was built on a rigid system with broad avenues, named and ordered quarters, solid and businesslike Government offices, square towers, and massive walls. It was not inhabited by a squalid and ragged population, sunken in disease and poverty, but was an orderly capital with a perfect police system, regular cantonments of troops, colleges, observatories, exchanges, law courts, hospitals, poor-houses, public baths, trade unions, and guilds. There was society in Bagdad; wits and poets, philosophers and statesmen, lexicographers, learned doctors and metaphysicians met and conversed in schools and assemblies. Through the pages of the old chroniclers one gets small glimpses of that extraordinary and elaborate world which pivoted on Bagdad, for Bagdad was not an oasis in the wilderness; Damascus, Kirkisiya, Ragga, Mosul, Ras-ul-Ain, Erbil, and scores more great cities surrounded it. Now many of them are marked by mere undulations in the soil.

Such was the Arab world which pushed forth armies to farthest Turkestan, and had, before the building of Bagdad, stretched out its advance guards beyond the Pyrenees. And be it said, though the Arabs were conquerors, yet were they not destroyed. So long as the lordship of Islam was in Arab hands, intellect, architecture, and commerce flourished. Frequently oppressors, often tyrants, the provincial Governors of the Arab Caliphs hardly ever left a province without adding to it some monument or institution.

Bagdad under the Abbasids was not only the center of a great organized empire, but it was also the seat of the finest culture of the time-a culture that taught Europe astronomy, algebra, chemistry, medicine, and treasured the wisdom of the Greeks through the Dark Ages. While Christendom was slowly struggling out of the chaos of barbarism and tribal war, Arabian artists were decorating the jeweled

halls of Granada and Cordova, Arabian scholars were writing commentaries on Aristotle, Arabian craftsmen were weaving the exquisite fabrics which no Western hands could make. Those were the great days of Islam, when it seemed as if Islam rather than Christianity would pass down to later ages the civilization the ancient world has left behind in its fall.

And then the destroyers from the North swept out the Arab Caliphate in blood and fire. "Since the days of Halaka," writes Sir Stanley Maude, in words that will awake an echo in the hearts of educated Moslems, "your city and your lands have been subject to the tyranny of strangers, your palaces have fallen into ruins, your gardens have sunk in desolation, and your forefathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage." It is truly said. Halaka or Hulagu, the grandson of Genghiz Khan, at the head of a great Mongol army, captured Bagdad, in 1258, slew Mostasim, the last of the Abbasid Caliphs with most of his family, sacked the city, burned many of the palaces and public buildings, and killed a large number of the inhabitants. Forty-three years later the city was again sacked, with horrible bloodshed and massacre, by Timur. Under the Tartars and the Ottoman Turks, their successors, the glory of Bagdad passed away, its population dwindled, and its trade decayed, only to be in some small degree revived when English steamers began to navigate the Tigris in the nineteenth century. The ancient wealth of Mesopotamia depended upon a system of irrigation as elaborate and life-giving as that of the Nile Valley itself. The Mongols wrecked the canals and dams and sluices which had been kept in order for three thousand years, and the country fell back to marsh and

swamp, or to parched and barren waste, withering under the pitiless

sun.

The Arabs, never wholly subdued, but plundered and oppressed so far as the process could be performed with safety, were dispersed, divided, and incited to internecine quarrels by their Turkish masters. Some went back to the nomadic life of the desert; some sought an outlet for their enterprise and commercial instincts in Africa. In Nejd the tribesmen returned to the old clannish isolation, suspicious of one another, fiercely hostile to all strangers: In Lower Mesopotamia the failure of agriculture and the neglect of irrigation have ruined the land that once bloomed like a garden-the Garden of Eden-and changed the local Arab "from a prosperous husbandman into an amphibious predatory savage." In Palestine and Hedjaz the peasants have toiled on, hopeless and sullen, but with the irrepressible vitality of the Semitic stock, under the exactions of rapacious officials, corrupt recruiting agents, insatiable Turkish tax-gatherers, and shady Levantine financiers. Robbed, bullied, and dragooned, the Arabs of the Red Sea coast and the uplands have chafed restlessly under the Turkish yoke, and even in the Holy Places themselves the alien Padishah has only retained his authority by arrangement with the local potentates. In the Yemen Turkish battalions have been thrown away year after year in the futile attempt to make Ottoman government a reality in that untamable province. The Turkish hold was weakening in Southern Arabia even before the present war. In 1912 the Stamboul Government purchased the neutrality of Iman Yahia in the war with Italy by granting autonomy to his district. Sheikh Idris, the other powerful chief in the Yemen, refused to accept the gift of the Turkish governorship of the

Asîr, and demanded the virtual independence of the province, failing which he continued to harass and obstruct the Ottoman troops and officials. If the Arabs could have found a leader able to overcome their inveterate particularism, and their incapacity to act in concert, they might have driven out Turkish pashadom long ago.

