Part 22

We in hungry Roubaix looked out on Belgium as the land of promise. The Flemish workers who came into the town from time to time from Belgium were well fed and prosperous looking, a great contrast to the French of Roubaix and Lille. The Belgian children that I saw were healthy and of good appearance, quite unlike the wasted little ones of France, with hollow blue rings round their eyes.

The people of Roubaix, knowing these facts, are convinced that the Germans are endeavoring to lay the foundations of a vassal State in Belgium. Foiled in their attempts to capture Calais, the Germans believe that Zeebrugge and Ostend are capable of development as harbors for aggressive action against England. The French do not doubt that the enemy will make a desperate struggle before giving up Antwerp.

The picture I have presented of Belgium as I saw it is, of course, vastly different from the outraged Belgium of the first stage of the war.

Lest there should arise any misunderstanding, I complete the picture by stating my conviction, based on intimate talks with Belgian men and women, that the population as a whole are keeping a firm upper lip, and that attempts by the Germans to seduce them from their allegiance by blandishment and bribery will fail as surely as the efforts of frightfulness.

Mr. Whitaker's account of his escape into Holland closes thus:

When we drew near to the wires, just before midnight, we lay on the ground and wriggled along until we were within fifty yards of Holland. There we lay for what seemed to be an interminable time. We saw patrols passing. An officer came along and inspected the sentries. Everything was oppressively quiet.

Each sentry moved to and fro over a distance of a couple of hundred yards. Opposite the place where we lay two of them met. Choosing his opportunity, one of my comrades, who had provided himself with rubber gloves some weeks before for this critical moment, rushed forward to the spot where the two sentries had just met. Scrambling through barbed wire and over an unelectrified wire, he grasped the electrified wires and wriggled between them. We came close on his heels. He held the deadly electrified wires apart with lengths of thick plate glass with which he had come provided while first my other companions and then I crawled through. Before the sentries returned we had run some hundreds of yards into No Man's Land between the electrified wires and the real Dutch frontier.

Only one danger remained. We had no certainty that the Dutch frontier guards would not hand us back to the Germans. We took no risks, though it meant wading through a stream waist deep. Our troubles were now practically over. By rapid stages we proceeded to Rotterdam.

I was without money. My watch I had given to the Belgian villager in whose cottage I had found refuge. My clothes were shabby from frequent soakings and hard wear. I had shaved only once in Belgium, and a stubby growth of beard did not improve my general appearance.

At Rotterdam I reported myself to the British Consul. I was treated with the utmost kindness. My expenses during the next four or five days, while I waited for a boat, were paid and I was given my fare to Hull. There I was searched by two military police and questioned closely by an examining board. My papers were taken and I was told to go to London and apply for them at the Home Office. As I was again practically without means I was given permission to go to my home in Bradford before proceeding to London.

* * * * *

In cooperation with the British forces, a Russian army took part in movements against Bagdad and Turkish cities in Armenia and Persia. These military movements were marked by varying success on the part of the Russian and Turkish forces. Certain phases of this campaign are described in the following chapter.

THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN IN TURKEY

JAMES B. MACDONALD

Copyright, American Review of Reviews, April, 1916.

It is perhaps not generally realized how important the future of Mesopotamia is to the British, or why they originally sent an expedition there which has since developed into a more ambitious campaign. Ever since the Napoleonic period British influence and interests have been supreme from Bagdad to the Persian Gulf, and this was the one quarter of the globe where they successfully held off the German trader with his political backing.

It will be recalled that early in Queen Victoria's reign Great Britain engaged in a war with Persia, and landed troops at Bushire in assertion of their rights. Ever since they have policed the Persian Gulf, put down piracy, slave and gun-running, and lighted the places dangerous to navigation. These interests having been entrusted to the Government of India, news affecting them seldom finds its way into Western papers. Previous to the war a line of British steamers plied regularly up the River Tigris to Bagdad, the center of the caravan trade with Persia. The foreign trade of this town alone in 1912 amounted to $19,000,000, and it was nearly all in the hands of merchants in Great Britain or India. Germany exported $500,000 worth of goods there annually. Basra, farther down the river, exports annually about 75,000 tons of dates, valued at $2,900,000. It also does a large export trade in wheat.

