positions on the left bank. Here the Turk could have made us no end of trouble had he been in sufficient force, for the lowlands were partly inundated and a defence of the practicable routes could have been made very effective.

“It was the weakness of the opposition met here that first led us to hope that Bassorah was not going to be strongly defended. Although the advance resolved itself into little more than a series of outpost actions, the period was an anxious one for us—and especially for me—in that it put to the acid test the result of our work, not only in forecasting the capricious and variable overflow, but also in conciliating the no less capricious and variable Arabs of a region nominally subject to Turkey. I can only tell you now that things turned out, and are continuing to turn out, even better than we had any reason to hope they would. There was no suggestion of a menace to our exposed left flank from the hordes of curious but in no wise hostile Arabs who showed themselves all along the way, and the censor will probably not allow me to tell you that our transport and commissariat, if nothing more, will probably be much helped by active assistance from this source. [Here several sentences, doubtless telling something more of the attitude of the Arabs, were obscured by the censor’s brush.] So you will see that the Turk is reaping the harvest he deserves from his sowing of harshness and duplicity among the Bedouins, and that the time and efforts of us ‘language students’ who have worked this sphere will not have been spent in vain.

“The Turks have undoubtedly been quite sound in deciding not to make a stand at Bassorah. With the sea approaches in our hands, and with the city entirely encompassed by desert and marsh, the holding of it for any time would have hinged upon command of either the Tigris or the Euphrates all the way to the rich agricultural region to the west of Bagdad. As the cutting of this line by us was only a matter of time, the city would have been isolated and forced to withstand a siege which could only have ended in the capture of whatever forces were locked up there. As it is, the most of these forces are now at liberty to dispute our advance, through a very difficult country, to Mesopotamia and Bagdad. Here it seems certain we shall have all the fighting we care for.

“I have not mentioned the fact that I have received my captaincy and am assigned to the general staff. In an ordinary campaign the latter circumstance would mean a lot of dreary consultations at headquarters, and no action. Here, Allah be praised, the case is quite different. R——, K—— (the two chaps who have also worked this sphere), and I are always called in, if we chance to be on hand, when the maps are unrolled; but most of the time the whole lot of us are off on something else. R—— has been through the Turkish lines twice, once spending three days in Kurna, their advanced base, and I have been off on a week’s journey to receive renewed assurances of the friendship of my Bedouin ‘blood-brother.’ It is going to be a jolly amusing game.”

III

Another letter came from F—— a month later, this being in answer to one I had rushed off on receiving the card announcing his departure for the Persian Gulf:—

“You ask what we are driving at here, by which I suppose you mean, ‘What is our plan of campaign?’ This, obviously, is a question I can answer only in the most general way. Our principal purpose in the present campaign will be the occupation of southern and central Mesopotamia up to and including the cities of Bagdad and Kerbela, a region roughly corresponding to what might be called ancient Babylonia proper. Our objective in this is twofold. First, to gain control of all the irrigated—and hence highly productive—portion of the Tigro-Euphrates Valley, and, second, to establish ourselves strongly upon the flank of Persia in the event that that country should show a disposition to make common cause with our enemy.

Map of the Tigro-Euphrates Valley,
Where the operations against Bagdad were carried out.

“There is little doubt that the advance to Bagdad will be a fight all the way. The most difficult country will be that between here and about fifty miles north of where the Tigris and Euphrates come together. Most of this area is marshy all the year, and practically all of it will be under water from the spring floods by the time we are ready to get into it. An endless network of ‘canals’ and backwater channels makes it practically impossible to advance on foot even across much of the overflow country, and one of the main reasons for our long halt in Bassorah has been the training of our men in the use of the various native craft which will have to figure in our transport. Luckily, the Turks will be under the same handicap as ourselves in this region, and our superior artillery and organisation are sure to give us the ‘edge.’ The real fighting is going to come when we emerge upon the level alluvial plains of Central Mesopotamia. Here the enemy will have the Bagdad railway at his back, and, without doubt, a pretty complete little system of German-made light railways to keep him in munitions and food.

“It may be that it will take us to the end of 1915 to attain our first goal. Then, if a decision in Europe has not been reached in the meantime, our next general advance would be up the Tigris to Samara, Tekrit, and Mosul, and up the Euphrates to Hitt and Deyr; this advance would place in our hands an upland grain-growing region of considerable productivity. Still another campaign would have to be launched to occupy the country up to a line from Aleppo to Mardin or Diarbekir; but Russia should reach this region from the Caucasus before we can get there from the south. Upon the guns and munitions which the Germans are able to send through to Bagdad will depend the character of the stand that the Turk is going to make in Babylonia.

“But what a game it is going to be, this fight for the old Garden of Eden,—with the high-banked canals and the crumbling walls of Babylon and Hitt serving for trenches and forts, and the khans which sheltered Ali Baba and Haroun-al-Raschid as outposts! Why, the ‘G.C.C.’ and I have even discussed how we are going to use that isolated old tepe of Birs Nimrud—which some call the ‘Tower of Babel’—when the time comes!

“Our transport for the new campaign will probably be the most remarkable thing of the kind ever assembled. The fact that the country into which we are advancing will be largely under water will compel us to become practically amphibious. On land we are using camels, horses, mules, and donkeys, while on the water the services of everything, from the native balems, gufas, and kaleks to shallow-draught gunboats and river-steamers, will be in demand. The old Bagdad side-wheelers have all been converted into gunboats, but even their slight draught of five or six feet is too great for all but the main river-channels. One of these, by the way, went into action the other day with an armour improvised from mats of dried dates. Of course the Turkish shrapnel made an awful mess of it, and, I am sorry to say, also of the chaps behind it.

“The direction of the training of our men in the use of the native watercraft has been one of my recent duties. The balem is a gondola-like sort of boat which has long been used for