The New President

President of the Board of Education. No one in particular is responsible for the frequent changes in the holder of that office, and we can only hope that Mr. Butler, who has proved his broadminded statesmanship elsewhere, will remain in his new post long enough to do a thorough piece of work at a time when it is sorely needed. Meantime he is obviously, and we think wisely, determined not to be drawn' until he has heard all sides. Churchmen and Nonconformists, having come through decades of bitter and as yet unforgotten controversy, have at length decided that there must be some unity if there is to be any strength. If they assumed that, their 'sectional interests' having been composed, other 'sectional interests' must at once fall into line, Mr. Butler quietly but effectively undeceived them. One by one he passed in review the well-known five points, and replied in effect, "Yes, I hear what you say, but I must also hear for myself what the local authorities and the teachers have to say ". For ourselves, though we see no difficulty in the point relating to time-tables, and little difficulty in the point relating to H.M. Inspectors, we make no complaint. True, Mr. Butler's former office must have been a severe school of caution, but his habit of caution is not misplaced in his present office, when faced with a subject which most of his predecessors have been afraid to touch, and which has caused some of them to burn their fingers.

Welsh Education Authorities and Current Problems.

THE Welsh Federation of Local Education Authorities, at its annual meeting this year, displayed refreshing vigour in the enunciation of the Welsh point of view on current educational problems and plans for reconstruction. The President, Sir William Jenkins, said he was tired of appearing before committees to answer questions for reports. They knew what Wales wanted and the time would soon come when they must move and not merely talk. The old system needed overhauling— complete overhauling-and the new system for Wales must be planned on the needs and ideals of Wales. The Executive particularly emphasized the need for a new 'black list of schools, bearing in mind the findings of the Clement Davies' Committee on Tuberculosis in Wales. On the whole the new Davidson Report was accepted, but increased staffing allowances were asked for in view of the bilingual problem, and a revision of the rule governing payment for evacuated secondary school children in view of the low fees charged in Welsh secondary schools. As to religious education, the Executive made a pronouncement which makes it clear that the Archbishops' Five Points will have to bear the brunt of much sharp criticism in Wales. It deprecated unfair attacks on religious education in council schools, said that the Anson Clause and Section 13 of the Act of 1901 are sufficient to supplement, where desired, the agreed syllabuses now generally used, and warned the Federation against proposed changes which would imperil national unity.

IT

T is nearly twenty years since Mr. Ifan ab Owen Edwards, J.P., the son of Sir Owen Edwards (first Chief Inspector of the Welsh Department of the Board of Education) founded Urdd Gobaith The Youth Movement in Wales. Cymru (the Welsh League of Youth). This venture has captured the imagina

tion of the Welsh people and has done great work for Welsh children through Eisteddfodau (Literary and Musical Festivals), National Games, and all kinds of local cultural and educational activities. Since the war broke out the work has developed among young people from 14 to 20 in accordance with the suggestions of Circular 1486 of the Board of Education, and the results have surpassed all expectations. One main activity has been the setting up throughout Wales of 'Aelwydydd' (Youth Clubs). Starting from small beginnings, the number of these clubs is now ninety-five; they have been helped by grants from the Board of Education and the local education authorities, and the greater part of their organization is in the hands of the young people themselves. Other activities of the. Urdd include a carefully organized scheme of training courses for youth club leaders, dealing with music, drama, craftwork, and religious and social questions; these have been already begun, and will be carried on intensively throughout the winter. Summer camps, in spite of many difficulties, have also been held; and a special magazine, entitled Yr Aelwyd, which began a year ago as a cyclostyled production, will appear this month in a printed form. An Urdd National Eisteddfod is planned for 1942; and another experiment, of which more will be heard in the future, is a Welsh private school held at the Urdd Headquarters at Aberystwyth.

The Scottish Leaving Certificate.

