January 13, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER 
and dirt that have gone so deep under my epidermis that 
they will never come out, I shall shortly have the appear- 
ance of an Arab. Perhaps in time— you'd never believe 
the appeal of the Koran till you've bowed toward Mecca, 
with a Bedouin on either side of you, morning and evening 
for six months at a stretch — I shall pray like an Arab. 
I have had small-pox, dysentery — which has become 
practically chronic — and a dozen varieties of skin diseases, 
and I'm mottled from head to foot with ' Aleppo Button ' 
scars, two of which have never healed. I've been alone 
so much that I talk to myself even in Calcutta and Simla. 
The Persians in this region distrust me ; the Russians and 
Germans hate me, and the Turks are perfectly frank in 
saying that they, will send me on ' the long pilgrimage ' 
if ever a fair chance offers. 
"AH that my Government does is to allow my pav 
to go on and provide me with a passport that will land 
:rie at Koweit, Basra, or Bagdad. If I get into trouble 
they will not— cannot, in fact — do as much for me as they 
would for a spindle-legged Hindu coolie. And all this 
on the chance that sometime before I am retired for old 
age or invalided home, the Russian Bear nosing after 
warm water, or the Prussian Eagle scratching after ' places 
in the sun,' may take it into their heads to wander this 
way. In either of these contingencies, of course, there is 
no denying the fact that I shall be very much in demand, 
especially if operations are carried on in my own ' sphere,' 
that of North-Eastern Arabia, and Lower Mesopotamia 
up to about a line drawn from Bagdad to Hitt. 
"Afoot, or by horse or camel, I have traversed 
almost every square mile of this region. There is not 
a bazaar from Kerbela to Koweit in which, disguised, I 
cannot mingle unsusjiected in the throng, or, in case of 
need, call upon friends who will do anything from giving 
me a "cigarette or a handful of dates to risking their lives 
to save my own. i 
Blood Brotherhood. 
" I also know every one of tlie greater, as well as most 
of the lesser. Bedouin sheikhs whose peoples roam the 
deserts between Basra and Damascus ; and with one of 
the most powerful of these — his camels and "goats are 
numbered in hundreds of thousands — I have gone'through 
the ' blood brotherhood ' ceremony. The blood of our 
arms has actually mingled, and each is pledged to stop at 
no act to serve the other. My friends, I need hardly say, 
are all Arabs, Chaldeans, Syrians, Armenians, Jews, or 
people of one of the other subject races of t|iis region ; 
totheTurk, courteous as he is to mc socially in Bagdad and 
Basra, my name is anathema. 
" A week hence, for instance, I shall exchange 
Oriental amenities with the Vali of Bagdad in his garden 
on the bank of the Tigris. He will toast me in scented 
coffee and drink to the success of my visit ; and all the 
while a double guard of ' zaptichs' or mounted police will 
be watching the gates to prevent my getting away to the 
desert and my Arab friends. Personally, I kno^v it would 
pain him immensely if I were to be shot in the 'dark for — 
' let us say — refusing to answer a sentry's challenge : but 
Dflicially he is dead keen that something of the kind may 
;ventuate, and there is no doubt that it would do him a 
lot of good in Stamboul, where he is not in verv high 
favour at present. 
" The whole thing, when all is said and done, resolves 
itself down to about this :. If a war involving operations in 
this ' sphere ' comes within the next twenty years, I — • 
and several other chaps who are doing the same sort of 
work — provided I do not lose my life, or my health, or the 
best of my faculties in the interim, \<i]l probably break all 
records outside of a Central American revolution for 
quick promotion. I might easily be a. brigadier-general at 
forty, with ten or a dozen letters after rny name. But if, 
as is overwhelmingly likely, there' is ho war, I shall 
probably continue these little jaunt^'intp the desert until 
my health gives out, when, at, best, ^ shall be invalided 
home on the half pay of a ci;iptain or major. At the 
worst — well, since some of the best (yes, aiidthe happiest, 
too) years of my life will have been spent out here. I 
should probably sleep better under six fe^l of desert soil 
than in the family vault. ;', .,'.,«,, 
" So you see," Landers concluded wi'th a whimsical 
smile, " my future depends entirely upon whether or not 
some of our neighbours, or would-be .neiglibours, see fit 
to start somethintr in this littlq neck of Central Asia 
within the next decade or two. And now that wc arc in the 
Entente with Russia, and acting entirely in concert with 
her in Persia. I'm very much afraid that it's going to be 
a case of the ' hope deferred making the heart sick.' " 
In Bagdad. 
