Lord Curzon made an informing statement on Mesopotamia in the
House of Lords last Friday week, inreply to Lord Islington, who regretted the delay in setting up an Arab Government and withdrawing the Indian troops. Lord Curzon said that the Turks bad left an administrative vacuum which our military authorities had to fill. They had tried to galvanize the natives into political activity by local councils, and they would summon a native representative assembly to assist Sir Percy Cox, the High Commissioner, in framing an organic law. The civil administration included 424 officers, 30 British civilians, and 286 Indians and natives. There were 13,500 British troops and 66,000 Indians ; some of them were stationed in North-West Persia to prevent a Turkish or Bolshevik invasion directed against the Persian Government, ,while four battalions were protecting the remnant of the Assyrian Christians. The cost of the occupation on the Army Estimates was £21,500,000. The civil administration showed a surplus of revenue amounting to a million since 1915, and was expected to yield a similar surplus this year. We could not leave the country at this moment, when it was a peaceful island in a sea of anarchy. After aban- doning the Transvaal and the Sudan at the wrong moment, we had to go back again. It would be the same with Mesopotamia if we left it just now. Lord Milner cheerfully predicted that in a year or two the defence of Mesopotamia would cost no more than the defence of. the Sudan.
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