Turkey: a Past and a Future Part 4

Certainly, if the Jewish colonies are to make progress, they must be relieved of keeping their own police, building their own roads, and the other burdens that fall on them under Ottoman government, and this can only be secured by a better public administration. As for the British side of the question, we may consult Dr. Trietsch.

"There are possibilities," he urges, "in a German protectorate over the Jews as well as over Islam. Smaller national units than the 14 1-3 million Jews have been able to do Germany vital injury or service, and, while the Jews have no national state, their dispersion over the whole world, their high standard of culture, and their peculiar abilities lend them a weight that is worth more in the balance than many larger national ma.s.ses which occupy a compact area of their own."

Other Powers than Germany may take these possibilities to heart.

Here, then, are peoples risen from the past to do what the Turks cannot and the Germans will not in Western Asia. There is much to be done--reform of justice, to obtain legal release from the Capitulations; reform in the a.s.sessment and collection of the agricultural t.i.thes, which have been denounced for a century by every student of Ottoman administration; agrarian reform, to save peasant proprietors.h.i.+p, which in Syria, at any rate, is seriously in danger; genuine development of economic resources; unsectarian and non-nationalistic advancement of education. But the Jews, Syrians, and Armenians are equal to their task, and, with the aid of the foreign nations on whom they can count, they will certainly accomplish it. The future of Palestine, Syria, and Armenia is thus a.s.sured; but there are other countries--once as fertile, prosperous, and populous as they--which have lost not only their wealth but their inhabitants under the Ottoman domination. These countries have not the life left in them to reclaim themselves, and must look abroad for reconstruction.

If you cross the Euphrates by the bridge that carries the Bagdad Railway, you enter a vast landscape of steppes as virgin to the eye as any prairie across the Mississippi. Only the _tells_ (mounds) with which it is studded witness to the density of its ancient population--for Northern Mesopotamia was once so populous and full of riches that Rome and the rulers of Iran fought seven centuries for its possession, till the Arabs conquered it from both.

The railway has now reached Nisibin, the Roman frontier fortress heroically defended and ceded in bitterness of heart, and runs past Dara, which the Persians never took. Westward lies Urfa--named Edessa by Alexander's men after their Macedonian city of running waters[49]; later the seat of a Christian Syriac culture whose missionaries were heard in China and Travancore; still famous, under Arab dominion, for its Veronica and 300 churches; and restored for a moment to Christendom as the capital of a Crusader princ.i.p.ality, till the Mongols trampled it into oblivion and the Osmanlis made it a name for butchery.

From Urfa to Nisibin there can be fields again. The climate has not changed, and wherever the Bedawi pitches his tents and scratches the ground there is proof of the old fertility. Only anarchy has banished cultivation; for, since the Ottoman pretension was established over the land, it has been the battleground of brigand tribes--Kurds from the hills and Arabs from the desert, skirmis.h.i.+ng or herding their flocks, making or breaking alliance, but always robbing any tiller of the land of the fruits of his labour.

"If once," Dr. Rohrbach prophesies, "the peasant population were sure of its life and property, it would joyfully expand, push out into the desert, and bring new land under the plough; in a few years the villages would spring up, not by dozens, but by hundreds."

At present cultivation is confined to the Armenian foot-hills--an uncertain arc of green from Aleppo to Mosul. But the railway strikes boldly into the deserted middle of the land, giving the arc a chord, and when Turco-German strategic interests no longer debar it from being linked up, through Aleppo, with a Syrian port, it will be the really valuable section of the Bagdad system. The railway is the only capital enterprise that Northern Mesopotamia requires, for there is rain sufficient for the crops without artificial irrigation. Reservoirs of population are the need. The Kurds who come for winter pasture may be induced to stay--already they have been settling down in the western districts, and have gained a reputation for industry; the Bedawin, more fickle husbandmen, may settle southward along the Euphrates, and in time there will be a surplus of peasantry from Armenia and Syria. These will add field to field, but unless some stronger stream of immigration is led into the land, it will take many generations to recover its ancient prosperity; for in the ninth century A.D. Northern Mesopotamia paid Harun-al-Ras.h.i.+d as great a revenue as Egypt, and its cotton commanded the market of the world[50].

