d the garden where the land was green and good. But the grim
ramparts of Hit stretched like a line of fire between, forbidding and
impassable. Higher and higher the shadows climbed till the tall minaret
stood out alone, a sentinel and a flaming sword. A hundred sooty figures
toiled and grovelled in the ground.

In the sweat of their faces shall they eat bread.

X

THE KINGS OF THE EAST

[Illustration: Hit.]

[Illustration: SAMARA]

THE KINGS OF THE EAST

The future of Mesopotamia with its enormous productive potentialities is
a subject fraught with great interest to all those who have studied her
past. Will this country again become one of the granaries of the world,
and will it ever be, like Egypt, an important asset of our Empire? At
first, when the war had freed the country from the Turkish yoke, it was
assumed that it would rise into unheard-of prosperity under the fatherly
care of British protection. Schemes of irrigation, long planned and to
some small extent begun, even under the Turkish regime, were to re-stock
Eden and benefit the whole world. The Baghdad railway would bring the
wares of the East quickly to our doors, and it had even been
anticipated that Nineveh would become as much a resort for European
tourists as Rome.

All this, however, was foretold in the time when a new world was
expected as soon as hostilities ceased. Another tune has been called
now, and we find countless advocates of the policy to get out of
Mesopotamia altogether and let well alone. Capitalization, like charity,
we are told must begin at home, and thirty millions, estimated by the
Inspector of Irrigation in Egypt, as necessary to turn Mesopotamia into
a prosperous country with an annual revenue in fifty years time of ten
millions a year, should be used for house building in England and not
for empire building in Chaldea. On the other hand, wise men have told us
that the Mesopotamian oilfields near Mosul are to be of great
importance, like the Persian wells that have their pipe-line outfall at
Abadan, and that a firm and fatherly hand is necessary to keep the
country in a state of trade development. Should our sphere of influence
be withdrawn from Mesopotamia things will revert back to chaos. Already
trouble with the various tribes is brewing.

Not the least of the problems in controlling the marauding activities of
some of the nomadic tribes is the difficulty of meting out adequate
punishment to peace-bre