THE war-time Senior Leaving Certificate of the Scottish Education Department continues to serve a useful purpose. Designed this year on regional lines, as against the method of examinations set by the teachers in each individual school, it has been well received and no marked change will be made in the machinery of examination for 1942. Pupils who are proceeding to the universities or similar institutions make application to the appropriate entrance board, and the board in its turn gets private information from the Department as to the performance of the applicant. The method has its cumbrous side. Nevertheless it has the supreme merit of ensuring that every applicant for admission gets individual attention and thus of eliminating hardship due to war conditions. The scheme is open to the objection that standards must inevitably vary to some extent, and there seems little doubt that, when normal times come round again, teachers will wish to go back to an examination conducted on national rather than on regional lines. The present experience, however, is distinctly valuable since it has given the opportunity, on a large scale, for experimentation in that most difficult of all secondary school problems, to wit, the place of the examination in the life of the secondary school pupil.

N

OTHING is clearer than the intention of the Hadow Report to regard all types of post-primary school as institutions of equal rank. We regard it as most important that the new modern schools and senior classes should not become inferior secondary schools" (p. 108). "This growth" (i.e. of "modern" schools) "will run side by side with, but in no sense counter to, the growth of secondary schools; and, while it will differ in kind, it will not be inferior in its promise or quality" (p. 20). While the secondary school was to be rather of an academic type, the senior and central schools were to emphasize practical instruction and manual work, and to have a realistic bias related to industrial, commercial, or rural life. Children were to be drafted to these different types of school according to their aptitudes and needs, and not according to their social position or their parents' income. The New Prospect in Education (p. 1) says: "It is important to grasp the fact that the Report has in mind all sorts and conditions of children, the humble and the weak as well as the mighty and the strong. . . . The claims of attainment and capacity are to be satisfied by variety of treatment." It is obvious that, if the Consultative Committee really meant what they said, they had in mind a system of post-primary education in which each child would receive that type of instruction for which he was best fitted, and this ' fitness ' would be the only consideration to be taken into account in deciding the type of school to which he should be sent. It is evident that we have not yet succeeded in giving effect to this recommendation. Few people really believe that the senior or central school is not an inferior species of secondary school (see Hadow Report, p. 131). Setting aside the public schools, which-to judge from some recent articles in The Journal of Education-seem to congratulate themselves that they are not as other men are, there still persists a stratification in the national system. Above is the secondary school, and the grant-aided or direct-grant school tends to consider itself superior to the maintained school; while the lowest and largest place is occupied by the "modern" schools of various types. These schools, instead of making the best use of their freedom, may be tempted to imitate the secondary school, or driven by the demands of employers to take certificate examinations so that their ex-pupils can compete with those of the secondary school. Instead of trying to evolve a life and a curriculum of their own, they may be content with teaching a much watered-down secondary school curriculum along formal or academic lines. They may, for example, feel constrained to teach French-sometimes with very poor results, to judge by what I have seen-in order to compensate in some measure for the sense of inferiority induced in their better pupils by failure to secure special places' in a secondary or selective central school.

"

This tendency to look down on one type of school, or to attempt to copy another type, is still in evidence in spite of the Hadow recommendations. As a result the nonselective central school sometimes runs a risk of being looked upon as the 'duds'' school-the lowest form of post-primary education and a kind of educational scrapheap. Yet the great bulk of the nation's children-the next generation—are being educated in this type of school. As Mr. Lowndes says in his Silent Social Revolution (p. 149), it is upon the purpose or want of purpose of these schools that the best educational thought of the nation must be concentrated in the next twenty years, if the ideal set before English education by the Hadow Report is to be completely realized." That statement is more true than ever now that the war has come upon us.

We are not likely to overcome the stratification of schools and the consequent depreciation of the central

44

school by vague talk about equality of opportunity" in education. That is largely a question of social conditions, for there can be no real initial equality of opportunity as between a child born in a slum and the offspring of cultured, intelligent and well-to-do parents. But we could forthwith abolish the distinction between elementary' and secondary' schools, which so often implies larger classes, meaner conditions, and lower-paid teachers for the former. If for administrative purposes a distinction is really needed, it should be on the lines indicated by the Hadow Report-between 'primary' and post-primary or 'secondary' types of school. In this case the central school would take its place as a single species of the genus secondary "-to quote the Consultative Committee's wording.