This lack of political aptitude, the disinclination to subordinate local feeling and personal ambition to the common cause, weakened the Caliphate even in its best days. Under the Ottoman régime the tendency has been aggravated. Bitter rivalries have been deliberately fomented between the chiefs and sheikhs; while the intelligent and often highly educated members of the active mercantile and professional communities of the towns have been so worried, hampered, and depressed by misgovernment, official extortion, and social persecution that many of them have quitted the country in despair, and have turned their talents to more profitable uses in Egypt or the United States. For many generations past the Arabs have been a people rather than a nation. But they are a vigorous people still, endowed with many notable gifts of mind and body. In physique the Arab remains, as he has always been, among the finest specimens of the human race. Tall and lithe and supple, with his eagle eye, his clear-cut features, his skin of dark olive, his straight limbs, his small, delicate hands, his royal gait as he strides along in pink turban and snowy burnouse, the Arab dragoman in Cairo or Tangier is a magnificent creature who has been known to rouse romantic sentiment in the hearts of feminine tourists from Northern and Western lands. Baron de Larrey, who was surgeon-general to Napoleon in his expedition to the East, wrote of the Arabs: "Their physical structure

is in all respects more perfect than that of Europeans; their organs of sense exquisitely acute, their size above the average of men in general, their forms robust and elegant, their color brunette; their intelligence proportionate to their physical perfection, and without doubt superior, other things being equal, to that of other nations." This, no doubt, is putting the case too high; but all the evidence of those who know the Arabs at close quarters, whether in Arabia or in Africa, goes to show that their unfortunate history has not produced degeneracy, and that they retain many of the intellectual as well as the corporeal qualities of their ancestors. They are still brave, quickwitted, humorous, shrewd, temperate, dignified, and polite, still keenly addicted to poetry, theology, and disputation, still adventurous, servant, and resourceful.

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The "nationality" movement that has pulsed through the Nearer East is only beginning to stir among the Arabs. But they have the elements of nationhood-race-consciousness, religion, language, a common tradition, and a distinctive culture embodied in an ancient and noble literature that is still vital. Energetic, intelligent, physically robust, born traders, and excellent fighters, the Arabs have been sacrificed too long to the political misfortunes and internal dissensions which have rendered them for many centuries the prey and victims of peoples far inferior to themselves in all essentials of civilization.

The time is ripe for an Arab revival, and with their delivery from the crude military autocracy that usurped the Moslem papacy it should make rapid progress. The Ottoman Padishah has been superseded in Egypt by the independent Sultan, and in Arabia by the King of the Hedjaz, who is now the guardian of the Holy Cities. Sir Stanley Maude's army and the Rus

sians have been pressing the Turkish forces back towards the Taurus, and Sir Archibald Murray is advancing into Syria. The latter country, if onequarter of the troops we threw away in the Dardanelles had been landed at Alexandretta, would long since have been in our hands, and its inhabitants saved from a massacre almost equal in atrocity to that of the Armenians.

What will be the eventual political constitution of the countries wrested from the Turks it would be premature to discuss. Arab independence may be easier to achieve than Arab unity; for the nation has been too long sundered by local divisions and sectional jealousies to come together easily. Improved railway communication and the growth of industry and commerce may gradually bridge the distances that separate the various branches of the race, and co-ordinate communities which move on such widely different planes of existence as the tribesmen of Nefud and the traders of Damascus, Beirut, and Hodeida. Mesopotamia, though predominantly Arabic in population, is economically linked to Persia and the Gulf region rather than to the Arabian Peninsula, and for a time at least, as Sir Thomas Holdich has pointed out in a recent number of this Review, an Arab "Home Rule" regime in Irak would have to be buttressed by British power, which cannot afford to relax its hold upon the Euphrates estuary and the line from Bagdad to Basra.

In any case we may take it that the Arabs of Syria, Arabia, and the Euphrates basin will not go back to Turkish misrule after the war. In one form or another a group of free Arab States, under British and French protection, will be established between the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. They will form an effective barrier against Teutonic and

Turanian advance towards the southeast; and they will have an excellent chance of showing that Islam is not necessarily associated with stagnation and decay. The Arab renaissance is assuredly not the least momentous, or the least interesting, of the results that will accrue to humanity from the defeat of Turkish barbarism and Prussian militarism.

