To Bagdad with the British

Foreword

The author of this work, Mr. Arthur T. Clark, is a member of Princeton University of the Class of 1918. In the midst of his college course he gave up his work to enlist as a member of the Young Men ^s Christian Association, going to the most difficult of all fields in the world, that of Mesopotamia. This volume is a record of his experiences there in the midst of the stirring war scenes of the campaign which resulted successfully in the capture of Bagdad.

Mr. Clark's account is based upon an intimate knowledge of the events which he personally observed and of which he was a part. This gives us an excellent idea of a chapter in the world's war which is little known and yet which has unique significance. The capture of Bagdad places an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the German realization of their Hamburg-Persian Gulf ambition. It is well for us all to know something of the particular events whose significance will be more and more appreciated as time goes on and as the insolent ambitions of Germany are more and more clearly revealed.

The author of this book is now a member of the United States Aviation Corps and I am sure will give his services as conscientiously and valiantly to the army of his own country as at the beginning of the war he gave his best efforts in the Y. M. C. A. service of our great ally.

John Grieb Hibben, President of Princeton University.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Preparing the Play, '^On to Bagdad'' — England in the Persian Gulf and the

German-Bagdad Railway ... 1

Chapter I

PREPARING FOR THE PLAY "ON TO BAGDAD"— ENGLAND IN THE PERSIAN GULF AND THE GER- MAN-BAGDAD RAILWAY

In the Great War Mesopotamia is a ^^side show. ' ' Its importance is not to be compared with that of the western front. The fact that the war must be won in France is brought home to us every day. No matter what may happen to the front in Roumania, in Italy, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, the French front holds the key to the end of the war and our final victory. But there are points of view from which even side shows are important.

The war in France has been characterized over and over again as **a grim business.'' Such it certainly is. For one who is in it continually, it becomes more than a grim business. It becomes a nerve-racking, monotonous business. There are plenty of side lights that brighten up the thing in spots for certain people, but the whole war as a war is a great exhibition of strength, of capacity, of grim determination.

If we would get away from war as it is in France and still feel in close touch with the Great War, we could do better than catch a glimpse of the side show in Mesopotamia. There we can get into the atmosphere of melodrama, of romance, of imagination. For the side show there was *^0n to Bagdad^' and has proved that in the right place war even to-day can be a romance.

As one of the surging crowds that have gone to fairs, from county fairs to world fairs, I have always been carried away, with the rest, by the exhibition of the triumphs of genius, of force, of endurance that man has won in every phase of life. I have entered the exhibition grounds with a sense of awe, and have left them with a greater respect for my fellow men and a greater faith for the future. But I have always, somehow, wandered into the side shows that grow up near the grounds, where a tired fair-goer may pass a refreshing hour watching a magician, or a melodrama staged by a company of traveling players. The bare feats of strength and of brains at which I marveled so, were in themselves too prosaic and I sought the human touch.

It was my good fortune — ^before America came into the war and while the grim business of war was still something of which we knew little and felt less — to go to the war in Mesopotamia.

In America we were still blissfully ignorant of all the ambition of Germany and of all that war means. For us students at Princeton, life was going on as happily and peacefully as ever, when the call came for men to go with the British troops to Mesopotamia, ^^ where there is the most atrocious climate in the world and where there are more insects and germs to the square inch than there are bullets to the square mile.'' That was the way it sounded. Needless to say, those who told us the discouraging tales of the country had an insight into the fancies of college men. Promise them adventure even in the worst place in the world and they will risk their necks. In this case there was more still, the chance to give a hand. After much confabbing and deciding, five of us found ourselves on a transatlantic steamer bound for — that we did not know. If we could believe the ** Arabian Nights'^ we were certainly on a curious expedition. Think of going to Bagdad or to one of the wonder-lands of Sindhad the Sailor!

