EUPHRATES A UARDEN

Hokitika Guardian, 6 July 1918, Page 1

EUPHRATES A UARDEN

300,0c0 ACRES CULTIVATED,

(From Edmund Gaudier.)

Mesopotamia

The peaceful penetration of the Euphrates from Felujah to Hiileh began in April last year, a month after we entered Baghdad. This year, owing to the success of the Euphrates irrigation scheme, the supplies from the Euphrates side will be enormously increased and the transport of the country will be hard put to it to bring in the grain. During the summer we have been at work on the irrigation scheme connected with the Hindieh barrage. The bar rage, designed by Sir William Willcocks and built by Sir John Jackson's firm, was finished before the war, but tire Turk neglected to profit by it. This year nearly roo canals on the Hrlleh branch of the Euphrates which had fallen into disuse have been dug out and 300,000 acres have been brought under cultivation. There is promise oi the greatest harvest in the memory of man, possibly the greatest since the davs of Nebuchadnezzar.

In May 1917 as soon as the Tigris operations were completed, we began to open posts on the Euphrates. The work on the canais was finished by the end of October.

The Arab cultivators welcome the new regime. Their property, which has lain fallow for years, will become rich and profitable. All the summer and autumn they were busy getting their water channels clear. Below the barrage some 14,000 Arabs were engaged in making the new canals and clearing the old ones.

The effect of the work will be farreaching. The irrigation scheme will reduce the tonnage required for foodstuff on the line of communications bv thousands of tons and will free rolling stock and river transport for ordnance and other supplies, not to speak of the economy in overseas shipping. And while we are feeding ourselves we are enriching the cultivators and bringingin settlement and content where neither existed before. -The collection of revenue on the Euphrates no longer calls for an armed force. Paying taxes lias become an investment. An old sheikh said the other day, “ No other Government but the British would take the trouble to bother about our canals while they were fighting."