WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 March 1917, Page 5

WAR NOTES.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN. Wo have now secured possession ofone of the finest possible cards to play in the future peace negotiations (writes' "Critious" in the Dunedin Star). For possession is nine points of the law, and our position would have been very different had Bagdad been captured by the Russians. From Bagdad, southward (to ' Lli'i sea-, the country is a vast alluvial V-ii'»i, as Hat as a table and of tremendous fertility. Several crop a year can lie grown with proper irrigation. Ancient historians praise enthusiastically the fertility of the soil, and it was declared by Ileredotns that grain .commonly returned 200-fold to the sower. The anient? had a marvellous system ■ • of irrigation canals, whicli has been allowed to go to ruin; but the possibilities of irrigation are as" great as ever they were, and the country is still capable of being turned into another and greater Egypt. At present the best part of the waters of the Euphrates is lent in ' awanip3 and marshes, caused by the. breaking down of the long-neglected cmbnnkmcii'ts in 1834 as the result of a big flood. Now it is only navigable for vessels of any size for 58 miles ahoveMte confluence with the Tigris; whereas formerly it was the great highway for the export of vast quantities of grain raised in the provinces around it. Now 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 irrtga* lion expert who did so mi-ch for Egypt, was engaged in a great scheme for damming up the waters, cutting canals, and providing tlho nucleus for a giant) irrigation system. Wlra-'. will bo the fate of Mesopotamia after the war It is impossible to say. The chief difficulty in the way of retaining it lies in the diffieuUy' of defence. But if we do retain it the country will probably become oneof the greatest granaries of the Empire, raising crop after crop in a single year, for it was not without some justification that ancient tradition placed,the Garden of Eden in the country lying between, tho Tigris and the Euphrates.