[41] Sir William Willcocks (1852- ) is one of the foremost authorities on Egypt, India, and Mesopotamia. As a young man he was employed in India by the Department of Public Works and for a period of eleven years, 1872–1883, was engaged in the construction of the famous irrigation works there. From 1883–1893, he was employed in a similar capacity by the Egyptian Public Works and was largely responsible for the development of irrigation in the Nile Valley. In 1898, he planned and projected the Assuan Dam, which turned out to be the greatest irrigation work in the East. In 1909, Sir William Willcocks became consulting engineer to the Ottoman Ministry of Public Works, and was responsible for the construction, 1911–1913, by the British firm of Sir John Jackson, Ltd., of the famous Hindie barrage, the first step in the irrigation of the Valley of the Two Rivers. [42] _Mesopotamia_, p. 54, and _The Geographical Journal_, August, 1912. [43] _The Recreation of Chaldea_ (Cairo, 1902). This suggestion led to the absurd charge by Dr. Rohrbach that Sir William Willcocks was actively promoting the establishment of a British colonial empire in southern Mesopotamia. _German World Policies_, pp. 160–161. _Cf._, also, _Diplomatic and Consular Reports_, No. 3140 (1903), p. 27. [44] H. H. Johnston, _Common Sense in Foreign Policy_ (London, 1913), pp. v-vii. A similar opinion was expressed by Colonel A. C. Yate, at a meeting of the Central Asian Society, May 22, 1911. In answer to an alarmist paper on the Bagdad Railway which had been read to the society by André Chéradame, Colonel Yate made a spirited speech in which he warned his countrymen that M. Chéradame proposed that they should follow the same mistaken policy which had guided Lord Palmerston in resistance to the construction of the Suez Canal. “We cannot pick up every day,” he said, “a Lord Beaconsfield, who will repair the errors of his blundering predecessors.... Because the German Emperor and his instruments have adopted and put into practice the plans which Great Britain rejected [for a trans-Mesopotamian railway], we are now, forsooth, to pursue a policy which savours partly of ‘sour grapes’ and partly of ‘dog-in-the-manger,’ and which in either aspect will do nothing to strengthen British hands and promote British interests.” _Proceedings of the Central Asian Society_ (London), May 22, 1911, p. 19. [45] Johnston, _op. cit._, pp. 50–51, 61. Sir Harry Johnston made an extended lecture tour through Germany during 1912 for the purpose of promoting Anglo-German friendship. For details of this trip see Schmitt, _op. cit._, pp. 355–356. It is interesting to note how nearly Sir Harry’s proposals corresponded with the terms of the treaties of 1913–1914. _Infra_, Chapter X. For a similar point of view, _cf._ Angus Hamilton, _Problems of the Middle East_ (London, 1909), pp. 178–180. [46] _Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords_, fifth series, Volume 7 (1911), pp. 601–602. The italics are mine.