MESOPOTAMIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 May 1916, Page 5

MESOPOTAMIA.

| RUSSIAN CAVALRY DASH. AID FOR v Times and Sydney Sun Services. , , London, May 24. : J- lie j imes,_ in a leader, says that the dramatic arrival of Kussian cavalry in Mesopotamia is a further indication that the tide is turning, but we must deprecate/ exaggerated expectations. Daring Russian forces are appearing in many places, but are probably limited m strength and cliiefly cavalry. The Ottoman Red Cross Society has informed the British Red Cross that tli ere are ample medical stores at Bagdad. There is no information regarding prisoners' needs, but the American Consul at Bagdad is ascertaining them and supplying information to Constantinople. The Embassy expects Red Cross supplies from Athens via the GraecoBulgar frontier. The Bulgar authorities have agreed to forward them. The Embassy advises to send clothing for prisoners by this route.

RUSSIA'S WESTWARD MARCH. TOWARDS TREBIZOND AND ERZINGAN ANATOLIAN AND BAGDAD RAILWAYS TO WEST AND SOUTH.

Petrograd, March 19. "Still pursuing" is the unbroken tenor of the bulletins of tho Caucasian Army (writes Harold Williams). But now and again a clearer glimpse is given of this long pursuit in the broken uplands of Armenia, and each glimpse reveals a fresh stage of accomplishment in a great and expanding operation. tienera! Yudenich's centre, thrusting on along the main road from Erzeroum, has stormed and taken Mamakhatun, the chief town of the district of Terdjan, in the valley leading down to the plain of Erzingan. The hattle was more than a rearguard action. The Turks, realising the importance of Mamakhatun as the key to Erzingan, seem to have rallied their forces here and made a desperate st|nd on the heights. But again they were broken, and retreating down the valley were compelled to allow the Russians next day to occupy the village of Kotur at the junction of the Tuzlu and the Euphrates, 44 miles east of Erzingan.

PAST HISTORY-AND FUTURE. General Yudenich's plan of campaign is revealing itself as a careful and farseeing piece of strategy. Locking the door of the approach from Mosul at Bitlis on his left, and thrusting forward his right flank from the coast and supporting it from the sea, lie has clipped the \v : ngs of the already beaten Third Turkish Army, and isolated it in the highlands, and is now proceeding to push back its centre. His immediate goal is Erzingan. a place of much military importance, the headquarters of, the Ninth Turkish Army Corps, and presumably a secondary base. Prom Erzingan broad open to Sivas (westward) on the one hand and to Khaiput (westward) and Western Mesopotamia on the other. Even Alleppo comes into view; and the se ; zure of Aleppo would mean not only the capture of the Bagdad railway, but the isolation of Syria and Mesopotamia from the centre, and the effective crippling of Turkey.

STKOXG ENEMY OF ANATOLIA. By pkilful use of his command of the sea, General Yudenich has not only been able to extend tiic area of his own communications, but he has narrowed down the communications of the Turks, and neutralised their coastal basis, But now the advance of the centre is bringhg up the Russian Army to the region thanks to the Angora railway, the land communications of th<> Turks are nior- fully developed, and where more frequent, breaks in the mountain barrier permit of a more complex connection between Anatolia and Mesopotamia arid Syria. Hitherto the Russians have liad to deal with the beaten and retreating Third Army, perhaps slightly reinforced. But the strength of the Turkish reinforeemfiits will grow as the Russians move westward; and in Western Anatolia, based immediately on their main line of communications, the Turks, with troops and guns brought from the Dardanelles and Thrace, are organising a strong resistance. A line of fortifications is being hastily constructed from Ker.ison (50 miles west of Trebizond, on the coast), through Karahissar to Sivas, and the guns from Gallipoli brought up by rail from Angora, are there.

BLACK SEA AND MESOPOTAMIA. By carefully co-ordinating the movements (if liis flanks and his centre, and by detaching the Kurds from their Turkish allegiance, General Yudenich Is making his position in Anatolia very strong. The command of the seas grows more important as the Russians move along the coast, and it may, stealing up towards Constantinople, even decide the fate of the big Turkish resistance in Western Anatolia But there remains the question of Mesopotamia, and I am not sure whether the Turkish resistance may not be even stronger here than in Anatolia.

Tlu Bagdad railway is unfinished, it is true, but nloii" its numerous complete sections Turkish" troops can, by a process of leap and glide, be advanced with considerable speed to the Bagdad front. The Mosul and Bagdad region is replete with interesting possibilities, and the very fact that it is threatened by the Russians from Bitlis in the north, and from the Persian frontier in the east, and by our troops in the south, enhance* for the Turks its significance as a wedge of resistance. To add to the dramatic character of the situation, there is the possibility of lateral thrusts of the Russian Anatolian operation cutting into the Bagdad railway bj way of Kharput and Diarbekir.