in the theater of his
picturesque activities I think I should put the
stamp of my approval on his walls and priceless
carpets and on literally nothing else. The walls,
decorated with a wide stucco frieze of warlike
figures which might have been carved by Nebuchad-
nezzar's head sculptor for a palace in ancient Baby-
lon, were completely fascinating, while the floor was
covered with just one vast carpet of a depth of pile
and a richness of tone not to be described,

S65

)

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

Down the middle of the room lay a long table
covered with fine linen and "groaning" under a
display of gold and silver plate and a bewildering
variety of colorful sweets and other light refresh-
mentSy while the tufty and tasselly sofas and diairs
and other upholstered articles of Occidental ease
were ranged along in a straight line near either wall,
just under the wonderful frieze.

The chairs of ceremony were three; for His
Excellency, the General, and the Admiral; above
them himg a portrait of King George which would
convict that royal gentleman of a vast indiffer^ice
with regard to what people think of his looks.
Behind the General's chair stood a small table on
which, in an open velvet case, were displayed the
insignia with which the Sheikh was to be invested.

Suddenly an imbelievable kind of band — ^the
Sheikh's own, which proves how progressive he is
— ^began to play "God Save the King" in wild and
quaintly flourished wails, and presently into the hall
marched His Excellency, followed by the General
and the Admiral and a fine array of British staff-
officers. I do not know what became of the staff-
officers. I suppose they dropped on bits of up-
holstery here and there. I was busy watching the
principal actors. They came on down past the long
table, seated themselves with deliberate dignity,
and the impressive ceremony began.

The General was in excellent form. He held his
written speech in his hand, but did not refer to it,
so I fancy there were a few differences between what
he said and what was later read to the Sheikh in
Persian translation. But I confess to a real thrill
when he said, very gravely, "In the name of His

366

TBV SHEIKH OF MITHAMUERAH, AFTER THE CEREMONY

AND THEN

Majesty, the King-Emperor ..." and proceeded
to hang upon the handsome person of His Excel-
lency the insignia of his new and splendid honor.

Fhrst came the ribbon, a broad band of royal
purple; then the jeweled cross; and finally the
golden chain which clinked against the cross with
a clink that must have stirred the soul of the fine
old Arab as nothing had in many a day.

He was on the right side in the world war, but
in his way he had taken a mighty risk. If the
Turks had won-^not a vestige of him or of anything
he stood for would have been left on the face of the
earth. Without a doubt it would have been the
gallows, the holocaust, and the sword for him and
his. He had had the temerity to uphold an
ancient alliance made by his fathers before him,
and it seemed to me that he deserved well at the
hands of his British allies. It is not to be forgotten
that he is Persian and that his territories were in-
vaded by the Turkish-German army.

I shall remember him always as he stood up to
listen to the Persian translation of the speech of
investiture. He wore a magnificent Persian robe
which reached almost to his feet, and his rather
handsome old head, with its thin black locks, was
bare. Across his breast lay the ribbon and the
chain, while beneath them gleamed the jeweled
and enameled cross. It took fifteen minutes to
read the speech, but not once did he move nor lower
his eyes from the far-away somewhere on which they
were fixed.

Haji Rais-ul-Tujjar, the Sheikh's Wassiry or Prime
Minister, read the speech, and Haji Rais is a won-
derful little man. Most Arabs are tall and stately.

367

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OP THE WORLD

High-class Arabs, that is. But Haji Rais is not.
He is only about five feet five, but he makes up in
loftiness of intelligence what he lacks in physical
stature. His is the commanding intellect which
has stood at the Sheikh's right hand for more
years than most people can remember. He is
only about seventy years old, but an impression
seems to prevail among people generally that he
is at least one hundred and seventy. He is very
active and is said to be the only Arab extant who
never wastes anybody's time.

He is a very rich and powerful merchant, with
interests extending throughout Persia and Meso-
potamia, and when he has business to transact with
a foreigner he does it in the fewest possible words;
then picks up his inevitable little black portfolio
of papers and runs along. The '^ul-Tujjar'' in his
name means "chief of merchants.*' Which doesn't
sound the least like a description of an Arab, does
it? An earnest little man is Haji Rais, and he read
the General's speech up over the tall Sheikh's
shoidder as though he thought a good deal of
emphasis and a few dramatic pauses would have
a desirable eflPect.

As soon as the speeches were finished the guns on
the Latorence b^an to boom. They knew on the
Lawrence how to fire a salute, and the measured
precision of it inflicted nothing upon one in the
nature of a nervous strain. But the response from
one of the Sheikh's old cannon would have served
to convince the most self -controlled that he needed
either a rest cure or a tonic.

There are eleven fairly sizable gims bristling
rnimd the palace, but only two of them are capable

868

AND THEN

of making a noise, and it was painfully evident that
the Arabs who had been intrusted with the im-
portant duty of responding to the British salute
had relied on luck with a too complete and un-
inquiring confidence. It took them fifteen minutes
to fire twelve guns, the intervals being anything
from three seconds to five full minutes. One lost
count, but while it was going on there was nothing
to do but sit perfectly quiet — or try to.

