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THE KINGS OF THE EAST

[Illustration: Hit.]

[Illustration: SAMARA]




THE KINGS OF THE EAST


The future of Mesopotamia with its enormous productive potentialities is
a subject fraught with great interest to all those who have studied her
past. Will this country again become one of the granaries of the world,
and will it ever be, like Egypt, an important asset of our Empire? At
first, when the war had freed the country from the Turkish yoke, it was
assumed that it would rise into unheard-of prosperity under the fatherly
care of British protection. Schemes of irrigation, long planned and to
some small extent begun, even under the Turkish regime, were to re-stock
Eden and benefit the whole world. The Baghdad railway would bring the
wares of the East quickly to our doors, and it had even been
anticipated that Nineveh would become as much a resort for European
tourists as Rome.