spent in General Maude's house, on the
river-bank. The general was a striking soldierly figure of a man, standing
well over six feet. His military career was long and brilliant. His first
service was in the Coldstream Guards. He distinguished himself in South
Africa. Early in the present war he was severely wounded in France. Upon
recovering he took over the Thirteenth Division, which he commanded in the
disastrous Gallipoli campaign, and later brought out to Mesopotamia. When
he reached the East the situation was by no means a happy one for the
British. General Townshend was surrounded in Kut, and the morale of the
Turk was excellent after the successes he had met with in Gallipoli. In
the end of August, 1916, four months after the fall of Kut, General Maude
took over the command of the Mesopotamian forces. On the 11th of March of
the following year he occupied Baghdad, thereby re-establishing completely
the British prestige in the Orient. One of Germany's most serious
miscalculations was with regard to the Indian situation. She felt
confident that, working through Persia and Afghanistan, she could stir up
sufficient trouble, possibly to completely overthrow British rule, but
certainly to keep the English so occupied with uprisings as to force them
to send troops to India rather than withdraw them thence for use
elsewhere. The utter miscarriage of Germany's plans is, indeed, a fine
tribute to Great Britain. The Emir of Afghanistan did probably more than
any single native to thwart German treachery and intrigue, and every
friend of the Allied cause must have read of his recent assassination with
a very real regret.

When General Maude took over the command, the effect of the Holy War that,
at the Kaiser's instigation, was being preached in the mosques had not as
yet been determined. This jehad, as it was called, proposed to unite all
"True Believers" against the invading Christians, and give the war a
strongly religious aspect. The Germans hoped by this means to spread
mutiny among the Mohammedan troops, which formed such an appreciable
element of the British forces, as well as to fire the fury of the Turks
and win as many of the Arabs to their side as possible. The Arab
thoroughly disliked both sides. The Turk oppressed him, but did so in an
Oriental, and hence more or less comprehensible, manner. The English gave
him justice, but it was an Occidental justice that he couldn't at first
understand or appreciate, and he wa