Show A iati T C d tower of babel la Is again in use uce mesopotamian reclamation matlon sir william great project now in course of realization my dy WILLIAM T ELLIS babylon possibly tho the greatest present project of and certainly tho the most roin romantic antic the reclamation ol of mesopotamia Is now in course of actual realization during the time of my sojourn in mesopotamia the papers providing tor for the construction of these vast irrigation works wore signed by tho the turkish government and sir john jackson the distinguished british engineer to whom the carrying on to completion ot of the imperial project of sir william has been entrusted sir john has lentone left one ot of hla his consulting engineers in charge at bagdad and the other men of his staff are either already here or on the way the magnificent ent conception ot of sir william Wille acks to giva glaback Aback to civilization the fertile land between the tigris and the euphrates which was waa tho the birth birthplace of history and the home of teeming millions of people to Is no longer a dream so dramatic an event as the rehabilitation tation of this once fertile land now become a desert deaerts la Is found to be full of at startling aspects not the least of these I 1 discovered when I 1 camo came to babylon and saw that what the archaeologists are agreed upon as the remains of at the tower oc at babel la is now practically a hole bole in the ground and when I 1 went out to the hindia barrage where the engineers are at work I 1 saw the bricks from the tower of babel being ground up into powder to make maho cement for the foundations of the new barrage there to Is a mens measure ifie of fitness in this ancient tower of deliverance being used to help save cave the land from Us its thirsty aridity lest anybody accuse sir willam wiljam of being an iconoclast it may bo be said that the bricks were taken from their original site 30 years ago by the turkish government which tried to build a dam that would send the waters of the euphrates once moro more past babylon or what meant more to it past the modern town of Il lilah making the garden of eden bloom sir william like all arch and students of the bible locates the garden of eden in the tigris euphrates delta sir william fixes the site nt at a point west of lilt the famous springs from which chic h both both antiquity and modern times secured vast of bitumen these smoking and forbidding regions are said ty some to have given the ancients their figure of the angels with tho the words swords at the gates of the garden no doubt Is entertained by tt the le archaeologists sea logiste that it was in this region that civilization had its birth here were the great empires of antiquity prom beneath the drifted dust and silting billing mud of mesopotamia tho the scholars with spades are digging up the wonderful stories ot at Da babylon bylon niffer tello ninevah and ashhur while other tells or mounds such as mark the site of ur of the Chal dees the city of abrahams ancestors await the coming of archaeological expeditions the garden made a desert As every traveler in this part pait of the world has remarked the most moslem em Is not mot a builder but a waster the statement la Is commonly made concerning the arab but it la is equally equal ly true it f tho turk it seems as aa it if the fatalism and physical ec excesses esses of mo cut the nerve of initia jve and endeavor certainly the followers ewers of the prophet found this relon gion a garden but they have made it desert I 1 have traveled over a considerable ild sid crable erable part of mesopotamia by celek horse wagon donkey small boat and afoot everywhere the same story Is repeated it is all poverty ruin and desolation the arabs live inthe in the same black tents that solomon sang ang about or else in miserable mud hovels they havo have none of at the con sentences ven lences ces of of lite life to la a hand to mouth existence the appliances ances of agriculture are primitive beyond belief a small email triangular shovel a little hoe hoa about the size and shape hape afan of an adze and a sharpened stick for a plow bialy a small email strip of territory lying along the rivers or the few subsidiary canals that remain la Is cultivated water la Is by the ch cher erit lt a leather bucket let down to tho the stream dream and hauled up cupl by oxen donkeys camels or cows the process to la cumbersome expensive and inadequate in a few places oil engines and pumps pump enado in britain and america have displaced the cumbersome charit and it seems seema inevitable that they should become general in tho the rev new day that Is dawn ing for mesopotamia back of these cultivated areas lies iles the mesopotamia desert I 1 have hava traversed sec sections tons of it where not a plant bigger than the camel thorn them could be seen it looks looka quite as aa desolate as the sandy bandy arabian desert to pe the west of the euphrates yet it Is every toot foot good gray airth c arth friable and productive nA needing eding only water to lo make it pour forth croan to enrich the markets a 0 civilization and to deliver the pie population tram irom dir pov arty and the water la Is still available a 11 tally gully as aa it was waa viea this region was the worlds gira granary narY the father of the nile dams dama sir william who hax has also had bad extensive experience in irrigation work in india has for years boen been calling the attention of the world to the irrigation possibilities oc at the delta of at the euphrates and the tigris there la is n no good reason why the ancient productiveness of this district should not be restored the water la Is still available and the soil la Is as good as e ver ever it WM wa the only reason reagon tor for its ancient productiveness which was so BO great that herodotus was afraid to describe it la in full last hla his veracity bo be questioned was waa the system ot of canals maintained by the peoples of old it la Is to bo be remembered that tho the dense dens populations which filled this delta in a former time were not dav ages or barbarians they represented alak alike tho the beginnings and the high water mark of ancient civilization greece Iri and rome home were the tha heirs of this eastern culture ifera hera it was that many of the fundamental inventions of civilization had bad their origin it was hero here that wheat and barley were first domesticated some of at the sciences took their rise in this part of the world A code of laws lawi as old or older than the mosaic Is now known to have prevailed in this babylonian civilization for the prevent present it la Is enough to recall that a complete and wonderful system of