LAN J) AND WAIHR 
iNovcmbcr 27,. 1915. 
a first-rate oxnmplo of the inefficiency to which I 
alhide. For wlitlc the one falsehood will be told 
say, to the Scandinavians, and the other opposite 
falsehood to. let us say, the Americans, both are 
at once put side by side in the Press of the world. 
But the second fault seems to me graver. It 
consists, as I have said, in the neglect ol the 
" informed minority." 
In all the acres of print — subsidised articles, 
interviews, speciallv published brochures and the 
rest of it— with which the enemy floods the United 
States, I have not seen one example of an appeal 
made to the soldier or the mihtary historian. 
Now the United States are fortunate in the 
possession of experts in these matters. The 
citizens of that country have produced some of the 
very best miUtary writing, criticism and history, 
which the modern world has seen. The technical 
training of the small, but highly exercised, body of 
American officers is universally recognised to be 
as good a thing of its kind as there is in the world. 
Vet the German goes so badly to work that 
he not only makes no appeal to these leaders of 
military thought whose ju Igment will incvitabh- 
leaven the mass of opinion at last, but he actually 
flouts that instructed opinion, even when he puts 
on a trained soldier to write. 
Take the case of Bernhardi. Here is a really 
great military writer, recognised as &uch, and ad- 
mired as such, throughout the world, and nowhere 
more than in France and England. Yet Bern- 
hardi, as we have seen in past issues of this paper, 
when he writes a pamphlet for the American 
public, writes what he knows to be political 
rubbish and rhetorical lubbish, without one true 
military argument. 
I read, the other day, in one of the American 
jcurnals an article by a soldier w'i.-) had himself 
served in the Prussian Guards. It was an article 
full of patriotism and not disfigured by violence. 
But the only approach to a military statement in 
it was the stupefying remark that the Germans 
" held lines in the West upon which they could 
stand pat for any length of time that suited them." 
In other words, he so despised his public that he 
presented to them the conception of an army 
either not subject to wastage or provided with an 
infinite recruitment ! He knew, and every soldier 
kiiows, that the average rate, of wastage on the 
Western front for the enemy is certainly over 
120,000 a month, probably a great deal above that 
figure. He knew that the recruitment of the 
German units with efficients had run its course, 
and that there remained or wculd quite shortly 
remain, nothing to draw uoon, but categories of 
increasingly inefficient recruits, and the classes 
'16 and '17. 
There were any number of military arguments 
he might have used to state his case. He might 
have said, what I fancy the German General Staff 
on the whole thinks possible, that the lines cculdbe 
held all winter, even with the increasing inefficiency 
of their recruitment, and that the new Classes 
coming in with the spring might conceivably 
effect a decision. He might have pointed out the 
difficulties attaching to any alliance ; the problem 
of recruiting in England ; the smaller population 
of the French; the "Interior Lines" of the 
Austro-Germans — and so on. Instead of that, he 
chooses to put the rnatter in as grossly unmilitary 
a fashion as any sensational hack-writer. 
I cannot but believe that this clumsiness will 
begin to affect American opinion adversely, par- 
ticulariv when the results of the increasing 
difficult v in maintaining the (ierman effectives 
begin to appear with the progress of the winter. 
There are alread\- signs that the Press in America 
is receiving the iniluences of instructed opinion in 
thatcountrv. Nowhere in the worid is the nature 
of a war of attrition better grasped than in the 
country where old men still remember as part of 
their personal experience what it was that 
determined the defeat of the Stuth, and where 
the nature of that great campaign is familiar to 
every scholar. H. Belloc. 
MR. HILAIRE BELLOC'S WAR LECTURES. 
DecenilKT 8th. --Wolverhampton, Pictiircdronr;. 8 o'cla:k. 
December loth.- Liierpu)!, Philharmonic Hall. 8 o'cloLk. 
Moccmber i ith.— lidinburgh, L'sher Hall. 8 o'clock. 
