The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1917-05-08
Bagdad.
From the Kansas City Star.

Bagdad taken by the British! That bit
of news is one of the romantic touches that
occasionally punctuate the grim story of the
world war. Bagdad, city of the caliphas,
home of that figure of our dreams, Harun
Al-Rashid.
Look at the map of Turkey in Asia and
you will see two rivers, one the Tigris,
rising in the mountains of Armenia, near
the Black Sea; the other the Euphrates,
rising near the sources of the Tigris, each
flowing toward the southeast, almost paral-
leling each other across the Mesopotamian
plain and finally joining their waters into
one river that empties into the Persian Gulf.
That land of Mesopotamia, of Babylonia, of
Assyria, traversed by those rivers is gem
orally regarded as the cradle of the human
race. 1t is the center of the plain of Shinar,
between the rivers, that the people built
the great tower of baker brick to the god
of the air, that was the ancestor of our
church steeples. From this plain come some
of the earliest written records, clay tablets
more than 5000 years old. From out those
valleys poured the mighty hosts of Xerxes
and Darius on their world conquering mis-
slons. There the great ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
looked about him and exclaimed: as not
this the great Babylon, which have built?"
This land was for thousands of wears SUI
preme in the history of the world and was
one of the great mOlding forces in the hu-
man story.
In the days of their prosperity those val
leys supported large population. The soil
was rich and produced freely, when irri-
gated. 1t was the first great wheat country.
Herodotus (who was frequently over-en-
thustic) tells us he saw wheat growing on
the irrigated lands there that yielded 200
and 800 bushels to the acre.
War, the lust of conquest, wrecked and
ruined it. The irrigation dams and locks
and bitches and aqueducts, ruins of which
are yet to be seen, were destroyed, and the
population starved or moved away, and since
lain waste, its cities of ancient greatness,
capitals of the world, heaps of rubbish upon
desolate plain, where jackals bay the
moon.
There was always city where Bagdad is,
100 miles up river from old Babylon, but
it was greatest in the year 833, when its
population astounded the age 1t was the
religious capital of all Islam. How its
splendor impressed the Imagination may be
seen from the stories of the arabian
Nights" But the Mongols took it from the
Turks, Timur captured it, the Mongols re-
captured 1T, the Turks and Persians fought
there and it was again and again the scene
of a great war; and gradually it declined
until for many centuries now it has been
to US of the Western world merely a name,
mythical creation of oriental romance,
IuS oSCAlc VI IHe tdleS OF the SultanoSS
Shahrazed.
But through all those years the city lived
and was an important trading point on the
caravan routes from India to the west, and
now it has some 100000 population.
Through all those years of the last few
centuries, too, the eyes of many rulers were
watching it. Napoleon dreamed of an en-
pire that would embrace it. Russia has COW
eted it. Germany planned the Berlin to
Iagdad railway that would get and hold
those valleys; and British capitalists had
planned to spend $130,000,O00 there under
Sir William Willocks, who surveyed the
country and reported that that much money
would irrigate 100000 acres of land which.
planted in wheat and cotton, would return
9 per cent on the investment, and that 12,-
100000 acres more are susceptible of mod
ern irrigation, and it is yet the richest soil
in the world when irrigated.
1t is possible that modern science NAV
build anew finer civilization on the ruins
of the past.