Page:The Commercial Future of Baghdad (1917).djvu/10

 Rh is the richest in the world. The water-supply is there, but there is need for great organization. You can cultivate as fast as you can irrigate, and irrigate as fast as you can get labour.

"The people will go there gradually, but we must not imagine that, ten years after the awakening, Mesopotamia will have become as great as it was a thousand years ago. It will take much longer than that, if it ever does reach to such affluence again.

"It should be remembered that the Arabs are just as susceptible to the influence of education as any people in the world, and that is an enormous factor.

"Mesopotamia has always been a centre of intellectual life, and I will say this for the Turks, that with all their vices they did a very great deal, especially under Abdul Hamid, for education. It was part of their plan of Turkeyfying the people.

"Those who were trained in the Government schools are capable of holding their own with the educated of any other country. There is no reason why Baghdad and other centres should not turn out just as good men in the professions and in commerce as the European countries.

"People were studying Plato in Baghdad in the eighth century.

"Turkey is the only nation which has not been a source of profit to the Arab, and that is because the Turk only looks for conquest. The