Page:Turkey, the great powers, and the Bagdad Railway.djvu/319

 entrepôt of caravan trade in the Middle East; therefore their prestige with both Arabs and Turks was certain to rise. At home, pictures of British troops in the Bagdad of the Arabian Nights appealed to the imagination of the war-weary, as well as the optimistic, patriot. In the Central Powers, on the other hand, the loss of Bagdad created scepticism as to whether the German dream of "Hamburg to the Persian Gulf" was not now beyond realization. This scepticism became more confirmed when, on April 24, General Maude captured Samarra, northern railhead of the uncompleted Bagdad line in Mesopotamia.[30]

Scepticism would have turned to alarm, however, had Germans been fully aware of the significance of the British advance in the Land of the Two Rivers. For behind the armies of General Maude came civil officials by the hundreds to consolidate the victory and to lay the foundations of permanent occupation. An Irrigation Department was established to deal with the menace of floods, to drain marshes, and to economize in the use of water. An Agricultural Department undertook the cultivation of irrigated lands and conducted elaborate experiments in the growing of cotton—the commodity which means so much in the British imperial system. A railway was constructed from Basra to Bagdad which, when opened to commerce in 1919, became an integral part of the Constantinople-Basra system. There was every indication that the British were in Mesopotamia to stay.[31]

Germans and Turks were sufficiently aroused, however, to take strenuous measures to counteract General Maude's successes. In April, 1917, Field Marshal von Mackensen, hero of the Balkan and Rumanian campaigns and strong man of the Near East, was sent to Constantinople to confer with Enver Pasha regarding the military situation. It was decided, apparently, that Bagdad must be