Then the colorful refreshments were passed
around, along with coffee served in exquisite cups
set in holders of gold filigree. One of the women
from Abadan said she knew a Persian princess who
always served coffee in cups like that, and exi>ected
her guests to take them away as souvenirs. I
hardly think the Sheikh lost any of his, but if I
had known that Persian princess I should have
wanted to drink coffee at her expense at least
twelve times.

I begged a swift launch from the General — the
one in which the D. P. C. had made the trip down
from Basra — ^and decided to linger behind my party,
see some more of the Sheikh and his fascinating en-
vironment, then go on down to Muhammerah town
and run back up-river in the late afternoon. The
D. P. C. woidd go back on the Lav>rence.

This little supplementary program for myself ap-
pealed to my sense of the fitness of things, whereas
sitting down to luncheon with my own kind on a
gunboat's deck did not appeal to me in the least.

But it is necessary that I should stop now.
Otherwise I should go on and tell about the inner

869

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

mysteries of the palace; about the harem; about
some amazing barbaric decorations in inner courts
and some more wonderful carpets; about under-
groimd hot- weather rooms f mnished for the utmost
in luxurious, somnolent ease; and about some in-
teresting and sporting yomig sons of the Sheikh —
all of which and whom he showed me himself while
he rather nervously fingered the ribbon and the gold
chain which himg about his neck.

But what I really want to tell is about getting
back up-river. Time sped so swiftly that I didn't
realize its passing, and when I suddenly glanced
at nly watdi I found it was half past five. By that
time I was with the British consul and his wife in
the depths of the bazaar of old Muhammerah, glee-
fully bargaining with a good-natured Persian over a
beautifully ¥nrought silver-sheathed dagger which I
longed to possess.

And I am sure that glancing at my watch cost
me at least five dollars. In another two minutes
he would have split the difference with me. But I
was so startled that I said, ^'Oh, here I'' Then he
got the money and I got the dagger.

There I was with nothing but a shell of a launch
— ^as it seemed to me — ^to travel in, and Basra more
than thirty miles away! And it would be dark in
another half-hour!

My two khaki-dad Britishers at the engine and
the wheel were not particularly pleased with me.
I could see that. And then I made the mistake of
saying, as I climbed aboard :

"Fm afraid I'm a little late," rather twirling the
"late.** It was the kind of apology that would
make any normal man want to lay violent hands on

370

AND THEN

somebody or something, but my pilot looked down
upon me from his six feet or more of magnificent
muscularity and said:

"WeU, it *u*d be aU right if we had any lights!"
And I rather thought he twirled the ** lights"

Good Heavens! And we had those sunken Turk-
ish ships to get round, while farther up toward
Basra the river would be crowded with rapidly
moving craft of every kind, to say nothing of ships
and mahaylas and dhows innumerable lying at
anchor. Well, there was nothing else for it! I
had to get home !

We swung down the two miles of the Karun
River and out into the broad Shatt-el-Arab. I have
said it was a swift launch. It was. It could make
twenty-five miles an hour at ordinary speed, and
that kind of speed in a shallow laimch is terrifying
even in broad daylight.

I said nothing, however, and even if I had spoken
I could not have been heard above the noise of the
engine and the wild wash of the high foaming wake
that we left behind us. I just sat tight in my deep
willow chair and looked and looked. I tried to love
the date-gardens along the banks that I had learned
to love so much, and the occasional glimpses I
caught of the far-flung desert stretching away be-
yond the palm-fringes and the low-lying, salt-
whitened marshes.

But the serenity had departed from my Mesopo-*
tamian world and love for it had turned to a kind of
fearsome thriU. Up from the southwest rolled with
incredible swiftness a bank of amber doud streaked
with black and edged with the orange of the desert
sunset. The first tremendous flash of lightning

871

THE WAR IN THE CRADLE OF THE WORLD

shot tJirough it in the last faint glow of day, and
in the darkness it left behind our moiling wake
shone ghostly green with vivid phosphorescence.

Then black night fell. The green path streaked
away behind us and green ripples rolled away on
either side to break in little flecks of light against
the near bank. Jagged forks of imbelievable
lightning cut great gashes in the dense black over-
head and down the slope of the sky, while thunder
crashed and rumbled incessantly.

When we came up to the edge of the traffic area
we had to slow down. We had to feel our way
darkly, in fact, with our motor-horn constantly
sounding. And then it was that the rain descended
upon us. It was not rain; it was a deluge.

Shelter? No, not out on the broad bosom of the
Shatt-el-Arab in a little open launch. But nobody
minded that. The rains had begun. It was the
first drop that had fallen in Mesopotamia for more
than eight months. The thirsty land would drink
it up and begin to bubble and seethe, and the
British army would soon be mired to its knees.
But in the eyes of his people the prestige of Sir
Khazal Khan, Sheikh of Muhammerah, Knight
Commander and wearer of the Grand Cross of the
Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, would
be immeasurably enhanced.

The next afternoon I went back down the Shatt-
el-Arab on a troop-ship, leaving with keen regret
that amazing land wherein an invading army of
right-minded men has done and continues to do
such extraordinary things.

THE END

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