Southern Mesopotamia--the Irak of the Arabs and Babylonia of the Greeks--lies desolate like the North, but is a contrast to it in every other respect. Its aspect is towards the Persian Gulf, and Rohrbach grudgingly admits[51] that down the Tigris to Basra, and not upstream to Alexandretta, is the natural channel for its trade. It gets nothing from the Mediterranean, neither trade nor rain, and every drop of water for cultivation must be led out of the rivers; but the rivers in their natural state are worse than the drought. Their discharge is extremely variable--about eight times as great in April as in October; they are always silting up their beds and scooping out others; and when there are no men to interfere they leave half the country a desert and make the other half a swamp. Yet the soil, when justly watered, is one of the richest in the world; for Irak is an immense alluvial delta, more than five hundred miles from end to end, which the Tigris and Euphrates have deposited in what was originally the head of the Persian Gulf. The Arabs call it the _Sawad_ or Black Land, and it is a striking change from the bare ledges of Arabia and Iran which enclose its flanks, and from the Northern steppe-land which it suddenly replaces--at Samarra, if you are descending the Tigris, and on the Euphrates at Hit. The steppe cannot compare with the _Sawad_ in fertility, but the _Sawad_ does not so readily yield up its wealth. To become something better than a wilderness of dust and slime it needs engineering on the grand scale and a mighty population--immense forces working for immense returns. In a strangely different environment it antic.i.p.ated our modern rhythm of life by four thousand years, and then went back to desolation five centuries before Industrialism (which may repeople it) began.

The _Sawad_ was first reclaimed by men who had already a mastery of metals, a system of writing, and a mature religion--less civilised men would never have attempted the task. These Sumerians, in the fourth millennium B.C., lived on _tells_ heaped up above flood-level, each _tell_ a city-state with its separate government and G.o.ds, for centralisation was the one thing needful to the country which the Sumerians did not achieve. The centralisers were Semites from the Arabian plateau. Sargon of Akkad and Naram Sin ruled the whole _Sawad_ as early as 2500 B.C.; Hammurabi, in 1900, already ruled it from Babylon; and the capital has never s.h.i.+fted more than sixty miles since then. Babylon on the Euphrates and Bagdad on the Tigris are the alternative points from which the _Sawad_ can be controlled. Just above them the first irrigation ca.n.a.ls branch off from the rivers, and between them the rivers approach within thirty-five miles of each other. It is the point of vantage for government and engineering.

Here far-sighted engineers and stronghanded rulers turned the waters of Babylon into waters of life, and the _Sawad_ became a great heart of civilisation, breathing in man-power--Sumerians and Amorites and Ka.s.sites and Aramaeans and Chaldeans and Persians and Greeks and Arabs--and breathing out the works of man--grain and wool and Babylonish garments, inventions still used in our machine-shops, and emotions still felt in our religion.

"The land," writes Herodotus[52], who saw it in its prime, "has a little rain, and this nourishes the corn at the root; but the crops are matured and brought to harvest by water from the river--not, as in Egypt, by the river flooding over the fields, but by human labour and _shadufs_[53]

For Babylonia, like Egypt, is one network of ca.n.a.ls, the largest of which is navigable. It is far the best corn-land of all the countries I know. There is no attempt at arboriculture--figs or vines or olives--but it is such superb corn-land that the average yield is two-hundredfold, and three-hundredfold in the best years. The wheat and barley there are a good four inches broad in the blade, and millet and sesame grow as big as trees--but I will not state the dimensions I have ascertained, because I know that, for anyone who has not visited Babylonia and witnessed these facts about the crops for himself, they would be altogether beyond belief."

Harnessed in the irrigation channels, the Tigris and Euphrates had become as mighty forces of production as the Nile and the Ganges, the Yangtse and the Hoang-Ho.

"This," Herodotus adds[54], "is the best demonstration I can give of the wealth of the Babylonians: All the lands ruled by the King of Persia are a.s.sessed, in addition to their taxes in money, for the maintenance of the King's household and army in kind. Under this a.s.sessment the King is maintained for four months out of the twelve by Babylonia, and for the remaining eight by the rest of Asia together, so that in wealth the a.s.syrian province is equivalent to a third of all Asia."

The "Asia" over which the Achaemenids ruled included Russian Central Asia and Egypt as well as modern Turkey and Persia, and Egypt, under the same a.s.sessment, merely maintained the local Persian garrison[55]. Its money contribution was inferior too--700 talents as compared with a.s.syria's 1,000; and though these figures may not be conclusive, because the Persian "province of a.s.syria" probably extended over the northern steppes as well as the _Sawad_, it is certain that under the Arab Caliphate, when Irak and Egypt were provinces of one empire for the second time in history, Irak by itself paid 135 million _dirhems_ (francs) annually into Harun-al-Ras.h.i.+d's treasury and Egypt no more than 65 million, so that a thousand years ago the productiveness of the _Sawad_ was more than double that of the Nile.

Another measure of the land's capacity is the greatness of its cities.

