ITS R£D!iMPTICMAND FUTUR 
 
Class H^Jc^ 
 Book__ 
 
 CoipiglttN" , J A. 
 
 CHEBRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
Press Illustrating Service. 
 
 A Typical Courtyard in Jerusalem. 
 
JERUSALEM 
 
 Its Redemption and Future 
 
 THE GREAT DRAMA OF DELIVERANCE 
 DESCRIBED BY EYEWITNESSES 
 
 BY 
 
 Mme. ben YEHUDAH 
 Prof. KEMPER FULLERTON 
 Prof. EDGAR J. BANKS 
 LiEUT.-CoL. J. S. WARDLAW-MILNE 
 Prof. GEORGE L. ROBINSON, Ph.D. 
 Dr. JOHN H. FINLEY ^ 
 THEODORE WATERS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HERALD 
 
^% 
 
 1 
 
 Copyright, 1918 
 By The Christian Herald 
 
 ©CI.A511iy9 
 
 JAN -2 1919 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VAGH 
 
 I. When the War Came to Palestine. . 3 
 
 A Dramatic Story of the Long Siege, SuflFerings, Persecu- 
 tions, and Ultimate Relief of the Holy City— A Glorious 
 Hannucca of Joy and Gladness. By Mme. Hemda Ben 
 Yehudah. 
 
 II. Jerusalem— The World City and the 
 World War 65 
 
 By Professor Kemper Fullerton, Oberlin Graduate 
 School of Theology. 
 
 III. The " Eden Land " and the Lands of 
 
 Bible History 107 
 
 How They are Affected by the World-war— The Morning 
 Land of the Race and Its Future Development. By 
 Professor Edgar J. Banks, 
 
 IV. The Key to the World-war . . . 135 
 
 By Lieut. Col. J. S. Wardlaw-Milne, of the British Meso- 
 potamian Campaign. 
 
 V. The Jewish Agricultural Communities 
 OF Palestine 1^*^ 
 
 The Development of Edom and Mt. Seir. By George L. 
 Robinson, Ph.D., McCormick Theological Seminary. 
 
 VI. Shall Palestine be Held in Trust by the 
 Nations ? 1^^ 
 
 An Interview with Dr. John H. Finley, Head of the 
 Red Cross Commission to Palestine. 
 
 VII. Palestine after the War . . . .191 
 
 The Jerusalem of To-day, Its Many Nationalities and 
 Religions; Its Picturesqueness, and Its Poverty — Char- 
 acteristics of the Holy City and Its Present Population. 
 By Theodore Waters, of the Christian Herald Staff. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACIKG 
 PAGE 
 
 A Typical Cottbtyabd in Jerusalem . iFrontupiece 
 
 Mohammedan Procession- of Pilgrhis Approachtn-g the 
 
 Mosque El Akhsa 6 
 
 General Allexby's Entry rvro Jerusalem after its F.vll 22 
 
 Armenl^- Refugees Leaving Jerus-u^em for Port S.vid . 38 
 
 Strlas" Refugees on the Steps of David's Tower, Jerusalem 54 
 By Noon They Came with Every Kind of Vessel for Food 
 
 at the Soup Kitchen 70 
 
 The Place Called Gethsemane Sg 
 
 Canal at Busreh, among the Date Gardens in "Eden 
 
 Lan-d" 102 
 
 "Waiting the Opening of a Coffee Relief Station . .118 
 Ancien-t Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, Occupied by 
 
 Gen. Allen'by's Forces 134 
 
 Damascus, Captured with its Garrison of 70jO Men . 134 
 
 ZicHON Yakol. a Model Jewish Agricultural Colony . 1.50 
 
 Pruning a Lemon Tree 150 
 
 The River Jordan 166 
 
 Refugees Awaiting Food Supplies at a Relief Depot in 
 
 Jerusalem 182 
 
 A Lace-making Madonna 198 
 
 In the Lace Works, Jerusalem, Supported by the Chris- 
 tian Herm.d 214 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 ONLY forty years ago, Palestine was, for the 
 Jews, "The Holy Land," the object of de- 
 vout pilgrimages. Pious Jews traveled to 
 Jerusalem to pass their last days in prayer and in 
 preparation for death. 
 
 With those who came to Jerusalem to die, there 
 were a few young souls — children who had accom- 
 panied their aged parents or friends who refused 
 to be separated. They grew up and lived the life 
 of old people. 
 
 At this time, the entire population of Jews in 
 Palestine, including the Sephardim, other groups of 
 native Hebrews, and all the young and old together, 
 numbered not more than 30,000 souls. Most of 
 them were supported by the "Hallucca," a fund 
 composed of the voluntary offerings of the Jewish 
 world to perpetuate the service of prayer in the 
 Holy Land. 
 
 However, in the midst of this life, which was lived 
 in the anticipation of death, a new germ appeared. 
 A few ardent and intellectual young Jews arrived 
 in Palestine, possessed with another spirit. They 
 desired to live and dwell in the land of their fathers, 
 to sow the seed and plant the vine, and to awaken 
 in the heart of their own people the fire of the 
 ancient Maccabees. 
 
 The old religious men were hostile to this move- 
 ment with which the younger generation became 
 
iv FOREWORD 
 
 associated, little by little. The first land was bought, 
 the first colonies were founded, and supported later 
 on by the Baron de Rothschild. Immediately, by 
 a decree from Constantinople, the Turkish govern- 
 ment prohibited all Jewish colonization and all im- 
 migration of Jews into Palestine. Nevertheless, 
 numbers of Jews continued to arrive and the colonies 
 prospered. 
 
 The pure air of Palestine vibrated again with the 
 accents of the Hebrew language after a silence of 
 
 2000 years. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The story of the beginning of the great Trans- 
 formation — the rebirth of Palestine and the redemp- 
 tion of Jerusalem — is told in this book in language 
 which in many passages recalls the fervor of the 
 ancient Jewish writers and seers. It will be read 
 with intense interest and appreciation by all who 
 love the Land which has been rendered sacred to 
 Christians everywhere by the holiest memories and 
 associations. 
 
 Of the contributors to the volume it may be said, 
 briefly, that all have been chosen for the work be- 
 cause of their intimate knowledge of the ancient 
 Bible Lands and more especially of Palestine itself. 
 
 Madame Ben Yehudah is a native of Palestine, 
 a lady of literary distinction and the wife of one 
 of the ablest Hebrew scholars now living, whose 
 patriotism caused him to become an exile. She is 
 the first Jewish writer to describe the historic scenes 
 at the Capitulation of Jerusalem — scenes in which 
 she was herself a participant. 
 
 Professor Kemper Fullerton writes from personal 
 
FOREWORD V 
 
 experience of the conditions and hardships suffered 
 during the long months while an enforced exodus 
 of all foreigners was in progress, before the crisis 
 which ended in capitulation. 
 
 Professor Banks, one of the best known of our 
 American orientalists, has traveled extensively in 
 the "Eden Land" and throughout Mesopotamia, and 
 writes from personal acquaintance with conditions 
 and an intimate knowledge of the races from Bagdad 
 to the Bosphorus. 
 
 Mr. Waters, a member of the Christian Herald 
 staff, who was called to special service in Palestine, 
 vividly records his impressions of Jerusalem as he 
 found it after the Capitulation. 
 
 Lieutenant Colonel Wardlaw-Milne is a British 
 officer who has held important positions in the 
 Indian and Mesopotamian service, and who knows 
 the Near East thoroughly. His contribution en- 
 titled: "The Key to the War" is especially timely, 
 as it tells of the wide scope of the plans of Great 
 Britain and her Allies in relation to the establish- 
 ment and safeguarding of the future autonomy, not 
 only of Palestine, but of all the races of the Near 
 East. It is a scheme which opens up a new era for 
 all of the ancient Bible Lands — an era of progress 
 and development and of absolute independence of 
 Turkish and German tyranny, from which they have 
 suffered in the past. These lands are now facing the 
 sunrise of freedom and enlightenment and progress, 
 and their liberation must therefore be viewed as one 
 of the most glorious results of the great world-war. 
 
I 
 
 WHEN THE WAR CAME TO PALESTINE 
 
 The Real Story of the Long Siege, Sufferings, Persecutions, and 
 
 Ultimate Relief of the Holy City — A Glorious 
 
 Hannucca of Joy and Gladness. 
 
 By Mme. Hemda Ben Yehudah 
 
I 
 
 PALESTINE BEFORE THE WAR 
 By Mme. Ben Yehudah 
 
 IN 1913, the year before the War, the 35th 
 year from the beginning of the Jewish Na- 
 tional movement in Palestine, first under the 
 terrible regime of Sultan Abdul Hamid and later 
 under the Young Turkish Constitution — Jewish life 
 in Palestine began to define itself as national in 
 character. 
 
 The number of Jews in the Holy Land had in- 
 creased approximately to 150,000. In the principal 
 cities, Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, the Hebrews 
 formed the majority of the population, counting 
 80,000 in Jerusalem alone. In Judea, Samaria, and 
 Galilee they were in possession of extensive lands, and 
 they had founded over 60 colonies. (A Jewish 
 colony consisted of a town and adjacent territory, 
 or it might be composed of only a group of houses 
 and surrounding fidds.) 
 
 The Jewish colonies were the marvel of the 
 natives. From afar off, the houses could be seen 
 rising in the midst of verdure, like oases in a desert. 
 The dwellings were well constructed. The wide 
 streets were adorned with dignified public buildings, 
 schools and hospitals. 
 
 Domestic industries had arisen, including wine, 
 
 3 
 
4 JERUSALEM 
 
 silk worms, olive oil and soap. Orange, almond and 
 apricot orchards charmed the eye. The perfume 
 plantations of roses, geraniums, and other flowers 
 resembled a paradise. Cultivated fields extended so 
 far that the aspect was like a sea of verdure, where 
 formerly had been the desert wilderness. 
 
 Machine shops and factories were opened for the 
 production of articles of building construction, 
 household utensils, and agricultural implements. 
 Arts and crafts were developed: knitting, weaving, 
 basketry, metal work, lace, pottery, wood carving, 
 jewelry. Commerce increased. The oranges, 
 almonds, and especially the wines of Palestine won 
 renown in the markets of Egypt, and on distant 
 shores. 
 
 Jews from various parts of the world began to 
 unite in the Holy Land and to become assimilated. 
 Thus a new and healthy generation sprang into 
 being — straight, well formed, filled with the pride 
 of race and love of country. 
 
 The Hebrew tongue was the common language of 
 this generation, and fired the Hebrew soul with 
 patriotism. 
 
 The Old Turkish government under Abdul Hamid 
 made no objection to this development of the Hebrew 
 language, which they considered of "no importance." 
 But they systematically impeded the progress of 
 the Jews in every other direction. They issued de- 
 crees against Jewish ownership of land and coloniza- 
 tion, against the planting of orchards, and the 
 drainage of marshes. 
 
 On the other hand, the Young Turks granted 
 some measure of liberty to the Israelites, but in- 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 5 
 
 sisted that Turkish should be made the principal 
 language of the country. 
 
 However, these decrees of the ancient regime and 
 of the modem Young Turks were only on paper. 
 The regulations were never fully enforced. 
 
 Bakshish and camouflage admitted the advance of 
 Israel. 
 
 The attitude of the Foreign Powers was different. 
 
 The French, who were popular in all Turkey, in- 
 cluding Palestine, insisted upon the propagation of 
 the French language throughout the country and 
 the French Jews in their schools sustained this 
 movement with ardor. Russia, anxious to extend 
 her influence in the Holy Land, erected over a hun- 
 dred schools where Russian was spoken, but most 
 of the pupils were Arabs. Italian was the language 
 of Italian schools. 
 
 The English were behind hand in this campaign 
 of education. However, aside from the Christian 
 Mission schools, there was one establishment for 
 girls in Jerusalem (the Evelina de Rothschild 
 school) where the children w^ere zealously instructed 
 in the Anglo-Saxon tongue. 
 
 In the midst of this rivalry, the Germans pos- 
 sessed the desire to dominate and to establish German 
 Kultur in Palestine. 
 
 All these foreign efforts seemed to be at variance 
 with the one language really beloved by the Jews, 
 their own Hebrew, which expressed their own spirit 
 and interior life. 
 
 A conflict was inevitable between the Jews dom- 
 inated by foreign influence and those who strove 
 to develop the National life. 
 
6 JERUSALEM 
 
 The Nationalists were ardent in spirit, and al- 
 though material wealth and power united on the 
 opposing side, they wrung concessions from the 
 foreign parties and above all from the Germans. 
 Hebrew was not merely introduced in all the schools 
 of the Hilfsverein of German Jews. It became the 
 chief medium of instruction, and the Nationalists 
 exerted all their powers to inspire the children with 
 devotion for their national language and to make 
 it supreme. Thousands of children chattered and 
 sang Hebrew on the streets going to school. Hebrew 
 became so popular that even some Moslem and 
 Christian children were sent to the Jewish schools. 
 
 Many public buildings were erected, of which some 
 of the most important were the German edifices, 
 the Augusta Victoria Memorial on the Mount of 
 Olives, and the Deutsche Katholische Hospiz near 
 the Damascus gate. 
 
 However, a change was taking place. Instead 
 of the usual ragged Turkish soldiers, one remarked 
 the larger number of well equipped military, in- 
 cluding officers in fine uniforms. The public sup- 
 posed that the Young Turks were making reforms 
 in the army, but it was singular that the improve- 
 ments failed to extend to the civil administration; 
 the Turkish Post Office and the railroad and tele- 
 graph system were remarkably inefficient. 
 
 It was reported that the Military Centre was 
 being transferred from Damascus to Jerusalem, and 
 the inhabitants of the Holy City rejoiced with a 
 sense of greater importance and prestige. 
 
 Between the separated elements of the population 
 amicable reunions took place where Moslems, Jews, 
 
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ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 7 
 
 and Christians met together in one another's institu- 
 tions. 
 
 There was a remarkable harmony between the 
 various Jewish divisions ; the devout orthodox, the 
 free thinkers, and the Nationalists, now called Zion- 
 ists, all seemed in accord. 
 
 The various Jewish schools united in reunions for 
 festivals and excursions, under the one flag of the 
 Zionists, and speaking one common language — 
 Hebrew. 
 
 There was a general sense of happiness and 
 prosperity. 
 
 The Jews awaited the opening of their fine Poly- 
 technic schools at Haifa as an auspicious event, an 
 expression of the Jewish National idea before the 
 world, a demonstration of Hebrew as a living lan- 
 guage. 
 
 These Polytechnic schools had been erected by 
 Jewish contributions from all over the world, but 
 especially from Russia, America and Germany. 
 The curatorium was directed by a committee in 
 Berlin. Instruction in Hebrew had been assured. 
 
 Therefore, when a courier arrived from Berlin, 
 announcing that the instruction should be in Ger- 
 man, the news was like a thunderbolt. 
 
 The indignant Zionists demanded that the German 
 Jewish director (Ephraim Cohen) should go im- 
 mediately to Berlin to reverse the decision. Mr. 
 Cohen refused and advised submission. The Zionists 
 united in a huge mass meeting and sent public reso- 
 lutions of protest to Berlin. 
 
 The reply from Berlin was to the effect that not 
 only in the new Polytechnic, but also in all German 
 
8 JERUSALEM 
 
 Jewish schools in Palestine, henceforth the instruc- 
 tion would be in German, and Hebrew would be 
 relegated to a secondary place. This declaration 
 caused a revolution in the German Jewish schools. 
 The professors went on a strike. The children tore 
 up their German books and strewed them in the 
 streets, crying that they would never return to the 
 schools where their beloved Hebrew had been so 
 insulted. Jewish parents took part in the demon- 
 stration. Moslems and Christians increased the 
 agitation ; the German director summoned the Turk- 
 ish gendarmerie. 
 
 This caused consternation. The Consul General 
 of Germany, Dr. Schmidt, who was present, ad- 
 dressed the children saying: "My children, what are 
 you trampling upon?" They cried: "German books ! 
 German copies ! down with the German ! We want 
 Hebrew, our own language!" The good old consul 
 had been 20 years in office, and he loved the Jews. 
 Now he saw that the Germans had overshot their 
 mark and aroused the wrath of the Zionists. He, 
 personally, would have yielded the point. But tjie 
 German director was firm and finally called for aid 
 from Dr. Paul Nathan, the German Jewish General 
 Inspector of schools, from Berlin. He was "by 
 chance" in Egypt, and he arrived on the scene in 
 twenty-four hours, and installed himself in the 
 Augusta Victoria Memorial on the Mount of Olives. 
 All the "pourparlers" between the parties at strife 
 were conducted through him, and to him the teach- 
 ers of the Hilfsverein schools presented their col- 
 lective memoranda. 
 
 The text of this document follows: 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 9 
 
 MEMORIAL OF THE HILFSVEREIN TEACHERS 
 
 Jerusalem, November, 1913. 
 Dear Dr. Nathan: 
 
 This memorial is sent to you in the name of all the teachers and 
 principals of the Hilfsverein schools in Jerusalem. For years most 
 of us have been active in Palestine; we have participated from the 
 very beginning in the evolution of modern Jewish settlement here; 
 from our personal observation, we are accurately acquainted with the 
 conditions of the country. Our familiarity with the land and the 
 people has led us to the unanimous conviction that Hebrew has a 
 well-founded claim to be introduced as the language of instruction 
 in all subjects taught in all schools of the Hilfsverein in Palestine. 
 On the strength of this conviction we decided at our teachers' 
 meeting to send a memorial to the leaders of the Hilfsverein, the 
 founders of our school system; and we cherished the confident hope 
 that the Hilfsverein, which has repeatedly asserted the aim of its 
 school system to be the strengthening of the Jewish Yishub in the 
 country and the prevention of emigration, will recognize the justice 
 of our view. We shall consider the language question from all sides, 
 and state the reasons that have led us to our conviction. We do 
 so in the hope that the leaders of the Hilfsverein will heed the opinion 
 of those to whom they have until now entrusted the interests of their 
 schools, and who, for their part, have honestly endeavored to promote 
 these institutions and help them attain their present high degree 
 of excellence. 
 
 First of all we would state that we consider it an absolute necessity 
 for a portion of the city children completing the elementary course 
 to learn a European tongue tha,t will enable them to get into intel- 
 lectual and commercial touch with the civilized world and will 
 broaden their view by a knowledge of its literature. If they study 
 such a language at all, they should acquire complete mastery of it. 
 
 The question then is, in what way this object is best to be attained 
 — whether in the natural, direct way of learning the language itself 
 by giving it the necessary time and energy, or by an indirect method. 
 If a language with which the pupils are not thoroughly familiar 
 is used as the medium of instruction in various subjects, the result 
 is a confounding of instruction in the subject itself with instruction 
 
 I 
 
10 JERUSALEM 
 
 in the language. The places a hindrance in the way of the child's 
 intellectual development. From psychological, pedagogical, and 
 national considerations, such a method must be condemned. 
 
 Under normal conditions the child entering school speaks a mother 
 tongue which serves during his tutelage as the means by which he 
 acquires all knowledge. He understands naturally what the teacher 
 says to him. The teacher must develop his mental abilities and 
 enlarge the field of his vision. In this case language instruction 
 has only the one object, of enabling the child to express himself 
 faultlessly both in speaking and writing. The child's spiritual 
 harmony is not disturbed. He knows he possesses the language 
 that will lead him rung by rung up the ladder of development. 
 When the pupil grows older, and learns another language, he dis- 
 tinguishes between his mother tongue, in which he feels and thinks, 
 and the foreign tongue, which he has learned for a definite, practical 
 purpose. 
 
 In Palestine, where Jews from all countries of the globe have con- 
 gregated and brought different jargons, a worse confusion of languages 
 has arisen than anywhere else. To overcome this evil, the Hilf sverein 
 did well to introduce Hebrew as the sole language in the kindergartens 
 and the lowest classes of all its schools. As it is, every child learns 
 Hebrew from its earliest years for religious reasons. 
 
 It would be natural if the same system were maintained in the 
 upper classes; but that is not the case in our schools. 
 
 When the pupil reaches the classes where some branches are 
 taught in German, both the teacher and the pupils find themselves 
 in a difficult position. The subject is not taught in a language 
 which the pupil has completely mastered, but in another language, 
 which he has just begun to learn and of which he does not possess 
 sufficient knowledge. 
 
 Clearly, such instruction is not practical. It is necessarily forced 
 and unnatural, since the teacher must be guided not by the require- 
 ments of the subject, but by the poor vocabulary of his pupils. The 
 constant repetition necessitated by the pupil's imperfect under- 
 standing of the languages results in loss of time and in lack of interest 
 in the subject. No matter how much trouble is taken, the pupils 
 acquire only hazy ideas, and so superficiality and sciolism are 
 encouraged. The subject suffers by being taught in an unfamiliar 
 language. 
 
 At the same time, it almost always happens that the teacher, who 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 11 
 
 must have his mind fixed on the subject, cannot pay proper attention 
 to the sort of language the pupils use. Thus, the pupils, especially 
 those who speak the German- Jewish jargon in their homes, become 
 accustomed to faulty expressions. 
 
 This alone explains the remarkable phenomenon that, in spite 
 of all our efforts, we cannot get the pupils to acquire complete mastery 
 of German. 
 
 The instruction of history and the sciences in a foreign language, 
 instead of helping to a perfect knowledge of that language, only does 
 harm by encouraging its slipshod use. Thus, the subject to be 
 taught suffers through the language, and the language suffers through 
 the subject. 
 
 The pupil also suffers. He is burdened, oppressed. So far from 
 love of knowledge being fostered, the reverse is true. Nor can the 
 pupil acquire genuine love of the language that has placed so many 
 hindrances in his way. 
 
 The conditions arising when certain branches have been taught 
 for a number of years in one language and then are taught in another, 
 are very peculiar. There is no small loss of time and energy. All 
 the technical expressions have to be learned anew, and the unity 
 of the language of instruction in a given branch is thereby interrupted, 
 that unity of instruction of the pedagogical necessity of which the 
 president of the Hilfsverein himself recently spoke. 
 
 Der Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden has always asserted that its 
 activity is adapted to the needs and conditions of the different lands 
 in which it works — a very valuable, important principle, showing 
 refined consideration of the people in question. In the language 
 problem, too, it is of course the purpose of the Hilfsverein to take 
 into account the conditions among the Jews of Palestine. They 
 are divided into various communities, groups and strata, though the 
 division is not necessarily the consequence of deep-seated differences 
 among them. It results chiefly from the number of languages 
 employed, which hinders a common understanding between them in 
 the simplest matters. Even in relation to the authorities we con- 
 stitute communities and not a community. 
 
 The only way of overcoming this evil is by making Hebrew, which 
 all regard as sacred, the one language of intercourse. After the great 
 progress it has made within the last few years, it is the one language 
 that has the chance of becoming the sole medium of intercourse. 
 
 That is the only method of eliminating the differences prevailing 
 
n JERUSALEM 
 
 among the various strata of Jews in Palestine. It is high time for 
 a union to be brought about between the Sephardic, Ashkenazic, 
 Moroccan, Yemenite, and Bokharan groups, unless we would per- 
 manently constitute a negligible quantity in Palestine. 
 
 On the other hand, by spreading the use of different foreign lan- 
 guages among the masses, we should only be creating new lines of 
 division. 
 
 There is imperious need in the land for good mechanics, small 
 trades-people, industrious peasants, modest, industrious wives and 
 mothers. 
 
 While the goal of our endeavors is to strengthen the elements that 
 hope to spend their future in the country, we are, as a matter of 
 fact, creating an intellectual proletariat that will not take root 
 in the land. 
 
 On this point a few statistics are enlightening. Of a hundred 
 pupils entering the lowest classes of our schools, only twenty-five 
 complete the course. The remaining seventy-five leave at an early 
 age without having acquired a rounded education. To this larger 
 number of our children a foreign language is of no use. In fact, 
 it produces discontent among them and estranges them from their 
 environment. 
 
 Consequently, though we are endeavoring to increase the number 
 that will remain and take root here, we are, as a matter of fact, 
 by our measures increasing the number of those eager to leave the 
 country. With our right hand we destroy the work of our left hand. 
 The system is still less to be recommended for the education of girls, 
 who at present have no position in the business and social life of our 
 country. 
 
 As for the Teachers Seminary, there is a particular reason why 
 in it all branches should be taught in Hebrew. The teachers here 
 trained are destined to teach in Hebrew in elementary schools. Now, 
 if in the Seminary they do not acquire even a Hebrew terminology, 
 they are by this very fact insufficiently equipped. Every teacher 
 is then obliged to make linguistic experiments in his school. The 
 result is confusion and distortion of the language. 
 
 Finally, we would emphasize that from our Jewish national point 
 of view we see in Hebrew the most important factor in the realization 
 of our Palestinian ambitions. Are we not striving to obtain a posi- 
 tion in the land of our fathers worthy of our people? Do we not 
 wish to enjoy the esteem and privileges of a nation suflScient unto 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 13 
 
 itself? Or would we be satisfied to pass for a heterogeneous, polyglot 
 crowd? We can become a homogeneous nation only if we substitute 
 one language in place of the many dialects and jargons. That will 
 be the sole way of converting ourselves from an inarticulate element 
 into a stable, national element in Palestine. 
 
 The revival of the Hebrew language, therefore, is an ideal giving 
 content to our life. Our schools must help in the advancement 
 of this ideal in a still higher degree than heretofore. 
 
 Our children must know that they belong to an ancient civilized 
 race, whose language enjoys high esteem in the civilized world. 
 They must not receive the impression that our national speech is 
 ill-adapted to the use of a civilized people. The school, therefore, 
 should not hinder the development of the Hebrew language. On 
 the contrary, it should be the very first to serve in the Hebrew revival 
 going on before our very eyes. 
 
 Nevertheless, the study of German will by no means suffer in the 
 schools of the Hilfsverein. In fact, it will be cultivated more than 
 before, and those pupils who expect to use German later on in life 
 will be allowed to devote the necessary time and energy to its study. 
 
 But our children should receive their general education in our, 
 in theiTy language. 
 
 As a result of these opinions, the outcome of many years' occupa- 
 tion with the school question, we have come to the following 
 conclusion: 
 
 That Hebrew has a well-grounded right to be introduced into our 
 schools as sole language of instruction in all branches. 
 
 We hope that the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, which has 
 contributed so much to the development of Hebrew through the 
 establishment of kindergartens and elementary schools, will look 
 with favor upon our opinion and our wishes as herein expressed. 
 
 In this way the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden will show the Jewish 
 world in general, and Palestinian Jewry in particular, that it has 
 been chosen by Providence to re-establish the language of our fathers 
 in the land of our fathers during the renaissance of our people. 
 
 Respectfully submitted. 
 
 Signers for the Teachers Seminary: David Yellin, prorector of the 
 Teachers Training School and the Commercial High School and 
 instructor in the Lamel School; Joseph Mejohas, A. M. Lipschitz. 
 
 Signer for the Edler von Lamel School: Joseph Riwlin. 
 
14 JERUSALEM 
 
 Signers for the Girls' School: Vera Pinczower, Principal of the 
 Girls' School; Ch. L. Sutta, Principal of the Training School for 
 Kindergartners. 
 
 Mr. Ben Yehudah, the reviser of the Hebrew La-n- 
 
 guage and the author of the Great Hebrew Diction- 
 ary "Thesaurus Totius Hebraitatis," wrote a 
 historic letter to Dr. Nathan, saying that the Jews 
 would never surrender the privilege of their language 
 because it was the principle of their national ex- 
 istence and if one dared to open the Polytechnicum 
 in German, blood would flow. 
 