The first step to that end should be the abolition of tuition fees in all types of post-primary school. If one

brand of tea costs more than another brand, the former is normally assumed to be the better. Similarly parents not unnaturally rate the education given in 'public' schools, 'secondary' schools and elementary' schools according as the fees are high, low, or non-existent. My own experience as headmaster of a secondary' school strongly confirms this. If I recommended that one of my boys should be transferred to an excellent local junior technical school because he showed marked ability in practical subjects, his parents would at once protest on the ground that in my school the tuition fees were five guineas a term and at the technical school only two pounds. The only way to get rid of such criteria is to make the question of fees entirely irrelevant. There would still remain private fee-paying schools of various sorts. It has been suggested that the logical solution would be to establish multilateral schools, to abolish the public' and private schools and to devote educational endowments to the benefit of those for whom they were originally intended. But as a nation we prefer a compromise to strict logic and are more ready to adapt than to destroy. All the same we are likely to see some drastic changes in this respect.

If then the central school is a post-primary school for a certain type of child, and not for pupils drawn largely from a certain social class, we must decide what this' type is going to be. The more intellectual children are ' creamed ' off by a competitive examination; but, as Ward points out, it is by no means to be assumed that a non-selective school has inferior material to handle" (Educational System of England and Wales (p. 100)). In the course of an investigation carried out by one of my colleagues in the schools of a particular area, it was found that 21 per cent of the children in the senior schools had I.Q's. of 110 to 115 and 15 per cent I.Q's. of over 115; while in the selective central schools 27 per cent had I.Q's. of less than 110 and 46 per cent I.Q's. of less than 115. If "intelligence" alone were the criterion, there are plenty of pupils in secondary and public schools who ought to be transferred to senior schools. It might well be argued that, in a reconstruction of national education after the war, we should concentrate on three main types of post-primary school, each admitting of variety and individuality: (i) The 'secondary or ' grammar school, which gives an education with an academic bias. (ii) The technical' school, which has already ceased to be purely vocational and now includes definitely cultural training in its curriculum. It would bulk very much more in the national system than it does at present; it would deal with rural as well as urban occupations; and it would take a large number of pupils who at present find their way to the grammar ' school or the selective central school. (iii) The 'modern' or nonselective central school which caters for those who are not

fitted for either an academic or a specialized technical training, but for whom a general education with a practical bias, determined by local conditions, is indicated. As these local conditions vary greatly, so also does this type of school vary. It also provides for children of greatly varying ability, and it must therefore be of a reasonable size and necessarily be organized in 'streams'. But, if all these children are in one type of school and (as I hope to show) can to some extent cooperate in their work if the rigid time-table system is relaxed, this fact again will help to establish the central school as equivalent in value and status to the other two types of post-primary school.

We still have to decide the principles upon which children leaving the primary school should be drafted to one or other of these types of post-primary school. This implies a thorough overhaul of the 'special place' examinationan element in our national educational system about which some misgivings may justly be felt and on which there is still room for research and experiment. So long as this examination emphasizes the competitive element, ' parity' between the various forms of post-primary education is impossible. If it is known that those who obtain the highest places will go to the secondary school, the next in order on the list to the selective central school or junior technical school, and the 'also-rans' to a non-selective central school, the old pre-Hadow gradation of schools will persist. The examination itself-so far as I can judge from my own experience as a headmaster-is not a very satisfactory method of selecting candidates even for the secondary school. Too often it encourages the smart and slick' and handicaps the deliberate and reflective. It tests intellectual ability and leaves personal qualities out of account. The conditions under which it is held affect the candidates in

