The Wenatchee daily world. [volume] (Wenatchee, Wash.) 1905-1971, 1909-06-29
FRED S|MP|CH, NOW CONSULAR
APP0|NIEE, At washington
Now in Conference With Other Repre-
sentatives of the Government at the
National Capital---Will Leave Soon
for For East Where a Great Interna-
tional Game Is Being Played.

Fred Simpich, formerly of the Daily
World, and now appointed as Amer
ican consul at Bagdad, is in Washing
ton in conference with other eastern
representatives of the government.
He will be at the national capital
only few weeks prior to his depar-
ture for Turkey
Bagdad is a city of 100000 in
ha5itants and just now the section
tributary is the scene of a great
game, the outcome Of which means
eventually the opening of the orient
to trade relations with the occident.
In this months issue of Every
body's E. Alexander Powell, late
consul in the Ottoman dominion, has
written an article entitled THE Fight
for the Highway of Nations" which
discusses the questions of interna-
tional import in reference to this part
of the world. He says:
This is the story of a chess game;
the greatest, perhaps, since Napoleon
played the allies. with Europe for a
stake-and lost In this game Eng
land and Germany are the opponents;
the prize for which they are playing
board on which they make their
moves is the Babylonian plain.
There is no stranger or more fas-
cinating story in all the world. The
people with whom We have to do are
the great ones of the earth. The
lands wherein this world game is be-
ing played to a finish were old when
the pyramids were built, were hoary
with antiquity at the crucifixion. And
the pawns in the great game are the
most interesting of ALL for one is an
engineer with title and a reputation
and half the alphabet trailing after
his name; another is an Arab sheik
with a hawk nose, who lives in a
squalid, mui-walled town and rides
abroad with ten score armed retain
ers at his back; and the third is a
lean political agent in white he'll
met, who has looked behind the
scenes of the international diplomatic
drama so long that he is cynical and
has not a single illusion.
AS for the rest of those who make
up the motley crew of chessmen, each
of them playing his little part, there
are fox-eyed agents of the Surete,
grizzled, grave-faced diplomatists In
frock coats, and handful of Turkish
pashas in their red fezes; and the
rest are of no Importance whatever,
automatically, being merely engi-
neers and bridge constructors and
railway builders. While over them
all hovers the shadow, ominous. mys-
terious, uncertain of the Moslem
power.
And now, with the board set and
the game begun, let us peer behind
the curtain and see for ourselves
those things of which the diplomats
are wont to speak of with bated
breath. Let US call things by SIM
ple. everyday names. and try to learn
the real reason for Germany's hatred
of England and England's deep-seat-
ed fear of Germany, and of the race
for battleship supremacy which is
impoverishing both nations, and,
above all else, why Abdul Hamid
managed so long to keep his seat on
his unstable and tottering throne.
In his great white palace in Berlin
the head of the House of Hohenzol-
lern sits and ponders. Outspread
before him lies a map, and dotted
across it is a trail of tiny flags, black
-white-and- d-scarlet-German flags.
They start at Hamburg. and We fol-
10 wthem across Germany and across
the other Teutonic empire-German
in all but name-to Vienna, and so
on to Budapest and Belgrade and
constantinople Even there the trail
Hoes not end, for, crossing the Bos-
porus, we take it up again and it
laads MS straight away across the
/Ooo+;ruad IN PAGE Four1