of the Empire in Asia as firmly in the British grip as Persia was bring held. The Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, with its G. H. Q. at Bagdad, had pushed its way up from the flatlands of the lower Tigris-Euphrates basin into the rugged hills of southern Kurdistan, the Turkish administration of Mosul withdrawing in front of it to Diarbekr. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, with its G. H. Q. at Cairo, had reached the top of the Syrian corridor at Aleppo and had flung out small detachments to establish contact with the Bagdad command to the east, and to occupy Cilicia and the Taurus tunnels of the Bagdad Railway to the west, the Turkish administration of Cilicia continuing in office pending an indication of British intentions. Armenian deportees, some of whom had been interned by the Turks in Syria and some of whom had made their way into Egypt to be interned by the British, were being run into Cilicia in large numbers and a few of them were being carried on along the Bagdad Railway as far as Konia, where the E. E. F.'s control ended. The British co-command of the Army of the Black Sea whose Anglo-French G. H. Q. was in Pera, had stationed control officers along the Bagdad Railway from Konia to its Constantinople terminus, along the railways in the hinterland of Smyrna and along the old Russian railways in Trans-Caucasia. The Bagdad Railway had been broken up into its two original parts. The Bagdad and Cairo commands had confiscated it from Konia east and their military trains were rapidly wracking it to pieces. Western Europe was not to be again permitted to escape the Suez Canal. The Pera co-command, however, was working the original