different ways; some children of eleven are quite overcome by the magnitude of sitting for a public examination in some strange, huge building, under quite unfamiliar conditions. If these written tests are retained, they should be taken in the candidate's own junior school. Moreover, the special place' examination, as usually constituted at present, is not necessarily a satisfactory method of selection for schools of various types, for it is based for all children alike on ability in English and arithmetic and on an intelligence test. It may be necessary to retain this examination as part of the machinery for selection, but other methods should be combined with it. Even if we could be assured of the complete reliability of the written examination, and could avoid the tendency to coach' for it in the junior school, this would not be enough. The Spens Report, in suggesting selection for technical high schools, recommends an interview in which the parents and child, a local educational official, and the head of the post-primary school all take part. Some of the technique of vocational guidance can doubtless be adapted to meet the situation. The livret scolaire or school record' and the considered opinion of the head of the primary school are also of the highest importance. It is often argued that such records or testimonials are unreliable or hard to equate; but they have been used in France and America and Germany, and by some of our own local education authorities, and there is no reason why we cannot devise a satisfactory method of using them. Thus, on a basis of written or oral examination, intelligence and attainment tests, interviews, records, and any other relevant information, a careful assessment would be made. No list in order of merit would be published; no particular primary school would be commended or advertised in the local press because of the number of scholarships' which it had obtained. But all children at some time during the final year of the junior school would be tested and classified according to the particular type and stage of ability which they seemed to show; and they would be drafted to the particular kind of post-primary school to which they appeared to be best suited. Thus the central school (which would lose its present title and be better called the 'modern'

school) would maintain its equality of status as compared with other post-primary schools, and would no longer be the school of children who had failed in a competitive examination or were considered too unintelligent to sit for it.

Even a revised method of selection for post-primary schools should not be regarded as final. Some children develop late or show special aptitudes at the post-primary stage; others do not fulfil expectations. The only remedy for this is the possibility of easy transfer as between any types of post-primary school. This is perhaps effected best at the age of 13-unless we adopt the suggestion that the post-primary course should begin at 9 and further transfers effected at II; or alternatively we

might give up the fetish of 11+ and begin post-primary education about the age of 13. Once we have secured the Hadow'equality' of post-primary type, transfer in any direction will be far easier than it is at present; and a child will not lose caste by being moved, for his own educational benefit, from a secondary' to a senior school nor gain caste by transference from a modern school to a technical school.

It has been necessary to discuss other types of school in order to put the central school in its rightful position in the educational system of the country. It remains to say something of the central school in itself. If it is to be placed in this position of functional equality with other secondary We schools it must enjoy similar amenities with them. must give up for ever-as indeed we are already doingthe idea that inferior buildings, less adequate equipment, and larger classes are sufficient for the central school. Playing-field accommodation is also as urgent a need for it as for any other type of secondary school. In some areas effect has been given to Mr. J. H. Whitehouse's suggestion that urban local authorities, in their town-planning schemes, should allot a large area as a "school base ". Here the schools would be built in groups, surrounded by open spaces. If this could be done the post-war senior school would be sure of a quiet situation, away from noisy roads, shunting-yards and factories, instead of being housed— as so often at present-in a huge barracks with an asphalted yard, in the heart of a densely crowded area.

""

The compulsory leaving-age in the central school should not be inferior to that in the secondary or technical high school; and this means that the school leaving-age should be raised not merely to 15, but eventually to 16. M. Ramsbotham has adumbrated this in a speech made in January, 1941, to the A.M.A.; he endorsed the assertion of the Spens Report that the adoption of a minimum. leaving age of 16... may not be immediately practicable but must even now be regarded as inevitable" (p. 311). But "raising the school age should imply in all types of secondary school alike the completion of the post-primary course, and not simply leaving school directly the prescribed age is attained.

It is not enough that the buildings and equipment and length of school-life of the central school should not be inferior to those of any other kind of secondary school. The parity of all post-primary schools must be symbolized by their inclusion in one code of regulations for administrative purposes. The term 'elementary education' must cease to have any but a historical significance and must disappear utterly from the vocabulary of the Board of Education and of local education authorities. There is no room either for the distinction between Part II' and 'Part III' Authorities; and local feeling must not be allowed to perpetuate this anomaly. So long as these things persist, the central school can never really come into its This consideration, moreover, involves the Burnham Scales. Financial considerations explain, but do not justify, higher salaries for 'grammar' or technical school teachers than for their colleagues in other secondary schools. In view of the fact that the central school will educate the bulk of the democracy which will have to deal with post1 See J. H. Whitehouse: Education, "In My Time" Series.

own.

war problems, its teachers have at the very least-a responsibility as great as that of other teachers; and they should therefore not be paid at inferior rates. But the correlative of this is a high standard of qualification for the teachers of the central school. The unqualified, or half-qualified, or (worse still) the uncultured, teacher has no place in this type of school-or anywhere else. A narrow outlook, formal or routine methods of teaching, are as inappropriate in the central school as in any other; and the securing of equality of status for all types of secondary school will have its repercussions not only in educational administration, but also in the whole system of teacher-training. It will, in fact, involve our whole conception of the work of the teacher and his position in the community. Why, for example, should it not become as natural and normal for a young man of high academic achievement or wealthy parentage to serve as a teacher in a slum or rural school, as it is at present for him to be ordained to a title in the East End or become a country curate?

