Now Baghdad had followed Kut, and the immediate result of the second capture is thus described in the same ‘History’:-- [Illustration: B SQUADRON ON THE WAY TO THE DIALA] [Illustration: CROSSING THE DIALA] [Illustration: WATERING IN THE DIALA] “So fell Baghdad, the immediate base of Turkish warfare in Persia and Mesopotamia, and one of the most famous cities in all the East. If the recapture of Kut had produced a great effect, it need hardly be said that the fall of Baghdad made an impression vastly greater. In Germany it was described with unusual frankness as ‘a deplorable event,’ and on the Bosphorus the news of it was received with something like consternation; while among the Allies and all who sympathised with them it was hailed as a striking victory and an auspicious opening to the campaigns of 1917. Indeed, considering that the Asiatic theatre of war was after all a secondary one, and that the capture of an Asiatic city could hardly have any material bearing on the issue of the European conflict, the weight attached to the British success seemed almost disproportionate. But it must be remembered that the conception of a great advance eastward by way of Turkey in Asia was a fundamental part of the German scheme of world-politics, and that the seizure by Great Britain of the eastern end of the Constantinople-Baghdad railway meant a heavy blow to this scheme.” These words were written in 1917, within a few months of General Maude’s entry into Baghdad. The subsequent course of the war was to show that far from having over-estimated the value of that success, the writer might have said more. Now that the war has come to an end, there can be no doubt that the blow struck by the British in Mesopotamia, together with the almost concurrent victory of General Allenby in Palestine, had a material effect upon the whole issue of the war. By themselves they could not have brought about the complete triumph of the Allied cause. Nothing but the defeat of the Germans in the west of Europe could do that. But they meant, if duly followed up, the collapse of the Turkish military power, and the striking out of the Turkish Empire from the great confederacy. That meant the maiming of the German scheme of world-conquest. Without the aid of Turkey as a vassal, the Kaiser’s dream of a vast Eastern dominion could never be fulfilled. And dominion in the East was no small part, some even think it was the more important part, of his scheme of world-conquest. This, however, is perhaps to say too much, and in any case, great as was the effect of the fall of Baghdad, much fighting had yet to be done, even in Mesopotamia, before the Turks finally recognised that they were not strong enough to stand alone against the British Empire. They had received a heavy blow, but they were not yet conquered. To return to the Thirteenth Hussars and their share in the work of the Baghdad campaign, the following extracts from letters and diaries may be of interest.