BAGDAD'S SPECIAL VALUE

Waikato Times, Volume 88, Issue 13448, 29 March 1917, Page 7

BAGDAD'S SPECIAL VALUE

CARD IN PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. ] Britain by the capture of Bagdad has secured possession of one of the finest possible cards to play in the future peace negotiations. From Bagdad, southward to the sea, the country is a vast alluvial plain, as flat as a table and of trenniendous fertility. Several crops a year can be grown with proper irrigation. Ancient historians praise enthusiastically the fertility of the soil, and it was declared by Herodotus that grain commonly returned 200-fold to the sower. The ancients had a marvellous system of irrigation canals, which have been allowed to go to ruin; but the possibilities of irrigation are as great, to-dav as over they were, and the country is still capable of being turned into another and greater Egvpt. At present the best part of the waters of the Euphrates are lost in swamps and marshes, caused by the breaking down of the long-neglected embankments in 1834 as the result of a big flood. Now it is navigable for vessels of any size for only 50 miles above its confluence with the Tigris; whereas formerly it was the great highway for the export of vast quantities of grain raised in the province around it. M)w its navigation amounts to nothing, and the towns and industries along its banks have decayed away. But before the war Sir William Willcocks, the great irrigation expert, who did so much for Egypt, was engaged in a great scheme for damming up the waters, cutting canals and providing the nucleus of a giant irrigation system. What will be the fate of Mesopotamia after the war it is impossible to say. The chief difficulty in the way of retaining it lies in the difficulty of defence. But if we do retain it the country will probably become one of the greatest granaries of the Empire, raising crop after crop in a s>ngle vear, ior it was not without some justification that tradition placed the Garden of Eden in the country lying between the i igris and the Euphrates.