A large irrigation scheme was partly completed before the war, near the ancient town of Babylon, under the direction of a famous Anglo-Indian engineer, Sir William Willcocks. When finished it was to cost $105,000,000, and was expected to reclaim some 2,800,000 acres of land of great productibility. It will, therefore, be seen that Britain had some considerable stake in the country. In addition to this, the British Government, shortly before the war, invested $10,000,000 in acquiring control of the Anglo-Persian oil fields, which is the principal source of supply for oil fuel for their navy. By this means they avoided the risk of great American corporations cornering the supply of oil fuel and holding up their navy. John Bull upon occasion shows some gleamings of shrewdness. This deal is on a par with their purchase of sufficient shares to control the Suez Canal. The Anglo-Persian oil fields are situated across the border in Persia, and the oil is led in pipes down the Karam River valley, a tributary of the combined Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The native tribes in the neighborhood were subsidized to protect the pipe-line, or, rather, to leave it alone.

During recent years Persia has fallen into decay. Politically she is more sick than "the sick man of the East." The people have a religion of their own and worship the sun, although quite a number of Moslems have settled in their midst. Being cognizant of German designs to create a great Eastern empire in Mesopotamia and Persia, which would threaten India, Egypt, and the Russian East, Britain and Russia came together and formed a kind of Monroe Doctrine of their own. They said, in effect, northern Persia shall be Russia's sphere of influence, and southern Persia shall be Britain's sphere of influence. They both recognized that a great military power, like Germany, permanently established at Bagdad, with aggressive tendencies, would imperil their Eastern dominions, and both were prepared to make it a casus belli--Britain, further, a few years ago informed Germany that the area from Bagdad to the head of the Gulf was her "Garden of Eden," and any attempt to carry German railways south of Bagdad would bring on war. The Emperor William apparently did not mind this opposition by Britain and Russia to his Oriental ambition, provided he could find a passage through the Balkans.

At the time Britain and Russia came to an agreement regarding Persia they were not on so good a footing with each other as they are to-day. In order that neither should get an advantage over the other, it was decided that the Persian gendarmes--about 6,000 in number--should be officered by neutrals, and, unfortunately as it turned out for the Allies, they mutually chose Swedes. On the outbreak of war neither Britain nor Russia desired that Persia should be brought into it. The German ambassador in Persia, however, had other views, and suborned Swedish officers in command of the Persian gendarmes. Partly by this means, and partly by Turkish agents, a rebellion was brought about within the Russian sphere. Religion had nothing to do with the trouble in Persia. Turkish forces entered Persian Kurdistan and announced that they were on their way to conquer India and the Russian East, while their compatriots would overrun Egypt. These were the fairy-tales with which the Germans had originally enticed the Turks into the war. The Turks were willing to believe them, and apparently did believe them. The responsible Germans had no such illusions, but hoped to attain their ends by causing internal disturbances within India and Egypt. These German canards, put about in war time, have been adopted by some writers in this country as the foundation from which to write contemporary history. It may interest them to know that India possesses the strongest natural frontiers in the world.

Strategy nowadays is very largely a matter of geography. Modern armies are circumscribed in their movements by the available means of transportation, whether these be by railroad, river, or roadway, and this means geography applied in giving direction to troop movements.

Before entering into a review of the combined Anglo-Russian campaign a preliminary survey of the strategical geography of the war area will make the position more clear.