We sped across the Atlantic, through the danger zone, to the beautiful country of France, rent asunder by war. Just a week there was enough to teach us the awful lessons of war. Then on, dodging submarines continually, we sailed through the blue and white Mediterranean. Warships and transports signaled to us as we passed. Next we glided slowly through the Suez Canal, where the vassals of Germany were trying to break through to cut off that route to India. The banks of the canal were covered thick with troops, Indian, Egyptian, and English, and the Turks were near by. Not many days before, they had made a desperate charge on the canal and had even launched a boat before they were driven back. Next we sizzled through the Red Sea and stopped at its end at Aden. Just behind that town

PREPARING FOR THE PLAY 5

of exile, too, the Turks were stirring np trouble. We were half way around the world and still there was war. We began to realize that this truly was a World War. Driven on by the monsoon we reached India, and there, in the beautiful harbor of Bombay, were freighters with munitions and supplies, transports with troops, and hospital boats with wounded and sick. We heard that a steamer had just been sunk by a German mine not far from the coast. In India we found troop trains rushing troops up through the country to the northwest frontier to fight the tribes of Afghans, and to the interior to put down the trouble that Germans were trying to stir up in India itself. Surely the war was everywhere. And we were yet to go to the land of fairy stories. Finally we arrived even there, sailing up through the Persian Gulf to Busra, Sindbad^s port.

From there, as a sort of stage hand, it was my privilege to watch closely some of the acts of the splendid side show, *^0n to Bagdad,'' to follow the armies of Great Britain up through the most interesting of all countries, to move up the winding Tigris past the remains of the glories of the

Chaldeans, of the Babylonians, of the Persians, of the ancient Greeks, and of the great Arabian Kaliphs, to the wonderful city of Bagdad.

"We hardly realize how closely connected the World War is, from end to end of the earth. Away out there at the other side of the globe a big part of the Great War has been fought and won. No one can tell how many more of the wide plans of the Kaiser might now be carried out if the little British wedge in the Persian Gulf had not been in the way to hold so many of the troops of Germany's vassals in Mesopotamia. No one can tell how real might have become the Kaiser's boast of control of India, Egypt and the rest of Africa. ^^ Drang nach Oesten^' lay beneath the war in Mesopotamia. The key to the hoped-for world supremacy for Germany lay in her control of the highway of Asia Minor, Palestine and Mesopotamia, the great highway to the East. Mesopotamia, which in the days of Babylon supported ten million people, again rose to importance in the affairs of the world.

Back in 1914, as the war was approaching, over 72,000 laborers were working on the Berlin-Bagdad Railway, trying to shove it through the Taurus mountains and get it in shape so that it could carry Pan-German troops over to the Persian frontier and give a chance for the drive on India, the first step in the conquest of the Far East. At the same time the railways in Palestine were getting ready to rush other Pan-German troops down from Asia Minor to block the Suez Canal, that most important route to India and the Far East from the Mediterranean.

Mesopotamia, lying right between Palestine and Persia, was the key position. For England to hold the troops of the enemy there would mean relief both in Persia and in Palestine, and safety for India and Egypt. It might mean the salvation of the entire Far East. Now, in 1918, when both Bagdad and Jerusalem are under British protection, we have a glimpse of the real importance of the war in Mesopotamia, for the campaigns in Mesopotamia and Palestine have worked together to block the deep-laid plans of the Huns. They are far from Egypt and far from India.

Emperor William, soon after his accession to the German throne, proclaimed himself Defender of Islam, the Mohammedan world; became the guardian of the Turkish throne ; and, on the most shady of premises, started the Berlin-Bagdad Eailway. These three facts spelled one thingexpansion eastward. They meant that Egypt and India would before long feel the pressure of German intrigue; that either by stealth or by force Germany would some day seize them both. With her railways, her Mohammedan vassals and her trade, she was well on the way — and then came the war, and with it a little British force from India on an island of the Persian Gulf, at the entrance of Mesopotamia.

Strange that into that decayed, historic, mysterious country should come a great war, fought by great modern armies ! Strange, too, how it all came about !

The ** Arabian Nights'' tells the tales of the wonderful trips of Sindbad the Sailor between Bagdad and the cities of India, of his journey on a raft through a mountain to the domains of the King of the Indies and his return, with presents to Haroim-al-Raschid, his lord in Bagdad. There are many reasons for believing that Sindbad was a real person. Certainly his occupation was a real one, for when India became a colony of England, one of the first steps of the new government was to encourage and protect trade between her new charge and the renowned city of Bagdad.

Away back in the days when the first New England colonies were just starting, a British force was fighting the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf. That was the beginning. Not many months ago a British force entered Bagdad.

About half a century after England's arrival in the gulf, Turkey moved her border down through Mesopotamia to the top of the Persian Gulf. There was no opposition to this. One look at the country was enough to bring the British sailors in the gulf to the conclusion that Mesopotamia was a place for Turks, or for wandering Arabs, not for them.

England's task was to get rid of the hostile powers in the gulf and to keep peace there, that there might be trade between India and Persia and Bagdad. Little did it matter who owned Mesopotamia. No one saw ahead two hundred years to the ambitions of a Pan-German monarch.