The curriculum of the senior school is another matter to which much consideration is rightly being given. It comes down to us from the days before reorganization, and there has in the past been too much tendency to rigidity of timetable and stereotyped methods of teaching-an inheritance from the days of huge classes and utilitarian views of education. The spread of enlightened ideas (for which the training colleges can take some credit) and, more recently, the stress of evacuation have helped to overcome some of this rigidity. Children in the central school are not necessarily taught most profitably along lines appropriate to the more academically minded' grammar' school type, or even to the technical type. There is plenty of room for experiment as to the best method of dealing with this kind of child; the question has certainly not yet been finally settled, nor will it be settled by mere theorizing. But the problem is being tackled and Mr. Greenhough, of Chesterfield, for example, has show us in his system of " Free Groups " how the inherent time-table difficulties can be overcome. There must still be room, of course, for class-teaching along more or less orthodox lines, and for this purpose the school will be divided into the usual streams'. But there should be ample opportunity for co-operative activities to which children from different streams can all contribute something. These may take the form of 'projects' of various kinds, excursions and journeys, visits and surveys, summer camps, dramatic, musical, artistic or craft activities, the See A. Greenhough: "The Educational Needs of the 14-15 Group."

keeping of animals, the playing of games. All these things should be regarded not as trimmings or extras or out-ofschool concerns, but as an integral part of the serious business of the school, at least equal in value to the more formal work of the class-room. If children lose interest in what they have learnt at school and never return to it once they have left, they have either studied the wrong subjects or they have been badly taught. Even if it saves trouble to have a stereotyped curriculum prescribed by regulations for all pupils alike, there is no magic in this. Certain skills -e.g. ability to read and write English and to calculateare necessary minima; but to reduce the work of the central school to a weak and colourless imitation of the secondary school curriculum is to fail to realize the great opportunities which such a school can afford for the true education of a special type of child. The various voluntary associations which cater for boys and girls-e.g. Scouts and Guides, the Young Farmers' Clubs, and the Youth Service Squads have shown the educational value of manifold activities in which children are intensely interested. The more progressive central schools are already realizing the value of this kind of work which is pre-eminently suited to the particular type of child with which they deal; and it will gain in importance as the school-leaving age is raised to 15, or, eventually, to 16. All this implies an elasticity of organization which will throw special difficulties upon those who draw up time-tables. But similar problems raised by evacuation have been met and solved. In any case, the child's interests must not be jeopardized by the interests of mere machinery.

We may hope that before long the child who leaves the central school will be able in the day continuation school to develop the interests and skills which have been awakened. Opposition to the raising of the school age is perhaps due to a feeling that it implies an extension of a formal or academic type of education for every one. The central school should do its utmost to demonstrate the untruth of that. It must take its place alongside and not below other forms of post-primary education, but it must make its own specific contribution. To enable it to do this it must have parity of treatment with other secondary' schools, and that would entail the outlay of money. No one knows what periods of Geddes Axe' depression may lie ahead or how many 'Fisher Act' hopes may be frustrated; but, if we could earmark the equivalent of what is spent in a week or two of war, our problem would be solved. If we can face great sacrifices to preserve freedom, we may well face small ones to implement it.

HE Middle East may be regarded as the scene of one

with striking memorials of bygone civilizations. Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham, to whom both Jews and Arabs attribute their origin, lies just south of the Euphrates, a hundred miles or so west of Basra; Babylon, the capital of the Chaldean Empire, is some fifty miles south of Baghdad; Nineveh, the seat of the rival Assyrian power, stands on the east bank of the Tigris facing Mosul. Tyre and Sidon recall the Phoenicians; Jerusalem is venerated, not only by Christians and Jews, but also by the adherents of Islam.

