England
will unquestionably retain control of Mesopotamia for the sake of the
oil wells at the head of the Persian Gulf, the control which it gives
her of the eastern section of the Bagdad Railway, and because of her
belief that scientific irrigation will once more transform the plains of
Babylonia into one of the greatest wheat-producing regions in the world.
She may, and probably will, keep her oft-repeated promises to the Jews
by erecting Palestine into a Hebrew kingdom under British protection, if
for no other reason than its value as a buffer state to protect Egypt.
She will also, I assume, continue to foster and support the policy of
Pan-Arabism, as expressed In the new Kingdom of the Hedjaz, not alone
for the reason that control of the Arabian peninsula gives her complete
command of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf as well as a highroad from
Egypt to her new protectorate of Persia, but because she hopes, I
imagine, that her protege, the King of Hedjaz, as Sheriff of Mecca, will
eventually supplant the Sultan as the religious head of Islam. (It is
interesting to note, in passing, that, as a result of the protectorates
which she has proclaimed over Mesopotamia, Palestine, Arabia and Persia,
England has, as a direct result of the war, obtained control of new
territories in Asia alone having an area greater than that of all the
states east of the Mississippi put together, with a population of some
20,000,000.
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