Turkey’s remarkably central position in the eastern hemisphere makes the country the threshold of Great Britain’s Asiatic dominions as well as the natural land connection between British Africa and British Asia. From India westward and from the British zone in southern Persia as defined by the Anglo-Russian convention of 1907, to the Sultanate of Egypt, southern Turkey, represented by Lower Mesopotamia and Arabia, is the only stretch of territory in which the British government does not exercise direct control; and the task of consolidating British influence in these two regions of the Turkish Empire is well advanced. In the economic life of modern Mesopotamia British influence is paramount. About 90 per cent of the trade of Basra and Bagdad is in British hands. Steam navigation on the Euphrates and Tigris with its attendant privileges of transportation is a monopoly exercised by the British. This means that all the Persian trade which enters or leaves the country through its southern Turkish border must pay toll to British capital. Most important of all, the stupendous task of reclaiming the great twin-river valley has been undertaken by British enterprise. The area of agricultural lands in Lower Mesopotamia is generally calculated at ten times the total surface of farming land in Egypt. The territory suited for cultivation extends northward from the Persian Gulf roughly to a line drawn from the bend of the Euphrates at Anah to Tekrit on the Tigris. Its eastern boundary is defined by the Zagros and Pusht-i-Koh mountains. On the west it reaches the Great Syrian desert as far as its junction with the plateau of Arabia. Thus defined the region is the great alluvial plain of Mesopotamia. A stretch of land remarkably rich in humus, it only needs a just rule and competent engineers in order to become highly productive. In olden days the entire district was one vast field. Its fertility had earned it the name of granary of the world. Herodotus extols its productivity: “ ... In grain it is so fruitful as to yield commonly two-hundred fold. The blade of the wheat plant and barley plant is often four fingers in breadth.”[204] In their present state the once productive lands present the appearance of a desert. The old irrigation ditches are in ruins. Mile upon mile of parched, cloggy soil or dreary marsh take the place of ancient fields.