 Dr. Nathan invited Ben Yehudah to an interview 
 and begged him to influence the Zionists to submit, 
 "in order," he said, "that the schools should be 
 saved and all this new life should not be destroyed." 
 
 The interview proved ineffectual. The writer, 
 who knew Dr. Nathan for years, since he had aided 
 the publication of Ben Yehudah's dictionary, con- 
 ceived a diplomatic idea, and with the consent of the 
 professors, she made her proposal known to Dr. 
 Nathan. His reply was to the effect that Ben 
 Yehudah must betray his party. Madame Ben 
 Yehudah replied: "Then the people would stone him 
 — and I myself would cast the first stone !" 
 
 Dr. Nathan rejoined with bitterness: "Very well! 
 But remember! that you destroy with your own 
 hands all that you have built for thirty years, not 
 one stone will remain upon another of all your 
 beautiful colonies !" 
 
 The Zionists considered these words as empty 
 threats, and all negotiations proving useless, they 
 proceeded to open Nationalist schools of their own. 
 
 The German institutions were deserted except by 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 15 
 
 a few feeble adherents, and children whose parents 
 had been bribed. 
 
 Now the Jews were divided in two hostile camps. 
 The war spirit affected even the children who called 
 their small German comrades "traitors." Even in 
 the German orphanages the struggle continued. One 
 child wrote to his Hebrew professors from whom 
 he had been separated: "Come and deliver us from 
 this German fortress !" Another child went mad. 
 
 The orphans revolted against the German 
 Director, who came to light the sacred candles at 
 the feast of Hannucca in 1913. Thej cried: "You 
 traitor, you have no right to illumine our sacred 
 lights !" They shut their eyes and stuck their 
 ears. The Director threatened and they wept. On 
 the second day when he arrived, the children with 
 one accord rushed out of the room and into the 
 courtyard. 
 
 The Director in anger cried: "You cursed chil- 
 dren ! You shall have no more lights at Hannucca !" 
 
 On the next day when the hour arrived for the 
 sacred illumination, the orphans were in darkness. 
 But news of their conflict had become known, and 
 now behold a procession of Zionists accompanied by 
 Christians and Moslems and black Abyssinians, ap- 
 peared in the darkness before the windows of the 
 orphanage, bearing a glorious seven-branched 
 candlestick which they proceeded to light. Then 
 a loud voice uttered the prescribed prayers in 
 Hebrew, and the imprisoned orphans within the 
 walls made the responses in Hebrew. It was so 
 touching that even the German Director was moved 
 to tears ! 
 
16 JERUSALEM 
 
 After this, the outward agitations subsided — but 
 the breach was not healed. Even those who tried 
 to remain neutral were obliged to take sides. The 
 Jewish youth declared for the Nationalists. The 
 Turkish government advised the Zionists not to 
 persecute their adversaries. The Turkish Director 
 of Public Instruction favored the German Hilfs- 
 verein schools. 
 
 However, the season was prosperous, the harvests 
 were promising, and there was an unusual flood of 
 tourists. Among the visitors, arrived the Baron 
 Edmund de Rothschild, the celebrated patron of the 
 Jewish colonies. The Baron and the Baroness de 
 Rothschild landed from their yacht at their port 
 of Tamtura. The Jewish youths and maidens went 
 to meet them clothed in the national colors, white 
 and blue, and mounted on horseback. 
 
 The Baron was moved to tears and cried: "Pass 
 all before me that my eyes may behold you every- 
 one — I was not expecting to see Jewish amazons !" 
 
 The populace of Jerusalem received Baron Roth- 
 schild with greater honors than they had bestowed 
 on Emperor William himself. 
 
 The Zionists created a National Guard to sur- 
 round him. Nevertheless the Baron did not escape 
 the surveillance of German spies, who reported the 
 favors accorded to Zionists. 
 
 Other eminent visitors were Julius Rosenwald and 
 Mrs. Rosenwald who paid almost exclusive atten- 
 tion to the Nationalists. Finally there arrived in 
 Jerusalem Mr. Morgenthau, the American Am- 
 bassador to Turkey, and Mrs. Morgenthau. 
 
 All the foreign powers as well as the Turkish 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 17 
 
 officials in Jerusalem, did homage to the Jewish 
 representative of the United States, and this in- 
 creased the prestige of the Hebrews in the Holy 
 City. 
 
 The Ambassador was impressed by the renaissance 
 of Jewish life in Palestine, but he regretted the in- 
 ternecine conflict over the language question. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Morgenthau gave a great dinner 
 to which the most eminent Moslems and Christians 
 and the noted Jews of the opposing parties were 
 invited. 
 
 Several diplomatic speeches were made regarding 
 the amicable relations between Jews, Moslems and 
 Christians, America and Turkey, but the two sepa- 
 rate companies among the Jews remained divided. 
 
 The tourist season was followed by the harvest, 
 which was especially blessed and plentiful, and the 
 Jews completed their 1856th year of exile. 
 
 Devout Jews assembled on the Fast of Ab, at 
 the Wailing place where they were accustomed to 
 assemble year after year, to mourn the Destruction 
 of Jerusalem. 
 
 They watered the ancient foundation stones with 
 their tears and entreated the Lord God of Hosts, 
 saying: "Turn thou us unto Thee, O Lord, and 
 we shall be turned. Renew our days as of old!" 
 
 In this prayer, all Jewish hearts of all the world 
 unite. In the utterance of this prayer one era was 
 terminated, and a new era was ushered in — for upon 
 this very day of the Fast of Ab, the Great War 
 was declared in Europe. 
 
II 
 
 PALESTINE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 
 GREAT WAR 
 
 AS sleepers suddenly awakened, the inhabitants 
 of Jerusalem opened their eyes with a new 
 comprehension concerning the recent mys- 
 terious events in their own country. 
 
 They perceived that the large increase of 
 foreigners in Jerusalem was mostly German, that 
 Turkish troops had assembled including many 
 German officers in Turkish uniform and the report 
 of a transfer of military centre from Damascus to 
 Jerusalem was a mere fiction. Now it was clear 
 that the conflict over Hebrew was waged in the 
 larger interests of German propaganda and the 
 threats of Dr. Paul Nathan were regarded seriously. 
 The tragic deeds in Belgium and France deeply 
 moved the people of Palestine. Only the Germans 
 were jubilant. 
 
 The principal daily paper of Jerusalem, "Haor," 
 "The Light," edited by the Ben Yehudah, declared 
 openly for the Allies and exerted a great influence 
 over public opinion. 
 
 Friendly Turkish officials warned the Ben Yehudas 
 not to be over zealous for the Allied cause, an atti- 
 tude favorable to Germany would be more agree- 
 able to the Government. Only Zaki Bey, the military 
 commander of Jerusalem, made no attempt to in* 
 
 18 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 19 
 
 cline the populace on one side or the other. He 
 continued to visit the consuls of the belligerent 
 powers, and to frequent their institutions. Every- 
 where he was received with open arms, either on 
 account of his nobility or with regard for his future 
 favors. In his private office, at diplomatic dinners, 
 in parlor meetings, he conveyed an atmosphere of 
 tranquillity and assurance. 
 
 Only the Germans regarded Zaki Bey with an evil 
 eye. They criticised his manner of life, and made 
 out that he wasted his time in amusements during 
 these days of grave anxiety. They nicknamed him 
 "Der Tanz Pasha" — (the Dance Pasha). 
 
 Oriental Christians and Jews adored Zaki Bey, 
 and felt themselves secure under his protection. 
 
 He was a man of culture and fine breeding. He 
 spoke admirably both French and English, having 
 lived in Europe and America. Indeed he was en- 
 gaged to an American girl, but her parents had 
 objected to her marriage with a Turk, and thus 
 offended his national pride. It was said that he 
 was of Jewish ancestry, and belonged to the 
 "Donme," the class to which belongs also David 
 Bey, the present minister of finance in Turkey. 
 
 Such was Zaki Bey, the Commander of Jerusalem 
 in the summer and autumn of 1914. 
 
 From the beginning of the great War, Palestine 
 suffered, because few ships visited the native ports 
 and soon there was a scarcity of necessaries, either 
 because the goods had not arrived, or had been 
 hoarded by the merchants. Although Turkey her- 
 self was not at war, the day after the Germans 
 commenced hostilities in Europe, the Turks mob- 
 
20 JERUSALEM. 
 
 ilized their troops and commandeered all the horses, 
 camels and mules. They unharnessed the horses and 
 left carriages standing in the middle of the streets. 
 The usual means of communication were cut off. 
 
 Turkish officials visited the villages and returned 
 driving flocks of young men who were drafted into 
 the army. To arouse enthusiasm, a public ovation 
 was given to the drafted men on the streets. 
 
 In Jaffa there appeared a gigantic young Arab 
 who was surrounded by children and dervishes 
 flourishing naked swords. With a hoarse voice he 
 shouted: "Din Mahomed am bil sef !" (The religion 
 of Mahommed advances by the sword!) and this 
 refrain was repeated by the populace with savage 
 cries. 
 
 To inflame his followers, he cried again: 
 
 "Hadal sef bidou dam!" (This sword demands 
 blood!) "Allah younsour 11 Sultan!" (Allah pre- 
 serve our Sultan!) 
 
 This Arab demonstration knew no bounds, and 
 the common people fled in terror. 
 
 In Jerusalem, evil days were foreseen. People 
 began to hoard their supplies for the years ahead. 
 
 They concealed their provisions not only in 
 ordinary places, but by walling them up within the 
 huge ancient walls and stone masonry. The govern- 
 ment confiscated everything they found in the 
 shops. Poor people were left entirely destitute. 
 
 The reverse happened in the Jewish colonies, where 
 the representatives meeting together made regula- 
 tions for the future and arranged for equitable divi- 
 sions of the supplies, setting aside a special portion 
 for distribution to the poor. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 21 
 
 When these facts became known to the govern- 
 ment, they sent to the Jewish colonies to take posses- 
 sion of the suppHes; but nothing could be found. 
 In consequence a number of arrests were made. 
 
 In Christian communities and in religious institu- 
 tions there was great anxiety. One could not tell 
 what evil was in store for the morrow. When the 
 Jews addressed Pere La Grange, the superior of 
 the Dominican monastery at Jerusalem, begging 
 him to preserve in his own library a precious Hebrew 
 manuscript, he replied: 
 
 "I would keep it with pleasure, but I do not advise 
 you to leave it here, because there is no security in 
 our monastery. Possibly to-morrow they may expel 
 us, and our institution and our precious library will 
 be at the mercy of irresponsible persons." 
 
 The Syrian Christians were in a panic. In their 
 houses they hid themselves, trembling with fear and 
 saying that they would be the first to be massacred, 
 partly on account of their well known friendship for 
 the French and the English. The Armenians de- 
 clared that the greatest peril awaited them, for of a 
 certainty they had been marked in advance for the 
 slaughter. They pointed out that the Jews were 
 well organized and had some protectors, because at 
 the request of Mr. Morgenthau the United States 
 battleship Tennessee under the never-to-be-forgotten 
 Captain Decker had been sent to Palestine with sup- 
 plies for the Jews. 
 
 A little later on the North Carolina arrived with 
 Mr. Maurice Wertheim, the son-in-law of Henry 
 Morgenthau with $50,000 in gold for the relief of 
 the Jews, 
 
22 JERUSALEM 
 
 Mr. Wertheim was so much impressed by the 
 renaissance of Jewish life in Palestine that on his 
 return to America by his public statement he greatly 
 increased the interest for the Jews in Palestine. 
 
 Almost everyone who could do so, left the country. 
 
 The consulates of France, England and Russia 
 were surrounded by spies so that anyone, even en- 
 tering the doors, was immediately under the sus- 
 picion of the Turks; while the German consulate 
 was the meeting place of government officials. The 
 headquarters of the American and Italian consuls 
 were neutral territory towards which the populace 
 looked for protection. 
 
 General consternation was caused by the news 
 that a decree at Constantinople announced the sup- 
 pression of "The Capitulations," which signified that 
 all the privileges accorded to foreigners in Turkey 
 existed no longer. 
 
 A manifesto summoned the people to gather in 
 the Public Gardens to hear "The great news that 
 Turkey had cast behind her back the shame of 
 foreign bondage, which she had been forced to en- 
 dure by the European powers for centuries." 
 
 The rejoicing of the Ottomans was so tremendous 
 and contagious that even those among the people 
 for whom the consequences were most grave were 
 caught in the delirious outburst of joy. 
 
 It was a pleasure to see those Ottomans who had 
 behaved the day before like slaves, now straighten- 
 ing their backs, lifting their heads, and casting looks 
 of pride. 
 
 Soon after, came the following consequences. The 
 government closed the foreign post-offices, the usual 
 
Underwood b" Underwood, N. Y. 
 
 General Allenby's Entry into Jerusalem after its Fall. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 23 
 
 marks of respect were denied to foreign consuls. 
 To be a stranger was no longer a privilege, but 
 an object of opprobrium. 
 
 The Arabic signifying foreigner is "Hma j a" ; and 
 "Surmaja" is the Arabic for a "shoe" or a "boot." 
 
 The street boys shouted at - all foreigners: 
 "Hmaja Surma j a!" which signifies: "The stranger 
 is put under the foot," and after these words, they 
 would strike off with their canes the hats of the 
 foreigners. The natives wore the Turkish fez, 
 hence a man with a hat was recognized as a stranger. 
 
 The government officials became insolent, es- 
 pecially in places where the High Command was 
 evil, notably at Jaffa where the Kaimakam (the 
 governor) Behad el Din, and the military com- 
 mander Hassan Bey knew no limits to their 
 wickedness. 
 
 They began by a systematic persecution of the 
 Jews. They arrested the Hebrews, cross-questioned 
 them ; accused them of concealing arms ; of evading 
 military service; of belonging to secret societies; 
 and of working in opposition to the government. 
 After being cast into prison, they were spit upon, 
 beaten, deprived of their watches and money, fined 
 heavily — and then — released ! 
 
 But in Jerusalem only, where Zaki Bey held the 
 reins of power with an iron hand, such acts of 
 injustice were not yet perpetrated. Some Israelites 
 escaped from Jaffa and took refuge in Jerusalem. 
 They implored Zaki Bey to use his influence in be- 
 half of their suffering friends in Jaffa. 
 
 But the power of Zaki Bey was limited to Jeru- 
 salem and its environs. 
 
24 JERUSALEM 
 
 The inhabitants of Jaffa realized that only a 
 miracle could deliver them from their tyrants! — 
 and this miracle really took place. Once, while in 
 a fit of rage, Behad el Din made the mistake of 
 striking a German. By a telegram to their am- 
 bassador at Constantinople, the Germans demanded 
 that he should be dismissed, and in twenty-four hours 
 he was deprived of his office, and sent to Damascus, 
 to the great relief of the Jews. However, it was 
 impossible to get rid of the military commander, 
 the wicked Hassan Bey, since he suited the Germans. 
 
 The only escape for the Jews was in flight from 
 the country. 
 
 From the very beginning of the war, the inhabi- 
 tants of Palestine cherished the hope that England 
 would find a pretext to take possession of Palestine, 
 and they were heartbroken after all their troubles 
 that England did not yet intervene. 
 
 The English and French warships could be seen 
 from afar off, passing by. The dwellers in Palestine 
 were tormented by fears regarding the attitude of 
 their Turkish government. Would the Sultan re- 
 main neutral or not? 
 
 From personal considerations they realized that 
 it was safer for them that Turkey should be neutral. 
 
 The Zionists felt that if Turkey remained neutral, 
 the Allies would be grateful to the Ottoman power, 
 but the Jews would long remain under Turkish rule, 
 which was becoming to them more and more un- 
 supportable. It was beyond all possibility for her 
 to side with the Allies, being herself in the grip of 
 Germany. 
 
 On the other hand, if Turkey combined with Ger- 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 25 
 
 many, as an enemy of England, it was the open 
 conviction of the Zionists that England would con- 
 quer Palestine, and recognize the national Jewish 
 aspirations. The Syrians hoped for deliverance 
 through France. 
 
 The Arabs only lacked a clear vision. They be- 
 lieved in German victory, and being very weary of 
 the Turkish yoke, they were content to be dominated 
 by the Germans. There was an Arabic saying: 
 "L'Almane bimschi dugri!" (The Germans are 
 just.) 
 
 In a conversation between a high Turkish official 
 and an eminent Jew, the question was asked : "Why 
 my friend, when you know how France has sup- 
 ported you in your struggle for liberty; and how 
 both France and England have protected you, how 
 do you then turn your back and ally yourself with 
 Germany who will make you forever a slave? — it is 
 an act of suicide." The Turkish official replied: 
 "My friend, all that is true, but France and Eng- 
 land while protecting us, looked upon us from above, 
 and abased our national pride. It is different with 
 Germany, who treats us as an equal. We are proud 
 that such a great Power should extend her hand 
 and that we should fight beside her." 
 
 The Jew said: "Then you are blinded by flattery?" 
 
 The Turk shrugged his shoulders and rejoined: 
 "Such is the fact ; we cannot do otherwise !" 
 
 A few days after this conversation, Turkey de- 
 clared war on the side of Germany. 
 
 One of the first steps was the announcement of 
 the "Jehad" (the Holy War). At first, one im- 
 
26 JERUSALEM 
 
 agined that the whole Moslem population of the 
 world, 300,000,000 strong, would rise under the 
 green banner of Mahomet, and humanity itself would 
 be endangered. 
 
 The terror in Jerusalem was extreme. A few 
 courageous Jews and Christians approached certain 
 Mohammedans and earnestly inquired what the 
 Jehad would signify to themselves. The explana- 
 tion was brief, as follows : 
 
 "It signifies that every faithful Moslem is re- 
 quired to slay at least four unbelievers!" 
 
 To impress the public, the authorities ordered 
 forty fanatical Circassians, fully armed, to ride on 
 horseback through the streets of Jerusalem. 
 Silently they passed, brandishing naked scimitars. 
 This was to the inhabitants of Jerusalem the only 
 visible sign of the Holy War. 
 
Ill 
 
 HARDSHIPS ENDURED IN WAR TIME- 
 GERMAN INTRIGUES 
 
 ALTHOUGH affected by the declaration of the 
 Jehad, all the Ottoman subjects realized 
 that they must do their duty and be loyal 
 to their own rulers, as long as they remained under 
 Turkish sway. 
 
 They all contributed money upon the request of 
 the government for the fleet and airplanes, and for 
 the Red Crescent, an organization like the Red 
 Cross. Numbers of the young men, although 
 able to purchase substitutes, volunteered for the 
 army. The women replied to the call from the 
 government by preparing hospitals, and learning the 
 duties of nurses. 
 
 In order to avoid being expelled, the foreign Jews 
 followed the friendly advice of Zaki Bey and ap- 
 pealed to Constantinople to be made Ottoman 
 subjects. 
 
 This right was accorded them. 
 
 This episode was the last question treated by the 
 Jewish daily paper, "Haor" (The Light). Not 
 being willing to change its political attitude towards 
 the Allies, and since the director, Mr. Ben Yehudah, 
 was an Ottoman subject, it seemed best that the 
 paper should immediately cease to exist. The Turks 
 and Germans would have preferred that the "Haor" 
 
 27 
 
28 JERUSALEM 
 
 should continue its publication in order to influence 
 the public in the Teuton-Mohammed policy. 
 
 The editor said in explanation that he lacked 
 paper and funds and clearness of vision in the crisis. 
 That his mind was too troubled for him to continue 
 his labors. 
 
 The horrors of war commenced. Evil orders ar- 
 rived from Damascus, the seat of D'Jamal Pasha. 
 Every day brought a bitter surprise. 
 
 More troops of military arrived, and on pretext 
 of military necessity the government took posses- 
 sion of the remaining supplies in the city, and 
 occupied the public buildings that belonged to the 
 enemy countries, the hospitals, orphanages, schools, 
 convents and monasteries. 
 
 Zaki Bey facilitated the departure of the expelled 
 religious orders, especially the women. Of course 
 the Dominicans of Jerusalem were included in this 
 act of expulsion and the melancholy predictions of 
 Pere La Grange were verified. Their beautiful 
 monastery near the gate of St. Stephens was ap- 
 propriated by the Turks and used as a "Serail" 
 or government building. 
 
 In about a week the cloisters and courts previously 
 devoted to the pious meditations of the "White 
 Fathers" became so unclean as to resemble stables. 
 
 The Turks, with their accustomed disregard for 
 the architecture of subject races, cut doors and 
 constructed stairways, wherever it pleased them. 
 
 The volumes and manuscripts of the famous 
 Dominican library were packed in boxes to be sent 
 to Constantinople, and up to the present time it 
 is not known what has become of them. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 29 
 
 Amid the turmoil of this forced embarkation, 
 there were some absurd episodes. Such was the 
 flight of an English subject, whom the Turkish 
 Commander Hassan Bey wished to keep prisoner and 
 pursued to the seashore. The English Jew had 
 reached a steamer when he saw the Commander in 
 pursuit; he cried out to an American refugee beside 
 him: "I would rather jump into the sea than fall 
 into the hands of that brute." Whereupon the 
 American gave him refuge in his own private state- 
 room, and the Englisliman concealed himself under 
 the berth. The wife of his rescuer undressed, lay 
 down in the berth and feigned illness, while her hus- 
 band lighted a pipe and stood in the doorway. 
 Presently the enraged Hassan Bey appeared, hunt- 
 ing for his victim, and the American husband said: 
 "You cannot enter here, you see my wife is very iU 
 in this stateroom. Impossible for you to enter." 
 
 Hassan Bey returned to Jaffa and immediately 
 confiscated the house and the store of the escaped 
 Englishman. It was a large store for gentlemen's 
 clothing, and now the costumes were sold off at two 
 dollars apiece, and many Arabs suddenly appeared 
 in European dress in the streets. Some of these 
 exiles from Jaffa found refuge in Egypt, and still 
 remain there in hopes of an ultimate return to 
 Palestine. 
 
 The government confiscated the foreign banks, 
 but they could not discover much money. However, 
 this step produced a panic because so many people 
 were suddenly impoverished. Then the Anglo-Pales- 
 tine Banks issued checks which passed as currency. 
 
30 JERUSALEM 
 
 All foreign silver was depreciated and even Turk- 
 ish coin of low denominations. 
 
 The checks of the Deutsche Palestine Bank were 
 not accepted even by Germans. For the second 
 time, a United States warship arrived at Jaffa with 
 relief in gold and in provisions, which the American 
 Consul, Dr. Glazebrook, took in charge and dis- 
 tributed with the aid of a Jewish committee. 
 
 All private contributions and deliveries of money 
 passed through the hands of the American consul. 
 
 The ports were entirely closed. The censorship 
 was extremely severe. There were no newspapers. 
 Those who came in touch with the crew of the U. S. 
 relief ships learned something of the world outside. 
 
 Then the English were expelled and Christmas 
 eve was the last night they were allowed to remain 
 in the Holy Land. Following the advice of the 
 United States consul, a number of Americans left 
 with the English. All the hotels were filled so that 
 people slept on the floors and embarked the next day. 
 
 All the English, French and Russian consuls and 
 their staffs took their departure under difficulty and 
 even cruelty. 
 
 Several members of the diplomatic corps and of 
 the religious orders were deprived of liberty, and 
 exiled to Damascus and Angora, and some time 
 later on some of them were allowed to return to 
 their native lands. 
 
 The Jews had a share in this expulsion, which took 
 place at 24 hours' notice. The Hebrew exiles in- 
 cluded very aged men, and women and children who 
 were minors. (There were many children, who had 
 been sent to Palestine for a Jewish Nationalist 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 31 
 
 education and hence lacked the protection of 
 parents.) 
 
 Ten thousand Jews left Jerusalem in one week. 
 The streets were filled with the exiles who had no 
 carriages and conveyed their baggage on their own 
 backs. 
 
 In Jaifa 700 Jews were commanded to leave the 
 country in two hours. They were precipitated into 
 the ships without even taking any food. The em- 
 barking was made in rowboats with great distress; 
 some people fell into the water and parents were 
 separated from their children. 
 
 Dr. Glazebrook and his wife went to Jaffa and 
 did all in their power personally, to lighten the trials 
 of the expelled travelers. 
 
 Other events occurred at Jerusalem where many 
 preparations were made for the expedition to Suez. 
 Caravans of camels were laden with tin cans in- 
 tended for water. Great bridges were prepared in 
 sections, to be united and thrown across the Suez 
 canal. Zaki Bey, who was named commander of 
 this expedition under Djemal Pasha, had his trunks 
 packed with fur rugs to sleep on in his tent, and 
 with all the luxuries required for his cuisine. 
 
 At a social function he said to a lady — "When I 
 
 shall be in Egypt " to which she added "As a 
 
 prisoner." He graciously answered: "You have no 
 right thus to speak to me!" for he could have cast 
 her into prison for these words. 
 
 Djemal Pasha arrived in Jerusalem with Behad 
 El Din (the former evil Kaimakam of Jaffa) as 
 secretary. Now it was the Jews of Jerusalem who 
 
32 JERUSALEM 
 
 suffered him. The Germans could do nothing to 
 oppose Behad El Din, because Djemal Pasha was 
 not very friendly with the Teutons. The influence 
 of Zaki Bey became even more important because 
 he had been a former school companion of Djemal. 
 But the Germans showed foresight. They obtained 
 an order making the German Bach Pasha a superior 
 commander over Zaki Bey. Whereupon, Zaki Bey 
 resigned his commission and left Jerusalem and re- 
 turned later on as a civilian. 
 
 Behad El Din commenced his catalogue of atroc- 
 ities, with the aid of Djemal Pasha. At Jaffa 
 thirty-four representative Jews were arrested and 
 conveyed in a special train as prisoners to Jeru- 
 salem. The Hebrews of the Holy City were shocked 
 at this act, and exerted all their influence to avoid 
 having these political prisoners committed to the 
 common prison. 
 
 The prisoners were cross-questioned regarding 
 concealed arms, provisions and money, and it was 
 demanded that they should reveal their political 
 secrets. They were questioned for two weeks and 
 released ! 
 
 Then — Djemal Pasha demanded that the Jewish 
 flags should be given to him. Mounted gens d'armerie 
 were sent to search the houses and to take all the 
 Hebrew banners, but not one could be found, because 
 all had been burned or concealed. 
 
 Next Behad El Din issued a decree in the name 
 of Djemal Pasha that the Jews must bring all their 
 national stamps to the government house (the serail) 
 and whosoever should be found with a stamp in his 
 possession after 24 hours should be hanged. There 
 
ITS -REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 33 
 
 was a panic; of course the Nationalists had many 
 stamps, and the stamps were produced. The panic 
 subsided. Djemal Pasha was also severe towards 
 the Arabs. It was an amusement for him to hang 
 the Arabs. Fortunately he did not especially perse- 
 cute the Christians. 
 
 At this time another important event took place: 
 the brother of the sherif of Mecca arrived at 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 He was known to the populace by the abreviated 
 title of "Sherif." He was a venerable old man, 
 with a long, white beard, and when he appeared 
 robed all in white, riding upon a camel, and with 
 a canopy over his head, the devout Moslems pros- 
 trated themselves before him. Others kissed the hem 
 of his flowing garments. So great was his reputa- 
 tion for holiness that he was regarded as a saint. 
 The Mohammedans of Jerusalem went out to meet 
 him, with a banner bearer, who carried a sacred 
 flag, that had remained untouched in the Mosque of 
 Omar for three centuries. The "sherif" was in- 
 stalled in the Court of the Sacred Tomb of David. 
 
 On the next day he was expected to solemnly 
 consecrate and bless the arms for the expedition 
 to Suez. But to the surprise of everyone, on the 
 next morning he was found dead! 
 
