The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-05-16


 dad, but not the least interesting item in the recent remarkable news from Bible lands is the fact that Babylon has fallen once more, and this time to the troops of Great Britain. Des- pite all the attention that is being given to Bagdad-and some of the re- cent articles are amazingly inaccur- ate-that city of the caliphs does not have anything like the hold upon public attention that old Babylon possesses. In history, prophecy, inn agery, song and story Babylon occu- pies a unique position, and its passing into the control of the British is note worthy.
 Literally, the British have taken Babylon. There are really two Baby Ions. One is the Babylon of today and the other is the Babylon of the time of NebuchadneZzar. The former is the town of lillian, situated with in the confines of old Babylon, and famous for it's dates. I have eaten dates in many parts of Mesopotamia, but those of lillian are best of all. The town is small, with only a few hundred inhabitants, and it's build ings are all of mud bricks, like the Babylon of old.
 Hard by are the ruins of Nebu- chadnezzar's palace, and the house of the German archaeologists who have been at work excavating the ruins for many years. Before the war there were a dozen German scholars living reguarly at Babylon, together with the Arab workmen encamped outside the walls of their compound. The head of the community was the fa- nous Dr. Kaideway, whose hospital ity has been extended to the Few Am ericans who have penetrated into that remote corner of the world. Judging from the guest book which Dr. Kal- deway kept, I should say that there are probably not score of persons in all America who have pressed foot on the very bricks of the floor of Nebuchadnezzar's throne room, as the Germans have laid it bare.
 Germany had more than scholarly interest in Babylon. The expenses of the work, amounting, as Dr. Kaldeway told me, to $20,000 a year, were met by the German government The lon project is famous. Not only was 1t a research work that appealed to the imagination, but 1t was also a stake" in this wonderful region to which the imperil German ambitions were directed. The members of Dr. Kaldeway's staff were all German of ficers, and their activities were not exclusively archaeological has been demonstrated by the early success of the Turco-Teutonic expedition. They accomplished what the British, long dominant of this region, had believed impossible. .s-.-...--..
 When the city of the caliphs fell to Gen. Maude's forces and the Turks were chased from all their outlying positions Babylon was one of the first points to be cleared. Your unsenti- mental British officer was not mind f11l of the romance of capturing the city which had fallen to Cyrus the Great and to Alexander the Great, and which has had a peculiar posi- ton in all the histories of antiquity. AS a German center it was import ant that it should not be left in the enemy's hands. Bible students best understand the dispatches from Mesopotamia, for other persons, for the most part, have only the haziest notions as to the To- cation of Mesopotamia itself, not to speak of it's detailed points. Interest in the present retreat of the Turkish German forces is enhanced by the fact that they are operating within strictly Bible lands, and their course is almost identical with that followed by Abraham when he followed the voice that called him out of UT of the Chaldees. Kut e1 Amara is on the edge of ancient UT. The Chal- deans are still living there. Among the Christian leaders hung by the Turks when they took Bagdad were eminent men of the Chaldean Chris tian church.; one of the historic east ern churches which has borne wit ness to it's faith, despite all persecu- tion, in this famous region.
 When Abraham went to Haran he followed the Tigris river, just as the Turks are doing. They have the ad- vantage of a hundred miles of the Bagdad railway which has been built northward from the city the name of which it bears, to old Samarra, the place famous religiously as the tomb of the tenth Imam, the mahdi whose return is expected by Moslems It was because of the pilgrimages that this section of the railroad was completed without waiting for the rest. The in the world externally. No Christian has, ever been permitted to enter its sacred precincts, and few westerners have seen it's walls.
 The route of Abraham and of the | fleeing army passes old Nineveh | across the river from which is the city of Mosul, where the army is like I ly to make a stand. This is a walled city and the capital of vilayet. A battle beneath the ruined walls o1 Nineveh would be in consonance witf the character of this war, which ha. | so wonderfully linked the old and the new, the past and the present, tht East and the West. All that is alive in Nineveh today is little village over the reputed tomb of Jonah, ant still bearing that prophets name.
 If defeated at Mosul, the Turks ant
 Germans will make their next stand at another point of Scriptural inter
 est-Ras el Ain, which is in old liar an, where Abraham dwelt before go
 ing on to Canaan, and where he sen his steward to get a wife for Isaac
 Here Rebecca's well may still be seen Does it not seem like Journey int,
 the realms of the remote lands O
 mystery to contemplate a battle o
 modern troops where Rebecca water
 ed the sheep?
 Here at Ras el Ain great stores o military supplies are accumulated
 since Ras el Ain is the terminus o
 the construction of the Bagdad rail
 way Preparations have long beer made for defense here, should i