A link between the culture and commerce of the Occident and the Orient, the Middle East has from early times been traversed by caravan routes leading from the ports of Syria and adjacent lands, across the desert, to the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and the Persian Gulf.

Its strategic position has made this region one of the world's great battlegrounds. Across it have swept many

invading armies-Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Crusaders. The Turks, who conquered it in the sixteenth century, held it until the first Great War, when it was wrested from them by British and allied forces, whose successors to-day occupy Syria, Iraq, and Iran (Persia).

After the first Great War, Syria, which under Turkish rule had included Palestine and Transjordan, was divided into its component parts, and these, together with Iraq, were set up as separate states. But their conquerors, instead of annexing these states, agreed to administer them under mandates from the League of Nations. France was given a mandate over Syria : Britain over Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq, the last-named consisting of Mesopotamia together with a strip of steppe-desert to the west.

In 1932 Iraq became an independent state. Its relations with Britain were regulated by the Anglo-Iraq Treaty of Alliance, under which the British were authorized to maintain forces near Basra, and aerodromes in the vicinity of Basra, and at Habbaniyeh.

Before 1914 Britain and Russia had divided Persia into spheres of influence. In 1919 an Anglo-Persian Agreement established what was to all intents and purposes a British Protectorate over the country. But this Agreement was never implemented, and, with the rise of Persian nationalism under the late Shah, both British and Russian influence waned, only to be replaced in recent years by that of Germany.

With the exception of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, the region stretching from the Mediterranean east into the Plateau of Iran, and from Caucasia and the Caspian south to the Arabian Sea, consists of mountainous country.

From the Mediterranean littoral of Syria and Palestine, the land rises to a limestone plateau, which drops steeply to a remarkable valley, part of a great trench extending south through the Red Sea into Africa. In Palestine this valley is drained by the Jordan, which flows through Lake Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, whose surface is 1,286 feet below sea-level and whose floor is another 1,300 feet down. The Syrian Hollow-a continuation of the valley—is walled in by the abrupt slopes of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. Snows from the crests of these hog-backed ridges feed streams which unite to form the Orontes and the Litani, the former flowing north by Homs and Antioch to the Mediterranean, the latter south and then west through a steep gorge, which leads to the sea between Tyre and Sidon. Road and railway from Beirut climb Lebanon, drop down to the Hollow, and, after leaving Rayak where the line to Aleppo runs north, follow the valley of the Barada, the ancient Abana, to Damascus.

East of the Syrian Hollow and the Jordan Dead Sea Valley the country rises to 2,000 feet in the Syrian Desert, which slopes down to the Euphrates. The desert, a triangular area, based upon the Nefud Desert of Arabia, narrows towards the great bend of the Euphrates, where the river, swinging west in the direction of Aleppo, approaches to within a hundred miles of the Mediterranean.

The broad southern portion of the Syrian Desert-the Great Desert-is virtually waterless. But the northern and narrower portion-the Little Desert-is well supplied with oases, such as those of Rutba and Palmyra, which have served caravans from time immemorial. Rutba, an airport and a stopping-place for trans-desert autobuses plying between Damascus and Baghdad, lies on the oil pipe-line from Iraq to Haifa, the chief port of Palestine. Palmyra commands a pass through a line of hills running from the vicinity of Damascus north-east to Deir-ez-Zor, on the Euphrates. For centuries a great commercial centre, it lay on the route along which Phoenician merchants made their way to Babylon, and, at a later date, it stood on the Roman road to Hit, on the Euphrates. The shortest crossing of the Syrian Desert is that from Aleppo to Meskene, on the Euphrates, where the road runs down the valley through Deir-ez-Zor to Falluja, at which place it crosses the river and turns east to Baghdad.