 This sudden decease of so venerated and exalted 
 a personage shocked all the inhabitants of Jeru- 
 salem. The Christians imputed the unexpected 
 demise to a dispute between the Mohammedans re- 
 garding the reception of their Moslem saint. The 
 Moslems said that he had died of grief, because at 
 midnight he had heard the ringing of church bells. 
 
34 JERUSALEM 
 
 Upon being told that these were the bells of the 
 German Church of the Redeemer nearby, this faith- 
 ful son of Islam was filled with anguish to think 
 that an abhorred Christian edifice should have been 
 erected in close proximity to the sacred Tomb of 
 King David, the object of Moslem veneration. 
 
 In sorrow of heart, the saint had requested to be 
 left alone, and later on he was found dead! 
 
 The Jews averred it was the "Finger of God" 
 because their Tomb of David had been profaned. 
 Common people regarded the death of the saint as 
 an evil omen concerning the approaching expedition 
 to Suez. 
 
 Preparations for the expedition continued not- 
 withstanding. A triumphal arch was reared near 
 the Jaffa Gate in honor of Djemal Pasha, who was 
 styled by an Arabic poet as "Phatah el massar," 
 "Deliverer of Egypt!" 
 
 A saying of Djemal Pasha was reported, as fol- 
 lows: "In history, my name will be recorded as 
 either a genius or a fool! — I conquer Egypt, or I 
 return not." 
 
 All the schools of the three religions were re- 
 quired to assemble their pupils and instructors near 
 the Triumphal Arch early one morning. The as- 
 sembly of children and adults remained standing in 
 wind and dust from morning till afternoon when the 
 battalions of Turkish heroes passed under the 
 Triumphal Arch on their departure for Egypt. 
 At the head of his troops, mounted on a magnificent 
 charger, rode Djemal Pasha — "the great camel" — 
 and the procession was closed by the dignitary 
 known as Djemal — surnamed "the little camel." 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 35 
 
 All the eminent personages of Jerusalem, and all 
 the populace, Jewish, Christian and Moslem, fol- 
 lowed the departing soldiers with their eyes. The 
 Arab women uttered piercing cries as long as one 
 could see so much as a floating flag or even the 
 clouds of dust raised by the vanishing hosts. 
 
 Now the Germans and Moslems of Jerusalem 
 seemed as if intoxicated with the pride of coming 
 victory. They formed various projects as to the 
 most honorable way in which to receive the returning 
 victors. But the prospect filled the hearts of Jews 
 and Christians with profound dread. They argued 
 thus: "If the Moslems come back triumphant, there 
 will be no limit to their pride and insolence, but if 
 they should be defeated, they will revenge themselves 
 upon us here." 
 
 This was in the spring of 1915. In a few days 
 news arrived that the Turkish Army had success- 
 fully traversed the desert. A later dispatch an- 
 nounced the crossing of the Suez Canal, and the 
 capture of Ismailia. This occasion was celebrated 
 by the illumination of Jerusalem. 
 
 After the trying privations of the previous 
 months, the Moslem populace of Jerusalem now re- 
 joiced to think of their soldiers coming home laden 
 with booty — sugar and rice. 
 
 But numerous Christians gathered together and 
 began to consider the best places of concealment and 
 refuge for their women and children. It was possible 
 to fortify the buildings of the great religious in- 
 stitutions, especially the compounds of the Greeks 
 and the Armenians, but the Jews, not possessing 
 such large buildings, so well adapted for fortified 
 
36 JERUSALEM 
 
 purposes, were, at first, overcome by fear; because 
 they lacked, apparently, all these means of self- 
 defense. 
 
 In the midst of this hour of extreme anxiety ar- 
 rived the news of the defeat of the Turks. 
 
 The Mohammedans were crestfallen. The Ger- 
 mans failed to conceal their disdain for Turkish 
 prowess and their scorn of the Turkish Army. 
 
 Jews and Christians avoided being seen on the 
 streets fearing to be accused of joy, and in their 
 houses they trembled in dread of that homecoming 
 defeated army. 
 
 A few soldiers and officers who had escaped from 
 Egypt reached Jerusalem safely. They declared 
 secretly that "the gates of Hell had been opened 
 upon them," 
 
 Silently in the dead of night, the remnant of the 
 defeated army, broken up into small companies, 
 crept back into Jerusalem. 
 
 Djemal Pasha shut himself up in the walls of the 
 Augusta Victoria Memorial on the Mount of Olives, 
 and refused to see anyone, not even the most eminent 
 personages. 
 
 Thus closed ignominously one scene in the Oriental 
 Dream of Power which Kaiser William had dreamed 
 for himself in Jerusalem. 
 
 In this very Augusta Victoria Memorial there is 
 a great throne room in which stand two thrones. 
 
 A few days before the dedication of the Augusta 
 Victoria Memorial the writer of this article visited 
 this throne room, escorted by Von Mirbach, the late 
 ambassador to Moscow. Von Mirbach explained 
 that these two thrones were designed for the Em- 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 37 
 
 peror and Empress of Germany. Evidently the 
 conquest of Egypt had been planned as an act in 
 this drama in which Djemal Pasha had been given 
 a leading role — and now the first expedition to Suez 
 had failed. 
 
 The Germans, however, discussed the arrange- 
 ments to be made for a second expedition, to be led 
 this time by a German commander. 
 
 In the meanwhile, the Turkish Army, such as it 
 was, in small units took its departure along the road 
 towards Nablus, and the population of Jerusalem 
 began to take flight in various directions as well as 
 they could. 
 
IV 
 
 THE PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS— PERSECUTION 
 OF THE JEWS 
 
 A NOTHER calamity was impending. The 
 /-% heavens were darkened ; obscurity reigned at 
 midday, with ominous clouds not of rain, but 
 plague clouds of locusts! 
 
 The secretions from the flying insects fell in a 
 foul rain upon Jerusalem, and the air was poisoned 
 with the sickening odor. 
 
 The locusts descended upon fields and gardens, 
 consuming the grain, devouring the vegetables, ruin- 
 ing the trees. In vain the unfortunate inhabitants 
 closed doors and windows. The nauseating pests 
 penetrated to the interiors and entered the beds, 
 and crawled in the clothing and on cooking utensils, 
 even falling into the food. 
 
 As an example of their depredations, a story was 
 told of locusts in a garden in Judea, where they 
 devoured not only fruit and leaves but even the bark 
 of the trees, leaving the trunks and branches stand- 
 ing like ghastly bare skeletons. So appalling was 
 the sight that on beholding this horror of his garden, 
 the owner went mad! 
 
 It was said that in Galilee, the locusts utterly 
 destroyed one field belonging to a German, and left 
 untouched the ad j acent field belonging to the French 
 Baron de Rothschild. 
 
 S8 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 39 
 
 The Turkish government was powerless in the face 
 of this plague of locusts. Even German efficiency 
 failed to meet the emergency. Then the Jews came 
 forward and offered their assistance. This was 
 notably expressed by the celebrated scholar, Mr. 
 Aaronson, the discoverer of "the original wheat." 
 
 He was at the head of the American Agricultural 
 Experimental Station which he had founded at 
 Atlite in Samaria, near Zickon Jacob. He came to 
 Jerusalem at the very time when Djemal Pasha was 
 terrorizing the population and when everyone feared 
 to approach the Pasha. 
 
 Mr. Aaronson requested an interview, and the 
 request being granted, he said to Djemal Pasha: 
 "Your Excellency! You can hang me — but first 
 hear what I have to say to you." Then he began 
 his defense of the Jews, saying that the rulers had 
 no reasonable foundation for their persecution of 
 the Hebrews. After these statements he added that 
 he knew ways of fighting the locusts, and he offered 
 his services, which Djemal Pasha accepted with open 
 arms. 
 
 Mr. Aaronson was named head of a commission 
 to combat the locusts, and Djemal ordered that 
 every facility should be placed at his disposal in 
 the villages. The finest Jewish young men rallied 
 to the side of Mr. Aaronson, but the country itself 
 lacked the supplies and the special chemicals re- 
 quired for this campaign. Then Mr. Aaronson 
 asked for 8000 of the military in order to accom- 
 plish by hand what should have been done by 
 chemical devices. 
 
 Djemal Pasha disapproved the idea of placing 
 
40 JERUSALEM 
 
 military forces under the control of Mr. Aaronson 
 and refused this request. 
 
 The people were driven to fight the plague by 
 the only means which they possessed. 
 
 The entire population was to be used, even the 
 school children. But some individuals escaped the 
 service by the payment of a Turkish pound in gold. 
 The locusts after devouring everything green on 
 the land had deposited their eggs in the soil and 
 flown away. The great danger ahead was in this 
 vast deposit of eggs. Being deprived of chemicals 
 which might have been scattered on the land, it was 
 necessary to dig in the soil with the hands in order 
 to feel the eggs, which were thus gathered and de- 
 posited in trenches, trodden under foot and burned, 
 or else covered with quick lime. This labor was so 
 severe that some of the workers died from exposure 
 to the burning heat of the sun, not having sufficient 
 nourishment to sustain them. 
 
 These were some of the trials of Palestine in 1915. 
 In 1916 a second expedition was launched against 
 the Suez Canal, with an army of 250,000 men under 
 the command of the German, Von Kress, but it was 
 not more successful than the first enterprise. Von 
 Kress was killed — shot, it was said, in the back. 
 The German Commander of Jerusalem, Bach Pasha, 
 was called to Damascus and en route he was injured 
 by an accident which occurred to his own automo- 
 bile. He sustained a broken leg, which caused his 
 death. 
 
 Not only the Moslems, but even the Germans began 
 to perceive that their star was waning in the Holy 
 Land. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 41 
 
 Notwithstanding the immense German propa- 
 ganda waged continuously for the ten years before 
 the war, to convince the Arabs that the land belonged 
 to Arabians, the ancient tradition now revived con- 
 cerning the destiny of the Jews to possess the land. 
 
 Many were the legends expressing this prophetic 
 thought. One told of a cavern of Zede Kiali, 
 where a small pool of water was reddish in color. 
 Old Arabs whispered that on the day of the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem this water had been changed to 
 blood, but that when the Jews should again possess 
 the land, the waters would be purified. Another 
 legend concerned the rocky barren soil around 
 Jerusalem. It was related that the High Priest 
 had taken ashes and cast them around the city walls 
 at the destruction of Jerusalem, uttering a curse 
 upon the land that it should remain barren until the 
 Jews should be restored to this their ancient heritage. 
 
 Even the Moslems themselves had doubts regard- 
 ing the future, and hence their troops had departed 
 quietly without triumphal parades. 
 
 Before this second expedition to Suez, hospitals 
 were erected and supplies collected at Gaza in prepa- 
 ration for a further advance. 
 
 Most of the Jewish and Arab-Christian doctors 
 of Palestine were called to service and a number of 
 their families followed them to Gaza. 
 
 It was a Mohammedan town. The inhabitants 
 were accustomed to see women veiled. The sight of 
 women going about unveiled affected them as "a 
 proof of immorality." 
 
 After the Turkish troops were driven from 
 
42 JERUSALEM 
 
 Raphah in January, 1917, the English reached the 
 border line of Palestine. 
 
 The wounded were removed from Gaza, many of 
 the doctors left and preparations were made to de- 
 fend the city. 
 
 The persecution of the Jews in Palestine, which 
 had continued all along, now increased in violence. 
 In March, 1917, when the English and Turks were 
 fighting over Gaza, the Plebrews suffered dreadful 
 atrocities from German and Turkish authorities. 
 
 Hundreds of Jews were arrested as suspects. The 
 prisons of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Acre, Tiberias, Naza- 
 reth and Damascus were filled. 
 
 The persecution was directed especially against 
 the Zionists. By threats and tortures, the tor- 
 mentors endeavored to force confessions of political 
 secrets, especially of relations with the English and 
 of places where arms were supposed to be concealed. 
 Great suffering was inflicted to induce the Zionists 
 to betray their friends. 
 
 Upon their refusal to give the desired replies, 
 some Zionists were executed by hanging or shooting, 
 others were deported, and some continued to lan- 
 guish in prison. 
 
 Mr. Aaronson escaped because the government 
 had sent him to Europe to obtain further assistance 
 in fighting the plague of locusts and subsequent 
 events had prevented his return. The wrath of the 
 government fell upon his family and his friends. 
 The authorities took possession of his agricultural 
 station. They burned his library notes and his 
 manuscripts. They destroyed his precious library 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 43 
 
 which had been purchased in America. Leaves from 
 scientific volumes were given to the shopkeepers at 
 Haifa to be used as wrapping paper for food and 
 merchandise. The costly herbarium, one of the rarest 
 and most valuable in the world, was burned. 
 
 The mother of Mr. Aaronson was dead, but his 
 aged father, and one sister named Sara, and one 
 brother were tortured. 
 
 A few words may be said regarding Sara Aaron- 
 son. She was a woman of rare intelligence, of noble 
 character, and of great courage. 
 
 In the American Agricultural Station, founded 
 and directed by her brother, Miss Aaronson was in 
 charge of the meteorological section, and acquitted 
 herself with remarkable ability. 
 
 At the time when Turkey declared war, she was 
 at Constantinople. She had recently married a man 
 whom she almost adored, but he was absent, and 
 now her sense of duty to her country demanded 
 that she should return to her own land. She set out 
 alone on that dangerous journey, and passed 
 through great trials. On one occasion she was the 
 only woman on a troop train which was filled by 
 soldiers going to Palestine. There were many sick 
 and dying on this train, and the dead lay on the 
 floor. There was no place for one to sit down. 
 And in order for her to reach the door she was 
 obliged to lift the dead men who blocked her way. 
 
 Tliis beautiful woman escaped the perils of this 
 journey and reached her native village. She was 
 glad to be among her own people and to serve them. 
 
 But her ministries of love were finally interrupted 
 
44 JERUSALEM 
 
 by the soldiers, who were ordered to arrest her and 
 put her in prison. 
 
 For three days and three nights, they tortured 
 alternately the daughter in the presence of the 
 father, or the father before the eyes of his child, 
 expecting that one or the other would relent and 
 give the desired information. 
 
 They beat the old man till the blood flowed but 
 he kept silent except for one word. He uttered the 
 ancient Jewish complaint, the prayer said most 
 often by the devout Israelite and especially before 
 his death: "Shma Israel ... !" "Hear Israel, my 
 only God!" 
 
 The other prisoners in the neighboring cells heard 
 this cry, repeated, sometimes loudly, when a blow 
 was very violent, or more faintly when a blow was 
 less terrible, or when the victim was becoming ex- 
 hausted. 
 
 It was said that finally since the executioners were 
 unable to extract from him a single word, they took 
 the old man out of prison and cast him into his 
 own house. It was too late; the frightful suffering 
 had deprived him of reason. 
 
 The executioners took Sara Aaronson, and placed 
 burning bricks at the naked soles of her feet. They 
 placed burning bricks at her armpits. Her groans 
 and cries of anguish were heartrending but she re- 
 fused to say one word. 
 
 They insisted that she must praise the Turks and 
 utter insults against the English, but Sara Aaron- 
 son kept silent. She escaped from her tormentors 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 45 
 
 for one moment, and having gained possession of 
 a revolver, she shot herself in the mouth. 
 
 A Jewish doctor, a friend, having been called to 
 extract the bullet, she begged that he would let her 
 die since she could not longer support her sufferings. 
 
 Sara Aaronson died without justifying any of the 
 accusations brought against her, and her name is 
 covered with glory and honor in the land where she 
 suffered. 
 
 Another native Jew, called Absalom, the son of a 
 Hebrew farmer, also drank the cup of sorrow. 
 
 The young Absalom had lived much among the 
 Arabs in Judea. He knew their life and their lan- 
 guage, and was beloved by them. The Arabs called 
 him "Sheik Abou Salim." Aged Moslems brought 
 their disputes to him for settlement, or to receive 
 his judgment. Notwithstanding this friendship with 
 the Moslems, Absalom was arrested and twice he was 
 martyrized, once in the prison at Jerusalem and 
 once in Nazareth. They beat him so cruelly that 
 his flesh was torn in rags and afterwards he said that 
 so great was the horror of himself that he seemed 
 to lose the sense of being human. His own body 
 was become so repugnant to himself that it seemed 
 a beastly thing. 
 
 Yet so vivid was the flame of his intelligence, so 
 eloquent his word, that he justified himself even in 
 the face of his persecutors and twice they released 
 him. However, it was his destiny to suffer. Even 
 at his birth his father had lifted him up, saying: 
 ''My son! my desire for thee is that thou shalt 
 sacrifice thyself for the freedom of thy people!" 
 
46 JERUSALEM 
 
 This vow was accomplished when twenty-seven 
 years later, this Hebrew son fell on the field of honor, 
 in the great desert between Palestine and Egypt. 
 
 Other Jewish men and women, youths and maidens 
 gave their lives in the land of their ancestors as an 
 offering for the deliverance of the Hebrew race. 
 
THE TIME OF FEAR AND SUFFERING-^ 
 HOW THE GLORIOUS DAY OF DELIV- 
 ERANCE CAME TO JERUSALEM 
 
 GAZA was taken by the English and recovered 
 by the Turks, remaining in their hands 
 seven months. In June, 1917, General 
 Allenby captured Beersheba and then Gaza. Ludd 
 surrendered, Ramleh fell; on November 16, Jaffa 
 was captured. Victorious English troops then 
 marched upon Jerusalem. 
 
 For three years the Holy City had suffered priva- 
 tions and sorrows. It was as if the plague had 
 raged within the walls. Most of the houses were 
 closed because the inhabitants were dead, or de- 
 ported, exiled or in prison. Deserted were the 
 streets. One dreaded to be seen outdoors for fear 
 of falling victim to the rage of the Turks. 
 
 People hid themselves in cellars and subterranean 
 passages, where life continued underground by the 
 light of olive oil lamps. 
 
 The musicians composed music, the poets com- 
 posed verses, the professors meditated upon the 
 pupils whom they hoped to receive in the coming 
 hour of deliverance. 
 
 The women kept house underground; but there 
 was little food to prepare. They had forgotten the 
 appearance of a loaf of bread. The babies died for 
 lack of milk. 
 
 47 
 
48 JERUSALEM 
 
 Even in these hiding places, one heard the roar 
 of Turkish cannon, which was directed against the 
 "Nebi Samuel" (the Tomb of Samuel), where the 
 English had fortified themselves. One passionate 
 desire filled the hearts of Jews and Christians alike 
 as they waited for the hour of deliverance. Their 
 confidence in the victorious strength of the English 
 failed not. The devout souls were uplifted in 
 ardent prayer. Pious vows were pronounced. They 
 prayed that the Lord God would deliver them by 
 a miracle, and show His hand as in former days. 
 
 But now it seemed as if the Arm of the Lord was 
 turned against the Jews and deliverance seemed far 
 off. Their fervent prayers were rudely interrupted 
 by the intrusion of Turkish soldiers. The gendarm- 
 erie entered and penetrated down to the cellars and 
 arrested the defenseless Hebrews. They tore the 
 husbands from the arms of their wives, and separated 
 the children from their parents. They beat their 
 prisoners and loaded them with chains and drove 
 them outdoors into the mud and rain. The storm 
 lashed the helpless prisoners as they were driven 
 forth without coats and without bread. The sol- 
 diers goaded them forward like cattle to the as- 
 sembly places where those who were to be deported 
 were gathered together. The wives and the young 
 women threw themselves upon the necks of their 
 husbands and fathers and brothers, insisting that 
 they should share the horrors of this terrible forced 
 journey. The victims were taken away in the direc- 
 tion of Jericho. 
 
 During the execution of this cruel edict of de- 
 portation in Jerusalem, news arrived of a dreadful 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 49 
 
 deed perpetrated in Pethah Tikivah. Djemal Pasha 
 had arrived and passed through this colony from 
 one end to another. Then he shut himself in his 
 rooms, without saying a word to anyone, and after 
 an hour's silence he departed. 
 
 The colonists were filled with foreboding. They 
 said : "Some great evil awaits us !" On the follow- 
 ing day, Djemal Pasha sent a dark emissary, noted 
 for his cruelty, with the command that "the guard- 
 ians of the colony should be surrendered to him." 
 (The guardians of the Jewish colonies were always 
 the finest young men, who filled the office of watch- 
 men, forming a sort of voluntary police. As 
 "watchmen" they were under vows to sacrifice their 
 lives for their people.) The inhabitants of Pethah 
 Tikivah gathered together and resolved that they 
 would rather all perish than to deliver up their 
 guardians to death. 
 
 Then three Jewish Austrian workingmen arose 
 in the assembly and one, being the speaker, said: 
 "To save the guardians and the colony, we propose 
 that you name us as guardians and fear not for 
 us, because since we are Austrian, the Turks will 
 not dare to vent their ferocity upon us subjects of 
 the Central Powers. The worst they will do will be 
 to imprison us ; and we will wait patiently with hun- 
 dreds of our companions, for the day of deliverance." 
 
 But no sooner did the Turks have these three 
 brave Austrians in their power than they accused 
 them of high treason. In order to force them to 
 make confession and to name accomplices, the 
 bastinado was inflicted upon them. 
 
 They were also beaten with muskets and kicked. 
 
50 JERUSALEM 
 
 and lifted up bodily to a great height and then 
 violently cast down. After they were rendered un- 
 conscious by these atrocities, they were dragged off 
 and cast into prison in Damascus, where they died. 
 No form of trial was given to these innocent men. 
 The emissary and his soldiers acted as accuser and 
 judges and executioners. 
 
 Other Austrians in Jerusalem were also maltreated 
 and deported. 
 
 Then the vials of wrath were poured upon the 
 American Jews also. They were arrested on the 
 streets and in the houses and beaten and dragged 
 away and forced to march on foot, exposed to mud 
 and rain, all the way to Damascus. Those who 
 were sick were carried on litters. One American 
 discovered concealed in a cellar, was sent laden with 
 chains to Damascus. 
 
 In the meanwhile the Turkish cannon was destroy- 
 ing the Tomb of Samuel, and the English were 
 making a movement whose object was to encircle 
 Jerusalem. The Turks and Germans commanded 
 that the city should be defended and they sent for 
 reinforcements from Damascus. The garrison was 
 not sufficiently strong in numbers or in morale to 
 sustain the attack without aid. When the reinforce- 
 ments failed to arrive, the Turks perceived that they 
 would be obliged to evacuate. 
 
 In great haste, they arrested everyone whom they 
 caught on the streets, including the Dutch consul, 
 and a distinguished Austrian physician, a member 
 of the Board of Health. 
 
 Djemal Pasha had already left for Damascus. 
 Soon after, an edict was issued commanding the 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 51 
 
 deportation of all the Christian and all the Jewish 
 inhabitants of Jerusalem, 
 
 The governor did the favor to the Dutch consul 
 and two other distinguished prisoners to allow them 
 a respite of three days in which to prepare for 
 their journey. The Turkish authorities were them- 
 selves embarrassed as to the means of executing this 
 last great act of deportation, which included the 
 great mass of the population of Jerusalem. It was 
 expected that the Germans would be of assistance 
 in enforcing the edict, but the Germans were occu- 
 pied in saving themselves. After the flights, the 
 exiles, the deportations, executions and imprison- 
 ments, it was estimated that over 30,000 Jews and 
 Christians still remained in the city. 
 
 In vain the Jews implored Zaki Bey to save them. 
 He replied that nothing could save them! They 
 must prepare for the deportation. Then a bitter 
 suspicion entered the hearts of the Jews. They 
 suspected that even their friend, Zaki Bey himself, 
 was an accomplice of the Turks. It was observed 
 that all of the families with whom Zaki Bey was 
 chiefly associated were the special objects of perse- 
 cution. The Jews surmised that he had abused their 
 confidence and betrayed them. 
 
 In these terrible days in Jerusalem, Jews and 
 Christians fasted and prayed. Their common sor- 
 row and desolation drew them nearer to one 
 another. They sought concealment in the darkest 
 cellars and deepest subterranean passages. Jews 
 and Christians found refuge together. 
 
 It was in this darkness and dread that the Jews 
 awaited the coming of their great festival of light 
 
52 JERUSALEM 
 
 and gladness, Hannucca, the Feast of Deliverance 
 in former days, and now approaching as the day 
 of destruction! The women, weeping, prepared the 
 oil for the sacred lights, and even the men wept, 
 saying that this would be the last time they should 
 keep the feast in Jerusalem! They strained their 
 ears to hear the horses' hoofs and the tread of the 
 soldiers coming to arrest them and drive them forth. 
 The women pressed their children to their breasts 
 crying : "They are coming to take us ! — the per- 
 secutors, the assassins !" 
 
 Then, suddenly, other women came rushing from 
 outside down into the depths, crying: 
 
 "Hosanna! Hosanna! The English! — the Eng- 
 lish have arrived !" 
 
 Weeping and shouting for joy, Jews and Chris- 
 tians, trembling and stumbling over one another, 
 emerged and rushed forth from the caverns and holes 
 and underground passages. 
 
 With loud cries, with outstretched hands, they 
 blessed the company of their deliverers, who ad- 
 vanced in a glory of light, for all Jerusalem was 
 illuminated by the crimson light of the setting sun I 
 
 With the victors, entered Justice and Peace, into 
 the city so long ruled by Terror and Pain. 
 
 Pious Jews uttered thanksgivings to the Lord 
 God of Hosts who had wrought deliverance in this 
 great historic day, in the very hour of the begin- 
 ning of "Hannucca," the Feast of the Miracle of 
 Lights. 
 
 On the previous Hay the Turkish troops had 
 evacuated, driving before them numbers of unfor- 
 tunate prisoners, the last victims of their rule of 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 53 
 
 Force. For the last time on leaving, the hated 
 Turkish soldiers had entered the houses to rob and 
 to spoil, and to carry off everything they could lay 
 hands on. 
 
 On the next day after the beginning of Hannucca, 
 the troop of English conquerors entered and shared 
 their own bread with the famished populace, and 
 offered the support of their hands to the feeble 
 and the aged. On the following day, when the great 
 English army entered the city, the women threw 
 themselves on the necks of the soldiers, calling for 
 the benediction of heaven upon them. Young women 
 kissed the hems of their garments, and children 
 threw flowers on their path. It was the time of 
 the early flowers in Palestine — the first flowers 
 which announce the resurrection of Nature after the 
 burning heat of summer is past. 
 
 How simple and modest was the entry of General 
 Allenby into the Holy City! 
 
 He came with the members of his staff, marching 
 on foot, and passed between the ranks of soldiers 
 who lined the streets on either side and presented 
 arms. 
 
 How solemn and imposing was the reception of the 
 hero by the heads of three great religions — ^the Jew- 
 ish Rabbis, the Mufti and sheiks, and the Christian 
 priests ! 
 
 How impressive, with what relief to waiting hearts, 
 was the proclamation that all the shrines and sacred 
 places of the three religions should be equally re- 
 spected. These are the words of this proclamation: 
 
 Lest any of you be alarmed by reason of your experiences at the 
 hands of the enemy who has retired, I hereby inform you that it is 
 
54 JERUSALEM 
 
 my desire that every person should pursue his lawful business with- 
 out fear of interruption. Furthermore, since your city is regarded 
 with affection by the adherents of three of the great religions of 
 mankind, and its soil has been consecrated by the prayers and pil- 
 grimages of multitudes of devout people of these three religions 
 for many centuries, therefore, I make it known to you that every 
 sacred building, monument, holy spot, shrine, traditional site, 
 endowment, pious bequest or customary place of prayer of whatso- 
 ever form of the three religions will be maintained according to the 
 existing customs and beliefs of those to whose faith they are sacred 
 
 Delayed reinforcements of Turkish troops from 
 Damascus called to strengthen the former Turkish 
 garrison now arrived, and unconsciously precipi- 
 tated themselves into the arms of the English. 
 