Herodotus gives statistics[56] of Babylon in the fifth century B.C.--walls 300 feet high, 75 feet broad, and 58 miles in circuit; three- and four-storied houses laid out in blocks; broad straight streets intersecting one another at regular intervals, at right angles or parallel to the Euphrates. Any one who reads Herodotus' description of Babylon or Ibn Serapion's of Bagdad, and considers that these vast urban ma.s.ses were merely centres of collection and distribution for the open country, can infer the density of population and intensity of cultivation over the face of the _Sawad_. When the Caliph Omar conquered Irak from the Persians in the middle of the seventh century A.D., and took an inventory of what he had acquired, he found that there were 5,000,000 hectares[57] of land under cultivation, and that the poll-tax was paid by 550,000 householders, which implies a total population, in town and country, of more than 5,000,000 souls, where a bare million and a half maintains itself to-day in city alleys and nomads' tents.

And in Omar's time the _Sawad_ was no longer at its best, for, a few years before the Arab conquest, abnormally high floods had burst the d.y.k.es; from below Hilla to above Basra the Euphrates broadened into a swamp, and the Tigris deserted its former (and present) bed for the Shatt-el-Hai, leaving the Amara district a desert. The Persian Government, locked in a suicidal struggle with Rome, was powerless to make good the damage, and the shock of the Arab invasion made it irreparable[58]. Under the Abbasid Caliphs of Bagdad the rest of the country preserved its prosperity, but in the thirteenth century Hulaku the Mongol finished the work of the floods, and under Ottoman dominion the _Sawad_ has not recovered.

Can it still be reclaimed? Surveys have been taken by Sir William Willc.o.c.ks, as Adviser to the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works, and his final conclusions and proposals are embodied in a report drawn up at Bagdad in 1911[59].

"The Tigris-Euphrates delta," he writes, "may be cla.s.sed as an arid region of some 5,000,000 hectares.... All this land is capable of easy levelling and reclamation. The presence of 15 per cent. lime in the soil renders reclamation very easy compared with similar work in the dense clays of Egypt. One is never far away from the giant banks of old ca.n.a.ls and the ruins of ancient towns."

But he does not expect to make all these 5,000,000 hectares productive simultaneously, as they are said to have been when Omar took his inventory. "It is water, not land, which measures production," and he reckons that the average combined discharge of the rivers would irrigate 3,000,000 hectares in winter, and in summer 400,000 of rice or 1,250,000 of other crops. This is the eventual maximum; for immediate reclamation he takes 1,410,000 hectares in hand. His project is practically to restore, with technical improvements, the ancient system of ca.n.a.ls and drains, using the Euphrates water to irrigate everything west of the Tigris (down to Kut) and the Shatt-el-Hai, and the water of the Tigris and its tributaries for districts east of that line. Adding 33 per cent.

for contingencies to his estimate for cost of materials and rates of labour, and doubling the total to cover interest on loans and subsequent development, he arrives at 29,105,020 (Turkish)[60] as the cost, from first to last, of irrigation and agricultural works together; and he estimates that the 1,410,000 hectares reclaimed by this outlay will produce crops to the value of 9,070,000 (Turkish) a year. In other words, the annual return on the gross expenditure will be more than 31 per cent., and under the present t.i.the system 7,256,000 (Turkish) of this will remain with the owners of the soil, while 1,814,000 will pa.s.s to the Government. This will give the country itself a net return of 24.9 per cent. on the combined gross cost of irrigation and agricultural works, while the Government, after paying away 443,000 (Turkish) out of its t.i.thes for maintenance charges, will still receive a clear 9 per cent. per annum on the gross cost of irrigation, to which its share in the outlay will be confined.

Unquestionably, therefore, the enterprise is exceedingly profitable to all parties concerned. Looking further ahead, Sir William proposes to supersede the navigation of the Tigris[61] by railways, and so set free the whole discharge of the two rivers for irrigation. He contemplates handling annually 375,000 tons of cereals and 1,250,000 cwt. of cotton, and estimates the future by the effects of the Chenab Ca.n.a.l in Northern India--

"a ca.n.a.l traversing lands similar to those of Mesopotamia in their climate and in the condition in which they found themselves before the ca.n.a.l works were carried out.... In such a land, so like a great part of Mesopotamia, ca.n.a.ls have introduced in a few years nearly a million of inhabitants, and the resurrection of the country has been so rapid that its very success was jeopardised by a railway not being able to be made quickly enough to transport the enormous produce."

"A million of inhabitants"--that is the crux of the problem. Labour is as necessary as water for the raising of crops; Sir William's barrages and ca.n.a.ls without hands to turn them to account would be a dead loss instead of a profitable investment; but from what reservoir of population is this man-power to be introduced? The German economists are baffled by the difficulty.

"It is useless," as Rohrbach puts it, "to sink from 150 to 600 million marks in restoring the ca.n.a.l system, and then let the land lie idle, with all its new dams and channels, for lack of cultivators. Yet Turkey can never raise enough settlers for Irak by internal colonisation[62]."

