The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1916-01-04
OVER THE PATH TROD By ABRA-
HAM AFTER HE HEARD CALL
MUIR OF THE CHALDEES.
WAR IN THE GARDEN OF tDFN
On Spot Where Belshazzar Saw Let
ters of His Doom on Banquet Wall
Machine Guns Are Today Kicking
In Dust of Dead Centuries.

Machine NliIIS ATO AONtJ AAASAiHe
Up Dust of Dead Centuries.
If we were asked to name the
most interesting bit of war news dur
ing recent weeks, not the most i'm
portant or the most dreadful but thai
most stimulating to thought and i'm
agination, We should cite three lines
published on October 81, as follows;
'London.-It is reported from
Mesopotamia that the British eXpe-
dition is within a few miles of Bag
dad
Three lines and nothing more-a
mysterious reticence! Battles in Rus
STA and France and Servia; political
peace and rumblings of revolution
all these are of interest to the stu
dent of the great upheaval; but none
of them compares in fascination with
the brief reminder that there is war,
too, in far-off Asia; that armies are
fighting for the .Moslem world, now
a sordid slum of a city, with moth
ing but the name and few taWdry
mosques and tombs to recall the an
cient glories of the caliphate and the
spacious days of Haroun Al-Raschid,
says the North American, of Phila-
delphia, editorially.
Why should anyone desire to pos
YoolynC n 4
swarming desert city, unchanging in
its primitive, teeming, Oriental life,
a prize for which empires battle and
regiments of men lay down their
lives? With the fate of peoples and
of thrones at issue in western and
eastern Europe why is the clamor
of war waking the age-long silence
of mid-Asia the half-forgotten, desc
late birthplace of mankind?
A World Gateway.
These questions are easily answer
ed. Bagdad is potentially one of
those world gateways which from
time to time adventurous nations
strive to have and to hold. Like
Constantinople, like Suez, like Ka-
bull. it is one of the portals set mid
way on the road of empire; and he
who holds it-German or Briton-
will take tribute of the trade of half
a continent and give law to unnum-
bered millions.
But it is not the cause of war STRAIT
egv or projects of imperial suprema-
cy that this news thrills the imagi-
nation. It is because of the scene
of the struggle.
That land of solitude and mystery
was the cradle of the human race.
History itself began when Mesopota-
mia died; beyond that remote period
only questioning silence can pene-
trate, to grope in the twilight OF
conjecture There, under the dust
of ages, lie buried the fragmentary
ruins of civilizations that were old
when the first courses of the pyra-
mids were laid on the banks of the
Nile: that had known splendor and
decay before the Red Sea closed over
Pharaoh and his hosts; that were
forgotten before Troy fell or Rome
was.
'"Soldiers!" cried Napoleon in
Egypt, forty centuries look down
upon you!" Six thousand years OF
human history and natures slow de-
cay have scanned the face Of that old
err and emptier land. Empires rose
and fell and left hardly more trace
than the pulse beats of time. Cent
ury upon century they filled the
known earth with their glories-and
faded away into impenetrable dark
ness.
One reads three lines in the morn
ing's news, and peers into stupen-
dous vistas of antiquity. A dozen
words flashed over the cable stir the
very depths of history and link today