 A number of Germans and Turks, who were re- 
 garded with suspicion in Jerusalem, were now ar- 
 rested and sent to various places of exile, principally 
 to Egypt or to Malta. Among those who were 
 arrested was Zaki Bey, who was sent to prison at 
 Cairo. His friends among the Jewish refugees at 
 Alexandria gave surety for him, so that he was 
 released from prison and allowed to live among them 
 in some degree of liberty at Alexandria. 
 
 Then life revived in the city which had been 
 ravaged by death. The new rulers distributed 
 medicine and hospital supplies for the recovery of 
 the sick. The soldiers shared their rations with the 
 famished populace. As soon as possible, food was 
 procured from Egypt. Seed was given to the 
 peasants and army horses and mules were bestowed 
 to plow the neglected fields. 
 
 The English, although conquerors of the country, 
 showed due respect for the native civil and gov- 
 
Syrian Refugees on the Steps of David's Tower, Jerusalem. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 55 
 
 ernmental administration. They maintained their 
 rule strictly according to the principles of the 
 Hague Congress. At the same time, they did all 
 in their power to ameliorate the situation. They 
 constructed good roads. They organized a police 
 force. In order to insure against the miscarriage 
 of justice they exercised a certain oversight over 
 the native tribunals where Moslem Law was en- 
 forced. They conveyed pure waters from the pools 
 of Solomon into Jerusalem, and placed water pipes 
 and faucets in the streets, so that those in need 
 should supply themselves with water. 
 
 The inhabitants, assured of tranquillity and in- 
 spired with confidence, began to organize themselves 
 and to develop a new order after their troubled 
 existence. 
 
 It was an impulse of life after the reign of death. 
 
 The first to obey this overwhelming impulse was 
 the Jewish youths — the remnant which had been 
 concealed hidden like the seed in the earth, and 
 thus had escaped the general persecution. These 
 young men demanded the privilege of fighting side 
 by side with the English, in the conquest of their 
 own country. Their desire was granted. A bat- 
 talion of native Jews was immediately enlisted and 
 the recruits increased. 
 
 The young Jewish girls were not content merely 
 to be nurses and canteen waiters, they wanted a 
 more active share in the great conflict and certain 
 duties were assigned to them in connection with the 
 army. 
 
 The representative Jews of both the cities and 
 colonies assembled and took counsel regarding the 
 
56 JERUSALEM 
 
 assistance which it was in their power to render. 
 The English declared their desire for the advance 
 of the Hebrews; many times the message was heard 
 from the lips of the British: "The land which we 
 conquer is for you !" 
 
 The hearts of the Jews expanded with the glad 
 realization that they were now citizens of their own 
 country. 
 
 A National Jewish Commission arrived from 
 London. This Commission included Jewish repre- 
 sentatives from the Allied countries, with Professor 
 Waizmann at the head. He had previously occupied 
 the Chair of Chemistry at the University of Man- 
 chester. He is the personal friend of Mr. Balfour. 
 Haim Waizmann is justly respected for the valuable 
 discoveries which he has made, and placed at the 
 service of the English government, refusing all pay- 
 ment for these estimable services. The Jewish popu- 
 lation received their Commission with enthusiasm 
 and placed themselves under its orders. 
 
 Immediately their labors commenced. An im- 
 portant meeting of Jewish professors was called to 
 regulate the school question. When it was an- 
 nounced that the instructors were at liberty to install 
 their schools in the fine school edifices occupied by 
 the Germans' Hilfsverein and from which they had 
 been expelled the year before the war, the professors 
 replied: "We prefer to remain in our own insig- 
 nificant buildings. We would rather not teach 
 morals within those impure walls !" 
 
 It was Dr. Waizmann who reminded them that 
 even the Temple, after being profaned, was con- 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 57 
 
 secrated anew. "And we shall do the same," he 
 said, "with the desecrated school buildings." There 
 were some German Jews still remaining in the land 
 who witnessed this reopening of their former school 
 buildings. 
 
 Woman Suffrage among the Jews was proclaimed. 
 This gave to Jewish women the right to vote. 
 Preparations were made for the election of repre- 
 sentatives to a General Assembly. Meantime the 
 Jewish Commission does all in its power to facilitate 
 the English in their great aims. 
 
 The new development of Hebrew life expressed 
 itself in three public events, quite original in char- 
 acter. The first marked the return of the sacred 
 relics of the different synagogues, especially the 
 restoration of the scrolls of the Thora (the rolls 
 of the Law), which the Jews had withdrawn and 
 carefully concealed at the time of their persecutions. 
 They arranged a procession of horses, decorated 
 with garlands and harnessed to carriages adorned 
 with flowers, and filled with the sacred rolls of the 
 Thora. As they passed by a synagogue, the pro- 
 cession was halted, and the rolls belonging there 
 were ceremoniously returned to the sanctuary. 
 
 Members of the Society of the Young Maccabees 
 formed a National Guard of Honor, and the cortege 
 was escorted by an immense crowd, going before 
 and behind, clapping their hands and dancing and 
 singing to the accompaniment of musical instru- 
 ments. The scene recalled the dancing before the 
 Ark in the time of King David. 
 
 At the appointed place, the procession was 
 
58 JERUSALEM 
 
 halted, In the presence of General Allenby, the mem- 
 bers of his staff, Prof. Waizmann, the Jewish Com- 
 missioners, and other distinguished guests. 
 
 In token of the profound gratitude of the 
 Hebrews, Prof. Waizmann presented to General 
 Allenby a fine copy of the Thora (the Law) in- 
 scribed on a parchment scroll enclosed in a silver 
 case, artistically ornamented; the workmanship of 
 the Bazalel school at Jerusalem. 
 
 The next great public demonstration was the re- 
 vival of the ancient Jewish Feast of "Bekurim" — 
 The "Offering of the First-Fruits." This festival 
 was celebrated by another procession. At the head, 
 there marched a great bull with gilded horns, his 
 head and back adorned with garlands of fruit and 
 flowers. Beside the bull marched young girls, bear- 
 ing on their heads baskets laden with beautiful 
 fruits. Young men followed, carrying little lambs 
 in their arms. Others bore small kids on their 
 shoulders. Then came men who carried the various 
 instruments of agriculture. The national colors, 
 white and blue, were seen on every side. The air 
 vibrated with the peal of trumpets, the clash of 
 cymbals, the beating of drums and the harmony of 
 voices in song. 
 
 The perfume of ancient Biblical Hebrew life 
 seemed shed abroad. 
 
 These two celebrations occurred at Jaffa. A third 
 event of importance was solemnized at Jerusalem. 
 
 Thousands of Jews assembled on the Mount of 
 Olives and many Christians and Moslems. Troops 
 of school children, of the upper grades, arrived 
 marching with banners and led by their professors 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 59 
 
 and teachers. There were 38 delegates from 
 Jaffa and the colonies of Judea which had been de- 
 livered. There were deputies from various so- 
 cieties and corporations. The road from Jaffa was 
 like a procession because of the multitudes in car- 
 riages, in automobiles, mounted on mules, and asses 
 and horses, and even on foot, often with children on 
 their shoulders. All were coming to behold this 
 great event which was to take place on Mount 
 Scopus. At this point great reviewing stands had 
 been constructed to be occupied by exalted person- 
 ages of three religions. Members of the Jewish 
 Commission, British generals and officers of high 
 rank and representatives of the Allied nations, held 
 conspicuous positions. When General Allenby ar- 
 rived to take the seat of honor, he was greeted by 
 the multitude with loud acclaim, songs and shouts. 
 
 The great act of the founding of the Hebrew 
 University of Jerusalem had commenced. 
 
 Twelve foundation stones were laid, according to 
 the number of the tribes of Israel. 
 
 The master of ceremonies presented Prof. Waiz- 
 mann with a silver trowel curiously chiseled. 
 
 Following the laying of the first stone by Dr. 
 Waizmann, on behalf of the Zionist organization, 
 foundation-stones were laid by the two chief rabbis 
 of Jerusalem, the head of the United Jewish Com- 
 munity of Jerusalem, the Mufti and the Anglican 
 Bishop. Foundation-stones were also laid on behalf 
 of the Jewish regiment. Baron Edmond de Roth- 
 schild, the Town of Jaffa, the Jewish Colonies, 
 Hebrew Literature, Hebrew Teachers, Hebrew 
 Science, the Jewish Artisans and Laborers, and on 
 
60 JERUSALEM 
 
 behalf of Isaac Goldberg, the Russian Zionist whose 
 generosity made possible the purchase of the mag- 
 nificent site upon which the great edifice is to be 
 reared. This site faces the Augusta Victoria 
 Memorial, erected by Kaiser William. 
 
 The founding of the Hebrew University was 
 marked by a significant speech from Prof. Waiz- 
 mann, whose words will be long remembered. He 
 said in part: 
 
 "Here, out of the miseries and the desolation of war, is being 
 created the first germ of a new life. Hitherto we have been content 
 to speak of reconstruction and restoration — that ravished Belgium, 
 devastated France and Russia must and will be restored; in this 
 Hebrew university, however, we have gone beyond restoration and 
 reconstruction. We are creating, during the period of the war, 
 something which is to serve as a symbol of a better future. It is 
 fitting that Great Britain and her great Allies, in the midst of tribu- 
 lation and sorrow, should stand sponsor to this university. Great 
 Britain has understood that it is just because these are times of stress, 
 just because we tend to become lost in the events of the day, that 
 there is a need to transcend these details by this bold appeal to 
 the world's imagination. Here what seemed but a dream a few 
 years ago is now becoming a reality. 
 
 "It is a Hebrew university. I do not suppose that there is anyone 
 here who can conceive of a university in Jerusalem being other than 
 Hebrew. The claim that the university should be a Hebrew one 
 rests upon the values the Jews have transmitted to the world. From 
 this land, here, in the presence of adherents of the three great reli- 
 gions of the world which, amid many diversities, build their faith 
 upon the Lord who made Himself known unto Moses, here, before 
 the world, which has founded itself on Jewish law and has paid 
 reverence to Hebrew seers and acknowledged the great mental and 
 spiritual values the Jewish people have given, the question is an- 
 swered! The university is to stimulate the Jewish people to reach 
 further heights. 
 
 "I trust I am not too bold if here, to-day, in this place, among 
 the hills of Ephraim and Judah, I state my conviction that the seers 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 61 
 
 of Israel have not utterly perished; that, under the segis of this uni- 
 versity, there will be a renaissance of the divine power of prophetic 
 wisdom; that, once the war is over, the university will be the focus 
 of the rehabilitation of our Jewish consciousness now so tenuous 
 because it has become so world diffused. Under the atmospheric 
 pressure of this mount, our Jewish consciousness can become dif- 
 fused without becoming feeble; our consciousness will be kindled again 
 and our Jewish youth will be reinvigorated from Jewish sources. 
 . . . From this day the Hebrew university is a reality. Our Hebrew 
 university, informed by Jewish learning and Jewish energy, will 
 mould itself into an integral part of our national structure which is 
 in process of erection. It will have a centripetal force attracting all 
 that is noblest in Jewry throughout the world; a unifying centre for 
 our scattered elements. There will go forth on the other side, inspira- 
 tion and strength that shall revivify the powers now latent in our dis- 
 tant communities; here the wandering soul of Israel shall reach its 
 haven, its strength no longer consumed in restless and vain wander- 
 ings. Israel shall at last remain at peace within itself and with the 
 world. There is a Talmudic legend that tells of the Jewish soul 
 deprived of its body hovering between heaven and earth. Such is 
 our soul to-day! To-morrow it shall come to rest in this, our sanc- 
 tuary. This is our faith." 
 
 Thus a temple to Jewish Science and learning 
 was erected at the very place where the German 
 Imperial Government had striven to rule by force. 
 Once again the everlasting victory of the Word, 
 the victory of the Spirit was expressed by a sig- 
 nificant act upon the Mountains of Jerusalem. 
 
II 
 
 JERUSALEM— THE WORLD CITY AND THE 
 WORLD WAR 
 
 By Professor Kemper Fullerton, 
 Oberlin Graduate School of Theology 
 
JERUSALEM— THE WORLD CITY AND THE 
 WORLD WAR 
 
 Professor Kemper Fullerton 
 
 WE were spending an altogether lovely sum- 
 mer in the Lebanons when the war over- 
 took us. The mutterings of the storm 
 gathering in the West during July had scarcely 
 reached our little village high up on the slopes 
 of the mountains. We had watched with interest 
 the merry scenes at the threshing floors, the children 
 tumbling about in the straw and the unmuzzled oxen 
 treading out the com. Wherever we went the vil- 
 lagers, both Maronites and Druses, seemed prosper- 
 ous and contented. The fountains poured in gen- 
 erous tides into the red water-jars of the women. 
 Olive groves and mulberry orchards with their soft 
 or vivid greens filled our foregrounds and in the 
 background the sparkling Mediterranean stretched 
 away, from its border of silver foam below us, be- 
 yond Cyprus through the Gates of Gibraltar. The 
 horizon was so far away that it was seldom possible 
 to tell where sea left off and sky began, and the 
 sun seemed to set in heaven itself. Every evening 
 the land underwent that marvelous transformation 
 which takes place in all those Eastern lands when 
 not only the sky swims in color but the earth itself 
 
 65 
 
66 JERUSALEM 
 
 dissolves in it. Across the way our neighbor, the 
 Maronite hermit, would then come out and walk on 
 the roof of his hermitage and watch the glory slowly 
 disappear and the new moon follow it into the sea. 
 Everything in "cedared Lebanon" seemed to breathe 
 of security and peace. 
 
 Then the incredible happened. On August second 
 we first heard the news that Germany had declared 
 war upon Russia. On August sixth a French cruiser 
 flashed the news ashore that "England would inter- 
 fere by sea and land." We journeyed down to Beirut 
 to find that a moritorium had been declared and for 
 two months we were marooned on our mountaintop 
 without the means to get away. The sun set as 
 radiantly as ever. The colors in the Wady Arid 
 just by our village were as soft and beautiful as 
 before, but somehow the luxury and the relaxation 
 had stilled out of the atmosphere and an indefinable 
 anxiety, a tenseness of expectation had taken their 
 place. The wild bees still made honey for us in the 
 rocks of Binnai, the fresh figs were still a delight 
 to us in August and the nectar of the grapes of 
 Androphile was a daily wonder in September, but 
 their delicious flavors seemed to be stolen sweets, 
 unlawful to enjoy. Was it a presentiment of the 
 time when there would be no grapes to eat because 
 the children of those villages would be compelled to 
 eat the roots of the vines themselves in order to keep 
 alive ? 
 
 Meanwhile we watched the first gust and splashes 
 of the storm as it swept inland from the west. We 
 noted how the Druses, the hereditary allies of the 
 British, were gradually being weaned away from 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 67 
 
 their loyalty by secret propaganda. The Maronites 
 adhered to the French. Did this mean that the 
 old bloody feuds among the mountaineers were to 
 be revived again? We felt the tremor of the daily 
 increasing fear among the Christians that their 
 privileges would be taken from them and they would 
 be left again to the tender mercies of Druse and 
 Turk, for the massacres of the 'Forties and 'Sixties 
 were still a living terror in the land. One evening 
 we watched from the heights of our village the rockets 
 and heard the guns which celebrated in Beirut the 
 denunciation of the Capitulations — Turkey's fatal 
 step in her rake's progress. Later we were told of 
 the thousands of persons who had fled from the 
 same city into the mountains and to Damascus at 
 the rumored British bombardment of the coast soon 
 to take place. 
 
 In the midst of these disquieting occurrences our 
 cruiser, the North Carolina, arrived on the scene, 
 bearing gold, yea much fine gold, enough to get us 
 home again. But should we go? Friends at home 
 had been urging our return. Friends in Syria, 
 especially our English friends, warned us that war 
 between England and Turkey was inevitable and in 
 that event nobody could tell what might happen. As 
 a matter of fact, the English White Paper on the 
 relationship between Turkey and England after- 
 wards disclosed how many telegrams were winging 
 their way like birds of evil omen between London and 
 Constantinople just at that time, telling of the 
 seriousness of the situation, and within a few weeks 
 some of the friends who had so kindly warned us 
 were themselves to be prisoners in Damascus. 
 
68 JERUSALEM 
 
 But Jerusalem was as yet unvisited. Could we 
 bring ourselves to forego catching at least one 
 glimpse of the Holy City? We resolved to make 
 the attempt. Our plan was to go to Jerusalem and 
 pay a flying visit to the sacred sites even if we were 
 compelled to leave the day after our arrival. We 
 would at least have the right to carry the pilgrim's 
 palm. 
 
n 
 
 ON a beautiful evening just at sunset we 
 boarded a small Italian steamer, saying 
 farewell to glorious St. George's Bay and 
 goodly Lebanon. The wind blew fair and soft and 
 as we dropped anchor off Jaffa next morning and 
 were rowed ashore over the lazy undulations of the 
 sea in the warm October air, the prospect seemed 
 altogether reassuring. The Holy Land looked in- 
 deed like the Canaan of psalm and hymn, a land of 
 serenity and peace, fit emblem of the Rest that re- 
 maineth. It seemed as if it were still dreaming of 
 its milk and honey Past or of the heavenly Future 
 and as if the fierce Present concerned it not at all. 
 Our journey up to Jerusalem from Jaffa was suf- 
 ficiently commonplace. As we crossed the famous 
 coast-plain I suppose we should have been thinking 
 of Philistine, Saracen and Crusader. As a matter 
 of fact we spent the most of the time in conversation 
 with the only other traveler in our compartment, 
 an agreeable young man who was representing the 
 Standard Oil. He was one of the few Americans 
 still remaining in Jerusalem. Save for the mis- 
 sionary, the Standard Oil seems to be the first to 
 arrive in the far or dangerous corners of the earth 
 and the last to leave. The company had been pros- 
 pecting to the south of the Dead Sea and had 
 
70 JERUSALEM 
 
 started to build a road from Hebron to the reputed 
 sites of Sodom and Gomorrah in order to tap the 
 second causes of their overthrow. They were mak- 
 ing good progress when the War broke out. The 
 Turks afterward extended this road, I believe, as an 
 important link in the hne of communications for 
 their Egyptian expedition and the English have no 
 doubt also used it when they paid their return call. 
 
 As we approached the Holy City our hearts beat 
 faster and we pressed our cheeks against the window 
 panes to catch a first glimpse of its walls and towers. 
 But if we had been compelled to restrict our sojourn 
 in Jerusalem to the day or two which we had 
 originally allowed ourselves, our first impressions 
 would have been disappointing. To love Jerusalem 
 one must live there and must probe deep below its 
 surface. Not till the soles of one's feet have be- 
 come sufficiently sensitive to be able to distinguish 
 between a twenty-foot layer of debris and a forty- 
 foot layer simply by walking over them, will he 
 begin to prefer Jerusalem above his -chief joy. 
 
 The first appearance of the city as we rode from 
 the station in the fading light of the late afternoon 
 was distinctly uninviting. It looked dusty and 
 haggard after the summer heat. The upper part 
 of the valley of Hinnom, which lies to the right as 
 one enters the city, was slummy and unkempt. I 
 should never have been tempted to worship Moloch 
 there ! The gaping Birket-es-Sultan on the opposite 
 side of the road, with some slimy green water col- 
 lected at its lower edge, was equally unattractive, 
 while just above it the barrack-like structures of 
 the Montefiori Jewish colony inject their ugliness 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 71 
 
 into a scene already sufficiently painful to an ex- 
 pectant imagination and the bulky German Church 
 of the Dormitio that sits like a huge paper-weight 
 on the traditional hill of Zion does nothing to re- 
 lieve it. This Church, by the way, is out of all 
 proportion to its environment and assaults the at- 
 tention of everyone who approaches the city from 
 the railway station. The interior is beautiful, 
 chaste and serene, and the service, conducted by the 
 Benedictines, is one of the most devout to be found 
 in the city, but the exterior is aggressive and irri- 
 tating. Wherever one goes about Jerusalem this 
 great pile strikes the eye with the brutality of a 
 mailed fist. 
 
 The only really beautiful object which we passed 
 from the Jaffa Gate at the south of the city to 
 what was to be our pleasant home in the American 
 Colony which lies some half-mile beyond the 
 Damascus Gate at the north of the city, was the 
 tower of St. George's Cathedral. But even this bit 
 of architecture, which is fine in itself, is not, 
 aesthetically, altogether satisfying, llising, as it 
 does, out of a grove of olive trees, this thoroughly 
 English tower seemed to be an exotic in its Oriental 
 environment. I often used to meditate upon those 
 two churches in the weeks that followed — ^the Ger- 
 man Church at the south of the city and the English 
 cathedral at the north of it. They are the two 
 architectural features which are most conspicuous 
 from practically every vantage-ground. Even from 
 the Mount of Olives these modern upstarts thrust 
 themselves upon the unwilling attention, symboHc of 
 the present struggle for Jerusalem, hut botJi outside 
 
72 JERUSALEM 
 
 the walls! Is there not a spiritual hint in that lat- 
 ter fact? Can Jerusalem be Occidentalized, Teuton- 
 ized or Anglicised? George Adam Smith in a happy 
 moment calls attention to the fact that the geological 
 dip of the city is toward the East. Zechariah, it 
 is true, anticipates some strange transformations in 
 the topography of Jerusalem hereafter, but he does 
 not appear to contemplate such a change in the 
 geology of its site as to compel the city to bow in 
 worship toward the West instead of toward the 
 East. 
 
 On our arrival all that we had heard of the 
 dangers and difficulties of a visit to Jerusalem in 
 those troubled times seemed to be quite wide of the 
 mark. Instead of a day's flying visit we settled 
 down to a prolonged stay, and for the first two 
 weeks of it we went about the city and its imme- 
 diate environs in a leisurely, comfortable way. 
 
 The city was, of course, even then under martial 
 law, but this signified only an increased security. 
 Jerusalem is not a turbulent city even in ordinary 
 times when police regulations are not so stringent. 
 Few crimes of violence occur there and such as do 
 occur usually arises among the jealous Christian 
 sects or quarrelsome Jewish parties, rarely between 
 Moslems and Christians. But the strict military 
 discipline effectually checked any violence whatso- 
 ever. Indeed it should be said in justice to the 
 Turkish authorities that both before and after 
 Turkey declared war the order in Jerusalem 
 throughout the fall and early winter of 1914 was 
 admirable. This was due in large measure to the 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 73 
 
 good sense and moderation of the military com- 
 mander, Zeki Bey. 
 
 After war was declared police regulations were 
 of course somewhat more rigid than before. No one 
 was supposed to leave town without a permit; no 
 one was to be out after eight o'clock at night; no 
 one was to speak ill of his neighbor's religion. This 
 last regulation would have proved to us that we were 
 in an Oriental capital even if our sense of smell had 
 failed us. But none of these regulations hampered 
 us to any extent. We did not become sufficiently 
 intimate with any one in the gossipy capital to feel 
 aggrieved by a prohibition to curse his father's re- 
 ligion or his grandfather's beard. As there were no 
 picture shows in the city we could stay at home 
 after dark by our little drum stove quite contentedly. 
 So far as leaving town was concerned we obtained 
 without any difficulty permits from the authorities 
 to visit the surrounding districts. But this proved 
 to be a mere form. Only on the Nablous road did 
 we find a guard to question our right of egress and 
 by going a few hundred feet east or west of him 
 across the upper hollows of the valley of 
 Jehoshaphat, he could be circumvented without dif- 
 ficulty. The one locality which we were forbidden 
 to visit after the war was declared was Hebron. 
 As Hebron was at that time the main southern base 
 for the Egyptian expedition this restriction was not 
 to be wondered at. To the north the unsettled con- 
 ditions of the times and the restlessness and sus- 
 picion of the population made travel practically out 
 of the question. 
 
74 JERUSALEM 
 
 Thus, for the ten weeks of our stay, we were 
 compelled whether we would or not, to concentrate 
 our attention upon the strange city. But we were 
 not left without our reward. Jerusalem revealed 
 itself to us as it had revealed itself to no one, per- 
 haps, for generations. Our good friends, the Mont- 
 gomery s (Professor Montgomery was the director 
 of the American School for Oriental research that 
 year), and ourselves were the only persons in the 
 city who by any possibility could be classified as 
 tourists, a situation scarcely duplicated since the 
 days of the Bordeaux Pilgrim (333 A. D.). 
 
 Now, the tourist unavoidably carries with him an 
 atmosphere that communicates itself in a subtly 
 damaging way to all the scenes the tourist visits. 
 The tourist is automatically a vandal. He cannot 
 help himself. The most beautiful and sacred ob- 
 jects inevitably take on a bored and blase air after 
 they have been described in Baedeker and stared at 
 by sight-seers decade after decade. It is as if, under 
 cover of indifference, the choicer things in nature, 
 art and history wished to hide away their heart 
 secrets from the sacrilege of the idly curious. I 
 can well imagine that Jerusalem defends itself in 
 this way during the tourist season, and it is doubtful 
 if the average traveler ever catches anything but 
 the faintest suggestion of the real city of Zion. 
 
 I shall never forget the quiet rambles we took 
 about the city in those Autumn days. Not even 
 beggars molested us. The fake beggars who came 
 crawling and limping in from the surrounding vil- 
 lages to demand baksheesh during the tourist season 
 did not think it worth their while that year to 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 75 
 
 stir from the shelter of their homes. The few beggars 
 we saw were genuine beggars whose pedigrees reached 
 back to bhnd Bartimeus. One Friday we would 
 follow the weekly Franciscan procession, as it en- 
 tered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre out of the 
 Via Dolorosa, and wound its way with lighted tapers 
 through the dark ambulatory and down into the 
 blacker chapel of St. Helena, its murmuring chant 
 resounding through the Church and finally breaking 
 into a stately hymn, as the monks ascended the 
 steps to Calvary. On a Saturday we might find 
 ourselves in the synagogue of the Karite Jews — the 
 oldest synagogue in all probability in Jerusalem. 
 Only five families of this heretical Jewish sect are 
 still left in the city. Their synagogue is a diminutive 
 one, partly underground, and out of repair. On 
 the day we visited it the rain was leaking through 
 the roof. But it was spotlessly clean and redolent 
 of devotion, in striking contrast to the stinking 
 vault of a Sephardim synagogue and the tumultuous 
 worship of an Ashkenazim synagogue in the same 
 neighborhood. We sat for two hours while the rain 
 pattered on the roof and listened to the cantillation 
 of the Sabbath lections. There were only four men 
 present and three women in a balcony above. The 
 official reader was too blind to read the service and 
 the other three men read in turns. At the end of 
 the service they shook each other's hands and wished 
 each other "peace," then wrapped their beautifully 
 illuminated Bible away in a silk handkerchief with 
 loving care. Outside the city wall on the slopes of 
 the valley of Hinnom is the dreary cemetery of the 
 Karites, with its rude and nameless stones, where 
 
76 JERUSALEM 
 
 no doubt these last representatives of the sect will 
 one day be buried. 
 
 Our favorite walk was down the Kidron Valley. 
 Half-way down we would turn into Gethsemane and 
 sit under the shade of the old olive trees in the balmy 
 air and look up at the great eastern wall of the city 
 and the Golden Gate, while kindly Fra Giulio picked 
 us posies from his lovingly tended garden. 
 
 I have said that the first aspect of Jerusalem is 
 rather uninviting. It is not a city of artistic charm. 
 In this respect it is in sharp contrast with almost 
 any Italian city one may visit. When one has 
 named the glorious Crusading Church of St. Anne, 
 the charming little Convent of the Lentils (St. Nico- 
 demus), tucked away in a back alley of Bezetha and 
 not even mentioned in Baedeker, and the Mosque 
 of Omar, he has named the three really beautiful 
 architectural objects in Jerusalem. 
 
