the survey october 4 1919

7/30/2019 The Survey October 4 1919

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OCTOBER4, 1919 RECONSTRUCTION

P RI CE2 5CENTS NUMBERFOROCTOBER' TY O F C I T Y I f N U M

r. E B R A SK A

The Parliament of LaborBy Arthur Gleason

Winnipeg and Seattle

By Edward T. Devine

At the Gates of Bagdad

By Leland Rex Robinson

The illustrAted October Reconstruction Number cf

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ing trades. several 1.11ustrated articles must be

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Copyright, 1919, bar Survey, Assootater, ln o.

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1$, 1918.


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At the Gates of BagdadHow Tommy Turned Relief Worker in the Land of Haroun-al-Rashid

By Leland Rex RobinsonMEMBER OF THE AMERICAN-PERSIAN RELIEF COMMISSION

ONIE thirty miles northcast of Bagdad is a British

encampment, under the Mesopotamian Expedition-

ary Force but unique in that it shelters neither

field army nor an occupation force. h is known as

the Marshall's Bridge Refugee

Camps, and it has protected

for more than seven months

fully forty-five thousand Arme-

nian and Assyrian refugees from

Asia Minor and northwest

Persia. When the future of

these smaller nationalities is de-

cided upon, the military willassist the repatriation of the

. 1 r , tit refugees and leave them, under

the direction of organized re-

lief workers, to rehabilitate their fields and villages.

The site chosen by the Expeditionary Force when it was

confronted by the unexpected task of caring for this army of

war sufferers is the point at which the military railway, now

constructed to the Persian frontier, carries a wooden trestic

bridge across the Diyala river, a Tigris tributary from the

mountains of Kurdestan. Here the loop of the river cuts off a

tangue of barren land on its higher western bank from the

graves of willow, palm and orange in its well-watered flats,

and the camps break the monotony of the desert.

In August 1918, a station tent was pitched ta mark a new

stop on the military line, and Marshall's Bridge was added to

the railway schedule. Coloneland his staff arrived soon

atter. Following the hurried preparation of several camp

sites and temporary shelters, daily trains from the ever-advan-

cing rail head brought the weaker ones among the refugees on

the last stage of their journey, and by early September the

camps were in efficient activity.

In the latter month, by the courtesy of the authorities, I

made my first visit to Marshall's Bridge and watched the

classification and care of trainload after trainload of refugees

arriving in greater number than four thousand eekly. Every

day was repcating the previous day's exprience, and a brief

description ofmy first sight ofthe refugees, as they left the

railway trucks, would be typical of the arrivai of each train

with its strange human freight.

For a moment, as though dazed by their first rail journey,

the refugees looked about bewildered; then a throng of women,

many of them hugging puny babies in wrappings of bright-

colored rags, decrepit old men, girls and boys too Young or

weak to drive the pack-asses for the last stage of their wander-

ings, moved slowly toward the registration tents. In the glare

of the afternoon sun they knelt by caldrons of water and

dashed it on their flushed faces; women drank it from

trembling hands and bore it to parched Unie lips in the hollowoftheir palms. One rose to go. The toddling youngster by

her side crid piteously, took a few feeble steps, fainted, and

was dragged a litpp weight in the strong grasp of the mother's

hand. There was one more stretcher case, and a frantic

mother parted for a cime from her child; how could she know

that Kurdish sword, or Turkish bullet did not still lurk for

dragging steps, or that the British would not kilt her baby as

the Turks had threatened?

For two hours, in single file, the line formed from the wait-

ing groups outside and passed through the registration tents. On

the one side Captain , of the intelligence service, scanned

faces to detect Turkish spics, and on the other Chaldean inter-

preters gave out serially numbered identification discs. In an-

other hour the sick requiring immediate treatment were in the

emergency hospital, and those suffering from infectious dis-

cases were carefully segregated. The others had been led to

the area of the reception tents, here they were fed from pots

of boiling stew and, for two days of undisturbed Test, allowedto acquaint themselves with their strange environment. As

on every other day room had been made for these newcomers

by evacuating cartier groups from the reception camp to their

permanent tent sections, after the kerosene bath and the steam-

ing of each one's cloches had killed all parasites.

So large .were these assignments to permanent camp sections

that week by week new stretches of the desert glistened in

canvas. Two months after the erection of the .first shelter

you might have hopped into one of those circular Arab boats,

made of pals branches and bitumen, and rotated idly clowns

stream for three miles, yet within the limits of the camp.

From the distance there is little to distinguish this city of

refugees from an army camp. So large a military personnelwas diverted to its organization and supervision in the closing

weeks of the \Iesopotamia carnpaign that it may fairly

claim to the name. Platoons of Indian cavalry, assigned to

guard, bivouac on its outskirts. The old familiar Union

Jack and Red Cross flags mark three hospitals of the Indianand British armies; the bugle sounds reveille in the camp ofthe Dcronshires; airplanes from a nearby aviation station circle

above it; military supply trains leave army rations for its

dumps.

The Remains of an Empire

FoR here there is no living from the land. Through

mismanagement characteristically Turkish, and therefore

thorough, the fertility ofa terrain once the world's granary,

coaxed into harvests by intricate irrigation, has been allowed

to disappear. Only the narrowest belts of river bank are

watered by goat-skin bags, for the cost in animal power of

drawing river water up high banks over wooden spools is pro-

hibitive except for the tiniest spillwavs. Where the river hastended to sprcad its life-giving flow, the Arab fellah, moreignorant than malicious, has often used his spade to distribute

the water intoawasteful flood. Thisis the country fromwhich ancient empires dre their armies of sturdy peasantry;

yet from the mountain barriers of the Persian frontier, whose

snowy summits can be dimly seen on the clearest dayg, to theskyline of palm and minaret which mark, from afar, thetraveler's approach to Bagdad the glorious," there is nowscarcely a patch ofbarley, maize, or wheat save by the river'sside, or atree save in the environs of mud-walled villages.

Only a part of the requisites of the camps can be locally


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the survey october 4 1919

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