As I have written the news to Mamma this week I will tell you what I
gather of the campaign and country generally.
There's no doubt that old Townshend, the G.O.C., means to push on to
Baghdad "ekdum"; and if the Foreign Office stops him there will be
huge indignâ. It seems to me that the F.O. should have made itself
quite explicit on the point, one way or the other months ago: to pull
up your general in full career is exasperating to him and very
wasteful, as he has accumulated six months' supplies for an army of
16,000 up here, which will have to be mostly shipped back if he is
pulled up at Kut. The soldiers all say the F.O. played the same trick
on Barratt in the cold weather. They let him get to Qurnah, and he
wanted and prepared to push on here and to Nasiryah, which were then
the Turkish bases. But the F.O. stopped him and consequently the Turks
could resume the offensive, and nearly beat us at Shaibah. The
_political_ people say that the soldiers had only themselves to thank
they were nearly beaten at Shaibah. They were warned in December that
the whole area between Sh. and Basrah would be flooded later on, and
were urged either to dig a canal or build a causeway; but they
pooh-poohed it: and consequently all supplies and ammunition at
Shaibah had to be carried across 8 miles of marsh, 4ft. to 1in. deep.
As for the country, it is said to be very fertile wherever properly
irrigated. At present the water is distributed about as badly as it
could be. The annual rise of the river makes vast feverish swamps,
and the rest of the country is waterless. Any stray Bedouin tribe that
feels like growing a crop can go and cut a hole in the bank and
irrigate a patch for one season and then leave it; and these cuts form
new channels which as often as not lose themselves in a swamp.
Meanwhile this haphazard draining off of the water is seriously
impairing the main streams, especially that of the Euphrates, which is
now almost unnavigable in the low water season. To develop the country
therefore means (1) a comprehensive irrigation and drainage scheme.
Willcock's scheme I believe is only for irrigation. I don't know how
much the extreme flatness of the country would hamper such a scheme.
Here we are 200 miles by river from the sea and only 28ft. above
sea-level. It follows (2) that we must control the country and the
nomad tribes from the highest _barrage_ continuously down to the sea.
(3) We must have security that the Turks don't interfere with the
rivers above our barrage, or even neglect the river banks.
All this seems to me to point to a repetition of our Egyptian
experience. We shall be drawn, whether we like it or not, into a
virtual protectorate at least as far up as the line Kut-Nasiryah,
along the Shatt-al-Hai, and that will have to extend laterally on the
east to the Persian frontier and on the west to the Arabian tableland.
I don't see how we can hope to get off with less: and that being so, I
believe it would be better to take on the whole at once. North of the
Shatt-al-Hai line (_i.e_. Kut-Nasiryah) it would be very exhausting to
go, and very awkward politically, as you soon get among the holy
places of the Shiahs, especially Karbala, which is their Mecca. But
it's no use blinking the fact that a river is a continuous whole, and
experience shows that the power which controls the mouth is sooner or
later forced to climb to its source, especially when its up-stream
neighbours are hostile and not civilised. And what power of
Government will be left to Turkey after the war? It looks as if she
will be as bankrupt, both financially and politically, as Persia; and
I see no real hope of avoiding a partition à la Persia into British
and Russian spheres of interest. In that case it seems to me the
British sphere should go to the Shatt-al-Hai, and the Russian begin
where the plain ends, or at any rate north of Mosul. Are you at
liberty to tell me whether there is already an understanding with
Russia about this country, and if so how far it goes?
As for the climate, I don't think it is any worse than the plains of
India. When it is properly drained the fever will be much less: and
under peace conditions the water can be properly purified and the heat
dealt with. The obvious port is Basra; it is said that the bar outside
Fao could easily be dredged to 26ft. The only other really good
harbour is Koweit, I gather: but our game is to support the
independence of K.: make it the railway terminus, but by using Basra
you make your rail-freight as low as possible and have your commercial
port where you can directly control matters.
I wish they would get a move on in the Dardanelles. It seems to me
Germany is running a fearful risk by committing herself so deeply into
the interior of Russia at this time of year. The only explanation I
can find is that at each rush she has been much nearer to cutting off
a Russian army than has transpired and so is tempted on: nearer
perhaps than the Russians ever intended, which may be the reason of
the Grand Duke's removal to the Caucasus.
* * * * *