Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1915-12-18 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

NEARING BAGDAD.  Only occasionally a word or two is spoken in Parliament or a line or so appears in the papers  with regard to the British force that is pushing its way through the Turkish province of  Mesopotamia. Yet this campaign is, one of enormous importance to the Empire and it is meeting with an unbroken series of successes which speaks volumes for the quality of the men employed in the work and for the skill of their leader, General Sir John Nixon.  Bagdad gives its name to the Bagdad Railway, that stupendous undertaking designed to be a means of rushing troops upon our Egyptian frontiers and of seizing the Suez Canal, and so severing our route to India and the East.  Could Germany have kept us out of the war, as she hoped to do, in another year there would have been a through railway connection front Scutari, the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople, right down to the Egyptian frontier! There are enough historical relics left to give the imaginative visitor a vivid impres,sion of what Bagdad must have been like some eleven hundred years ago, when Harun-al-Rashid rode in splendour through its streets, or, disguised in the rags of a beggar, stole hither and thither among its lowliest dwellings, learning of the joys and sufferings of his people.  Without a doubt Harun was the most strange and romantic monarch who ever reigned. Often tender-hearted enough to put aside all the trappings of State, and mix unbeknown with the poorest and humblest of his subjects. sharing their pleasures and sorrows as if he had been but a homeless camel driver, he was at times a merciless tyrant, condemning to death guilty and innocent without distinction.  His grossest act of cruelty was his slaughter of the Barmeeides, an ancient and noble Persian clan or family. Harlin had a sister named Abbasa, a lovely girl, of whom he was exceedingly fond. Among the Barmecides was a man named Jafar, a person of no small wit and wisdom, in whose society the Ruler also delighted.  Now. according to the etiquette of the East, it was impossible for Harun to enjoy the society of these two people at one and the ;same time, since for a girl of high family to appear in the presence of a man who was neither husband nor close relative was a thing unthinkable. "I have it!.' said Harun at last. •• My sister and Jafar shall marry. But it shall be a marriage in name only. If they be husband and wife in name they may appear before me together whenever I so command them. and no one can raise objection." _ .  It seemed a brilliant idea. But alas! for Harun's scheme, when once Jafar had seen the unveiled faee of his bride her beauty so enraptured him that the cold contraet into which he had entered to please his master contented him no longer. As for Abbasa she fell just as deeply in love with Jafar as he had fallen with her. For a time Hamm was blissfully blind to it all ; but one day the staggering fact was borne in upon his consciousness that his sister was soon to become a mother. Furiously he questioned the girl, and she confessed that this was so and that she had becom• Jalar's bride in very truth! The treacherous. deceitful bound!" exclaimed He shall die for this!'' Accordingly, poor Jafar was led out to execution, and with one exception the other members of the Ilarmecide •' clan" were murdered. It was quite possible that they, too, were involved in Jalar s plot. Harlin -thought, and it was better to take no chances: Some say that Harun-al-llashid's ghost still wanders o* nights through the byeways of Bagdad. Small wonder ii it does! Robert MeCulloon.  ,)