The modern town has increased many fold with the advent of the
Expeditionary Force, and much of the improvement is of a necessarily
permanent nature; in particular the wharfs and roads. Indeed, one of the
most striking features of the Mesopotamian campaign is the permanency of
the improvements made by the British. In order to conquer the country it
was necessary to develop it,--build railways and bridges and roads and
telegraph systems,--and it has all been done in a substantial manner. It
is impossible to contemplate with equanimity the possibility of the
country reverting to a rule where all this progress would soon disappear
and the former stagnancy and injustice again hold sway.

[Illustration: Ashar Creek at Busra]

As soon as we landed I wandered off to the bazaar--"suq" is what the Arab
calls it. In Busra there are a number of excellent ones. By that I don't
mean that there are art treasures of the East to be found in them, for
almost everything could be duplicated at a better price in New York. It is
the grouping of wares, the mode of sale, and, above all, the salesmen and
buyers that make a bazaar--the old bearded Persian sitting cross-legged in
his booth, the motley crowd jostling through the narrow, vaulted
passageway, the veiled women, the hawk-featured, turbaned men, the Jews,
the Chaldeans, the Arabs, the Armenians, the stalwart Kurds, and through
it all a leaven of khaki-clad Indians, purchasing for the regimental mess.
All these and an ever-present exotic, intangible something are what the
bazaar means. Close by the entrance stood a booth festooned with lamps and
lanterns of every sort, with above it scrawled "Aladdin-Ibn-Said." My
Arabic was not at that time sufficient to enable me to discover from the
owner whether he claimed illustrious ancestry or had merely been named
after a patron saint.