Mesopotamia-the Tigris-Euphrates trough-lies between the eastern edge of the Syrian desert-plateau and the foot of the mountains that buttress the Plateau of Iran. This trough has always been a great highway: never isolated, always open to flank attack. Upper Mesopotamia (in part ancient Assyria) is a low table-land stretching south as far as an east to west line running through Hit. The great alluvial lowland of Lower Mesopotamia (ancient Babylonia) has been built up of sediment brought down by the Euphrates and the Tigris, whose united stream, the Shatt-el-Arab, is steadily pushing its delta into the Persian Gulf. Into the Persian Gulf also flows the Karun, the only navigable river in Iran, which is linked by a tributary with the Shatt-el-Arab.

Strikingly different from Mesopotamia-in configuration if not in climate, is Iran, a plateau which drops to the Caspian Sea in the north and to the Persian Gulf in the south. The interior consists of a rugged depression into which, from the encircling mountain, drain streams, whose waters irrigate

little valleys, or lose themselves in the sands, or spread out to form lakes and swamps, strongly impregnated with salt owing to the great evaporation. Part of this arid area is clad with sparse herbage, but at least a third of Iran is occupied by sandy or stony deserts and saline wastes, quite irreclaimable and sterile.

Over the whole of the Middle East from the Mediterranear to Iran the summers are hot, dry, and brilliantly sunny. The rainfall is confined to the winter months, the amount decreases with increasing distance from the Mediterranean, and its inadequacy is enhanced by the great evaporation. (Compare the annual rainfall at Jaffa, 21 inches, with that at Baghdad, 6.6 inches.)

Relief, and especially climate, as well as other geographical conditions, have had a profound effect on the occupations and character of the people of the Middle East. Apart from townsfolk, they may be divided into the pastoral Bedouin and the fellaheen-those of the steppe' and those of the sown ', at variance since man first started to till the land. Neither race nor religion alone accounts for the friction between the nomadic and semi-nomadic Arabs and the Jewish cultivators of Palestine.

In Syria and Palestine, as in other Mediterranean Lands, essential crops, such as cereals, olives, and vines, can be grown without irrigation. The fact that the natural rainfal is sufficient, coupled with the varied topography, favoured the growth of a large number of relatively self-supporting communities, and small countries. The French displayed a shrewd knowledge of geographical conditions when they decided to partition Syria, and to divide it into five miniature States-Syria, Lebanon, Latakia, Jebel Druze, and the Sanjak of Alexandretta. The last named was, however, ceded to Turkey in 1939. But the British did not fare so well when they proposed to set up a Jewish and an Arab State in Palestine, for there were other forces at work in this tiny land.

Very different from Syria and Palestine are conditions in Mesopotamia, where the scanty rainfall makes irrigation necessary even for cereals. Except on a small scale, agriculture involves the control of the rivers and the construction of canals. The latter must be protected from marauding nomads. Their banks must be maintained, and, even more important, their channels must be kept free from silt. All this implies effective control over a large area, and such control can be exercised only by a powerful State.

In the time of the great Empires, Mesopotamia was the granary of the world, a veritable sea of grain from end to end. But in succeeding centuries, when the Mongols and other invaders laid waste the country, the canals were neglected, and, having become filled with silt, were choked with sand, with the inevitable result that the country reverted to desert. To-day if we fly up the Tigris-Euphrates Valley we can clearly see the pattern of innumerable canals, that once supplied water to this thirsty land.

There is, however, a brighter side to the picture. The British, during their occupation (1919–1932) did much towards restoring the irrigation system, and Iraq is now a producer of cotton as well as grain. Moreover, the British facilitated the building of roads and railways, though the last link in the Basra-Baghdad-Bosporus Railway, 1,989 miles long, has only recently been completed.

In Iran, where there are no rivers to compare in importance with the Tigris-Euphrates, irrigation is limited to valleys in the vicinity of the marginal mountains, where snow-fed streams provide water. Thus Teheran, the capital, Tabriz, and other important towns, as well as most of the villages, lie at the foot of mountains. More than a quarter of the 15,000,000 inhabitants of Iran are nomads, who use the wool of their flocks for making rugs and carpets of wonderful colouring and unique design.

The wealth of both Iran and Iraq lies in their oil-fields, which are a great source of profit to their respective governments. The chief centre of the Mosul oil-field is Kirkuk,

(Continued on page 422)