PEEPARING FOB THE PLAY 11

In 1622, by a treaty with the Shah of Persia, England took up the burden of keeping men-of-war in the Persian Gulf. Persia, with its soil rich in mineral deposits, its great endless plateaus and its high natural sea wall on the east side of the Persian Gulf, gained through British ousting of Portuguese and Dutch, her only harbor and outlet to the world. To the west of the gulf lay Arabia, the home of countless wandering tribes, neither governing nor governed. Above the gulf, between these two countries — ^no one knows just where the borders are — lay Mesopotamia, the land ^^ between the rivers.'' As time went on there still arose no occasion for England to be interested in the future of that blighted country. The right of trade through it was important, but that country which controlled the Persian Gulf controlled the important part, the trade route between the Tigris and the rest of the world. All the rest of Turkey faced the Bosphorus, but Mesopotamia faced south.

The British men-of-war and the British flag became more and more objects of respect both to Persians and to Arabs, There is no cause to question England ^s right to what she had. It was not land, it was influence. It was the British policy of give and take. She gave Persia her seaboard ; she made trade safer ; she claimed in return for her work not land but the right to police the gulf in every nook and comer. She could have claimed this right, and more, as conqueror of the Portuguese and the Dutch, yet she asked it in return for a service. She paid for the ** wedge'' in the gulf with men, with ships and with patient labor. And policing was no joke. Barbary pirates were polished gentlemen in comparison with the wily Arabs who infested the gulf waters and the waters just outside, along the coast of Baluchistan and India. If the Arabian coast had been designed specially for the pirates' purpose, it could not have been better made. All along the coast lagoons, natural breakwaters in front of sheltered harbors, were secluded hiding places where the pirate boats could rest unnoticed till the time should come for a sally. It was a wild and exciting life that these fellows led. Hardy as the Viking explorers, they braved, not the icy storms of the north sea, but the parching blasts of the

Arabian wind and the cruel rays of the desert sun. On a day I spent in the gulf not long ago, during the twelve day-hours from six to six, the shade temperature never got below 100 degrees and rose to 121. We must give credit to the men who manned the British patrol in the gulf during all seasons, wet, dry, chilly, and blazing hot. But in spite of their efforts the piracy became greater and greater. It was discouraging — but for the sake of her trade and of order England kept up the good fight. The Arabs, oppressed by the Turks on two sides, from Egypt and from Mesopotamia, were becoming more organized. One tribe, the Wahabis, proved itself master, and the Arabs, coming together under their leadership, could cease fighting among themselves on land and spend their time in plundering people of other races and nations on the sea.

During the years of our War of Independence and the French Revolution, while so much of world importance was happening in Europe and America, there were British men-of-war putting down piracy in this mysterious part of the world, the Persian Gulf. On into the nineteenth century they f onglit it, but still it continued and increased. It finally developed into more than piracy, into absolute warfare. A great fleet of pirate vessels, with their cut-throat pirates seven thousand strong, set out to ravage not only the sea but the coasts. At this most startling turn of affairs a large force of British troops went to the gulf. To-day, on the colors of that force, is blazoned the word ** Arabia" for that tussle with the Arab pirates. Tommies were policemen then. Another century and the shores of Arabia would see them as soldiers in the Great War.

Aggressive measures, thus begun, gradually put an end to the whole business, and treaties between England and the Arab chiefs not only put a stop to the piracy, but gave England the official status of protector of the Persian Gulf, with rights in the disposal of the lands on its coasts. Thus, finally, a quarter of a century before the Great War began, England's constant guardianship of the Persian Gulf for more than two hundred years, to the great benefit of both Arabia and Persia, was officially as well as unofficially rewarded. Her *^ wedge" in the gulf was a respected fact.

PREPARINa FOR THE PLAY 15

But where was Turkey all this time! Turkey had not thought far ahead either. To her the lower Mesopotamia region was not worth a great deal of bother. She could collect taxes from the native inhabitants only as far as her guns could reach to conquer the Arab tribes ; and the possible taxes, except from the date trees, were not worth a great deal of sacrifice. Turkey's *^ squeeze" method of government was of little use where there was little to be squeezed. On the routes of the big Mohammedan pilgrimages the system was profitable enough, for the ofiicials could block the roads to the sacred shrines and take away whatever money the travelers had — if the Arab highwaymen on the road had left them any. But the possible tolls were slight near the Persian Gulf. There has always been a close race between the Turkish officials and the Arab highwaymen, and in many cases the officials, by putting their posts far enough ahead along the roads, have beaten out the Arabs. It is a good illustration of the German philosophy of the survival of the fittest.