Doccmber ijth. — Glasgow, St. Andrews Hall. 8 o'clock. 
BAGDAD OR BAGHDAD. 
To the Editor of L.\nd asd W.\tkr. 
Sir, - In the article by Sir Thomas Holdich whicli 
appears in your issue of the 13th, in review of Colonel Sir 
]\lark Sykes' work, " The Caliphs' Last Heritage," he speaks 
witli greater confidence regarding the correct name of Al 
Mansur's Capital than docs the writer of the article on " Bagh- 
dad " in the Encyclopedia Britannica, in a passage otherwise 
corresponding with the remarks of the more recent writer. 
This passage notes that the name " Bagdad " recorded 
in an Assyrian catalogue of towns may very possibly represent 
the after site of the capital of the Caliphs. There is no sugges- 
tion that Al Mansur gave to his capital any other name than 
that it bears at present, and has borne so far as I am aware 
since its foundation. Sir R. Burton mentions several variations 
that have been oh3er\'ed ih the spoiling of the name in certain 
mr.nuscripts, liut they do not appear to be of any importance, 
and there appears to be no reasonable doubt that the name 
given by the Arab founder was Baghdad or Baghdad, where 
unaccented a is the " fatna " or indeterminate vowel. It 
is tjuite possible, even probable, that he was aware of the 
ancient name of the former town (which Assyriologists have 
written in English characters as Bagdad), though Arabic 
authors have denied that the existence of any former town 
on the site was known. 
Richardson mentions two alternative derivations, which 
were probably known in Al Mansur's day. One Ba^h- Dad. 
The Garden of D.id, an ancient Assyrian deity, the other 
Baghdad, Ba^h gave or The Gift of Ba^h, BaHi bein-' also 
an Assyrian deity. Of the two the latter is perliap, the more 
convincing. I think the term Bagh or Buih runs through 
several of the Ancient Semitic languages as the name of the 
deity of the earth and its production. Again we find that Sir 
R. Burton quotes Mr. L. C Casartelli " La Philo.sophie religieuse 
clu Masdusml " . . . The ancient title Bagh the O P 
Baga of the Cuneiforms . . . and the Bagha of the 
Avesta whose memory is preserved in l^aghdad-the city 
created by the Gods (?) The Pahlevi books shew the word iii 
the Compound Baghobakht lit=what is granted bv the 
Gods. ..." ^ 
It is, I think, stated by authorities that the cuneiform 
inscriptions have only one character to represent e.g. audk 
and a so that m the Assyrian language the gutturals of the 
older forms had been smoothed down to a very great extent 
but It IS worth remarking that the writer of the article on the 
scientihc languages in the Encyclopx-dia remarks regarding this 
So at least it would appear from the writing or rather from 
the manner in whicli the Assyriologists transcribe it." But 
supposing the Assyriologists to be absolutely right, the more 
ancient forms o the word would apparently have been pro- 
nounced with the guttural. The Arabic had never lost it, 
so what can 3ustify tlie suggestion that Al Mansur did more 
than revive the ancient name with the spelling and pronuncia- 
tion of Ins native language ? As for us, surely we can hardly 
do bettei than call place, by their names in the living language 
of their inhabitants ?—Faith<ully yours, ^^ b r,- 
Ballinapierce, Enniscorthy. ^^ ^^ J°"^''°^- 
P.S.-It IS bad enough to have to write Baghdad (be- 
cause we have no accepted system of transliteration), to re e- 
IZLV""^ 'f°T ^''\ '■"^'' '' t''^' i'^determinate and\he 
second a sound as broad as our " Ah,' but surely we need not 
fl'r^'^'' '""^ •■'P?"%" 'l^' •"^'•'^^d K^ittural ghain by a hard g 
because sonie ancient Assyrians did so (or arc said to have 
done so in the distant past.) 
E- A. J. 
16 
