Of course all this systematized corruption involves huge losses to the Government. The officials, for a consideration, will always allow their friends to “make a bit;” and will often undervalue their property for assessment by as much as 90 per cent. The Kurds are favoured at the expense of the Christians because their support has to be courted, although in the development of the country they are much the least valuable asset. Yet even the Kurds are not[{39}] reconciled by such means to the paying of their taxes. Not so much because the taxes are heavy as because they are unremunerative. They see no return for their money: no roads, no education, no irrigation works. They are paying not taxes but tribute, like the old vassal kings under Assyria; and consequently they are always ripe for revolt, if they see any prospect of obtaining external aid to enable them to revolt successfully; again like the vassal kings under Assyria, who knew well that they would get flayed alive if they failed.
The best one can say of the administration of justice is that it probably is not quite as corrupt as it appears to be. The judge takes bribes from both sides with a view to remaining unbiased; and, if he is scrupulous, restores his bribe to the loser. In criminal cases, however, one must make allowance for a further principle. Among ourselves criminal acts are regarded as an offence against the State, and it is the State’s duty to exact the penalty. But the Turks are inclined to regard such acts merely as an offence against the individual. The State does no more than recognize the right of the injured party (or his representative) to take his own revenge—if he can.[27] It will only itself occasionally condescend to act as his representative, if he chances to be an influential person, or if some influential outsider (say the British Consul) may be thereby obliged. Such a point of view is very primitive, and inevitably leads to much injustice; but we cannot hope to see this remedied until the Turk has digested our own Western principles, and he has not made digestion easier by electing to swallow them whole.
With regard to the Kurds[28] we desire to speak as charitably as we are able; and we may find warrant for this in the words of Mar Ephrem, the Syrian Bishop of Urmi, who,[{40}] writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, could say no worse of them than that they were wakshi folk. Wakshi means merely “uneducated;” but it is only fair to add that it is a term of much greater opprobrium than seems quite reasonable in a country where not one man in a hundred is able to read or write.
The lack of education which the bishop laments is akin to that “weakness in arithmetic” which caused the Irishman to be hanged. They are apt to have more sheep in their villages than they can legitimately account for. They are a pastoral race, leaving agriculture almost exclusively to the Syrians and Yezidis; but we fear that their “pastoral” ideals are hardly those of Corydon or Meliboeus. Rather are they the modern representatives of those Elliots and Maxwells and Johnstones who used to practise “the faithful herdman’s art” upon our own border; and it might well be said to them (as was said to the chief of another great family whose enormities have since culminated in the acquisition of a dukedom)—
Had everye honeste man his awin kye,
A right puir clan thy name wad be!
Such doings are hardly criminal according to their own code of morals; and if they confined themselves to cattle raiding, or even to an occasional clean murder, we should be able to think of them more kindly. But we fear that yet darker deeds must sometimes be reckoned against them; deeds like those of Edom o’ Gordon, or Black Adam of Cheviot, or like that which drew Hepburn’s vengeance on Bertram of Mitford tower. It is highly interesting, no doubt, to find Donald Bean Lean in the flesh still practising his old avocations in the highlands of Asia Minor; but if we could also find there “the kindly gallows of Crieff,” we do not hesitate to avow that our state would be the more gracious.
There is a British Vice-Consulate at Diarbekr, but at the date of our visit it was vacant. It is one of those posts which our Government is apt to suppress whenever retrenchment seems advisable. Certainly the Vice-Consul[{41}] must lead a dull enough life; and the British trade, which is the ostensible cause of his appointment, is a very nebulous entity. Yet the mere presence of a European constitutes a very real protection of the subject races in such an environment; and we owe at least this much recognition of our treaty obligations towards them.[29]
Our national prestige in the East rests chiefly on our dominance in India; and this is reflected in the fact that our Indian consulates in the south are much better maintained than those in the north, which are controlled from Europe. Our prestige too is a waning quantity. We are living, as it were, on the capital accumulated for us by such men as Stratford Canning; and it must be confessed that latterly our policy has not been that of a Great Power. We seem content to preserve barbarism in Mesopotamia in order to make our position in India easier; and to discourage the Baghdad railway because it will make our frontier harder to defend. That our military men should take this view is excusable. They know our present unpreparedness; and some day it might even be their duty to destroy that railway, because forces at their disposal will not otherwise be adequate for defence. But from a national standpoint such a dog-in-the-manger policy must eventually bring its own punishment. Our most straightforward, and in the end our wisest, course would be to promote all developments, and to shoulder manfully the obligations which they entail.
We resumed our journey from Diarbekr across a lava-covered country by perhaps the bumpiest bit of road between Aleppo and Mosul. We and all our possessions were kept bouncing about in our araba like so many dry peas in a pod. The springs of a second carriage that was[{42}] travelling with us burst, and had to be spliced with string. Presently our own pole broke off short at the socket, and had to be lashed up with string likewise. By some miraculous dispensation the splice held out to Mardin.
These accidents and repairs delayed us, and nightfall caught us still on the moorland. Our driver went astray off the almost invisible pathway, and after a while was reduced to hunting for it with matches. We fished out a portable candle-lamp, which gave somewhat more illumination; but which scarcely seemed adequate for the next undertaking that awaited us—the fording of a fairly wide river, running strongly, about axle deep. Good luck, however, attended us, and we at length got safely to our khan.