 Most of the Churches seem to be caves or dun- 
 geons. Religion is largely troglodyte there. The 
 pictures that decorate the walls of the churches and 
 monastaries are usually atrocious and there is 
 practically no statuary. The general impression 
 which the city makes is rather grim and austere and 
 the vast rubbish heap of Ophel which marks the 
 site of the ancient city of David, with its ash-gray 
 slopes of potsherds, decorated with old tin cans and 
 cabbage patches, is positively ugly. 
 
 But there is one feature of the city which is al- 
 ways enchanting — the walls. Our favorite view of 
 them was from the garden of Gethsemane. Some- 
 times they would be the mellowest golden-brown 
 when the sun rested on them. Under a passing cloud 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 77 
 
 they would change to soft greens and mottled grays. 
 One evening we were walking up the Kidron at sun- 
 set. The shadows had already gathered in the lonely 
 gulch and the tomb of Absalom looked like a gigantic 
 ghost as we passed it. But the sun had thrown a 
 last jet of fire across the city above us and struck 
 the wall of the Viri Galilaei that rims the brow of 
 Olivet on the opposite side of the valley. The wall 
 stood out above the darkness below like a softly 
 \ flaming coronet of gold. Isaiah must have had some 
 such scene in mind when he likened Samaria on its 
 hill-top to a crown. 
 
 Sometimes we prolonged our stroll over the 
 Mount of Olives to Bethany. The inhabitants of 
 Et Tur on the top of the mountain, who have a 
 rather evil reputation, never troubled us at all. We 
 never tired of watching from the summit the vast, 
 majestic reaches of the wilderness of Judea or the 
 changing colors of the mountains of Moab and the 
 Dead Sea. There is a saddle on the eastern slope 
 of Olivet just beyond the Franciscan site of Beth- 
 page and a few minutes before you arrive at 
 Bethany. It is a very quiet place with marvelous 
 views toward the Frank Mountain on the southeast 
 and toward the Jordan Valley and the upper end 
 of the Dead Sea on the northeast. A little olive 
 grove is there and I have sometimes wondered if the 
 original Garden of Gethsemane was not in that 
 neighborhood, remote, unmolested, with a sense of 
 vastness pervading the landscape — no fitter place 
 for prayer and meditation can be found around 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 In these many walks about the city and its en- 
 
78 JERUSALEM 
 
 virons the utter quietness of it all impressed us 
 constantly. As I think back upon those days it 
 seems as if a strange and solemn hush had fallen 
 upon the city and the hills around it. A subdued 
 and mournful expectancy seemed to tremble in 
 the air. 
 
ni 
 
 ON October 31st we saw on our morning walk 
 an ominous sight. The Italian flag was 
 flying over the Russian consulate. On our 
 return home we learned that war had been declared 
 between Russia and Turkey, that the Spanish consul 
 had taken the French interests in charge and that 
 our own consul, Dr. Glazebrook, had been requested 
 to look after the British interests. We seemed to 
 be in for it at last, actually trapped in a war zone. 
 That afternoon we walked again through the city. 
 The day was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and 
 happened to be at the same time the Mohammedan 
 feast of Abirman. All shops were closed. Scarcely 
 a person was to be seen on the streets. The stillness 
 of Jerusalem had deepened until it had become un- 
 canny. The sorrowful forebodings of the past few 
 weeks were now to be realized. That ancient capital 
 knew what war and bloodshed meant. In its heart 
 were the recollections of countless agonies, in its 
 ears the cries of the widowed and the fatherless of 
 unnumbered generations. Its garments were stained 
 with the blood of butchered multitudes. Were all 
 these awful experiences to be again repeated? Alas! 
 the past four years have only too well justified those 
 early fears. But for a time things went on, at least 
 for us, about as they had done before. We re- 
 sumed our explorations of the sacred sites, faked 
 
 79 
 
80 JERUSALEM 
 
 and genuine, and the spell of the past reasserted 
 itself even in the midst of the commotions of the 
 present. We were subjected to only two annoyances 
 of any consequence. The first was the failure to 
 hear anything definite from the outside world or 
 for that matter from the world immediately about 
 us. Until war was declared we had at least the 
 French and Renter telegrams with which to balance 
 the German, though the former could not even then 
 be posted on the streets without the danger of being 
 torn down. But after the war began all the allied 
 sources of information failed us. We were shut up 
 to the German and Austrian dispatches. These were 
 meagre in the extreme and seldom admitted any 
 reverses. Even though one was morally certain that 
 there was another side to the story, the effect of 
 constant iteration and reiteration of the same news 
 over a period of several weeks was depressing. The 
 only offset to this discouraging telegraphic influence 
 was an occasional rumor started by some unknown 
 person who had talked with some other unknown per- 
 son when the latter had landed at an unknown date 
 from an unnamed Italian steamer. Rumors with such 
 pedigrees did not inspire much confidence though 
 they could be used to cancel the wild claims of the 
 Turkish telegrams which now began to be posted 
 up. We were thrown back for fuller information 
 upon our papers from home. These arrived from 
 a month to six weeks after their publication. While 
 our friends were reading extras morning, noon and 
 night, we were being schooled in the useful Oriental 
 lesson of patience and scorn of speed. So far as 
 Jerusalem news was concerned all we could learn 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 81 
 
 was by word of mouth. The only papers in circula- 
 tion were in Hebrew and Arabic and they were of 
 course heavily censored. 
 
 It is really surprising, when I think back upon 
 it, how very little we managed to find out of what 
 was going on immediately about us. Fortunately, 
 and rather remarkably, too, our home papers were 
 admitted without much censoring. Our private let- 
 ters were opened, of course. But I doubt if they 
 were read. This was lucky, for our friends indulged 
 in all sorts of tirades against the "unspeakable 
 Turk" which the unspeakable Turk usually allowed 
 to pass with the most exemplary lack of resentment. 
 In some cases, however, he did seem to scent some 
 cryptic danger to his fatherland. A letter came to 
 a Swedish friend of ours in which the innocent ex- 
 hortation "love to the baby" was smudged over by 
 the censor's thumb. The French Consul wished to 
 send a telegram home to his wife and to assure her 
 that he was safe and at ease he mentioned the fact 
 that he was playing bridge. The reference to 
 "bridge" sounded suspicious. Was military in- 
 formation being given to the enemy? Was there 
 a plot to blow up a bridge? The consul had to 
 appeal to the commandant before he could send his 
 telegram through. When leaving the country I had 
 upwards of three hundred slides and a considerable 
 amount of manuscript which I wished to take out 
 with me. I was cheerfully assured by friends that 
 these would give me much trouble, that if the manu- 
 script was found I would probably be put in prison 
 till it was read through. To save trouble at Jaffa 
 I had them all passed and sealed by the censor at 
 
82 JERUSALEM 
 
 Jerusalem. The only thing objected to was a note 
 on a scrap of paper by my wife stating that she had 
 seen one morning twenty peasant women with bales 
 of tebn on their heads being driven into town by 
 soldiers. Our kind-hearted censor did not like the 
 idea that gallant Turkish soldiers were driving 
 peasant women. I glossed over the memorandum 
 with the qualification that what the soldiers were 
 really doing was simply guiding the women to their 
 proper destination. When I finally reached Jaffa 
 the officials there ignored the Jerusalem censor's 
 seals but on the payment of baksheesh allowed the 
 slides to pass as being "a help to the country." 
 They paid no attention to my manuscripts, but in 
 the search of my person on the dock before em- 
 barcation they kept a copy of my will! 
 
 The other annoyance to which we, or rather our 
 friends, were subjected for a time arose from the 
 censor's regulations respecting the composition of 
 our own letters. English was debarred. They must 
 be written in Turkish, Arabic, French or German. 
 As German was the only one of these languages we 
 could handle we elected to send home our Christmas 
 greetings in this speech and they fairly reeked with 
 our "froehliche Weinachten" and "herzlichste 
 Grusse." Happily the restriction upon English was 
 lifted after a couple of weeks. 
 
IV 
 
 MEANWHILE the effects of the changed 
 situation began to manifest themselves in 
 ways decidedly distressing for others. 
 Requisitions for the army from every possible source 
 of supplies became more frequent and tyrannical. 
 After the first of August when the general mobiliza- 
 tion of the Turkish troops was ordered the condition 
 of the fellaheen had gone from bad to worse. The 
 government had no means to support an army and 
 so turned it loose to live off the country. A man 
 in the cavalry service told a friend of ours that his 
 pay was a ruba (a shilling) a month. While we 
 were in Egypt an Australian trooper received six 
 shillings a day. Even in the early days of the 
 summer the newly levied soldiers had to provide their 
 own outfit and rations for five days. But a man 
 could still buy himself off from conscription by the 
 payment of forty napoleons; only he ran the risk 
 of being drafted again after the payment. After 
 the war actually began requisitions and conscription 
 enlarged their maws and gulped down what was left 
 of the peasantry and their livelihood. In Bethany 
 we saw one day a proclamation to the effect that 
 if any one attempted to avoid the conscription he 
 would be shot with a rifle and a cannon and sabered 
 in addition. We chanced to meet there the present 
 innkeeper of the Good Samaritan Inn, a distant 
 
 83 
 
84 JERUSALEM 
 
 glimpse of which can be obtained from Bethany. He 
 had come in to town to answer the draft and escape 
 a bloody end. We asked him what he thought of 
 it all. He laid the blame on Germany but seemed 
 quite willing to go to war. We asked him what the 
 women and children would do in the meantime. 
 "Work and die" this successor to the kindly host 
 of old answered laconically. One day we heard 
 our poor old egg-man at the Colony had come to 
 grief. He and his donkey had been requisitioned to 
 go to Beersheba. He went to the officers to find 
 out more particulars and had a tooth knocked out 
 for his impudence. Poor old fellow! we used to 
 watch him counting out his eggs, singing their num- 
 bers to himself in a kind of chant and always omit- 
 ting to speak the number seven lest it should bring 
 bad luck. His circumspect enumeration had not 
 saved him or his tooth. On another day we were 
 visited by a party of Bedouins from the Bene Sachr 
 tribe. The son of the sheik who was with them, 
 a lad of only fourteen, was one of the handsomest 
 boys I have ever set eyes on. He was a walking 
 arsenal; guns, cartridges and daggers were fairly 
 festooned about him. They had brought in five 
 hundred camels which had been requisitioned from 
 their tribe. The party was full of war, said they 
 were not afraid of any cannon (which they had 
 probably never seen), could muster 30,000 guns and 
 horses and claimed they were equal in prowess to 
 any four other nations. These Arab tribes under 
 the King of the Hedjaz have since favored the cause 
 of the Entente. The long camel trains, bringing 
 ammunition and provisions for the Egyptian ex- 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 85 
 
 pedition, were among the commonest sights we saw 
 those autumn weeks. They came traihng over the 
 slopes of Scopus from the north in a never-ending 
 stream. Taxes, of course, in Turkey are always 
 cruelly heavy. Even before the war, many olive 
 trees which had taken years and years to grow were 
 cut down because of the heavy tax upon them. 
 With the war the tax levies became intolerable. One 
 day we saw a lot of signs being taken down from 
 the various shops about the Jaffa Gate. The signs 
 were taxed and as tourist trade had aU. dried up, 
 it no longer paid to keep these heavily taxed ad- 
 vertisements. 
 
 The Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem were obliged 
 again to endure the sufferings which the Jewish 
 people of Jerusalem have always had to endure 
 throughout the countless ages of its history. Jeru- 
 salem is a great pauper asylum even in times of 
 peace. Of its population of 70,000 at the outbreak 
 of the war nearly two-thirds were Jews and the 
 great majority of them were more or less dependent 
 upon charity. It was a hopeless situation and 
 should never have been allowed to develop. In the 
 emergency of the world war it became appalling. 
 Fully a month before we left the city Herr Dr. 
 Cohen of the Deutscher Hilfsverein, one of the most 
 admirable Jewish educational and philanthropic in- 
 stitutions in the city, told me that the Jewish relief 
 committee were feeding some 7000 Jews daily in 
 the soup kitchens. They would not have been able 
 to do this had it not been for the American Jewish 
 Relief Fund which was, indeed, manna sent from 
 heaven in their distress. At the Evelina Rothschild 
 
86 JERUSALEM 
 
 School, another excellently conducted school for 
 orphan Jewish children, they were able to give the 
 poor little things but one meal a day. When we 
 visited the school Miss L , the matron, was talk- 
 ing to the children on the war. She asked them 
 what it was that we were all longing for, expecting 
 them to answer peace. But at once they replied 
 "Our Messiah." Their minds were full of Israel's 
 hope, for they were practising their songs for the 
 Hannucca festival which commemorates the great 
 deliverance from Antiochus wrought by Judas Mac- 
 
 cabaeus. Miss L told us of her experience in 
 
 attempting to dole out bread to the Moghrebins, 
 Jews from North-west Africa, who lived down by 
 the Wailing Wall. They are a savage lot at best 
 and famine had reduced them to the level of beasts. 
 She was obliged to stand at an open window and 
 throw bread out to them. When she had given away 
 all her supply they tried to force their way into 
 the room where she was for more, and actually had 
 to be whipped back by the commandant of the city 
 who was with her. 
 
 One of the most pathetic sights was at our own 
 Consulate. Whenever one visited it, morning, noon 
 or night, the waiting-room was sure to be filled with 
 timid-eyed old Jews. They had come over from 
 America in order to be buried at Jerusalem. The 
 first thing they do on arrival is to buy a burial plot 
 on the Mount of Olives. This is as near as they 
 can get to the sight of the ancient temple, for the 
 Mohammedans have preempted the ground directly 
 by the temple wall. Both Mohammedans and Jews 
 believe that the Judgment scene is to take place in 
 
Press Illustrating Service. 
 
 "The Place Called Gethsemane. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 87 
 
 the Kidron Valley. The government was, of course, 
 drafting all the Jews into the army and these poor 
 old men were trying to claim exemption as American 
 citizens. But only too often their papers were de- 
 fective and our kindly Consul could do nothing for 
 them. 
 
THE disasters which overtook the fellaheen and 
 the Jews were also to be visited upon the 
 great ecclesiastical orders in Jerusalem. 
 
 I well remember a visit we paid to the beautiful 
 crusading church of St. Annes. This church was 
 tenderly and reverently cared for by the White 
 Fathers. Connected with it is the best museum of 
 antiquities in Jerusalem. One pleasant, balmy morn- 
 ing we wandered through the cool gray aisles of 
 the ancient sanctuary. No one, apparently, was 
 about. We descended into the crypt and there in 
 the quiet dimness was a White Father, sitting alone, 
 keeping a vigil over the reputed birth-place of the 
 Virgin. It all seemed very subdued and peaceful 
 and secure. Since we had plenty of time, as we 
 supposed, we did not attempt to see the museum 
 on that visit. A few days later we went again to 
 inspect it. Now all was changed. War had been 
 declared the day before. The White Fathers were 
 fluttering around their once peaceful close like so 
 many white doves disturbed by the approach of 
 an enemy. They feared that St. Annes would be 
 seized. Establishments such as this would make ex- 
 cellent quarters for the Turkish troops. 
 
 When we, rather thoughtlessly, asked permission 
 to see the museum, we were told it was impossible. 
 JThe curator was covered with cobwebs and we 
 
 88 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 89 
 
 shrewdly suspected that the treasures were being 
 hidden away in some safe crypt. Their fears and 
 precautions were justified. We had scarcely re- 
 turned home when it was announced that St. Annes 
 was in Moslem hands and later it was turned into 
 a barracks. Then came the news that the Convent 
 of the Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes had been 
 seized. We had spent a morning there, also, only 
 a short time before, examining the ruins of Tancred's 
 Tower, possibly the great tower of Psephinus built 
 by Herod Agrippa. One of the kindly brothers had 
 taken us up to the roof to show us the truly mag- 
 nificent view which was to be had from this point, 
 perhaps the highest in the city. He pointed out 
 the place where he thought Sennacherib had en- 
 camped and the little mosque just by the convent 
 wall which was built to commemorate the spot where 
 Saladin effected his entrance into the city. But now 
 another storm was gathering against the capital and 
 the Christian Brothers were to be caught within its 
 sweep. They were shortly evicted from the shelter 
 of their convent. 
 
 The same fate was ultimately visited upon the 
 learned Dominicans of St. Stephen's. I chanced to 
 be at the Convent when Pere La Grange and his 
 colleagues were making preparations against their 
 expected exile. The Dominicans have the best 
 modern library in Jerusalem and many valuable 
 antiquities. They seemed to be more concerned for 
 these than for their own safety. Well they might 
 be. We saw what could happen to such collections 
 one day when we visited the Turkish museum. This 
 was comprised of the collections which Bliss, Sellin 
 
90 JERUSALEM 
 
 and McKenzie had been obliged to turn over to the 
 Turkish government. Much of the material was 
 boxed up, but it had been so often packed and re- 
 packed that it was hopelessly jumbled, while the 
 unpacked articles were lying about the dingy little 
 room gathering cobwebs. It is to be feared that 
 the scientific value of these precious collections has 
 been largely destroyed. As for the Dominicans 
 themselves they were soon to be prisoners in their 
 own convent. 
 
 The Russian Hospice was one of the first build- 
 ings to be taken over and the military commandant 
 established his headquarters there. It was in these 
 quarters that the ladies of our party joined in the 
 activities of the newly established Jerusalem branch 
 of the Red Crescent Society and learned to make 
 socks and bandages for the Turkish soldiers. There 
 is, or rather was, a Russian convent in the Gorge 
 of the Wady Fara about six miles from Jerusalem. 
 This Wady is one of the wildest of the kind in the 
 neighborhood. The convent itself is located high 
 up on a stupendous cliff in an ancient cave, 
 formerly a hermit's cell and later, I understand, a 
 robbers' den. When we visited it, it had just been 
 pillaged by the natives of the neighboring village 
 of Hismeh. Its walls were riddled with bullets, its 
 eikons pulled down, the tinsel flowers that adorned 
 them scattered over the floor. A solitary guard 
 was set over the desolation after the ruin had been 
 wrought — the usual Turkish way! The world has 
 been sated with nameless horrors since those early 
 days of the war and I realize the little I saw is in- 
 significant by comparison. Yet somehow that 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE [91 
 
 wrecked Russian convent in its environment of grim 
 and savage crags, remote from the haunts of men, 
 has always seemed to me a fit symbol of the madness 
 and mercilessness of the World-war. 
 
 But what was to happen to beautiful St. George's ? 
 The cathedral was near our home and we had be- 
 come greatly interested in its fate and in the fate 
 of our friends of the chapter who still remained in 
 Jerusalem. We had been accustomed to attend 
 afternoon service there. It was fine to see the brave 
 attempt which Canon H. and Mr. R., the head- 
 master of the cathedral-school, made to carry on the 
 stately services of the Church of England amidst 
 their country's enemies. For a time the boy-choir 
 of the school was maintained. But we have been 
 present at a service carried through in all its de- 
 tails, with lections, sermon, responses and anthems, 
 when only two other persons besides ourselves sat 
 in the great nave of the church. The choir was 
 obliged to be disbanded but Canon H. still preached 
 on. Later the Turks dug a great hole before a 
 side altar where they claimed to have heard guns 
 were secreted and we had to sit beside this pit and 
 pray with increased fervor Good Lord deliver us. 
 To avoid further vandalism we undertook to dis- 
 mantle the church ourselves and pack away such 
 of the furnishings as could be packed. Finally we 
 retired to a little side chapel for the services. Not 
 once until the very end were they discontinued. 
 The dignity, solemnity, I think I may truly say the 
 quiet exaltation of those services when just a hand- 
 ful of us were gathered in the great cathedral or 
 in the little chapel, none of us knowing what a day 
 
92] JERUSALEM 
 
 might bring forth, will never be forgotten by those 
 who participated in them. The majestic calm of 
 the things unseen and eternal seemed to challenge 
 the turmoil of the present. 
 
 But what was to happen to all these very peace- 
 able belligerents of the various ecclesiastical orders 
 whose sheltering convents and churches had been 
 seized from over their heads? A hastily written 
 note from Mr. R. received December 10th seemed 
 to decide the question. "Please inform the consul 
 at once," it read, "that we have been ordered to 
 leave Jerusalem for Urfa this afternoon. I am 
 imprisoned in the school-building." 
 
 Just a few minutes before the card came I had 
 met Canon H. entering the cathedral close quite 
 innocent of his doom. I hastened over to our con- 
 sul. Dr. Glazebrook, the friend of every one in need 
 in Jerusalem, Jew or Gentile, Latin, Greek, Protes- 
 tant or Unbeliever. To my astonishment the Canon 
 was already there. He had passed in at the front 
 gate of the close, learned that he was to be re- 
 garded as a prisoner, immediately leaped over a 
 back-wall and declining an invitation to tea from 
 a Mohammedan Effendi who had seen him in this 
 rather strenuous and uncanonical exercise, had 
 hastened over to the consulate for advice. While 
 we were discussing ways and means in came the 
 other prisoner, Mr. R. He had been dispatched by 
 the police to discover the whereabouts of the Canon ! 
 But in spite of the fact that the situation had this 
 touch of opera bouife about it, it was serious 
 enough. Urfa sounded a long way oif and very 
 wintry. The journey would have to be made in 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 93 
 
 inclement weather which was now setting in. The 
 lovely weather of the Autumn had given place to 
 rains that had broken all records for fifty-two 
 years. There would be no consular protection for 
 the prisoners from the probable exactions of the 
 Turkish guards. There were also ugly rumors, and 
 they afterwards proved to be authentic, that Djemal 
 Pasha, at that time the military governor of 
 Damascus, had threatened to shoot the English 
 prisoners if any unfortified seacoast towns were 
 bombarded. It seemed as if our friends were in a 
 very precarious situation. 
 
 Dr. and Mrs. Glazebrook were just sitting down 
 to dinner when the two gentlemen came in and in- 
 vited them to dine. To the eye, it seemed like a 
 cozy little party. But the good cheer of it only 
 threw the actual situation into a gaunter back- 
 ground. It was impossible for our Consul to keep 
 them and they were compelled to leave the shelter 
 of the consulate. Friends assisted them to pack 
 their effects and then we all had tea together in the 
 dismantled study of the Canon — a function which 
 I am sure an Englishman would not omit or fail 
 even to enjoy if his execution were impending within 
 the hour — and waited for the gendarmes. But they 
 did not come. Our Consul secured an order tempo- 
 rary suspending banishment. This was the begin- 
 ning of a fortnight's cat-and-mouse play with the 
 English ecclesiastics and the other religious orders, 
 most trying to the nerves. 
 
 I had all my life been taught to believe in the 
 unchanging East. It is a myth. The hghtning-like 
 rapidity with which the scenes were shifted in the 
 
94 JERUSALEM 
 
 next two weeks was quite beyond my experience. 
 Counter-order followed order in quick succession. 
 But at last it did seem as if things had come to a 
 climax. One afternoon we saw between thirty and 
 forty carriages drawn up at the gate of the 
 Dominican convent. There was to be no fooling 
 this time. Northward they were to go. One Father 
 was in the last stages of consumption; another had 
 a broken leg. But all were to be bundled off and 
 must stand the long hard journey as best they 
 could. They were not to start till after dark. That 
 evening Canon H. and Mr. R., who had been im- 
 prisoned in the Dominican convent and whose fates 
 were still hanging in the balance, had secured a 
 parole and were dining at the Colony. It was a 
 bleak, windy night and the rain was falling. After 
 dinner we gathered in the great reception room of 
 the Colony which looks out on the Nablous road. 
 It was bright and cheerful inside, but the thoughts 
 of all were upon the Dominicans. Presently we 
 heard the rumble of carriage wheels. It was too 
 dark to see them pass, but for upwards of half an 
 hour we listened with scarcely a word spoken among 
 us as carriage after carriage jolted past us in the 
 darkness carrying the Dominicans to an unknown 
 fate. As I watched the set faces of our two English 
 friends while these doleful sounds came up to us 
 out of the night, the horror of war, only the rela- 
 tively trivial by-products of which I was witnessing, 
 came over me, the utter helplessness of the thou- 
 sands upon thousands of innocent harmless people 
 who had been caught in tliis awful maelstrom of 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 95 
 
 civilization and were being sucked down into its 
 disastrous vortex.* 
 
 Meanwhile our consul was leaving no stone un- 
 turned to save the English. Besides our friends 
 of St. George's there was a group of splendid men 
 and women, principally of the C. M. S. and Scotch 
 missions, who had been driven in from their stations 
 in Hebron, Gaza and Nablous. Their headquarters 
 were in the Olivet House where good Mr. Hinsman 
 must have housed them free of charge, for the money 
 they had in the banks was confiscated almost im- 
 mediately. For two weeks their bags lay packed 
 in the hallway of the hotel ready to start for 
 Damascus, Urfa, or home. They never knew a day 
 ahead what their fate was to be. It was a trying 
 ordeal which finally ended as we shall see in a really 
 dramatic climax. Yet it should be said in justice 
 to the Turkish authorities that while the fate of 
 the English was being decided they were allowed to 
 go about the city with perfect freedom and not once 
 were they subjected to any insult or hostile demon- 
 stration. 
 
 * We learned afterwards that the Dominicans were ultimately 
 spared. The Pope protested so vigorously to Austria against the 
 exile of the Latin orders that the Dominicans were taken only as 
 far as Beirut where they were allowed to board a steamer for 
 France and freedom. 
 
yi 
 
 As the holidays approached, the situation in Jeru- 
 salem became more and more tense. Evidences 
 ■ of the big campaign against Egypt which the 
 Turks were planning to launch multiplied on every 
 hand. Out of our window which looked toward the 
 slopes of Scopus to the north of the city we used 
 to watch the Red Crescent brigade at their daily 
 maneuvers or soldiers practising trench-digging. 
 One day we saw a vast shining mountain of tin 
 raised up just outside the Damascus gate. It proved 
 to be made up of Standard Oil cans. Seventeen 
 thousand of them had been collected for the march 
 through the desert. Another day we attempted to 
 visit Solomon's stone-quarries only to be driven out 
 as soon as we entered by a stench unspeakable. The 
 vast cavern was full of camels which had been herded 
 there to keep them out of the heavy rains. An 
 occasional automobile with dashing officers came 
 racing around the old walls of the city. One turned 
 turtle just outside our doorway, to the great sur- 
 prise of everybody. A civilization accustomed 
 to the Palestinian ass did not know what to make 
 of this roaring fiery dragon. Rumor finally shaped 
 itself into something like definiteness that the ad- 
 vanced guard of the Expedition under Djemal 
 Pasha himself would shortly arrive and that the 
 Holy Flag was to be brought to the city in token 
 
 96 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 97 
 
 that the Holy War had begun. Everybody was 
 uneasy, including the Mohammedan population 
 themselves. They were mostly Arabs and they 
 feared the coming of the Turkish soldiery almost as 
 much as the Christians did. I have described else- 
 where the two remarkable scenes at the entrance of 
 Djemal Pasha and at the coming of the Flag and 
 must pass over the details here, in order to speak 
 of a third scene in which I happened to participate 
 and which those who took part in it are not likely 
 to forget till their dying day. 
 