One of the Turkish governors was so indifferent to Mesopotamia south of Bagdad that he was willing England should take it off his hands, if she would. But England refused. If she could onlyhave pictured the Kaiser of a few years later! Perhaps the British wedge would have reached up to Bagdad.

But the chance was gone. The moves of Turkey and Germany, with ideas of greater depth than anyone imagined, were about to commence. A few years after the first great treaty between the British and the Arab chiefs, the new Vali of Bagdad, the Turkish governor of the District, marched a good-sized army through Mesopotamia and started after the Arabian towns on the shore of the Persian Gulf. England was overlord of the gulf and hers was the power of disposal of lands on the Arabian and Persian shores. But she objected little to this extension of Turkey's realm. It seemed unimportant, in view of the fact that the Arabs would not acknowledge Turkish overlordship except with Turkish guns under their noses. But attempts at expansion which followed were fought a little more strenuously, though even then there appeared to be no great international problems at stake.

PEEPARING FOE THE PLAY 17

With the accession of William II to the German throne a new light appeared on the situation. Out of a most casual difference between Turkey and England developed a colossal struggle. If the British were not interested in Mesopotamia, the Kaiser was. A route through Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf would be a quick way of getting to India and would give a chance to rush something serious down that way in a very short time. The great ^*open highway" across the country to the east would be a fact. It would balance England's advantage in the Suez Canal. The Pan-German plan was just getting under way. Slowly but surely the time was coming when the little British wedge in the Persian Gulf should become the great kink in the Pan-German plan for world conquest.

With the visit of the Emperor to Constantinople in 1889 began the war against the British in Mesopotamia. For years it had been concealed ; now it was in the open, but fruitless.

The plans of the Kaiser were deep. England was in a little difficulty with Turkey over the war in Egypt, relations between the two countries were not too good in tlie Persian Gulf, and the Sultan was quite ready to ally himself, or sell himself, to Germany for the rich rewards which would come from the Kaiser's schemes. As Defender of Islam and protector of the Turkish throne. Emperor William was master of Turkey. Turkey needed cultivation, especially the part of Turkey known as Mesopotamia. A railway through there would do wonders. It would also be a boon to India. The slogan, *^ Hamburg to the Persian Gulf," grew in popularity as the realization came of the true purpose — ^'Berlin to Bombay and Cairo. ' ' The Kaiser had no more idea of cultivating Mesopotamia than he had of cultivating mumps. Two of his spokesmen belied any statement he might make concerning that : ^ * Germany has no resources in men for opening the Islamic world,'' and *' Turkey can never raise enough settlers." Nor had he thought out any plan for the cooperative control of a railway between Europe and British India that would attempt to be fair to all nations. But he did have a very definite idea that with an army on rails at its back, a stronghold at the head of the Persian Gulf

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"Would be a great base of operations toward the east. His submarines could renew all the piracy of the Arabs, and on a much larger scale.

The affair began modestly enough. The obscure individual who went to set up a small pearl business in the Persian Gulf raised very little stir, even though he was a German. But a few years later came the startling news that Germany had obtained a concession to build a railway from **Konia to the Persian Gulf,'' 1,870 miles from Constantinople. It would indeed be a fine thing to have another railway through Asia, and especially in this part. Asia has few enough railways as it is.

But there was certainly something queer about the plans of the aforesaid concession. It was curious that, if the railway were for commercial reasons, the proposed route across should carefully leave out all the regions which gave promise of being agricultural districts and go by the shortest possible route across the barest desert. Curious, too, that any bank should advance money in such an enterprise unless said bank had the sanction of a great government to back it up. According to the plans a German bank was to furnish the funds. The Turkish government was to pay back the money with interest and also to pay a guaranty on the cost of construction at the rate of 700 pounds per year per kilometer. Considering the fact that Turkey was at the time bankrupt and that the Sultan would have no means of paying the guaranty alone, not to mention the original funds with interest, it seemed as though there must be something bigger than a railway scheme behind it. Indeed there was. Germany was going to see to it that no matter what might happen in the West, the East would ultimately decide supremacy. The old wars of the ages, from the beginning of empires, over control of the East, was to culminate, according to the wishes of Germany, in conquest for the Teutons.