She cannot raise them even for the minor enterprises at Konia and Adapa[63], and evidently the _Sawad_ must draw its future cultivators from somewhere beyond the bounds of Western Asia. From Germany, many Germans have suggested; but German experts curtly dismiss the idea. The first point Rohrbach makes in his book on the Bagdad Railway is that German colonisation in Anatolia is impossible for political reasons. "No worse service," he declares, "can be done to the German cause in the East than the propagation of this idea," and the rise of Turkish Nationalism has proved him right[64]. There remain the Arab lands;

"But even," he continues, "if the Turks thought of foreign colonisation in Syria and Mesopotamia, to hold the Arabs in check" (the political factor again), "that would be little help to us Germans, for only very limited portions of those countries have a climate in which Germans can work on the land or perform any kind of heavy manual labour."

And Germany herself is hard up for men.

"For all prospective developments in Turkey," writes Dr. Trietsch, "not merely scientific knowledge, capital, and organisation are wanted, but men, and Germany has no resources in men worth speaking of for opening up the Islamic world."

It is one of his arguments for bringing in the Jews, but the colonisation of Palestine will leave no Jews over for Irak. Rohrbach[65]

disposes of the Mouhadjirs--they are a drop in the bucket, and are no more adapted to the climate than the Germans themselves. "There is really nothing for it," he bursts out in despair, "but the introduction of Mohammedans from other countries where the climatic conditions of Irak prevail."

That narrows the field to India and Egypt, and drives Turco-German policy upon the horns of a dilemma:

"The colonists must either remain subjects of a foreign Power, a solution which could not be considered for an instant by any Turkish Government, or else they must become Turkish subjects--"

a condition which, to Indians and Egyptians, as well as Germans, would be prohibitive. No one who has known good government would exchange it for Ottoman government without the Capitulations as a guarantee.

The Ottoman Government has its own characteristic view. In a memorandum on railways and reclamation, published by the Ministry of Public Works in 1909, a _resume_ is given of the Willc.o.c.ks scheme.

"In due time," the memorandum proceeds, "a comprehensive scheme for the whole of Mesopotamia must be carried out, but, apart from the question of expense, it is clear that the public works involved will not be justified until Turkey is in a position to colonise these extensive districts, and this question cannot be considered till we have succeeded in getting rid of the Capitulations."

This is the Ottoman pretension. Egypt, rid of the Osmanli, and India, where he never ruled, have kept their ancient wealth of harvests and population, and have man-power to spare for the reclamation of the _Sawad_. All the means are at hand for bringing the land to life--the water, the engineer, the capital, the labour; only the Ottoman pretension stands in the way, and condemns the _Sawad_ to lie dead and unharvested so long as it endures.

"The last voyage I made before coming to this country," wrote Sir William Willc.o.c.ks at Bagdad in 1911, "was up the Nile, from Khartum to the great equatorial lakes. In this most desperate and forbidden region I was filled with pride to think that I belonged to a race whose sons, even in this inhospitable waste of waters, were struggling in the face of a thousand discouragements to introduce new forest trees and new agricultural products and ameliorate in some degree the conditions of life of the naked and miserable inhabitants. How should I have felt if, in traversing the deserts and swamps which to-day represent what was the richest and most famous tract of the world, I had thought that I was a scion of a race in whose hands G.o.d had placed, for hundreds of years, the destinies of this great country, and that my countrymen could give no better account of their stewards.h.i.+p than the exhibition of two mighty rivers flowing between deserts to waste themselves in the sea for nine months in the year, and desolating everything in their way for the remaining three? No effort that Turkey can make"--she was then still mistress of the _Sawad_--"can be too great to roll away the reproach of these parched and weary lands, whose cry ascends to heaven."

Turkey, which claims the present in Western Asia, is nothing but an overthrow of the past and an obstruction of the future.

[Footnote 1: Tekin Alp: "The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal" (Weimar: Gustav Kiepenheuer, 1915). The percentage is of course an exaggeration.]

[Footnote 2: In the sense of having preceded Arabic in this region, for in itself, and in its original area, Arabic is as old a language an any other variety of Semitic.]

[Footnote 3: "The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal," by Tekin Alp.]

[Footnote 4: "The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal," by Tekin Alp.]

[Footnote 5: _The Near East_, 30th March, 1917, p. 507; see also Tekin Alp.]

[Footnote 6: The legendary ancestor of the Turkish race.]

[Footnote 7: _The Near East_, loc. cit.]

[Footnote 8: Which (for obvious reasons) was printed for private circulation only.]

[Footnote 9: Miscellaneous No. 31 (1916).]