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Show i Mesopataroia I A WRITER, with the Allied army in Mesopo- I tamia, beginning with the heading, "Modern guns boom near the Garden of Eden," grows en- thusiastic over that region, calls it "a virgin coun- g try" and declares that it is a wonderfully rich ag ricultural country 'and that when the new irrigation irriga-tion works shall be completed it will be a glory of the earth. It is not quite a virgin country, but it has enjoyed a rest for five and twenty centuries and its strength may have become renewed. It started civilization on its western march and now the children of what were then unknown lands, peopled only by savages, are going back there to build up a new civilization. At least they were I when the present war burst upon the old world. It may delay the progress that had been inaugu rated, but there is no doubt about the native fertility fer-tility of that land. Ninevah and Babylon with their millions of people were supported by two or three of those valleys. They, too, must have had a great system of irrigation ir-rigation in use, and it is quite possible that the chief reason they finally became deserted and given over to bats and owls was because tho growing degeneration of tho people permitted the irrigation works to go to decay and there was no longer food for the myriads of men and animals. The way Cyrus captured Babylon was to turn off the water from the city and to enter it through the old river channel, and Belshazzar, while drinking from the holy golden cups was surprised and slain. And now the descendants pf the wild and barbarous tribes, that then were unknown, go back there ith engines that could have smashed those gates under which tho river ran in five minutes, and that land, when the present fury subsides, sub-sides, is to be restored and redeemed. Maybe after all, the redemption of the world is to really begin where the light first came to men; where they first began to call upon God and to do away with the primitive barbarism In which the world was wrapped. Who knows? For a year past the light has seemed to be going Into eclipse in the eastern world and mankind drifting swiftly back to savagery. Was there a plan drawn and a great purpose intended? Is there out of the suffering and tho darkness a great joy to be born and a great new light to come to the world? There is no doubt that "God moves in a mysterious mys-terious way His wonders to perform," but what are the next wonders to be? |