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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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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