 The Holy Flag had come to Jerusalem on Decem- 
 ber 20th. It was on that evening that Mr. Gelat, 
 the dragoman of the American consulate, hurried 
 over to inform us of orders which had just come 
 that all non-belligerent foreigners who wished to 
 leave the country must do so by the 28th of the 
 month or stay till after the war was over. A few 
 days before the order had been that no foreigner 
 could leave. When we heard we couldn't leave we 
 were anxious to go. Now that we learned we must 
 leave we wished to stay. Our hope all along had 
 been to attend the midnight mass on Christmas Eve 
 in Bethlehem. But an Italian steamer was due at 
 Jaffa the next day, the 21st, and we could not afford 
 to take risks. Instead we spent a good part of the 
 night in packing for our flight into Egypt. But 
 the next day it was blowing heavily and word came 
 from Jaffa that no steamer could take on pas- 
 sengers. This gave us a breathing-space and time 
 to think over the meaning of what we had been pass- 
 ing through. It was a unique, a memorable ex- 
 perience in which we had been permitted to share. 
 
98 JERUSALEM 
 
 We had seen great historical events transpiring iii 
 the city of the Prophets, the Apostles and the Lord. 
 We had seen the city itself facing with a grave and 
 solemn air the new crisis in its strange eventful 
 history. Perhaps it was not inappropriate after 
 all — or rather was there not a mystical necessity 
 operating in the fact that the world war had in- 
 volved the world city in its devastating sweep? 
 Could Jerusalem exempt itself from the agony of 
 mankind and remain true to its tragic past or to 
 its prophetic future? 
 
 We walked about in a dazed sort of way waiting 
 for news of another steamer. Word soon came 
 that another steamer was expected in the early 
 morning of the 26th. We were obliged to leave 
 the 24th to make sure of catching it. Christmas 
 was to be spent at Jaffa instead of at Jerusalem 
 or Bethany. It was a disappointment. We said 
 good-bye with genuine regret to the warm friends 
 whom we had made at the Colony and who had done 
 so much in the past weeks to make our stay pleasant 
 and profitable in spite of the anxieties of the time. 
 At the station we found a terrible jam, for at the 
 last moment orders had come to let the religious 
 orders, including the English, leave the country. Dr. 
 and Mrs. Glazebrook were there to see us off, though 
 it was fortunately not the last time we were to see 
 them. Dear old Major F. was also there to wave 
 us farewell. He was a retired English officer who 
 loved Jerusalem and all it stood for. He was in 
 charge of Gordon's Calvary, a really beautiful spot 
 which Chinese Gordon had once suggested was the 
 place of Christ's burial and which an English so- 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 99 
 
 ciety has carefully explored and preserved. He had 
 shown us about the place one quiet afternoon, with 
 an enthusiasm for the genuineness of this very fine 
 rock tomb, the contagion of which it was hard to 
 resist. When the permit finally came for the Eng- 
 lish to leave, the Major would not take advantage 
 of it. He was firmly persuaded that this war was 
 Armageddon, and he wished to be in Jerusalem at 
 the great day of revelation. So there he stood on 
 the platform cheerfully waving us of lesser faith a 
 final friendly good-bye. 
 
 That evening a great crowd of us refugees found 
 ourselves located at Hardegg's Jerusalem Hotel in 
 JaflPa. Mr. Hardegg is a German citizen but at 
 that time he was acting as our vice-consular agent. 
 The English had lodged some complaints with our 
 Consul for allowing a citizen of one of the enemy 
 countries to continue discharging his functions as a 
 United States agent at such a time, but before the 
 next two days were over they had changed their 
 minds about him. I had some difficulties of my own 
 about which I went to seek his advice. As I left he 
 remarked: "This is Christmas Eve; these are my 
 country's enemies in my hotel; but I am going to 
 have a Christmas party and invite them to it." And 
 so after dinner we gathered together as many of us 
 as could crowd into the private apartments of the 
 Hardegg family. A Christmas tree was standing 
 there with its twinkling candles. Grouped about it 
 were our English friends of St. George's, with a 
 number of the other English and Scotch mission- 
 aries, a party of Franciscan Friars in their dark 
 brown robes, and a variegated collection of Ameri- 
 
100 JERUSALEM 
 
 cans. There was to be a little Christmas interlude, 
 written for the occasion by the sister-in-law of Mr. 
 Hardegg, and performed by the children of the 
 family. First, a young boy came out with helmet 
 and sword and recited what war had done in the 
 world. He was followed by another boy who repre- 
 sented Kultur (the World has laughed at Kultur 
 much since then, yet these people had a faith in it 
 which was touching). Then a young girl appeared 
 who sang the praises of peace, and last of all a tiny 
 little mddchen in white who represented the angel 
 of the Christ-child supreme over all. The German 
 child stood just in front of a Franciscan and Canon 
 S., a magnificent type of a Scotchman, and she 
 lisped her verses. There was no war between the 
 monk, the missionary and the little maid. In spite 
 of the sharp differences in our religious beliefs, in 
 spite of the still bitterer political differences which 
 then divided us, all of us felt for the moment at 
 least the supreme and unifying power of the Christ- 
 child; and after the interlude it was natural for 
 German chorals and English carols to be sung in 
 turn by the enemies gathered together around the 
 Christmas tree in Mr. Hardegg's Jerusalem Hotel! 
 We subsequently read of the strange longing for 
 reconciliation and the desire to express goodwill 
 which took possession of the troops on either side 
 of No Man's Land that first Christmas of the War, 
 but I believe the story has never been told till now 
 of the first War-Christmas in Jaffa. We had failed 
 to hear the midnight mass at Bethlehem, but we had 
 worshipped at a new birth of the Christ spirit, which 
 was far more beautiful. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 101 
 
 Christmas Day itself, it seemed, would never end. 
 No one had slept much the night before. Would 
 the steamer come at the appointed time.^^ Would we 
 be allowed to go on board when she did come? 
 Orders had been changed so suddenly and so often 
 already that nobody had any assurance that a 
 permit to leave would last for twenty-four hours. 
 The elders tried to forget their anxieties by amusing 
 the children of the party. It was a perfectly 
 heavenly day after the previous storms and Canon 
 H. and Mr. R. took the children down to the sea- 
 shore to skip stones in the unruffled blue Mediter- 
 ranean. Later in the day, a few toys were pur- 
 chased in a dingy little Jaffa shop and a Christmas 
 party was held at which Santa Claus himself ap- 
 peared. 
 
 But the English became so anxious that finally 
 Dr. Glazebrook was telegraphed for. His coming 
 brought a feeling of great relief and the Christmas 
 dinner which Mr. Hardegg had patched up for us 
 was eaten with considerable gusto by those of us 
 who had not succumbed to splitting nervous head- 
 aches. 
 
 The next morning the Italian steamer Firenzi 
 was reported in the offing. The Montgomerys and 
 ourselves were the first to arrive at the Customs 
 house, and before we realized it we were all on the 
 narrow dock standing before the Kaimakam of 
 Jaffa. For weeks he had spread terror through the 
 city, and rumors of his deeds had reached Jeru- 
 salem. He was a fat, coarse-looking man, with a 
 smile which was anything but reassuring. He pre- 
 tended to read our passports, cocked a side-long 
 
102 JERUSALEM 
 
 eye at us, stroked the cheek of our small boy and 
 said tayib (good), and before we knew it we found 
 ourselves being rowed out to the Firenzi over the 
 gentle swells, freed at last of all anxiety as to our- 
 selves. 
 
 But what of our friends? We reached the Firenzi 
 about nine o'clock in the morning. At first all 
 seemed to be going well. Boat-load after boat-load 
 of refugees was coming on board. Jews, monks 
 and nuns, the Franciscans, the Sisters of Zion, 
 Sisters of St. Vincent and St. Paul, Sisters of the 
 Reparatrice, poor Carmelite nuns who had buried 
 themselves in a living death in their convent on the 
 Mount of Olives and now awakened to a cruel 
 resurrection, with veils pushed back, and rudely 
 jostled by the crowd on the ship's decks — eight hun- 
 dred of them altogether. Among them came some 
 of the English ladies with bad news. The English- 
 men had got down to the dock and in spite of their 
 permits to leave, had been ordered back to their 
 hotel by the sly Governor of Jaffa. In the afternoon 
 Cook's agent came on board to take their baggage 
 back. They had twice tried to get through and 
 twice been ordered back, and some of them had been 
 roughly handled. It was a difficult situation for 
 the English ladies, already on board the steamer. 
 Should they rejoin their husbands or stay on 
 board.'* 
 
 It was at this juncture that the wisdom of tele- 
 graphing for Dr. Glazebrook appeared. Our Con- 
 sul at Jerusalem was a Virginian, an ex-army 
 officer. He was a gentleman of the old school, in 
 whom courtliness and kindliness were blended in rare 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 103 
 
 degree. His unfailing tact and courtesy and a 
 native diplomatic sense had achieved in the preced- 
 ing weeks what the American business-man type of 
 consul could not possibly have accomplished. His 
 stately courtesy pleased the Oriental and his evident 
 desire to be fair won the Turk's confidence. 
 
 I shall never forget a meeting I witnessed be- 
 tween him and the sheik of the Bene Sachr tribe — 
 the son of Virginia and the son of the desert. It 
 was interesting to see how each at once recognized 
 in the other the gentleman which he was himself. 
 They were on good terms immediately, though 
 neither could understand a word of what the other 
 said. But when our Consul thought any wrong or 
 meanness was being done, his chivalrous indignation 
 would mount high. At the Christmas dinner he had 
 been toasted with rousing cheers by all present for 
 the good work he had done. But now all his efforts 
 seemed to be undone. He was the official protector 
 of the English. Their papers were in order but 
 he had suffered the mortification of twice seeing the 
 English file dejectedly past him, their papers ig- 
 nored by the obstinate man with the side-long eyes 
 and the unpleasant smile. It was then as we after- 
 wards learned, that he told the Kaimakam of Jaffa 
 quietly but firmly that he proposed to sit on that 
 dock until the English were released, and he actually 
 did take a chair and sit himself down in a way to 
 suggest that he was a fixture. 
 
 Then an interesting thing happened. Our 
 cruiser, the Tennessee, had been expected for several 
 days from Beirut. All day long we had been watch- 
 ing for it eagerly. About four in the afternoon, 
 
104 JERUSALEM 
 
 smoke was seen on the horizon and presently our 
 warship, flying our flag (and it is a wonderfully 
 beautiful flag) steamed up in the offing. The 
 Consul saw that smoke and so did the Kaimakam. 
 At once he called to Dr. Glazebrook that for his 
 sake, he would let the English go! In the late 
 afternoon we saw a boat putting out from shore 
 loaded to the gunwale. As it came nearer we 
 watched eagerly to see if it held the English. It 
 did, and a great cheer went up from the decks of 
 the steamer. Shortly afterwards Dr. Glazebrook 
 himself came alongside in a little dory to bid us 
 godspeed. The fine old soldier had won his fight, 
 and even a louder cheer bore tribute to his victory. 
 As we steamed away for Egypt the sun was set- 
 ting and the sea and sky were swimming in color. 
 To the east, however, the Judaean hills were be- 
 ginning to edge their dark shadows into the glory. 
 Up there within the gathering gloom lay the ancient 
 city, austere, resolved, waiting for the woe that was 
 to come. On the after deck of the Firenzi the Sisters 
 of St. Vincent and St. Paul in their blue dresses 
 and great white-winged bonnets were singing the 
 vesper hymn. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE "EDEN LAND" AND THE LANDS OF 
 BIBLE HISTORY 
 
 How They Are Affected by the World War — The Morning Land 
 of the Race and Its Future Development 
 
 By Professoe Edgar J. Banks 
 
THE "EDEN LAND" IN EARLY TIMES 
 By Professoe Edgar J. Banks 
 
 THOUGH we generally call Palestine the 
 original home of the Hebrew people, all of 
 early Bible history is laid far to the east 
 beyond the desert. Shinar, as the Hebrews called 
 the distant land between the Lower Tigris and 
 Euphrates, was their original home. To the Baby- 
 lonians the land was Sumer and Accad. Later it 
 was Babylonia. The Greeks knew it as Mesopo- 
 tamia. To the modern Turks it is Irak. There 
 where the rivers meet was the scene of the story 
 of the Garden of Eden, the birthplace of man. A 
 little to the north stood the Tower of Babel. There 
 Noah built the ark which saved him and his family 
 from the flood. Farther north, where the rivers 
 rise, is Mt. Ararat, the first land to emerge from 
 the flood. 
 
 From the land of Shinar, Nimrod, the mighty 
 hunter, went north to build Assur, and to found the 
 great Assyrian Empire. In Ur of the Chaldees 
 Abraham was born. From Ur he and his people 
 migrated across the desert to Palestine; that was 
 the beginning of the Hebrew nation. The children 
 of Abraham sent back to the land of their fathers 
 for wives to be the mothers of their children. Cen- 
 turies later, time and time again, the kingc of 
 
 107 
 
108 JERUSALEM 
 
 Assyria and Babylonia invaded Palestine to carry 
 the Hebrews back as exiles to their homeland. There 
 by the waters of Babylon the exiles first sang the 
 psalms which we sing to this very day. And there 
 Ezekiel lived and preached. So the old "Eden Land" 
 between the rivers is closely associated with much of 
 Hebrew history. 
 
 Far in the north, at the base of Mount Ararat, 
 the two rivers take their rise side by side. Flowing 
 apart, they first encircle Assyria. Again, near the 
 modern city of Bagdad, they approach within forty 
 miles of each other. Once more they spread out, 
 encircling Babylonia, and finally, after the 
 Euphrates has run its course of 1800 miles, and 
 the more direct Tigris 1150 miles, they come to- 
 gether at Kurna to flow in a single stream to the 
 Persian Gulf. The united stream is called the Shatt 
 el-Aram, or the Arabic River. 
 
 If you should travel north and south through 
 Armenia where the rivers rise, you would have the 
 impression that all the mountains of the world have 
 been congregated there. Ararat, overtowering all 
 other peaks, rears its snow clad head 17,212 feet 
 above the sea. You would cross range after rarige 
 with peaks 10,000 feet high, along trails almost too 
 rough and steep for a horse to climb. You would 
 find villages perched in almost inaccessible places, 
 where probably a wheeled vehicle has never been 
 seen. From the brush-covered Armenian hills you 
 descend into the rolling stony plain which was once 
 Assyria. The ruins of Nineveh and Nimrud and 
 other great cities now lie in a monotonous country, 
 fit only for the grazing of camels. Finally the domes 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 109 
 
 and minarets of Bagdad appear among the date 
 palms. From there to the ^rsian Gulf stretches a 
 perfectly level alluvial plain without a natural hiU, 
 yet it is dotted with thousands of hill-like mounds. 
 They are the gravestones of past civilizations. 
 
 At the present time the Persian Gulf is growing 
 shorter at the rate of seventy-two feet a year, for 
 its northern end is rapidly being filled with the 
 deposit brought down by the rivers. Each day in 
 springtime the Tigris carries past Bagdad 170,000 
 pounds of silt, and the waters of the Euphrates are 
 still more muddy. At one time the Gulf extended 
 so far to the north that the rivers emptied into it 
 by separate mouths ; now their confluence is seventy 
 miles away. There was a time still more remote 
 when the Gulf must have reached to Bagdad. That 
 is why Babylonia is the most fertile land in the 
 world. 
 
 The climate of the "Eden Land" reaches the two 
 extremes. It is said that, when the land was a part 
 of Persia, a Persian prince wrote a history of his 
 father's kingdom, and he began the history with 
 these words: "My father's kingdom extends so far 
 to the north that men can not live there because 
 of the cold; it extends so far to the south that men 
 can not live there because of the heat." That 
 sounds like a fairy tale, yet it is literally true. The 
 snow in the northern mountains lies so deep for 
 several months of the year that intercourse between 
 the villages is difficult. The mountaineers are forced 
 by the cold to abandon their homes for the more 
 moderate climate of lower levels. Down by the Per- 
 sian Gulf the summers are excessively hot. At the 
 
110 JERUSALEM 
 
 approach of the heated months, many even of the 
 poorest natives flee to the Persian mountains for 
 rehef. If necessity keeps them at home, they spend 
 the days in underground chambers, and the nights 
 on the roof. From May till October not a drop of 
 rain falls; not a cloud is in the sky, and every day 
 the sun, like a ball of fire, sends down its scorching 
 rays, withering the vegetation, and destroying most 
 insect life. Little but the annoying sand flies and 
 the scorpions seem to thrive. The breeze from the 
 desert seems like a blast from a furnace, and some- 
 times the air is laden with a fine penetrating sand. 
 Only here is the date palm at its best, for the 
 greatest of heat is required to ripen its delicious 
 fruit. On the coldest of winter nights ice will form, 
 and snow has been known to fall. 
 
 Naturally, in a land with such extremes of tem- 
 perature the vegetation is various. The northern 
 mountains were once covered with forests of oak. 
 There is an Oriental saying that "Wherever the 
 Turk has placed his foot the grass refuses to grow," 
 and it is almost true, for wherever the Turk has 
 gone he has cut off the trees for making charcoal, 
 leaving the mountains bare, or with only ragged 
 patches of scrubs. South of the mountains, every- 
 where in the desert, grows the thorny argool of 
 which the camels are so fond. In the summer time 
 there is little other vegetation, but during the rainy 
 winter the desert is clothed with herbage and dotted 
 with flowers of brilliant hue. Along the shores of 
 the rivers are patches of tall reeds and tamerisk 
 bushes; farther inland grows the wild liquorice. 
 Only below Bagdad does the date palm flourish, and 
 
l^ 
 
 ^8 
 7 
 
 74(3 
 
 ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 111 
 
 jou travel down the stream it appears in ever 
 increasing numbers until at the head of the Gulf 
 are vast forests of the trees. Grapes, oranges, figs, 
 lemons and delicious melons abound in the land. 
 
 Of animal life in the "Eden Land" there is little 
 to say. The Assyrian kings used to boast of the 
 lions they had killed, and the sculptured slabs from 
 the palace walls represent the kings at their favorite 
 sport, but the last lion of the land was shot some 
 years ago as it was attempting to leap onto a Tigris 
 River boat. Jackals roam about everywhere, and 
 frequently they are seen stealing down to the rivers 
 to drink. All night long you may hear them crying 
 like children lost in the wilderness. Wild pigs in- 
 habit the reedy places along the rivers, and the 
 beautiful gazelle is seen leaping over the plains. In 
 the southern marshes various kinds of large water 
 birds abound. Pish swarm the rivers. Fresh water 
 sharks of prodigious size travel up the Tigris as far 
 as Bagdad. House flies, sanJ flies, fleas and lice of 
 every description, find the land a paradise. Cen- 
 tipedes and scorpions, both yellow and black, the 
 kangaroo rat, and lizards of huge size thrive in the 
 dirt. Snakes are seldom seen. 
 
 A list of the names of all the peoples who have 
 lived in the "Eden Land" would be long indeed. 
 Many of the names would sound strange to most 
 of us. Far in the north, about the base of Mt. 
 Ararat, once lived the Vannic people who have left 
 inscriptions carved in the rocks of the mountains. 
 There too were the Hittites, those mysterious Bible 
 people who once spread over a greater part of the 
 Orient, and the Armenians, who may have been their 
 
112 JERUSALEM 
 
 descendants. The Kurds, hardy, lawless brigands, 
 have long occupied the mountain fastnesses. The 
 strange Yezidis occupy the Armenian foot hills and 
 the northern Assyrian plain. The Chaldeans are 
 found in every part of the valley. Following the 
 Assyrians came the Medes and Parthians. Farther 
 south in Babylonia were the Sumerians, whose cities 
 now lie beneath other cities older even than the 
 days of Abraham. Then came the Babylonians and 
 Persians and Greeks and Romans and the Arabs and 
 the strange hordes from Central Asia, among them 
 the Turks, and finally into the old "Eden Land" have 
 penetrated the British. 
 
 Several times has civilization come to the "Eden 
 Land." Six thousand or more years ago there ap- 
 peared from some unknown region a short, black 
 haired, round headed race known as the Sumerians. 
 But they were not the first to inhabit the valley, for 
 deep beneath the ruins of their cities are found crude 
 implements and the pottery of a primitive people. 
 When the Sumerians came to the valley they already 
 knew how to write, to work statues in stone, to make 
 beautiful jewelry of silver, gold and copper, and 
 they had a developed religious system. They built 
 large cities protected with strong walls, and several 
 of them, as Adab, Tello, Nippur and Erech, have 
 yielded valuable results to the excavator. 
 
 After the Sumerians had occupied the "Eden 
 Land" for several centuries, it is not known just 
 how long, there appeared a Semitic people later 
 known as the Babylonians. They were uncivilized 
 and warlike. Quickly they overran the valley, tak- 
 ing city after city. They admired the Sumerians 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 113 
 
 whom they subdued, for they learned to write their 
 own language with the Sumerian wedge-shaped 
 signs. They worshipped in the Sumerian temples 
 and borrowed their religious customs. They chanted 
 the Sumerian temple hymns in the Sumerian 
 language long after this older people had been for- 
 gotten, for three thousand years till Babylon fell. 
 They dug canals, like huge rivers, to water the land 
 until the entire valley became a veritable garden. 
 It is said that the soil produced three crops a year. 
 The population became so dense that colonies were 
 sent out. One migration went up the Tigris to the 
 city of Assur, and thus the Assyrian nation had its 
 birth. Other migrations crossed to the Mediter- 
 ranean; among them were Abraham and his people. 
 In 794 B.C. there were in Babylonia alone more 
 than 89 fortified cities and 820 smaller towns. 
 Babylon, Nippur, Erech, Larsa, Ur, Cutha, Sippar, 
 all familiar Bible names, were but a few of the great 
 centers of population. 
 
 Assyria in the north, though a less fertile land, 
 also flourished. Assur, Nimrud, Khorsabad, 
 Nineveh and a score of smaller towns, rose to power. 
 The Assyrian armies fought in the Hittite land, in 
 Armenia, in Egypt, in Palestine and in Babylonia. 
 In 606 B.C. Nineveh fell. Less than a century later, 
 in 538 B.C., Babylon was taken by the Persians. 
 The people of both empires were killed or deported 
 or impoverished. The land was no longer tilled; 
 the life-giving canals were choked with sand; the 
 date gardens perished; the cities fell to ruins and 
 became shapeless mounds of clay. Where once were 
 prosperous cities and fertile fields, the wild beasts 
 
114 JERUSALEM 
 
 of the desert prowled, and owls and jackals dwelt 
 in the palaces of the kings. Once the walls of the 
 great city of Babylon were partly restored that the 
 city within might be the wild game preserve of a 
 Persian King. So Babylon and Assyria passed 
 away, and only countless mounds of clay remained 
 to tell later generations of a civilization which had 
 lived for more than thirty centuries. 
 
II 
 
 THE COMING OF THE MOSLEMS 
 
 A THOUSAND years later, about 576, A.D., 
 long after the names of the cities and kings 
 of the "Eden Land" had been forgotten, 
 Mohammed was born in Mecca. His new religion 
 spread like wildfire over the desert. The Arab tribes, 
 always warring among themselves, united and 
 produced one of the most remarkable civilizations 
 the world has ever known. That civilization came 
 to the old "Eden Land." Among the ruins of the old 
 cities new cities sprang up, and in 762 A.D. Bagdad 
 was built on the site of a Babylonian city of that 
 same name. The story of Bagdad reads like a 
 tak from the Arabian Nights. At one time it was 
 a city of two millions, the metropolis of the world, 
 the center of art, of education and of commerce. 
 But its prosperity was comparatively brief. The 
 Mohammedan world, weakened by wealth and power, 
 began to decline, and in 1258 A.D. the Mongols 
 plundered and burned Bagdad. Other cities fol- 
 lowed its fate. The people were massacred, and 
 again the "Eden Land," left to itself, became a 
 desert. 
 
 All the valley from the Persian Gulf to the foot 
 hills of Armenia is now overrun by wandering Arab 
 tribes. Only here and there along the rivers or 
 canals are there towns of any consequence. Bagdad 
 has a population of 200,000 instead of 2,000,000. 
 
 115 
 
116 JERUSALEM 
 
 Busreh, the Persian Gulf port, from which Sindbad 
 the Sailor used to start upon his wonderful expedi- 
 tions, has 50,000. Mosul, near the site of ancient 
 Nineveh, has 60,000. The sacred city of Kerbela 
 has 70,000. Few others can boast of more than 
 ten thousand. It would be difficult to estimate the 
 population of the entire valley ; probably it numbers 
 less than the people who once lived in Bagdad alone. 
 In South Babylonia, to the east of the Tigris, are 
 the Beni-Lam, savages which the Turks have never 
 been quite able to subdue. In the great southern 
 marshes between the rivers are the wild Ma'aden, 
 living in huts of mud and reeds, and plundering the 
 travelers who pass that way. In Central Babylonia 
 are the more civilized Montifik, grazing their herds 
 of sheep and goats and donkeys and camels far into 
 Central Arabia. The powerful Shammar farther 
 north along the Euphrates, and the Anezeh to the 
 east toward Nineveh, are the largest of the tribes 
 upon which scores of the smaller tribes are 
 dependent. 
 
 Persian merchants live in considerable numbers, 
 especially in Bagdad and the sacred cities. Their 
 peculiar costume is a familiar sight, and in places 
 Persian money passes as freely as Turkish. 
 
 The Turks have never been . numerous in Meso- 
 potamia. They are confined chiefly to the official 
 class, and hold themselves aloof from all others. 
 The Constantinople Turk, even a high official sent 
 by the government to Bagdad, feels that he has been 
 exiled. 
 
 More numerous are the Chaldean Christians who 
 claim to be the descendants of the Babylonians and 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 117 
 
 Assyrians, and frequently among them may be seen 
 a face reminding you of the portraits of the Assyr- 
 ian kings. Their language resembles the ancient 
 Chaldean. They seldom live outside the large towns, 
 and at Tel Keif, north of Nineveh, they are more 
 numerous than elsewhere. 
 
 Jews are found in every part of the valley, and 
 even among the Bedouin tribes of the desert they 
 seem at home. About forty thousand of them live 
 in Bagdad. They are the bankers and the merchants 
 and the agents who go throughout the desert to 
 purchase wool and the antiquities found among the 
 ruins by the Arabs. Probably they are the 
 descendants of the Hebrew exiles brought over in 
 ancient times from Samaria and Jerusalem. Their 
 chief is still called the Prince of the Captivity, a 
 title which Ezekiel bore. During the Middle Ages 
 they were obliged to dress in a peculiar yellow cos- 
 tume, and traces of it still cling to them. They 
 observe the ancient Hebrew customs, and in connec- 
 tion with some of their services they offer animals 
 in sacrifice. They are by far the most industrious 
 and progressive people in Mesopotamia. 
 
 Kurds, too, though their home is in the Armenian 
 mountains, live in all parts of the valley, especially 
 in the larger towns. They are the porters or hamals 
 of Bagdad, strong men who bear incredible burdens 
 on their shoulders. They make the best of soldiers 
 and mounted police. 
 
 As interesting as any of the peoples of the "Eden 
 Land" are the Mandasans or Sabeans or Subi, or, as 
 they are sometimes called, the followers of John the 
 Baptist. They live by the rivers and canals, chiefly 
 
118 JERUSALEM 
 
 along the Lower Euphrates. They are famed 
 throughout the land as inlay ers of silver objects 
 such as cigarette cases, match boxes, and the various 
 ornaments worn by the desert women. Their religion 
 is a mixture of ancient paganism, Judaism, Chris- 
 tianity and Mohammedanism. John the Baptist was 
 their great prophet, but to them both Jesus and 
 Mohammed were false. Though they speak Arabic, 
 their sacred writings are in Aramaic. Just as the 
 Mohammedans face Mecca when tkey pray, the 
 Mandaeans face the North Star. Baptism or im- 
 mersion they practise on all occasions, frequently 
 several times a day, and therefore they live only 
 near some running stream. Even on the coldest of 
 winter days you may see them plunging into the 
 river to conform to their religious laws. 
 
