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 XI

THE COLLAPSE OF CZARIST RUSSIA

THE CZAR ABDICATES—THE FRENCH DEPOSE CONSTANTINE AT ATHENS—KEMAL URGES ENVER TO WITHDRAW FROM THE WAR—MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S NEW WAR AIMS IN TURKEY—THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN TREATY OF 1907 ABROGATED—PAN-TURANIANISM LEAPS INTO LIFE ON THE HEELS OF THE RUSSIAN ROUT—THE MUDROS ARMISTICE OPENS THE BRITISH ROAD TO THE CHAOS IN RUSSIA.

Following the East India Company's lead, the Government of India had long continued to weave into closer mesh the fabric of British influence which covered the land-locked Persian Gulf. In Nejd, Koweit and Mohammerah, in the maintenance for more than a century of an Agent at Bagdad, there lay the seeds of a British Arabian enterprise comparable to the great enterprise of British India. The Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 ensued and in 1914 the Government of India diverted a brigade of Indian Expeditionary Force "A" for Egypt and France, to the Persian Gulf where it lay off Bahrein Island to make a lightning stroke against Basra, the key to Bagdad. As soon as war was declared, it was heavily reinforced and, having been designated Indian Expeditionary Force