The following day we caught the river steamer at 
Basra, and four days later arrived at Bagdad, Landers 
putting up at the grim brown fort which housed the British 
Consulate, post-office and telegraph station. I saw him 
on and off for a week, usually at tiffins or dinners given 
for him by some of his British friends. At other times 
he was not to be found. " Landers Sahib gone to bazaar," 
his Pathan bearer invariably answered my enquiries ; 
and Landers himself volunteered no more than that he 
was spending a good deal of time " renewing old ac- 
quaintances." Then, at the end of about ten days, 
without a good-bye to anybody, so far as I could learn, 
he dropped from sight. 
" Landers is off again to his Arabs," said his friends, 
but all, knowing that the Turks had been watching him 
like cats, were more or less worried until the Vali, with a 
wry smile, admitted to the British Consul one day that 
" the bird had slipped through his nets." 
" I am much reheved," the Consul admitted to me 
that afternoon. " They hung on him like leeches this 
time, but Landers finally got away by togging up as an 
Armenian stage-coach driver when they were expecting 
him as an Arab. The iVrmenian came to a native house 
which Landers had taken, went inside for a few minutes, ' 
presently to reappear, climb into his arabanah (stage- 
coach) and drive off with a load of passengers to Kerbela. 
In reality this was Landers, who had stained his face 
and put on the Armenian's clothes. The Turks nabbed 
the latter when he finally ventured out to the street, but 
got little out of him, and I don't think they know j'et 
exactly what happened. 
" Landers is undoubtedly far into the desert by this 
time, and the Turks know the futility of going after him 
among the Bt^douins. We shall probably not hear of him 
again for six or eight months. Either he will come back, or he 
will not come back ; and if he does come, what he has to , 
report will go to Indian Army Headquarters at Simla, 
not to me. Captain X , who is working in the same 
' sphere ' as Landers — and whom you may have heard 
of as having been awarded high honours by the Royal 
Geographical Society for the most important work of the i 
year in exploration, was in North-Central Arabia for: 
something like eight or ten months without a word coming 
out from him. When he finally did slip into Bagdad, he 
was so burned and dirty, and his English was so halting 
from long disuse, that the Sikh sentry at the gate of the 
Consular compound would not pass him in. Landers 
himself, in fact, returned from his last jaunt in such a 
condition that he refused to Approach within ten yards of 
any of us until he had had a bath. 
"It's a queer game, isn't it ? And all against a 
contingency which maj' never materialize — at least not 
for years." 
German Activities. 
This happened in 1912, and at that time no one that I 
met — least of all Landers, who had the most to gain by 
such an event — appeared to dream tliat the blood- 
drenched plains of ancient Babylonia and Assyria were 
likely to echo for many years to the tramp of hostile 
armies. The broad scope of Germany's activities, ex- 
tending far beyond the mere construction of the Bagdad 
Railway, was -evident to everyone; that the Germans had 
ambitious plans for controlling the incalculably rich 
Tigro-Euphrates Valley no one doubted, but that German 
influence should prevail over that of Great Britain and 
Russia in Constantinople appeared not to be dreamed ol 
in Mesopotamia, even by the Turks themselves. 
The page or two which I have been able to give 
from my friend Landers' life is probably as far as it would 
be proper to go at this time in discussing certain of the 
ways in which knowledge of the country and its peoples 
have been gained. It is an interesting commentary on 
the cfficency of the system employed that the region 
most thoroughly " worked " — Lower Mesopotamia — was 
also the one in which the Expeditionary Force carried oq 
all its operations with scarcely a hitch 
