ARABS BARGAINING ON THE TIGRIS BANKS WITH TROOPS GOING UP RIVER.
A brisk trade is done in eggs and fowls.
For to how many during the past two years has not flashed the dream of the capture of this city, Dar-al-Salam, the City of Security? And of those who have seen the vision, how many have wondered from which gate the dream has issued, and how many have been filled with confidence? For that vision has drawn many thousands from Basrah and Amarah—many who are now here in the hour of victory, many who now lie where they fell on the field of battle, and many who are still prisoners and captives.
A few days ago, as the columns of the Army of Mesopotamia were hurrying past the great Arch of Ctesiphon, it was impossible not to think of the —— Division arriving there some eighteen months earlier—that gallant —— Division, war-worn and depleted in numbers but ever victorious, who found at Ctesiphon, in the hour of their last and most glorious victory, the beginning of their undoing and tragic end.
What dream was it of a captured city, of a City of Security, that lured them to their doom, and who was the first dreamer? And who next saw the second dream of fresh battalions and a new organisation that would lead without fail to Baghdad, and had the gift to know that this dream, unlike the other, had passed through the gate of horn?
So I mused but a week ago in the palm groves that had been ringing that very morning with rifle-shots, but seemed so quiet and peaceful in the evening light that I felt all the rush of the past pursuit was over, that our efforts had not only been crowned with success, but that a period of rest would now be given to man and beast. For the pursuit had been much more than merely a hot and dusty march of 120 miles from San-i-yat to Baghdad.