Within a year of the capture of Baghdad, our military
authorities have brought three hundred thousand acres of land in the Euphrates Valley under cultivation. Mr. Edmund Candler, the British Press representative with the Army, describes in Wednesday's papers how the old canals served by Sir William Willcocks's great Hindieh Barrage have been cleared and filled with water after lying dry for centuries. The Arab peasantry have thus been enriched, while the Army will be able to live on the produce of the country instead of having to import its foodstuffs from India and Australia. " No other Government but the British," said an old Sheikh, " would take the trouble to bother about our water while they were fighting." But these contented and prosperous people will have no wish to see the Turk return to the country upon which he had acted as a blight.
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