 Stranger still are the Yezidis of the north. Devil 
 worshippers they are frequently called, and their 
 dark forbidding faces seem to make that title ap- 
 propriate. To them Satan is a fallen angel greatly 
 to be feared. Not even his name may be mentioned 
 in their presence. They regard both Jesus and 
 Mohammed as angels. Of all the peoples in the 
 "Eden Land" they are probably the most inhos- 
 pitable and fanatical. 
 
 Armenians frequently leave their mountain homes 
 for the warmer climate in the south. During recent 
 years Europeans have settled in the larger towns for 
 the purposes of trade. Such are the peoples of the 
 "Eden Land" today. It is a strange mingling of 
 races and tongues and beliefs and customs, possible 
 only in a land where intercourse is difficult and where 
 time has wrought few changes. 
 
Waiting the Opening of a Coffee Relief Station. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE SIMPLE LIFE OF THE «EDEN LAND" 
 
 UNTIL very recent times no part of the world 
 has been less affected by European civiliza- 
 tion than has the "Eden Land." Even in 
 Bagdad life and customs remind one of ancient 
 times; the city seemed to be a survival of Nineveh 
 or Babylon. Bagdad, like most of the ancient cities, 
 lies on the two sides of the river; the two parts are 
 connected with an ancient bridge of boats. In the 
 center of the town, near the ends of the bridge, are 
 the bazaars, crowded from daylight till dark with 
 a picturesque throng of idlers. The narrow streets, 
 arched above, or covered with reed mats on poles, 
 protect the people from the summer heat and the 
 winter rains. There, all day long, even on the 
 brightest days, perpetual twilight reigns. The little 
 square booths, raised about two feet above the 
 street, have no windows or doors ; their entire fronts 
 are open. The other three sides are lined with 
 goods. The merchant, squatting on the floor, 
 patiently awaits a customer. When one appears he 
 bargains the hours away for the highest possible 
 price; time has little value. Merchants of similar 
 goods flock together. The vivid colors of the silk 
 bazaar, the strange subtle fragrance of the spice 
 
 119 
 
120 JERUSALEM 
 
 bazaar, the din of the copper beaters of the metal 
 bazaar, the dust laden air of the cotton bazaar, 
 the peculiar cries of the wandering venders, the 
 harsh shouts of the muleteers to drive the people 
 from the way, the motley crowd of people, the towns- 
 man with long flowing silky gown, the Persian with 
 tall felt hat, the desert Arab with face half hidden, 
 the naked dervish, the women so hidden in great 
 silk gowns and veils that their own husbands would 
 not know them, camels and donkeys laden with goods 
 from distant cities, — these and a thousand other 
 impressions form a picture which the stranger will 
 never forget. 
 
 Along the river's edge by the bazaars are the open 
 cafes, crowded with idlers sipping bitter coffee and 
 puffing at long water pipes. By the river too are 
 the low rickety government buildings, the consulates 
 of the foreign powers, and the homes of the wealthy. 
 The better Bagdad house is a great flat-roofed 
 structure of brick, surrounding an open court. On 
 the ground floor are the servants' quarters, the 
 kitchen, the stables and the serdaub or half-under- 
 ground chamber where the family spends the hot 
 summer days. On the second floor are the poorly 
 furnished living rooms. But the roof is a really 
 delightful spot ; there the evening meal is eaten, there 
 the children play, there the neighbor comes for a 
 little chat and a smoke during the twilight hours, 
 and there the beds are spread for the night. Every- 
 one sleeps on the roof. Back from the river lives'^ 
 the great mass of the people. The streets are so ^ 
 narrow that with your hands you may touch the \ 
 houses on both sides at the same time. They seem 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 121 
 
 like deep trenches, for no windows open upon them. 
 They are so winding that they form a great laby- 
 rinth in which a native may easily lose his way. 
 Before every house is a garbage pile growing higher 
 and higher with age so that you must descend several 
 steps to reach the house door. It has been said 
 that no one has ever seen a dead donkey, but he 
 who said it has never been in Bagdad. Hosts of 
 street dogs, as in ancient Samaria, find a perpetual 
 feast in the garbage piles. Most of the houses are 
 of brick; some are of mud, with a small court open- 
 ing from the street. At the rear of the court are 
 the two or three chambers. The furnishings are 
 simple. In the court is a pot-like clay oven for 
 the bread. At its side is a huge pot for the water 
 the donkey has brought from the river. A few 
 copper pots hanging on the wall, at one side of the 
 room a little clay bench covered with a reed mat 
 or a carpet to serve as a bed, and the simple house 
 is complete. 
 
 There are hans or inns where the stranger may 
 lodge. In the large open court the animals are 
 hitched and fed while the guests occupy alcoves or 
 unfurnished airless chambers at its side. There are 
 numerous hot baths frequented by both men and 
 women, and churches and synagogues and mosques. 
 Schools for the Jews and Christians have been estab- 
 lished by missionaries. The Moslem schools are not 
 worthy of the name. Society, as we understand it, 
 does not exist. The pleasures of the Bagdadi are 
 few. For the very poor life is a continual struggle. 
 The great universal desire is to do nothing, or to 
 lounge in the cafes smoking and listening to the 
 
122 JERUSALEM 
 
 tales of other loungers, or playing backgammon. 
 An outing may be had in a neighboring garden, or 
 a sail at twilight in a round bowl-like boat on the 
 river, or a ride on the mare in the desert about the 
 city. The women gather at the baths to gossip. 
 
 Such is life in the larger towns of the "Eden 
 Land." In the smaller places, like Kut el-Amara, now 
 brought to prominence by the war, it is even more 
 primitive. Kut is a typical river town inhabited 
 by Arabs and Persians, merely a trading place for 
 the desert Arabs. The bazaars are small and poorly 
 stocked with inferior goods such as the desert people 
 require. The houses are simpler than those of Bag- 
 dad, usually with a single room. A government 
 building, a bath, a cafe, a han for the passing pil- 
 grims, are the only buildings of importance. 
 
 Out in the desert life is more simple still. Black 
 goat-hair tent encampments pitched wherever the 
 pasturage is good, huts of reeds or of mud to shelter 
 the more settled Arabs, constant fighting to end an 
 ancient blood feud, an endless struggle with heat 
 and cold and hunger and drought, — that is life in 
 the desert. The Arab knows no other and is satisfied. 
 
 Though most of the "Eden Land" is a desert, its 
 industries are of no slight importance. Southern 
 Babylonia is a great date garden. The shores of 
 the Shatt el- Arab, and the country on either side for 
 miles back, supply the world with dates. Farther 
 north between the rivers grows the liquorice, and 
 thousands of Arabs are employed in digging the 
 sweet root to supply the foreign markets. The 
 Bedouin Arabs possess great herds of sheep, and the 
 hides and wool and casings sent to Europe and 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 123 
 
 America bring them their chief income. Once a year 
 the camels are driven to the large cities to market. 
 The poppy produces opium. Gum is collected from 
 the trees in the mountains, and ghee or clarified 
 butter is shipped to India. Until very recently Bag- 
 dad has been an important center of the rug in- 
 dustry. The Persian pilgrims, bound for the sacred 
 cities, used to bring the old family rugs and heir- 
 looms and sell them in Bagdad to meet the expenses 
 of the journey. Since the railroad was built from 
 Damascus to Medina, the pilgrims have preferred 
 to go by boat from a Black Sea port to Constan- 
 tinople and Beirut, and now they sell their rugs in 
 those cities. In 1911 the exports from Bagdad alone 
 amounted to $1,392,583. Of this the goods to 
 America were valued at $276,180. 
 
 The modern industries are but a fraction of what 
 the valley has produced in the past, or is capable 
 of producing. Should you travel north or south 
 anywhere below Bagdad, you would notice ridges of 
 dirt running everywhere across the desert. They 
 mark the ancient canals which used to bring an 
 abundance of water to the remotest parts. No 
 country has ever had a more perfect or extensive 
 system of irrigation. Enormous date gardens ex- 
 tended northward to Bagdad and beyond. Still 
 farther north were endless fields of grain. Climb 
 to the summit of any of the ruin mounds and you 
 can imagine how dense was the valley's population. 
 Dotting the plain everywhere, as far as the eye can 
 reach, are ruins and ruins, thousands of them. 
 Some are so low that they hardly rise above the 
 level of the plain; others tower to the height of 
 
124 JERUSALEM 
 
 150 feet. Some are but a few acres in extent; 
 others as many miles, and each mound is the grave 
 of an ancient city or village. Where once were 
 towns without number, and hordes of people, and 
 fertile fields and life-giving canals, you will see only 
 desert with perhaps a black tent encampment, or a 
 solitary horseman, or a few grazing camels. 
 
ly 
 
 MODERN PROGRESS AT WORK 
 
 HOPE has long been entertained that the old 
 canals may be reopened, the desert irri- 
 gated and the country reclaimed, for 
 the eleven millions of acres of rich soil could produce 
 cotton and grain enough to supply half the world. 
 Some years ago Sir William Wilcox, whose name 
 is familiar as the builder of the great Nile dam 
 at Assuan, was sent by the British Government to 
 examine the ancient system of canals with a view 
 to reopening them. Several years were spent in com- 
 pleting the details of the project. The plan provided 
 for canals to distribute the river water, for large 
 dams across the Euphrates to prevent flooding, and 
 canals to carry away the surplus water in the flood 
 season when it is filled with silt. Much of the 
 Babylonian soil is now saturated with saltpeter, and 
 provision was made for washing it away. The 
 Euphrates at Babylon has long been dr}^, for the 
 river ran away into the Hindieh canal and turned 
 vast tracts of the desert into a swamp. A large 
 dam was planned for the entrance to the canal to 
 turn the water back to its original course. Sir 
 John Jackson of London, with a staff of thirty en- 
 gineers, was placed in charge, and a fund of 
 
 125 
 
126 JERUSALEM 
 
 000,000 was to be devoted to this part of the 
 project. 
 
 From Kut el-Amara on the Tigris, running across 
 the valley to the Euphrates, is the ancient canal now 
 called the Shatt el-Hai. It is navigable for native 
 craft in the flood season. Scarcely any of the land 
 along its shores is cultivated. The plan provided 
 for the expenditure of $12,000,000 for irrigating 
 this district and for draining the malarial swamps 
 to the south. 
 
 The draining of the swamps about the date bear- 
 ing region along the Shatt el-Arab was also 
 provided for. The total project was to have cost 
 about $65,000,000. The work was begun; some of 
 the old canals were reopened; some of the swamps 
 were drained ; the run-away waters of the Euphrates 
 were controlled by a dam; several millions of acres 
 of land were reclaimed, and the work was progress- 
 ing so rapidly that people could not be found fast 
 enough to settle there. Babylonia was fast becom- 
 ing a great healthy fertile garden. Then the war 
 broke out and the work came to an end. 
 
 In the meantime, the Germans were devising 
 schemes for exploiting the land. In 1912 they ob- 
 tained from the Turkish Government a concession 
 to build a railroad from Constantinople to Bagdad. 
 In 1911 German engineers arrived in Bagdad to 
 begin the work of construction from that end. It 
 was begun on July 27, 1912. Its completion was 
 expected within five years. German spies, in the 
 guise of missionaries and explorers, came to prepare 
 for future events. A German excavating expedition 
 to Assur, the old Assyrian capital on the Tigris, 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 127 
 
 built one of the strongest forts that the country 
 possesses. It was claimed that it was for protection 
 from the Arabs. The walls of the old city of Nineveh 
 were being quarried for stone for the construction 
 of a railroad bridge across the river. Until shortly 
 before the war there were but two lines of river 
 steamers from Busreh to Bagdad, but the prosperity 
 of the country became so great that in 1912 the 
 number of the lines was increased to nine. There 
 was an unusual demand for labor. Wages mounted ; 
 rents were doubled; hotels, vast store houses, 
 hospitals and private residences were constructed. 
 It seemed to the native that at last prosperity had 
 come. The British were reclaiming his land for him. 
 The Germans were connecting it with the rest of 
 the world, and providing a way to carry his produce 
 to market. Then the great war broke out. 
 
5^ 
 
 THE EDEN LAND'S PART IN THE GREAT 
 WAR 
 
 THE part that the "Eden Land" has played in 
 the war has not been slight. It was the 
 belief of the German rulers that at the com- 
 mand of the Sultan of Turkey the entire Moham- 
 medan world would rise in a holy war to drive the 
 British from the East. Mesopotamia especially, it 
 was supposed, would eagerly welcome a holy war, 
 for to the Persians and most Eastern Arabs, 
 Kerbela and Nejef are the most sacred places on 
 earth. Surely all of Mesopotamia would rise to 
 expel the British. What was the result ? The Arabs 
 of all Arabia rebelled and threw off the Turkish 
 yoke. They rejected the Sultan as their religious 
 head. They drove the Turks from Mecca, and 
 placed upon the throne a ruler of their own, a real 
 descendant of Mohammed. For a time the Meso- 
 potamian Arabs were faithful to the Sultan, but 
 when they saw the British armies advancing up 
 the valley, they too abandoned the Turks. The 
 story of the British retreat from Ctesiphon to Kut, 
 the siege of Kut and its capture, the advance 
 of the British again, and the capture of Bagdad, 
 the steady progress up both the Tigris and the 
 Euphrates half-way from Bagdad to Nineveh, is 
 
 128 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 129 
 
 familiar. All Babylonia is now under British con- 
 trol, and not since ancient days has there been such 
 security and prosperity as now. The miserable, 
 malarial city of Busreh has been rebuilt and en- 
 larged, and all the region about has been made safe. 
 Wharves for ocean-going steamers have been con- 
 structed. Hotels and beautiful private homes have 
 been built. The canals which gave the city the 
 appearance of an Oriental Venice have been walled 
 and bridged. The streets have been paved, street 
 cars, electric lights and the telephone have been 
 installed. The squalid village of Kut has been en- 
 tirely remade. The filthy bazaars have become a 
 beautiful colonnade along the river. Bagdad is fast 
 resuming its former splendor when it bore the title 
 ''The Glorious City." Sewers have been laid, the 
 streets widened and paved, and the people are pros- 
 perous and contented. The Euphrates has been 
 made navigable in places where it was not deep 
 enough for a canoe to pass. Railroads have been 
 constructed from Busreh to Bagdad and beyond. 
 The desert along the way has been transformed to 
 wheat fields and dairy farms, and all Lower Meso- 
 potamia promises to become again as fertile, as 
 thickly populated, as wealthy as ever it was in its 
 palmiest days. 
 
 For the student of Biblical or ancient history; 
 the future of the Eden land holds much in store. 
 As long as Turkish rule extended over the valley 
 the work of the excavator among the ancient ruins 
 was attended with many difficulties. To obtain the 
 permission to excavate was a long and costly 
 process. If once it was obtained every possible 
 
130 JERUSALEM 
 
 obstacle was placed in the excavator's way, and all 
 the objects he discovered belonged to the unap- 
 preciative Turks. ' So all but a few of the thousands 
 of buried cities have remained untouched. There 
 they still lie fiUed with the treasures and records 
 of ancient time. Near Hillah on the Euphrates is 
 the lofty ruin associated with the story of the Tower 
 of Babel. On the Lower Euphrates near Nasarieh, 
 are the extensive mounds of Mugheir, marking the 
 site of Ur of the Chaldees where Abraham was born. 
 Farther toward the Arabian plateau are the ruins 
 of Eridu. To the north of Nasarieh are Erech and 
 Larsa, great cities which flourished in the days of 
 Abraham. Babylon, where the Germans have con- 
 ducted excavations for fifteen years, has been but 
 partly explored. Near by are the ruins of Cutha 
 and Sippar from which the Samaritans were taken. 
 Farther north, in Assyria, in the buried cities along 
 the Tigris, Assur, Nimrud and Nineveh, there still 
 remain priceless treasures and inscriptions. Still 
 farther north in the Armenian region are numerous 
 mounds still unexplored. Now the war is over, and 
 the end of Turkish rule in the "Eden Land" is as- 
 sured, the explorer and the excavator will be as wel- 
 come as he is in Egypt. Already several expeditions 
 to the valley are in formation. The buried cities will 
 then give up their secrets. It is likely that in 
 Bagdad will be established a great archaeological 
 museum which in time will attract scholars from all 
 the world. 
 
 So the "Eden Land," where civilization had its 
 birth, where it has died and been reborn over and 
 over again, the land, now a garden, now a desert, is 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 131 
 
 about to enter upon a new period of its long history. 
 No man can say what its future will be, but this 
 is certain. The "Eden Land" will no longer be in- 
 accessible to the rest of the world. Railroads and 
 steamships will bring it civilization. Its swamps 
 will be drained, its deserts irrigated, all its waste 
 places made fertile. New life will come to its re- 
 motest corners, and again it will send out great 
 rivers of grains and fruits to feed the world. 
 
IV 
 
 THE KEY TO THE WORLD WAR 
 
 By Lieut. Col. J. S. Waedlaw-Milne 
 of the British Mesopotamian Campaign 
 
(g) International Film Service, Inc. 
 
 Ancient Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, Occupied 
 BY Gen. Allenby's Forces. 
 
 (C) International Film Service, Inc. 
 
 Damascus, Captured with its Garrison of 7000 Men. 
 
THE KEY TO THE WAR 
 
 By Lieut. Col. J. S. Wardlaw-Milne 
 
 THE thoughts, the energies and the anxieties 
 of the American people in connection with 
 the war have been, as is natural, almost 
 entirely centered upon the battles of the Western 
 Front. Yet there is time, without slackening in any 
 way in the active prosecution of our work in con- 
 nection with the war, to stop and consider for a 
 moment what the war is all about; and if we do 
 make this temporary pause and study intelligently 
 the history of the causes which led to the gigantic 
 struggle, aided by a careful consideration of the 
 changing phases of European politics in the last 
 thirty years, we shall find that it is not upon the 
 West so much as upon the East that our attention 
 must be focussed, if we are to understand and ap- 
 preciate the real causes of the war. 
 
 It is well known that there is considerable di- 
 vergence of opinion in the minds of various military 
 experts who write regarding the war, as to where 
 and in which direction the decisive blow to Germany 
 could best be given. In the same way various writers 
 have put forward different theories as to the causes 
 which led to the great conflagration, but I know 
 of no writer who has not at least placed in the 
 forefront of the causes the German dream of world- 
 
 135 
 
136 JERUSALEM 
 
 empire and particularly her hope of dominion in 
 the East. 
 
 Slowly and surely were the plans laid. Others 
 have told fully of the religious difficulties and dis- 
 sensions spread throughout the Kingdom of Bul- 
 garia, while the plans for acquisition of territory 
 and increasing influence in the lands bordering on 
 the North Sea are too well known to need repetition. 
 Years were required, however, before the schemes in 
 the East came to maturity. The Turks' old friend- 
 ship for Great Britain had to be alienated and 
 British influence at Constantinople had to be re- 
 placed by German. But slowly and gradually the 
 process went on, while by continual speeches upon 
 the blessings of peace, the German Emperor and 
 the German Government threw dust in the eyes of 
 the politicians of Europe, and lulled Great Britain 
 particularly into a stupid sense of security. 
 
 I desire to draw the reader's attention to that 
 great area of land lying between European Turkey 
 on the one hand and the Persian Gulf on the other, 
 an area which we generally describe as the "Near 
 East," and which includes not only Palestine and 
 Syria, but all of Asia Minor, Armenia, Kurdistan 
 and Mesopotamia. Now, let us see what Germany's 
 interests and ambitions in this part of the world 
 were in the years previous to the present outbreak. 
 
 Probably thirty years ago there were few if any 
 Germans in Asia Minor at all, and although their 
 enterprises there had previously made a start, 
 fostered and encouraged by the German Govern- 
 ment, it was not really until 1896 that German in- 
 fluence made its great step forward. In that year, 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 137 
 
 when Germany declined to be a party to the other- 
 wise unanimous attempt on the part of the Powers 
 of Europe to put a stop to the Armenian mas- 
 sacres, she took her stand upon reasons quite other 
 than those which really weighed with her at the 
 time. The real reason for her refusal to bring 
 pressure upon the "Sick man of Europe" was that 
 she saw an opportunity, by preserving Sultan Abdul 
 Hamid, of earning his friendship, of laying the first 
 foundations of Germany's influence with and pro- 
 tection of Turkey, and of realizing the first portion 
 of the Kaiser's dream of conquest in the East and 
 of world-wide dominion. 
 
 The original Berlin-Baghdad Railway scheme, 
 which owed its inception to the activities and en- 
 terprise of German merchants, was before long 
 diverted to purely political purposes, while every 
 possible course of German influence and aggression 
 was used to the utmost in the Turk's Asian posses- 
 sions. Long and careful were the preparations 
 made. German colonies sprung up at various places 
 in Palestine and Syria, particularly at Jaffa and 
 Jerusalem. The Kaiser made his famous journey 
 to Palestine and eventually his preposterous declara- 
 tion at the Tomb of Saladin, where he declared 
 himself the "Protector of Islam." To such an 
 extent did this process of pushing German influence 
 continue that a well-known resident of Syria, writ- 
 ing just previous to the war, declared it to be 
 "impossible to express the extent to which the whole 
 country has recently come under German dominion." 
 That well-known authority. Canon Parfit, writing 
 of the events leading up to the war, mentions that 
 
138 JERUSALEM 
 
 a large force of German railway engineers was en- 
 gaged a few weeks before the outbreak in pressing 
 on railway construction at the rate of a mile a day ! 
 He also refers to the extent of German influence 
 in Jerusalem; for example: by mention of three 
 prominent German edifices erected in that city — 
 firstly, the German church on the top of Mount 
 Zion, built on a solid concrete foundation — secondly, 
 the well-known hospital at the Damascus Gate, built 
 like a fortress, and lastly, that charitable institu- 
 tion on the top of the Mount of Olives, a German 
 sanatorium, having erected upon it a strange object 
 for a charitable building, nothing else than one of 
 the largest wireless installations in the world! 
 
 It is probably little understood in this country 
 how many and varied are the schemes comprised 
 in the expression, the Berlin to Baghdad Railway 
 Concessions. Not only were the actual financial 
 concessions wrung from Abdul Hamid's Government, 
 as the blood-money in payment for which he would 
 be permitted to continue his orgy of lust and 
 murder — such as would undoubtedly bring the whole 
 of Turkey under German dominion and make Con- 
 stantinople practically a German city — but the 
 forest, mining and other rights connected with the 
 scheme would insure the Asiatic possessions of 
 Turkey coming directly under German influence and 
 control. The pressing on of the building of the 
 railway to a great German naval port at Koweit, 
 was to give Germany a direct outlet to the Persian 
 Gulf and the shores of India. Afghanistan was to 
 be bribed and vv^ith the occupation of Persia and 
 the advance through Afghanistan, and by sea from 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 139 
 
 Koweit, it would not be hard, the Germans thought, 
 to destroy once and for all British dominion in 
 India. This scheme was to be aided, if not entirely 
 accomplished, by means of a "Jehad" or Holy War, 
 launched (as it afterwards was) from Constanti- 
 nople, at which the "faithful" in all countries were 
 to rise and to push the "infidel" — excluding only 
 the German allies of Turkey — into the sea. The 
 extension of the railways of Palestine made progress 
 possible towards the Suez Canal and Egypt. The 
 linking up of the German possessions in East and 
 West Africa was to cut the line of the Cape-to- 
 Cairo Railroad, disposing forever of that "far-fetched 
 British scheme," leaving the German free to strike 
 north and south at his future convenience, until 
 finally Africa became his own. The economic con- 
 trol of Russia was no mere dream, as we have seen 
 in later days; and thus, with a great capital at 
 Baghdad, a vast Eastern Empire was to be estab- 
 lished and German power to rule without let or 
 hindrance from Hamburg to Singapore. 
 
 It is difficult now to go into the causes leading 
 to the first little block in the path of German 
 political progress in the East, namely the rise of 
 the Young Turkish Party — but with Enver Pasha 
 under the thumb ©f Berlin, the path of progress 
 was only temporarily checked. The Balkan War 
 was a more troublesome matter, inasmuch as it 
 meant the rise of Bosnia and Serbia. The former 
 was easily disposed of, leaving only one small coun- 
 try standing as a barrier across the German path 
 to the East. With the final deepening of the Kiel 
 Canal and the completion of other preparations 
 
140 JERUSALEM 
 
 long planned, and with the apparent immediate 
 prospect of civil war in England, it appeared to 
 Germany that the day had arrived and the hour 
 had struck. Difficult as it was to find an excuse 
 to quarrel with Serbia, chance or good management 
 did put an opportunity in the way. It is unneces- 
 sary to detail the measures taken by Germany to 
 prevent any peaceful settlement of the trouble be- 
 tween that unhappy little country and Austria. 
 The opportunity was too good to be lost. Serbia 
 must be removed and the path to the East opened 
 for German "Kultur." 
 
 In these days, when a policy of land-grabbing on 
 the part of European Powers and particularly on 
 the part of Great Britain, is still occasionally re- 
 ferred to, it is perhaps well to consider the history 
 of the British influence in the Persian Gulf. Unlike 
 the case of Germany, the British position in the 
 Gulf generally has been laid down clearly and pub- 
 licly by British statesmen on various occasions. 
 The following words defining the British standpoint 
 are from a speech delivered by Viscount Morley 
 (Acting Secretary of State for India) in the House 
 of Lords on the S2d of March, 1911: 
 
 *' If by any chance in negotiation our position in the Gulf is chal- 
 lenged, this is the answer — Great Britain has not sought territorial 
 acquisition in these regions. She has for generations borne burdens 
 there which no other nation has ever undertaken. She has had 
 duty thrust on her without dominion. . . . She has kept the peace 
 among people who are not her subjects. . . . She has kept in strange 
 ports an open door through which traders of every nation may have 
 as free access to distant markets as her own. If Great Britain has 
 become in any sense arbiter and guardian of the Gulf, it has been in 
 obedience to calls that have been made upon her in the past to 
 enforce peace and to hold back the arm of the marauder." 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 141 
 
 Now, in pursuance of this policy of keeping the 
 peace, of policing the Gulf, of buoying, charting 
 and opening the seas to navigation, it has become 
 necessary from time to time to restrain the various 
 and antagonistic tribes which occupy portions of 
 territory from interfering and making war upon 
 each other. To do this successfully, various treaties 
 and agreements have been made with independent 
 chiefs and rulers, great or small. Amongst others, 
 the Sheikh of Koweit is under definite agreement 
 with the British Government with the object, 
 amongst other matters, of preventing Jiis acquiring 
 further territory or disposing to others that which 
 he himself holds. When it is realized that in large 
 parts of the areas lying on the shores of the Persian 
 Gulf the claim to dominion on the part of local 
 rulers is often of a rather shadowy character, it will 
 be easily realized how necessary agreements of this 
 nature are. 
 
 Now, Busrah, the natural port of Mesopotamia, 
 is not suitable as a terminus for the Berlin-Baghdad 
 Railway — at any rate from the point of view of 
 the German authorities — owing to a sand bar at 
 the mouth of the Shatt-al-Arab (the name given to 
 the confluence of the two great rivers, the Tigris 
 and Euphrates) ; but the natural harbor of Koweit 
 below the bar is eminently suitable for the pur- 
 poses. Consequently, Turkey, at the instigation of 
 Germany, demanded that the territory in Koweit 
 should be handed over for the purposes of the rail- 
 way. The Sheikh, true to his obligations, replied 
 that he was unable to do this; but from the time 
 this first demand was made until the outbreak of 
 
142 JERUSALEM 
 
 war, Germany, by means of Turkey, never ceased 
 to press for a concession from the Sheikh of 
 Koweit, and to embroil the Turkish Government 
 with the British authorities. In this way the rela- 
 tions between the Turkish and British Government 
 became in the ten years previous to 1914 more and 
 more strained. Eventually Great Britain gave way, 
 and it is strange now to look back to the fact that 
 upon the outbreak of war, England was upon the 
 point of signing an agreement which virtually gave 
 Germany all she asked for, including control of the 
 Baghdad railway right down to the Persian Gulf. 
 