canals covered all the land known as lower mesopotamia nothing like it la Is known in modern times engineers have freely conceded high praise to this achievement not until sir william took up the subject from high humanitarian motives was the re establishment of the babylonian canals ever seriously considered si ills preliminary observations led him to broach the question and five nv years alo ago he h undertook on behalf of tho the turkish government whose inter interest est he ha had bad enlisted the actual mapping out and beginning of a canal system this he has done for a nominal salary which has straightway gone back into the project prole ct in some cases the lines of the old canals which to this day are the outstanding I 1 ot of the scheme inasmuch as the young turks refuse ito to admit any settlers who will not become turkish subjects otherwise the surplus peoples of india and egypt already trained to work on irrigated land would quickly find their way here it Is not at all un likely that within the next three years tie ane chauvinistic young will wll have had a chastening cha that will remove this difficulty in any case there are the industrious kurds burds ot at tha mountains who would flock down in numbers while the moslem persians have no scruples against exchanging their present sovereign for the caliph at 0 all the faithful then there is them the not uL unreasonable reasonable prospect that the tha roving bedouin will settle down to agriculture ri when conditions become more mora stable in the th land to this germanas germanys Gerr Germ nany anys chancay at present tuo the delta Is a land of lawlessness some of the tribes along the lower reaches of the two rivers are little better than sheer savages everybody carries a gun or a stout cudgel with a bam ball ot of pitch on the end tho the lack ot at safety for the farma er Is one reason for the abandonment of the old irrigation works the new government however has baa vigorously undertaken the disarmament of the people and the establishment of law and order it it succeeds tn in this a greater obstacle to the prosperity of 0 mesopotamia than any that confronts tho the engineers will have been overcome some persons persona there aro are who say that germany should be permitted to fulfill her ambitious ambitions in this region everybody knows that a primary consideration in the building of the dag bag dad railway la Is to give germany access to the wheat and cotton fields of mesopotamia here lies the potential granary which germany so much needs here too may be grown the cotton for which her bar spindles are ara hungry in all her projects looking toward the persian gulf she has bas been beela hindered by great britain and russia now a school of british statesmen 9 NW set n 4 art aw I 1 3 AJ R 7 C 4 s V V A t m J I 1 1 1 l 14 AAN Q W T mode of carrying baggage feature of mesopotamian scenery are followed in others othera newer methods mado made possible by modern engineering skill are employed A livelihood for new millions pil lions tho the Wll kocks operations which the engineering firm ot of sir john jackson I 1 take over at tho the first of april provi do tor for two great works to be completed la in less than three years one ot of these Is the barrage which will cause once more to flow the alvera of babylon now practically dry and the escape further up the euphrates at ramada hamadi when these have been completed with their incidental ci canals and the hindla barrage may be ready in a year and a half three million acres of land that is at present arid will be available for cultivation the only real obstacle feared by those engaged in the work Is the lack of stable mindedness of the turkish government ana its depleted treasury this latter point Is covered it Is understood in these parts by the terms of the contract with sir john jackson who practically finances the up undertaking der taking recouping himself from the income off the new lands receiving what in equivalent to seven per cent on the investment at AC present the area affected by the irrigation project contains about a million und and a half of population these them are mostly poor arabs who subsist on a pittance so that thousands of them are glad gild to got get work on the mew canals and barrages nt at 13 12 cents cent aday 01 day tho women arid and children make mahe even less lesa than this while some same of the tha foremen and picked workmen workman receive as cents a day all however are learning to a degree tho the habits ot of steady industry which will stand them lit la stead when they come coma to take up the land that it is being redeemed by their present labors sir willlim hlll cocks cocka to Is authority tor for the statement that there 18 b a livelihood for twelve people la in the tha reclaimed area where these extra ten tea end iliad a itile alf millions of population axe re to eom come from gives concern to some soma students among whom str sir william may be counted have arisen to ask tor for germany the outlet that she sha so eo sorely needs at present she Is hot tied up it la Is this very repression argue the men of nf this new school which makes germany a menace to the peace of europe and the world give her a legitimate outlet tor for her energies and the ph will cease to keep the statesmen of other nations awake at night lt her take on mesopotamia or a large part of it and she aho will have troubles enough right at hand as well as aa a field for or the labors of her surplus population it would ho be inconsonance with the thel ideala deals of the twentieth century and in particular with those or of sir william it the great dream and equally great achievements of this briton aided by others ot of king georges subjects should be instrumental in delivering his country from the peril ot of german militarism while at the same came time doing an service to humanity back to the garden of gaen the immediate results ot of the new irrigation are fairly staggering the land which within three years will be calling for settlers will jac according cording to sir william be capable af once of producing a million tons of wheat and two million hundredweight of cotton not to mention rice dates beans bar ley oats melons eto etc sir william Wl llam has haa figured out an entire scheme for the tha most profitable order of crops crop thin schema is in at the present moment visualized in mountains of new paled earth great canals throbbing engines growling crowling antono crushers thumping pit drivers which use ui piles and regiments of at slow and arab laborers hero are in p respect prospect the freights of the now new bagdad rall way Cyrls cyrint Cyri ht ISM ty br aw josph a |