Show ary T f ft i t ifft ast 0 i 1 y S ff r it BT G ye OLDER NATIONS tower towee of babel la to again in use mesopotamian reclamation sir william great project now in course of realization by WILLIAM T ELLIS babylon possibly tho the greatest present project ot of civilization and certainly the most romantic the reclamation of mesopotamia is now in course of actual realization during the lime time ot of my sojourn in mesopotamia the papers providing for the construction of these vast irrigation works we were signed resigned by the turkish government and sir john jackson the distinguished british engineer to whom the carrying on to completion of the imperial project of sir william has been entrusted sir john hag has left one of his consulting en ginders in charge at bagdad and the other men of his staff are either al at ready here or on the way the mag ent conception of sir william to give back to civilization the fertile land between the tigris and the euphrates which was the birthplace of history and the home of teeming millions of people Is no longer a dream so dramatic an event as the rehabilitation of this once fertile land now become a desert Is found to be full of startling aspects not the least of thesa these I 1 discovered when I 1 came to babylon and saw that what the arch geologists are agreed upon as the re mains of the tower of babel Is now practically a hole in the ground and when I 1 went out to the hindla bar rage where the engineers are antwork at work I 1 saw the bricks from the tower of babel being ground up into i powder to make cement tor for the foun i nations of the new barrage there Is a measure of fitness in this ancient tower of deliverance being used to help cave save the land from its thirsty aridity lest anybody accuse sir wll lam of being an iconoclast it may 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 wa tera of the euphrates once more past babylon or what meant more to it past the modern lown town of hillah making the garden of eden bloom sir william ilke all arch and students of the bible locates the garden of eden in the tigris euphrates delta sir william fixes the site at a point west of hit the famous springs from which both antiquity and modern times secured vast supplies of bitumen these ing and forbidding regions are said by some to have given the ancients their figure of the angels with the flaming swords at the gates of the garden no doubt Is entertained py by the arch geologists that it was in this region that civilization had its birth here were the great empires of antiquity prom from beneath the drifted dust and silting mud of mesopotamia the schol ars aro with spades are digging up the wonderful stories of babylon niffer tello ninevah and aish ashhur ur while other tells or mounds such as mark he site of ur of the Chal dees the city if t abrahams ancestors await the coming of archaeological expeditions the garden made a desert As every traveler in this part of the world has remarked the moslem Is not rot a builder but a waster the statement Is commonly made concern ing the arab but it Is equally true it f the turk it seems as it if the ta fa alisa and physical excesses of mohammedanism hamme cut the nerve of initia live uve and endeavor certainly the fol of the prophet found this region a garden 1 I but they have made it i desert I 1 have traveled over a con sid 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 in the same black tents that solomon gang sang about or else in miserable mud hovels they have none of the con venlen cea of civilization life ufa Is a hand to mouth existence the appia ances of agriculture are primitive beyond belief bellef a small triangular shovel a little hoe about the size and shape of an adze and a sharpened stick tor for a plow only a small strip of territory lying along the rivers or the few subsidiary canals that remain Is cultivated water Is raised by the charit a leather bucket let down to the stream ani and hauled up by oxen donkeys camels or cows the process Is cumbersome expensive and inadequate in a fe few places oil engines and pumps made in britain and america have displaced the cumbersome charit and it seems inevitable that they their should become general in the new day that Is dawn ing tor for mesopotamia back of these cultivated areas lies the mesopotamia desert I 1 have traversed sec sections tons ot of it where not a plant bigger than the camel thorn I 1 could be seen it looks quite as doso boso late as the sandy arabian desert to I 1 the west of the euphrates Euphra tear yet it Is every foot goodZ gray earth friable and productive needing only water to make it pour forth crops to t nelch rich the tho markets of deliver the present popular fe e poverty and the al liable lable KB an fully as y J region WM was the wf the rho fat BS me sir william V ai also bad had t IT s i 47 B 0 O A extensive experience in irrigation work la in india lias has for years been calling the attention of the world to the irrigation possibilities of the delta of the euphrates and the tigris there Is no good reason why the ancient productiveness of this district should not be restored the water la Is still available and the soli soil la is as good as ever it waa ws the only reason tor for ita its ancient productiveness which was BO so great that herodotus was afraid to describe it in full lest his veracity be questioned was the system of canals maintained by the peoples of old it Is to bo be remembered that the dense populations which filled this delta la in a former time were not sav ages or barbarians they represented alike tho beginnings and the high water mark of ancient civilization greece and rome were the heirs of this eastern culture here it was that many of the fundamental anven eions of civilization had their origin it was here that wheat and barley were first domesticated some of the sciences lences Bc took their rise in this part of the world A code of laws as old or older than the ilo mosaic sale Is now known to have prevailed in this babylonian civilization for the present ilits if Is enough to recall that a complete and wonderful system of canals covered all the land known as lower mesopotamia noth ing like it Is known in modern times engineers have freely conceded high praise to this achievement not until sir