An ancient prophecy foretells that the great river Euphrates shall be dried up that the way of the kings of the East shall be prepared.  The time has come, if the war was indeed Armageddon.  German engineers in 1914 had made a highway and effectively “dried up” the waters of the river for the passage of the armies.  They themselves expected to be kings of the East although coming from the West, and some, it is interesting to note, explain the Prussians as of Oriental origin.  At the same time the claims both of oil and empire kept us busy in the Persian Gulf.  It looked as if we were to share this new kingdom or sphere of influence with Germany, until the war came and sorted things out.

There are some who see in vast irrigation schemes a “drying up” of the Euphrates that shall bring colonists from the Far East so that the denizens of China or Japan shall begin, like the Saxons in Kent, to get a footing in the country and become, in very substance, the Yellow Peril.

He is a rash man who would prophesy concerning the future of Mesopotamia as far as our empire is concerned.  Perhaps before these pages are in print something decisive will have occurred.  We read daily in our newspapers of rumours of war with restless tribes around Mosul, and of raids and skirmishes.

The land of Shinar, where Abraham dwelt, with its silent traces of the great civilizations which it fostered, Babylonian and Assyrian, Persian, Greek and Arabian, is once more, by the chances of war, an open book, and time alone will show what is to be written therein.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] “Adventures with a Sketch Book.”

[2] Tennyson:  “Recollections of the Arabian Nights.”

[3] From Ragozin’s Chaldea.

THE END

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

ADVENTURES WITH A SKETCH BOOK

With numerous Illustrations in colour and black and white by the Author.  Crown 4to. 12/6 net.

“Artistically, and from the literary point of view, it is one of the most delectable travel books that have been published for many a long day, for Mr. Maxwell has not only an eye for the picturesque, and a frank, clear style both of pen and brush, but he has the even rarer gift of finding old-world romance and adventure in places near at hand where their presence would never be suspected by the ordinary traveller....  Mr. Maxwell’s book is wholly free from any suspicion of guide-book padding, and is as interesting and exciting to read as a work of romantic fiction.  The chief feature which should ensure it a permanent position on the library shelf are the very vital and expressive illustrations, the very spacing of which on the printed page is delight to the eye.”—­Observer.

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