In ancient times the only practical way by road and ferry from Europe to Asia or Africa was by way of the Balkan valleys and across the Bosphorus or Dardanelles. Hence arose the importance of the ferryhouse--Constantinople. That city in those days was the center of the known world and the clearing-house for the merchandise of Asia, Africa, and Europe. From Scutari, on the opposite shore, the overland route meandered across Asia Minor to Aleppo in Syria. Here the sign-post to India pointed down the Euphrates Valley, by way of Bagdad, while that to Egypt and Arabia followed the Levant or eastern shore of the Mediterranean. Between each fork lay the Syrian desert. A glance at the map shows the reason why in those days this was the only practical route, as to-day it is the easiest. The wall of the Ural Mountains, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasian Mountains, and the Black Sea shut out direct communication from Europe to Asia, or vice versa, except by the Constantinople ferry or a sea voyage.

In Asia Minor progress was further barred by the watershed of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers to the south, and the Caucasian Mountains to the east. A practical way was found at the lower elevations of the Taurus and Amanus mountains--two parallel spurs which strike the sea at the Gulf of Alexandretta. This narrow neck of the bottle, as it were, is of enormous military importance alike to the Turks and to the British. Through it must pass any army of invasion by land from Europe or Asia Minor to Egypt or India; and, conversely, through it must pass any invading army from Mesopotamia into Asia Minor. If the British should conquer Mesopotamia and should intend to hold it--as they undoubtedly would--they will have no strategical frontiers until they secure the watershed of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the Taurus passage. If they secure the latter, Syria, Palestine, and Arabia will fall to them like apples off a tree. It would then be no longer necessary to defend the Suez Canal. The natural frontier of Egypt is the Taurus mountain range. Asia Minor is the real Turkey; the other portions of the empire--Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and Turkey in Europe--are only appendages. The eastern door into Asia Minor is Erzerum, and the southern door is the Taurus passage. Turkey can only part with these at the cost of her life. Russia has already captured Erzerum, and the British possess the Island of Cyprus, which commands the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta--twenty miles from the Taurus passage. That is, broadly, the situation.

Near the crossing of the Taurus and Amanus mountains lies the city of Aleppo, the starting-point for the overland caravan routes to Bagdad and India, and also to Damascus, Mecca, and Egypt. Just as surely as pioneer travelers always chose the easiest route, so the railways of to-day follow in their footsteps. The physical features of nature constrained both modern as well as ancient armies to travel the same way. Hence a railway map of the Balkans and of Asiatic Turkey is a first consideration in appreciating the strategical bearings of the Anglo-Russian campaign in Turkey-in-Asia, or the alleged rival Germanic-Turkish schemes for the invasion of Egypt, Persia, and India. Of no less importance is a knowledge of the available sea routes and inland rivers.

The ability of Bulgaria and Turkey to carry on the war depends on aid from Germany in men, munitions, and money. These allies are the weakest members of the Central Group, and may be the first to give in if circumstances are adverse to their adventure.

Their sole communication with the Central Powers is by the Balkan railway from the Danube to Constantinople by way of Sofia. If this line is severed, then these nations are out of the game. The Allies have all winter been organizing the defenses of Salonica as a pied-à-terre for such an attack. Should Rumania join the Allies in the spring, then a further attack may be expected from the north, in which Russian troops would join. Turkey is now too preoccupied with her own troubles to be able to assist Bulgaria.

In Asia Minor the only railway of importance is the trunk line from Scutari, on the Bosphorus, to the Taurus Tunnel, in course of completion near Adana. One branch runs west to Smyrna, and another east to Angora. Beyond the Taurus Tunnel is another in course of completion through the Amanus Mountains. Every person and everything destined for the Bagdad front or for the invasion of Egypt has to be transported over these mountains. So also have rails for the completion of the Aleppo-to-Bagdad railway. These tunnels are expected to be finished this year--when it will be too late. From Aleppo the Syrian railway runs south through Damascus to Medina and Mecca in Arabia. Branches reach the Levant seaports of Tripoli, Beirut, and Haifa. Another railway was started from Aleppo to Bagdad shortly before the war, and construction begun at both ends. We have no reliable information as to how far it has progressed, but the presumption is that there is a large gap between Ras-el-ain and Mosul and between the latter place and Samara.