March 15, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
it was fully dark, the wind had died down at sunset, 
and the sky was clear. None the less, the British 
established a bridge-head upon the further side of the 
stream during the eourse of this night between Thursday 
and Friday last. A party managed to cross the water and 
secure it. ' 
Upon Friday the gth, the bridge-head occupied on the 
preceding night by the British forces on the further or 
northern bank of the Diala, was utilised to cover the 
passage of a British column across that stream, and by 
the morning of Saturday the loth the whole line of the 
Diala having thus been turned, the bulk of the army went 
over and the advanced posts of the main British and 
Indian forces bivouacked near Gadara, about four miles 
outside the city of Bagdad, prepared to enter upon the 
morrow. 
Meanwhile the second line of works upon the further 
bank of the Tigris had been carried during the Friday 
by the same detachment which had made so fine a rharch 
the day before and carried the first position at evening, 
Saturday, the loth. While the main British and Indian 
force was crossing the Diala to Gadara and its neigh- 
bourhood, the Turks upon the western side were con- 
tinuing their rearguard action back to within three 
miles of t>i.e south-western houses of the city. 
It was the last effort of the retreat. Early in the 
morning of Sunday, the nth, this rearguard on the west 
sick' had disappeared, while on the eastern side Sir Stanley 
Maude's main army marched into the capital of Mesopo- 
tamia and occupied it. ^ 
Remarkable Celerity and Precision 
I have said that the chief character of all these opera- 
tions has been the extraordinary rapidity and precision 
rtith which they have been conducted. 
It was generally known that excellent communications 
had been prepared up to the advanced defensive position 
A Kut ; and with these behind the army the victory 
which enabled Kut to be occupied by the Britisli 
upon February 24th was made possible. 
What remained doubtful was the power of pursuing the 
enemy retirement unth rapidity and success when the head 
of the main communications had been left behind at Kut. 
The enemy obviously counted on the difficulty of pursuit 
ance the head of the main communications was left 
behind. 
It is precisely this task which the British command 
iias triumphantly fulfilled, and fulfilled beybnd any 
expectation of the most competent observers at home 
or abroad. 
The distance to be traversed was one hundred and 
thirteen miles. There was no proper road and, of courS«, 
no rail accommodation. The river, now high, and there- 
fore with a very rapid current against the boats, was 
also notoriously difficult of navigation ; and while it was 
obvious that the Turkish retirement would be watched 
by cavahy it was hardly thought possible that the moans 
for an attack at the end of so considerable a distance over 
such poor communications, could be accomplished within 
a month. It was, as a fact, fully accomplished within a 
fortnight. It is clear that the guns, considerable bodies 
of infantry and, what was most difiicult of all; a sufficient 
supply of food, forage, and ammunition for the artillery, 
was close within reach of the cavalry advance when that 
advance reached the banks of the Diala late upon the 
Wednesday the 7th. One may say, roughly .speaking, 
that the concentration of horse, foot and artillery at the 
decisive point outside the great town, had been effected 
in such a country and in the face of such difficulties at 
the rate of 11^ miles a day. Better work than that has 
not been done by any belligerent in the whole course of 
the present great war. 
Three mopc days sufliced to reap the full fruit of such 
excellent staff and engineeeing work, and Bagdad was 
entered exactly a fortnight after the breaking of the 
main enemy front at Kut. , 
No one in Europe observing these operations, and 
following them with any competent reading of the climate, 
conditions and scale governing them, hoped or dreaded — 
according to his sympathies — so astonishingly rapid 
an issue. The more men knew of the ground the less 
were they ready to believe that the thing could be done. 
It is perhaps characteristic of the strange moods into 
which war casts the fluctuations of home opinion that the 
magnitude of this military effort and the supreme skill 
of which it is the witness is even now but gradually 
appearing in the public mind. The work has been perfect 
in every respect. 
There is one point on which at the moment of writing 
no information has reached London, and that is the 
route of the Turkish retreat. 
There are two courses of retreat open : the most 
precarious is by the east and the Euphrates. The 
most probable up the Tigris. There a railway is estab- 
lished for the first 100 miles or so, and a chain of supply 
posts runs all the way to the main bases in Europe, 
])ast Mosul and Nisibin and Aleppo. This line of retreat 
has the further advantage that it can — though with 
difiicult y — be joined by the Turkish armies now rapidly 
falling back, from the Persian plateau on the east (a 
point to be observed later), and further that it permits 
of rallying up the reinforcements on their way to the 
Mesopotamian front from the west. 
We shall the better understand what the permanent 
occupation of Bagdad may mean strategically and 
politically for the Alliance, and against the enemy, if we 
recall the geographical and therefore the military causes 
which have fixed here the modern capital of Mesopotamia, 
and why this city is the sole and necessary base of all 
operations in that region, so that its fall will automatically 
paraylse all further Turkish effort upon the Persian 
front and heavily handicap any further such effort in 
Mesopotamia itself. 
Geographical Basis of Bagdad 
Tile Mesopotamian Plain— using that term for the 
district between the northern part of the Arabian desert 
and the very high mountains of Media, which stand like a 
wall upon the cast, buttressing. the Persian plateau— is 
a vast, arid stretch of land through which, when it is left 
to its natural state, no natural opportunities for perma- 
nent human habitation on a large scale exist, save 
along tile two great rivers which come down from the 
north into tlie Persian (hilf, and join before they reach 
Uiat Gulf, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The district 
is not rainless ; but these streams are the only' great 
|)crmanent sources of water supply, until one comes upon 
the numerous torrents which fall from the Median 
mountains westward into Mesopotamia. Of these some 
few have the strength to reacii the 'i'igris in all seasons 
notably the Greater and Lesser Zab, the Adhiani, and 
this smaller .stream, the Diala, with which we are more 
immediately concerned. The others lose themselves 
in the parched soil or form marshes into which they are 
absorbed before they reach the Tigris. 
In some remote antiquity, the origins of which are 
unknown to us, man rendered the Mesopotomian Plain 
immensely prolific by a system of irrigation ; canals which 
led the waters of the Tigris ahd of the Euphrates in a net- 
work over the soil and rendered it fertile. It supported 
millions of hunmn beings and created vast capitals, from 
Nineveh high up upon the Tigris opposite the present 
site of Mosul (a town which seems to have been almost 
upon the modern scale of our great towns) to the famous 
site of Babylon. The district was not only a very populous 
and wealthy region in itself and of its own power of pro- 
duction, but acquired and maintained through thousands 
of years a special character as the centre of exchange 
between the further East— especially India — and the 
Mediterranean. The commerce of the Indies came over- 
land across the Persian Plateau, up the rivers from the 
Persian gulf, to Mesopotamia ; the commerce of the 
Mediterranean peoples of the Levant, of Egypt, of Asia 
Minor, and further west came eastward with more 
dilficulty to Mesopotamia by the Euphrato Valley and 
