Very few countries in the world have reaped any tangible benefit from the war, rather the reverse, so it is satisfactory to find one place where on the whole it has been a blessing. This is Mesopotamia, although to judge by all the fighting that has occurred there in recent months a considerable section of the populace is quite unconvinced of the accretion of any advantage whatsoever. The military occupation of the country, however, has achieved things which years of peace were unable to bring about. In the first place the country has been provided with a harbour, which it could not be said to possess previously, and this is solely due to the requirements of the army for a base at Basra. The port facilities thus created remain for the purposes of comnierce, and are certain to have an important influence on the development of the country's trade.
addition there are now 875 miles of railway, chiefly of metre gauge, the greater part of which was laid for military purposes, and roads have sprung up on which the omnipresent motor is now seen daily. A notable contrast indeed to what existed when the Expeditionary Force made its entry in November, 1914. Since the conclusion of hostilities a great deal has been done in the way of flood prevention and irrigation, and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.