It was hoped by Germany that the duty charges on goods sent over the line would in time bring into the Turkish treasury from England, which was the chief trader with the East, enough to pay for the line. But in the meantime Germany would become possessor of the land through which the railway would run. By the clever ruse of a railway she would annex practically all Asia Minor, Palestine and Mesopotamia, perhaps Persia. A railway would certainly be a good thing — ^but not on those terms.

While the plans were being formed and made known to the world, the i>etty merchant in the Persian Gulf was being followed by other Germans ; some scientists, some engineers looking for a good terminus for the railway, some representatives of rich German firms in hopes of buying property on the gulf. Then came attempts to prove the Turkish ownership of lands in the gulf, since Turkey wished to sell the lands to Germany. Finally came attempts by the Turkish government to take more land from the Arabs along the coast, both by force and by paying Arabs to act as German agents.

Every attempt to get land by force failed because of the presence of British men-of-war. Every attempt to get land by stealth failed because of the gratitude of the Arabs to England, the power that had so long been the patient guardian of order in the gulf. It speaks well for England's actions in the gulf that every one of the

Arab Sheikhs at the head of the districts which Germany was trying by all manner of means to acquire, stood firm by Great Britain and refused to let any land go without her consent.

When this failed, the next move was to make the affair an international contest, to challenge England's right to predominate influence in the gulf, and to make a supposed transgression of German *' rights'* a case for international discussion. England, some years before, had secured the right of trade up the Tigris, and the Lynch Brothers were carrying on a prosperous trade between Busra and Bagdad. Against this Germany started a line of trade with the Persian Gulf. The Hamburg-American line ran some boats to the gulf, treating all the nation's head-men to music and wine — to win them heartily to Germany. Even these means failing to give her control in the gulf, Germany played the last card, the card that has worked so successfully with other nations since the outbreak of the war. She put the matter in the hands of the big diplomats of the countries; disguising the important matters as unimportant, sliding through agreements before their real sig-

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nificance could be grasped, proposing, under pretext of playing a square game with Turkey, a plan that meant nothing but the helping of Germany, Turkey's master. Perhaps if the British guardians in the gulf were too alert for any underhand work to succeed, the diplomats in London, so far away, might be more easily influenced. Fortunately nothing was signed before war broke out. Even a few days ' delay in the declaration of war might have told. From the job-trader in pearls to the deep-dyed plottings of villain diplomats, every sort of German intrigue had been tried.

In the meantime the railway was being built. The section from Bagdad to Samarra was just completed. Enough materials were piled up at Busra to run a line across the Persian frontier and enable the troops of Germany's vassals to move against India.

Germany in India! Germany in Egypt! The very thoughts make one shudder. The first year of the war would require nearly all of the troops in India to help on the western front. India bled white, northern Persia turning to Germany, the effect of an attack on either India or Egjrpt might be disaster unthinkable. What a chance for intrigue in the Far East Germany would have with a line straight from Hamburg to the Bay of Bengal — and just across the Pacific lay America!

But with the war came a little British camp on the island of Bahrein, not so very far from Busra. Was that little camp a part of the World War f Indeed it was — and a much more important part than it thought. It was starting something more than a war between Tommies and Turks. The British Empire was at war with the German Empire to maintain England's right to her position in the East and to vouchsafe to India and Egypt the liberty and peace gained through the strong protecting arm of Great Britain. In the land where Assyria and Babylon fought for the mastery of the East, where a Caliph of Bagdad claimed allegiance from the great wall of China to the Atlantic, now Turks and Arabs, as tools of Germany, were to contend against the power of England — ^her navy, her British troops, and her dusky warriors of India.

Yet this was not to be like the war in France. There is all the difference between war in France and war in Mesopotamia that there is between Paris and Bagdad.

Chapter II Tragedy— Act I, Part 1— Brilliant Success

It was October of 1914 when the brigade from Poona pitched camp on the island of Bahrein. War between England and Turkey was not declared until the following month. To the men there, waiting to move into Mesopotamia, life was interesting enough. They were in the very center of the greatest pearl industry in the world. The pearls from all over the great pearl bank of the Persian Gulf came on the clumsy old dhows to the snug little island in behind a neck of the Arabian shore. It was fine to watch the Arabs at their work, and to get used to their life. They looked just like the characters of the Old Testament and time seemed to turn back twenty centuries. Perhaps some of these fellows were Wise Men or Prophets.

Some of the more imaginative of the officers of the brigade looked forward with a curious thrill

BRILLIANT SUCCESS 27