"MESOPOTAMIA'S RICHES AS YET UNDEVELOPED"

At a meeting of the Harvard Travellers' Club last night at the Harvard Club of Boston, Kermit Roosevelt '12, told of his experience while serving as a captain of the Motor Machine Gun Corps of the British Army in Mesopotamia.

He said that Mesopotamia was little known to Americans, but that is a country of great natural resources, and that as yet it was practically undeveloped. Except along the courses of the rivers the country is a desert, but there are many recently discovered oil fields which are now being used by France and England. It is in this barren area that the Desert-Arabs, the remnants of the original inhabitants of the country, live. Wandering about the desert in tribes, they consider themselves the highest class socially of all the people of the country. They have an especially deep hatred for the City Arabs, and they make frequent raids on the towns. Contrary to the general opinion, Mesopotamia is at the present time very orderly except for these occasional raids by the nomadic tribes.

In the cities all nations are found: Armenians, Kurds, Persians, Turks and Arabs. For the most part the people practice the Moslem faith, although Christians, semi-Christians and Jews are mixed in this jumble of peoples of all nations and faiths.

Better Classes Speak French

Arabic is the language generally spoken, but in the cities the better classes speak French.

The country has very little practical government, as the Turkish policy was to give all the power to the local chieftains or sheiks, who exercised their prerogatives independently. In times of national emergency, the government hoped to have the support of these local potentiaries whom it had raised to power, but the sheiks usually embraced the cause most profitable to their own interests.

In closing, Mr. Roosevelt said that under British control the country would in all possibility become very rich. The English system of ruling was very fair, he said, and in most cases they championed the cause of the better class of native rulers and governed through them.

In regard to the mandate recently issued to Great Britain by the League of Nations, giving exclusive rights to the commercial advantages of Mesopotamia to members of the League, Mr. Roosevelt stated that the English were very fair with the other nations in the control of the oil fields, and that at the present time France shared equally in the commercial privileges of the country.