In the meanwhile we must bear in mind that the military issue is not quite decided. There may be hard fighting still, not only for the AngloEgyptian army in Syria, but also for the Anglo-Indian army in Mesopotamia. From the Russians little The Fortnightly Review.

can be expected, at least for some time; and the Turks are sending down heavy drafts with the evident intention of making a vigorous bid for the recovery of the Badhada road. It is absolutely essential that this enterprise should be defeated. Bitter as is our need for fighting men elsewhere, we must yet continue to keep General Maude's army at the requisite strength, by the dispatch of fresh and adequate reinforcements from the United Kingdom, and from India and those other portions of the British Empire in which troops, well fitted for Oriental warfare, can be levied and trained.

Sidney Low.

CHAPTER I.

with a

The old order ended little wedding on a windy December afternoon.

A few people gathered in a shadowy church. Laurence fidgeted nervously by the chancel step with young Mills from the office in attendance. Christina, in a new bonnet and very inexpensive but new Caracul furs, was a little conspicuous because she knelt wrapped in prayer while others whispered and fidgeted till the bride arrived.

The bride wore heavy furs, a whole massacre, one would have said, of black foxes, whose heads and paws and tails and shining glass eyes hung about her. Her big picture hat and blue gown attracted interest and attention whilst she took Laurence Mottram "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health," till death should them part.

The wedding service struck Lucilla's friends as being almost unseemly in its solemnity. Her hostess, who gave

the little reception afterwards, declared in sprightly tones that "the old church always seemed so cross with people who want to get married."

A few people were assembled at tea, and Lucilla cut the cake and gave away flowers from her bouquet, and the whole occasion seemed gay and trivial and in no sense fateful or important. Laurence, it is true, was needlessly absent-minded and perturbed, and Christina was rather grave, with marks of tears about her eyes. "A dear old Grundy. the mother-in-law," the hostess had explained to one of her guests. Mr. Ingleby was there. He had given such munificent presents that it was necessary to invite him, though he struck his fellow guests as a curious fossilized old gentleman dug out of the social limestone of Westhampton.

At five o'clock there was a sleet shower just as the motor brougham, lent for the occasion, drew up outside the door.

But the sleet did not prevent the customary gayeties, a shower of rice and confetti, some old shoes and timehonored jokes. Christina was ashamed of her wet eyes, but Laurence's ardent kiss had provoked them.

Lucilla and she had embraced very tenderly, and the scents of Parma violet and eau-de-cologne had mingled for a moment of sincere cordiality.

Then all was over.

Christina found herself driving away with Mr. Ingleby in a musty old cab, called because it was raining.

"So that is over," Christina said with a sigh, "and here are you and here am I, just as we were at my wedding so many years ago. Do you know I could believe in several incarnations, for in one lifetime one seems to get through so many existences. I can hardly believe that the frightened, discontented, bewildered bride of that old wedding is myself. What a chasm the years make! Yet we can never give our children the wisdom of our experience. How differently I should treat my poor Mark now!"

Mr. Ingleby suddenly laid a dry wrinkled hand on her gloved one, and spoke.

"My dear old friend, this is very lonely for you. As you say, here are you and here am I-if my life, such as it is, could in any way be of service to you for comfort or help, it is at your disposal."

Christina's fingers squeezed his. "Dear, dear friend, indeed your friendship counts for so much to me, spiritually the most of all, but even in those little matters where a man is so helpful, and where I shall miss Laurence, in questions of business and so on."

"Yes, that is my meaning. Will you not take me as your life-long servitor? I am an antique suitor. I make no romantic professions. Could

I make life easier for you if I were

always at hand.. as your husband?"

Christina gasped. She had never had a proposal since her husband's death. Edmund had joked about Mr. Ingleby till the joke grew stale, but he had waited all these years, and she understood his offer to be solely one of friendship, but still it flattered and consoled her wonderfully. She was hardly conscious that Lucilla's wedding festivities had made her feel old and "out-of-it," but such was the case. She found that advancing years did not diminish her taste for admiration. There was still that wistful desire of human nature to be something to somebody. Mr. Ingleby had cast light across the dun path of her days. Admiration is the best balm of Gilead, and he had given it to her.

"Dear friend," she answered, "you are very kind. I cannot say how I thank you, but we are better as we are. Somehow I like to think that I shall go to Mark still Mrs. Travis. I wasn't a very satisfactory bride, now as a widow I try to make it up. You are my best friend, you will always be that. In old age one has few friends, but they are so precious."

"I am old," he said laughing, "but you are not."

"I feel old, my life is over."

"No, not over. In a school you do not finish your education when you are put into higher classes, on the contrary you find harder work, and have to exert yourself more and to show greater proficiency. I think old age is the higher class of life. The Divine Master gives us less playtime, fewer prizes then. We must apply ourselves to all our difficult lessons. Just because we are leaving school and going home so soon, we must be careful to let Him teach us what He will. The failing powers, the yielding ourselves physically and mentally to