THE RIVER WAR.* WE may fittingly use for this review
the title which Mr. Churchill gave to his admirable history of the Sudan Campaign. The character of the four years' fighting in Mesopotamia was dominated by the topography of the country, in which the great rivers afforded the only practicable means of supplying the fighting forces during the advance towards Baghdad. Even as late as June, 1919, no railway was open from Basrah to the ancient capital of Haroun-al-Itaschid ; on both the Tigris and Euphrates lines a considerable stretch had to be covered by steamers. When the Indian Expeditionary Force first took possession of Basrah, in November, 1914, the available river transport consisted of three steamers only, besides sixteen lighters and a few country sailing boats. Efforts of a rather half-hearted kind were made to supplement this very inadequate fleet, but it was not until the first quarter of 1916 that the Indian Government succeeded in delivering any largo number of suitable vessels. It was this shortage of river transport, as the Mesopotamian Commission made clear, which was mainly responsible for the failure to relieve Kut ; large reinforcements which actually reached the country could not be moved to the front in time to take part in critical battles. When the War Office took over the Mesopotamian operations, therefore, one of the first matters requiring urgent attention was river transport. Three officers were at once sent out to Mesopotamia to advise on the question, one of them being General (then Major) Hughes, under whose direction the present history has been admirably prepared by Colonel Hall. The immediate outcome of this mission was the establishment in Mesopotamia of a branch of the Inland Water Transport Service of the Royal Engineers, which took over the whole of the Mesopotamian river transport from the Royal Indian Marine on September 8th, 1916. General (then Colonel) W. H. Grey was at the head of the new service. A brief account of the reorganization and the work done up to the Armistice forms the first part of this volume. It is a lucid and very interesting narrative of the part played by the Inland Water Transport in the successful operations of General Maude and his successor. Some idea of the magnitude of the river work may be derived from the fact that at the end of December, 1917—fifteen months after General Grey had taken over com- mand—the river fleet had increased to over 700 steamers and motor-boats, with nearly 600 barges, whilst in the last quarter of the year this fleet travelled over 73 million ton-miles and carried 452,218 tons of supplies for the forces. The record lift was reached in March, 1918, when the fleet carried 199,350 tons. In spite of all difficulties—inefficient native labour, intense heat, low water and shifting channels, &o.—this work was carried on with wonderful exactness, and somehow or other the goods were always delivered when and where they were needed. The greater part of Colonel Hall's book is devoted to a detailed account of each of the departments—transport, dockyards, construction, &c.—into which the Inland Water Transport was divided. Specially interesting is the narrative of the measures taken for improving the navigation of the shallow and intricate channels of the Tigris and Euphrates—a work which must be of permanent value to the new country of Irak. In this connexion General Hughes writes a very useful description of the post-helium activities of the Inland Water Transport. The book is illustrated with a large number of photographs and has many statistical appendices. It will be invaluable to the future historian, and is a highly creditable record of an improvised but indispensable contribution to our conquest of Mesopotamia.
• The Inland Water Transport in Mesopotamia. Compiled by Lieut.-Col. L.
Hall, 0.11.E., under the direction of Mt.-Gen. H. W. Hughes, C.S.L. C.11.G., D.8.0., B.D. London : Constable. (21a. net.]
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