william Wili cocks took up the subject from high humanitarian motives was the re establishment reestablishment of the babylonian canals ever seriously con eldered ills its preliminary observations led him to broach the question and five years ago he undertook on be half of the turkish government whose interest he bad had enlisted the actual mapping out and beginning of a canal system this he has done for a nom inal salary which has straightway gone back into the project in some cases the lines of the old canals which to this day are the outstanding SW 0 4 t of tho the scheme inasmuch aa as the young turks refuse to admit any bottlers 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 I 1 ears the chauvinistic young turks will have had a chastening cha that will remove this difficulty in any case there are tho the industrious kurds burds of tha the mountains who would flock down in la numbers while the moslem persians have no scruples against exchanging their present sovereign tor for the caliph ot of au all the faithful then there Is the not unreasonable prospect that the roving bedouin will settle down to ag rl culture when conditions become becomer more stable in the land Is this germanys germanas Germ anys chance at present the delta Is a land ot of lawlessness some ot of the tribes along the lower reaches ot of the two rivers are little better than sheer savages everybody carries a gun or a stout cudgel with a ball ot of pitch on the end the lack ot of safety tor for the farmer Is one reason for the abandonment of the old irrigation works the new government however has vigorously undertaken the disarmament of the people and the establishment of law and order it if it succeeds in this a greater obstacle to the prosperity ot of mesopotamia than any that confronts the engineers will have been over come some persons there are who say that germany should be permitted to fulfill her ambitions in this region everybody knows that a primary con side ratton in the building of the bag dad railway is to give germany access to the wheat and cotton fields ot of mesopotamia here lies the potential granary which germany so much needs here too may be grown the cotton tor for which aich her spindles are hungry in all her projects looking toward the persian gulf she has been hindered by great britain and russia now a school ot of british statesmen A I 1 it t lia 4 f 1 i 1 A 11 sa X 4 t 4 1 t 4 A 11 w ilk 11 iea 44 f 4 kl ak J X X 0 X i W e 1 1 4 1 A z ko ax 4 J Z W P ta 4 0 t A ix T k I 1 it 1 V 6 4 bail IJ X ay mode of carrying baggage feature of mesopotamia mesopotamian scenery enery ac are followed in others newer methods made possible by modern engineering skill are employed A livelihood for new million millions tho the N Ill cocks operations which the engineering firm of sir john jackson take over at the first of april provide tor for two great works to be completed in less than three years one of these Is the hindla barrage which will cause once more to flow the rivers of babylon now practically dry and the escape further up the euphrates at hamadi when these have been completed with their in cl ci dental canals and the alindia barrage may be ready in a year and a half three million acres of land that la 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 and 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 tho the undertaking recouping himself from the income of oc ahe new lands receiving what hat Is eq equivalent ulva leAt to seven per cent on the investment at present the area affected by the irrigation project contains about a million and a halt of population these are mostly poor arabs who ho subsist on a pittance BO so that thousands ot of them are glad to get work on the new canala and barrages at 12 cents a day the women and children make even less than this while some ot of the tore fort men ami and picked workmen receive as much as M 45 6 cents a day dair all ho however never are learn ilig to a degree the habits of steady ludu industry stry which will stand them in stead when they come to take up the land that Is being redeemed by their present labors sir william la Is authority tor for the statement that there should be a livelihood for twelve million people in the reclaimed area where the these extra ten and a half millions ot of population are to come tram from gives goncey concern to some students among whom sir william may be counted have arisen to ask for germany the outlet that she so sorely needs at present she Is bottled up it Is this very repression argue the men of 0 this new school which makes germany a menace to the peace of europe and the world give her a outlet tor for her energies and ehe she will cease to keep the statesmen of other nations awake a at t night let her take on mesopotamia or a large part ot of it and she will have troubles enough right at hand as well as a field for the labors of her surplus population it would be inconsonance with the ideals of the twentieth century and in particular tic ular with those of sir william will cocks it if the great dream and equally great achievements of this briton aided by others of king georges subjects should be instrumental in de livering his country from the peril of german militarism while at tho the earne same time doing an incalculable service to humanity back to the garden of eden the immediate results results of tha the new pew irrigation are fairly staggering the land which within three years will be calling tor for settlers will according accord ng to sir william bo be capable at once of producing a million tons of wheat and two million hundredweight of cotton not to mention rice dates beans barley oats melons etc sir william haa has figured out an entire scheme schema tor for tho most profitable order of crops this scheme la Is at the present moment visualized in mountains of new piled earth great canals throbbing engines growling stone crushers thumping pile drivers which use lackawanna plies piles and regiments of slow and sing singing inic arab laborers here are in prospect the freights of the th new bagdad rau rall way copyright by joseph B bowl A gentle word soothes anger just as water puts out fire and there la in no boll soil BO so barren but that tenderness briegs forth somo some fruitsy fruit st ancas 69 4 soles |