 The old good feeling existing between Great 
 Britain and Turkey having gradually changed, it 
 was evident that when war with Germany was de- 
 clared Turkey might be brought into it. It has 
 perhaps been truly said that the statesmen of Eng- 
 land were strangely apathetic and blind to what 
 Germany contemplated; but they knew enough to 
 be aware of the fact that Germany had deep designs 
 in the East and had succeeded to some extent in 
 bending Turkey to her will. 
 
 By the 31st of October, 1914, when it was seen 
 that war with Turkey was inevitable, the British 
 had a small force lying on transports in the Persian 
 Gulf off the island of Bahrein. This force had been 
 sent to prevent any possible attack upon the oil 
 pipe line which, through Persian territory, brings 
 oil from the fields to the refineries on the Shatt- 
 al-'Arab. This oil pipe line was naturally in neutral 
 territory and should therefore have been safe from 
 attack; but it was a British enterprise, and it was 
 believed that in the event of trouble with Turkey, 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 143 
 
 the first thing Turkish troops would do would be 
 to attack this pipe line, and this is exactly what 
 they did. With war declared, the British force was 
 eventually landed at Fao, at the mouth of the 
 Shatt-al-'Arab and right at the head of the Gulf, 
 and after the battle of Zain, at which the Turks 
 lost six thousand men, the town of Busrah was 
 occupied. 
 
 Busrah, the home of Sinbad the sailor, is the 
 natural port of Mesopotamia, and just outside the 
 town there is a flat stretch of some miles of arid 
 desert land, now uncultivated, but once a beautiful 
 garden. Its fertility has been ruined by the de- 
 struction of the banks which in the old days kept 
 the Euphrates river within bounds. This great 
 river, when it rises from the rains in the hills, often 
 overflows its banks and may in a night fill up a 
 marsh or create a new lake. Ten miles away from 
 Busrah City there is a group of forts known as 
 Shaiba, and the battle of Shaiba is really the en- 
 gagement which secured the British control of the 
 neighborhood of Busrah and drove the Turks to 
 the north. A description of that battle gives an 
 idea of the country. During the greater part of 
 the year, the land is a flat, arid desert, with the 
 dust over one's ankles when one walks; an inch or 
 two of rain and one walks with what can best be 
 described as a plum pudding attached to each boot; 
 a little more rain, or a rise in the river, and the 
 whole place becomes a lake. When the British ad- 
 vance troops were on the ridge at Shiba, the river 
 rose, overflowed its banks, and turned the ten miles 
 between the ridge and Busrah City into a lake six 
 
144 JERUSALEM 
 
 feet deep in mud and water. A few mules were forced 
 through, but a great part of the battle was actually 
 fought in small flat-bottomed boats. 
 
 After the victory at Shaiba, the Turks mustered 
 in force at Qurnah, 40 miles above Busrah, on the 
 Tigris River. Owing to a number of sandbanks, 
 the Euphrates, although the larger of the two great 
 rivers of Mesopotamia, cannot be used to the same 
 extent as the Tigris for navigation; but river ves- 
 sels drawing up to 4 feet can proceed up the latter 
 river even considerably above Baghdad. 
 
 It is well to remember that Mesopotamia is not 
 only a flat desert with, at certain times of the year, 
 probably the worst climate in the world, but is also 
 a country without wood or stone, with the single 
 exception of a few palm trees too valuable to be 
 cut down for any purpose. The expeditionary 
 force therefore sent to Mesopotamia had to contend 
 with many difficulties quite unknown in the other 
 battlefields of this great war. Although most people 
 in this country are aware of the wonderful work 
 which has been done by British troops on the 
 western front, it is probable that few of them know 
 much of the terrible privations and hardships ex- 
 perienced in these far Eastern operations. In the 
 first place, the force was sent from India, and 
 India had already been "bled white" to supply men 
 and munitions for France and East Africa. It is 
 true that of the more than eight million men, which 
 the British Empire had raised for this war, no less 
 than seventy per cent were raised within the confines 
 of England (not Great Britain), and this is a mar- 
 velous record! Of all the British casualties (about 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 145 
 
 2,000,000 men) England has borne seventy-six per 
 cent and Scotland ten per cent. Yet the colonies 
 and India have also done wonders. In the first few 
 weeks of the war, India's contribution was naturally 
 of the greatest value of all; that was the fateful 
 moment, and in these first few weeks India sent 
 no less than 280,000 men out of the country, leav- 
 ing a purely nominal garrison of about 15,000 
 white men to control a country of about 320,000,000 
 people. How nobly India responded to the trust 
 reposed in her is now a matter of history. From 
 prince to peasant, every section of the community 
 has leaped to answer the call to service and sacrifice, 
 and from first to last India raised nearly 2,000,000 
 men. 
 
 The very necessities of the Western front, how- 
 ever, in the early days of the war, made it im- 
 possible for India to adequately supply and equip 
 a force to fight the Turk; the men, therefore, who 
 took Busrah were ill-equipped with practically every 
 item necessary for the success of the operations and 
 the welfare of an army. They were fighting in a 
 country that they knew little or nothing of, and 
 under conditions which are perhaps unequaled even 
 by the horrors and hardships of the early days in 
 France. Probably it is safe to say that an advance 
 beyond Busrah was little contemplated in the 
 original plans. There was no other course possible, 
 however, with the Turks mustering on the Tigris, 
 and an advance was made by the British force 
 along the river, resulting in the capture of Qurnah 
 and subsequently the taking of Amara, ninety miles 
 to the north, on the 2d of June, 1915. Just think 
 
146 JERUSALEM 
 
 what this simple statement means: Qurnah, the 
 traditional site of the Garden of Eden (although 
 only really one of the five popular sites in Meso- 
 potamia), has the distinction of having probably 
 the worst climate in the world. The heat is terrific 
 and almost always damp; reaching the almost in- 
 credible temperature of 130° F. in the shade; in 
 fact, such heat is probably unknown in any other 
 part of the world. From April to October, life is 
 almost unbearable and should really be lived under- 
 ground. The beginning of June is probably about 
 the worst time; yet it was just at the beginning of 
 June that the British forces made a ninety-mile 
 march in three days and captured Amara! 
 
 With the Turk continually trying to get round 
 behind the Persian hills, a still further advance 
 seemed inevitable, and ill-equipped and ill-supplied 
 as they were, the force pushed on, took Kut-el- 
 Amara, and then advanced to the ruins of Ctesiphon, 
 only twenty-five miles below Baghdad. It is easy 
 now to say that the advance was dangerous, that 
 the force was deficient in everything necessary to 
 insure success, and working far from its base; but 
 it would be a bold man who would criticise so long 
 afterwards the strategy and operations of those 
 days. If Baghdad could be taken, not only would 
 a famous city fall to the Allies, but also the control 
 of the neighboring sites sacred to a large number 
 of the Mohammedans of the world, while with the 
 same blow, the goodwill and allegiance of a large 
 number of the Arab tribes surrounding the opera- 
 tions in Mesopotamia would be secured. It is suffi- 
 cient now to record that the advance was unsuc- 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 147 
 
 cessful; the movements of our troops were much 
 impeded by floods in the river, the Turks were re- 
 inforced from Baghdad and at the battle of 
 Ctesiphon, the British forces were thrust back to 
 Kut-el-Amara, where General Townshend was sur- 
 rounded. 
 
 The next phase of the British operations falls 
 naturally into two parts — firstly, the heroic and 
 marvelous defense of Kut by General Townshend 
 and his handful of heroes and, secondly, the des- 
 perate, but continually unsuccessful attempts made 
 from the south to relieve them. From the 7th of 
 December, 1915, until the S9th of the following 
 April, that small but heroic band kept the Union 
 Jack flying at Kut. Under daily shell fire from the 
 Turks; living in a mud-hutted village of about five 
 thousand people in a bend of the river; without 
 sanitation, hospital equipment, stores or supplies of 
 any kind in proper quantity ; with rations gradually 
 dwindling to a few ounces of meal and a little horse- 
 flesh per head per day, the sufferings of the de- 
 fending force can be little appreciated by residents 
 in other parts of the world. As regards the main 
 body further down the river, the absence of all 
 equipment really necessary for operations on such 
 a scale made it impossible that their hopes of re- 
 lieving the beleaguered force could be realized, and 
 in spite of all their sacrifices, it was found im- 
 possible to reach the garrison of Kut in time to 
 save them. Eventually General Townshend sur- 
 rendered, his last communication to his troops read- 
 ing: 
 
 "Whatever may happen, my comrades, you have 
 
148 JERUSALEM 
 
 done your duty. The whole world knows that you 
 have done your duty." 
 
 The fall of Kut-el-Amara marks the end of what 
 may be called the first campaign in Mesopotamia, and 
 we may describe the second campaign as opening 
 with the appointment of General Sir Stanley Maude 
 to command the force, and the beginning of his 
 drive to the north in December, 1916. But what 
 a change had taken place in the intervening months ! 
 Wonderful efforts had been made to supply essen- 
 tials, to equip the army, and to fit it with what was 
 necessary to wipe out forever this even temporary 
 disaster to British arms. The Turks were so se- 
 curely entrenched on the Tigris that they believed 
 their positions to be impregnable. It must be left 
 to military historians to describe in detail how 
 General Maude was able to circumvent these posi- 
 tions. Here it is only possible to say that by a 
 masterly stroke he defeated the Turks at Sheikh- 
 Sa-'rd, and fighting continual trench warfare, foot 
 by foot, with a temperature changing as much as 
 60° between midday and midnight, he re-took Kut, 
 passed on to Ctesiphon and on the 11th of March, 
 1917, drove the Turk from Baghdad, thus deliver- 
 ing probably the greatest blow which the Allies had 
 yet delivered to the Kaiser and his government 
 since the war started, for the taking of Baghdad 
 meant the erection of a barrier once and forever 
 right across the German path to the East, and the 
 destruction of the German dream of world-wide 
 dominion. 
 
 Today, the British forces have advanced much 
 beyond Baghdad, and the city itself lies far back 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 149 
 
 from the fighting line. Peace reigns again, and this 
 wonderful and historical city has resumed its quiet 
 course of trade and commerce. Baghdad, once a 
 city of nearly two million people, has gradually 
 dwindled in importance under Turkish control to a 
 place of about one hundred and fifty thousand in- 
 habitants, of whom probably fifty thousand are 
 Jews. Every section of the community, excepting 
 a few thieving Kurds, welcomed the British forces ; 
 but probably no section were more delighted at the 
 advance than the Jewish residents who, after nearly 
 six hundred years of persecution, are still the 
 largest property owners in Baghdad. Many a 
 Turkish aeroplane has passed over the city; hun- 
 dreds of thousands of troops have passed through 
 it, and its population is augmented to-day by the 
 forces connected with the war. 
 
 The Turks, at German instigation, drove a new 
 street right across the city before the British 
 forces arrived, without considering, I fear, in any 
 way the rights or feelings of the owners or tenants 
 of the property which stood in the way. This 
 modern street, however, has enormously helped 
 Baghdad. The old bazaars are full of life, and 
 trading goes on under the old conditions, the close- 
 packed crowd thronging the markets, almost always 
 covered with a thin blue haze of cigarette smoke. 
 But in the main street there is a different traffic. 
 From early morning till late at night, the road is 
 full of all the men and material of war, ammunition 
 carts, transport wagons, British and Indian sol- 
 diers, officers on horseback and walking, and occa- 
 sionally even the passage of the Army Commander 
 
150 JERUSALEM 
 
 himself. On the famous "bridge of boats" all kinds 
 of traffic and all nationalities are to be seen: stout 
 and comfortable merchants, Persians, Jews, Arabs 
 of the desert and the town, Kurds, Armenians, 
 Syrians, Greeks, negroes, and last but not by any 
 means least, large numbers of British and Indian 
 troops and followers. Yet, in spite of all this 
 activity, we may still turn a corner into the old 
 world of Baghdad; still see the Arab woman mov- 
 ing silently along under the shadow of some great 
 wall with her face covered from the gaze of a 
 stranger, and a water jug poised on her shoulder 
 as in the days long past. As a soldier poet sings: 
 
 " Still in Baghdad's Gardens, 
 
 Soft coos the mating dove; 
 The almond blossoms whisper low 
 
 Old fragrant tales of love; 
 Still to the tomb of Omar 
 
 The Arab glides to pray. 
 Or brood o'er Islam's mighty past. 
 
 And the Caliph's vanished sway.'* 
 
 Mesopotamia, the "cradle of the world," the most 
 wonderful land in history, the country in which his- 
 tory began and the human race first saw light, the 
 land in which eight empires have risen and fallen, 
 had become under Turkish rule a desert and a by- 
 word among the nations. Yet this arid plain was 
 once the most fertile of all countries; on it was 
 raised the corn and oil which supplied the world. 
 Baghdad was the center of an empire stretching 
 from Spain to China, and its residents comprised the 
 greatest princes, preachers, scientists, and mer- 
 chants of the world. This Arab empire, however, 
 
Photo by Prof. G. L. Robinson. 
 
 ZicHON Yakol. a Model jE\^asH Agricultural Colony. 
 
 Photo by Prof. G. L. Robinson. 
 
 Pruning a Lemon Tree. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 151 
 
 followed the numerous civilizations which had gone 
 before; Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek, Per- 
 sian, and Parthian, and from these empires the 
 civilization of to-day, upon which the west so prides 
 itself, emanated. 
 
 A flat arid desert. Yet probably the most fertile 
 country in the world! Under the Turk, regarding 
 whose reign there is not one item of progress to 
 record, the vast irrigation system of the past has 
 been utterly destroyed. It has been useless for the 
 Arab to work, for to gain possessions under Turkish 
 misrule meant merely to excite the envy and cupidity 
 of an alien master. It is useless appealing to the 
 law when the judgment goes to the highest bidder. 
 No wonder that after nearly seven hundred years 
 of such conditions, the Arab has become a wanderer 
 and a thief. 
 
 The British have only been eighteen months in 
 Baghdad, yet what changes have already taken 
 place all over the country ! At Busrah, a port al- 
 ways, there are now miles of wharves, hospitals, 
 roads, water-ways, docks, and public works of all 
 description; at Baghdad, streets, sanitation, 
 telegraphs and telephones, with similar progress all 
 along the 500 miles of river intervening. Peace and 
 prosperity reign in the land; the old irrigation 
 works are being gradually taken in hand, the rivers, 
 which with restraint and care, mean wealth and 
 prosperity, but which, misused and left to the 
 ignorant and corrupt, mean danger and death, are 
 again working for the benefit of man and adding 
 daily to the fertility and wealth of the country. 
 The word of the Englishman is known throughout 
 
152 JERUSALEM 
 
 the land, and the Arab swears by him; even above 
 an oath on the Koran itself. Justice is equal for 
 all, murder and thieving are punished, and labor is 
 honestly paid for. Already, over eleven hundred 
 square miles of country are under cultivation, sav- 
 ing no less than two million tons of badly needed 
 shipping every year to the Allies. The Arab sees 
 all this and takes hold; he is not slow in learning; 
 he has got rid of his hated alien master; he is 
 free again, and is grateful for his freedom. 
 
 Now, what is the responsibility of America in 
 connection with all this? It is true that British 
 influence has long been recognized as predominant 
 in this part of the world; it is true that to British 
 arms and to British arms alone falls the disgrace 
 of the surrender at Kut, and to British arms must 
 be ascribed the glory of the subsequent retrievement, 
 and the blow struck to German dominion by the 
 capture of Baghdad; but there is no part of this 
 war, in which all the Allied powers are not con- 
 cerned, or in the direction of which they are un- 
 interested. We may take pride in the fact that 
 the Allies are united in their aims and strive to 
 appreciate and understand each other's position and 
 responsibilities. 
 
 The American people have two important duties 
 in connection with the wonderful campaign in 
 Mesopotamia and in regard to the settlement of 
 this famous land; firstly, it is their duty to see 
 that the sacrifices which their Allies have made have 
 not been made in vain. More than one German 
 writer has made it clear that Germany would give 
 up much in Europe to retain her path to the East. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 153 
 
 This must never he. Now that peace has come, 
 keep your eyes fixed on Mesopotamia and insure 
 once and for all that the German dream of dominion 
 is at an end. Secondly, the security and peace of 
 the world are bound up with the problem of the 
 settlement of the nations of Asia Minor. Away 
 beyond the lands which have been occupied by the 
 British under the operations of the Palestine and 
 Mesopotamia campaigns, there is an area still under 
 the control of Turkey which cries out for deliver- 
 ance. The Armenian massacres have been the 
 scandal of the civilized world for thirty years ; Syria, 
 Armenia, and other portions of the Turk's pre-war 
 possessions in Asia, must be free forever. The "Sick 
 man" of Europe must be cured once and for all, 
 and in the process of the cure, shorn of all his power 
 to infect and harm others. 
 
THE JEWISH AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITIES 
 OF PALESTINE 
 
 The Development of Edom and Mt. Seir 
 
 By George L. Robinson, Ph.D. 
 McCormick Theological Seminary 
 
THE JEWISH AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES 
 OF PALESTINE 
 
 By Geo. L. Robinson, Ph.D. 
 
 DURING the year 1913-14, the writer visited 
 twenty-two of the thirty-four Jewish 
 Colonies which have sprung up in Palestine 
 since 1878. At that time they were centers of great 
 activity, industrial, commercial and educational. 
 
 Many of the choicest parts of Palestine have been 
 selected, in which to plant these colonies. The most 
 important are located along the coast of the 
 Mediterranean in the Plain of Sharon, but others 
 are to be found in the Shephelah or foothills of 
 Judea, in the mountains, and far north about the 
 Sea of Galilee, and the Bitter Lakes. Prior to their 
 establishment the great centers of Jewish life in the 
 Holy Land were in Hebron, which claimed 2000, 
 Jerusalem which had about 60,000, Tiberias with 
 7000, and Safed having 20,000. These still remain 
 the four most populous and important Jewish set- 
 tlements in the country. To what extent they and 
 the newer colonies have suffered because of the war 
 is not known, but from recent reports received, it 
 is creditably certain that while in some cases they 
 have been emptied of their inhabitants, their houses 
 and public buildings, gardens and farms, vineyards 
 and orchards have for the most part been left 
 undisturbed. 
 
 157 
 
158 JERUSALEM 
 
 ZlCHRON YaKOB 
 
 Probably the most celebrated of all is that called 
 Zichron Yakob, or "Memory of Jacob," as the name 
 implies. It is also known as Zammarin. It is 
 located five miles southeast of Dor, in the northern 
 portion of the Plain of Sharon, under Mount Car- 
 mel, and enjoys an elevation of some SOO feet above 
 the sea. Before the war, there were in the Colony 
 one hundred and fifty families (the Hebrews count 
 by families rather than by individuals), mostly from 
 Roumania. The Colony was founded in 1882 by 
 Baron Edmund de Rothschild of Paris. Most of 
 the colonists speak German. They own 2400 acres 
 of rich land, devoted principally to the cultivation 
 of grapes, which in turn are converted into wine and 
 exported as "Carmel Wine." 
 
 It is here that the recent wild wheat experiments 
 of a German-Hebrew, named Aaronsohn, were con- 
 ducted. Herr Aaronsohn, having re-discovered in 
 Galilee and Gilead at different places wild wheat 
 (the same as that originally discovered fifty years 
 before by Theodor Kotschy on the western slopes 
 of Mt. Hermon), experimented with it in the new 
 laboratories of the Agricultural Experiment Station 
 at Zichron Yakob, and by repeated cross-breeding 
 of this wild type with the best domesticated varie- 
 ties, finally succeeded in producing an offspring 
 which possesses all the desirable characteristics of 
 the wild variety, coupled with the good qualities of 
 the domesticated; and which, better than any other 
 variety, withstands on the one hand the hot sirocco 
 >vinds of the desert which sweep over Palestine from 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTUEE 159 
 
 Arabia, and, on the other, the rust of the Rhine 
 Valley in Germany; for his work has been tested 
 and confirmed by the leading European and Ameri- 
 can agronomists. 
 
 He has also demonstrated on his two experimental 
 farms at Athlit and Khadeyah, in Sharon, that the 
 soil of Palestine is by no means exhausted, and that 
 it only requires proper tilling to produce crops in 
 greatly increased abundance. Already before the 
 war he had multiplied the ordinary yield of certain 
 areas six-fold. Besides, he had drained certain 
 swampy low lands in order to get rid of the mos- 
 quitos and malaria which are incident to the dis- 
 trict; discovered how to spread vines over the 
 blowing sands of the seashore to prevent their 
 constant encroachment upon the cultivated soil of 
 the adjacent plain; experimented with silk worms 
 and found a late hatching variety ; improved certain 
 olive trees which he permitted to bear only once in 
 two years ; discovered the best kind of eucalyptus 
 and acacia; and, in short, converted a considerable 
 section of the Plain of Sharon, which under the 
 Turk had become a comparatively unproductive 
 desert, into a veritable oasis; demonstrating to the 
 world that if primitive methods of agriculture so 
 successfully developed the wheat yield of Palestine, 
 what with modern scientific cultivation may not be 
 expected in the future! Surely the faith of the 
 Psalmist who prayed that when the Messiah should 
 come there might be "abundance of grain on the 
 earth, even upon the top of the mountains" (Ps. 
 72:16) gives promise of being actually fulfilled. 
 
160 JERUSALEM 
 
 RiSHON LE-ZlON 
 
 The second most important colony of the Jews 
 in Palestine is known as Rishon le-Zion, or "The 
 First Colony to Zion" (Arabic, Ayun Kara). It 
 is one of the oldest of all the colonies in Palestine, 
 It was founded in 1882, and owes its origin to the 
 persecutions of the Jews by the Russians. Baron 
 Rothschild has spent millions of francs in organiz- 
 ing and maintaining it. It lies some seven miles 
 south-east of Joppa and about five and one-half 
 miles west of Lydda; having 3180 acres of good 
 arable land and a population of approximately 
 1200. Sharon here has been transformed into "a 
 fruitful fill" with gardens of almonds, oranges, and 
 other fruit trees, especially vines. It is the greatest 
 center of the wine industry in Palestine. This 
 colony alone has 3,000,000 grape vines. The fruit 
 is converted into wine and exported as "Carmel 
 Wine." The wine cellars, originally built by Baron 
 Rothschild at a cost of 30 million francs, and having 
 a capacity of 1,650,000 gallons, are said to be with 
 two exceptions, Bordeaux and San Francisco, the 
 most extensive wine cellars in the world. Some 
 5,000,000 liters are exported annually. 
 
 In 1918 there were 200 families in this colony, 
 of whom 98 actually possessed land. They came 
 for the most part from Russia. A fine Synagogue 
 graces the colony, being situated at the head of 
 their principal thoroughfare, on the summit of the 
 village hill. Near the Synagogue stand a school, a 
 hotel, and a Jewish post office. As Colonists they 
 are allowed to choose their own Mayor, and make 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 161 
 
 their own laws. Every night at nine o'clock a great 
 bell, mounted on a high post near the Synagogue, 
 is rung to drive to their tents any visiting Arabs, 
 who by remaining through the night might disturb 
 the peace or plunder the possessions of the Colony. 
 
 Tell Abib 
 
 The most beautiful and in some respects the most 
 attractive of all the colonies prior to the war was 
 that in the northern edge of the city of Joppa, 
 known as Tell Abib, the name meaning "Hill of 
 ears of grain." Centuries ago (ca. 580 B.C.) there 
 was one of the same name in Babylonia on the banks 
 of the River Chebar, where dwelt a colony of exiled 
 Jews, cf. Ezek. 3:15. The modern Tell Abib at 
 Joppa was founded in 1909, and at the outbreak of 
 the war boasted of one hundred and eighty families 
 of the better class of Russians (about 1600 in- 
 dividuals). Not long after the great struggle be- 
 gan, however, the Colony became quite emptied of 
 its inhabitants. The houses are neat and well built ; 
 the streets are broad and well paved, with sidewalks ; 
 the gardens and parks being especially attractive. 
 The Gymnasium, or High School, is the outstanding 
 feature of the Colony. It was built in 1911-12 at 
 a cost of $15,000, the gift of the well known Zionist 
 Herr Mauser of Bradford. The Zionists were 
 accustomed to contribute four thousand francs 
 annually toward its maintenance. The Gymnasium 
 was rapidly becoming celebrated as the best High 
 School in the Holy Land. It was co-educational, 
 though in it there were fewer girls than boys. As 
 
162 JERUSALEM 
 
 many as 700 pupils were in attendance; some of 
 their graduates entering Columbia University, New 
 York, with advance credits. Twenty-nine men and 
 women constituted the staff of instruction. Hebrew 
 was the medium of instruction. Two dominating 
 principles gave character to the institution: one, 
 that Hebrew should be the only language spoken 
 in the School; the other, that there should be entire 
 freedom in religious belief. Among the disciplines 
 taught were the Old Testament, the Talmud, 
 Hebrew Language and Literature, Arabic, Turkish, 
 French, German, History, Mathematics, Geography, 
 Science, Music, and Physical Exercise. A certain 
 class in Music which the writer visited were being 
 taught to sing beautiful Maccabean melodies. In 
 the Gymnasium, the physical director, who was drill- 
 ing the class in gymnastics, gave all his orders in 
 the Sacred Tongue! The motto of the institution 
 was, "Mens sana in corpore sano." 
 
 Petah Tikweh 
 
 About seven miles northeast of Joppa there is 
 another important colony, which, indeed, is said to 
 be the largest of all the Jewish colonies in Palestine. 
 It is called Petah Tikweh, or the "Door of Hope." 
 It is situated on both sides of the River Aujeh, near 
 a modern village called Mulabbes. The colony was 
 founded in 1878 by Baron Rothschild. There were 
 four hundred families in residence here five years 
 ago. The entire area, 800 acres, is divided up into 
 some 20 gardens which are irrigated from the river. 
 Great waterworks have been constructed for this 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 163 
 
 purpose. In the gardens grow thousands and tens 
 of thousands of thrifty orange trees. It was said, 
 five years ago, to be the most important orange- 
 growing center in the whole of Sharon. The 
 northern half of the colony alone, known as 
 Bukariyeh, in 1913, had as many as 60,000 orange 
 trees, averaging a crop worth annually sixty cents 
 per tree. Besides oranges, lemons, almonds, and 
 grapes, grow in abundance; also cereals. Dairy 
 farming is likewise a prosperous industry. The most 
 modern implements of agriculture, such as wheeled 
 plows and cultivators, are used. Arab laborers are 
 employed, occasionally negroes. A million francs 
 per annum are paid as wages to these. Numerous 
 schools have been established, including an Elemen- 
 tary Agricultural School. A large Synagogue 
 stands, as in every important Colony, in the center 
 of the settlement. 
 
 MiKWEH YlSRAEIi 
 
 Two miles southeast of Joppa there is another 
 important colony, known as Mikweh Yisrael, or, the 
 "Congregation of Israel." It was founded by the 
 Alliance Israelite Universelle of Paris, and soon 
 developed into a thriving school of agriculture with 
 150 pupils. The colonists all speak French. In 
 1913, there were U families in the colony, who, 
 together, possessed 723 feddans, or about 625 
 acres, of land. Cattle breeding is one of the 
 colonists' specialties. Through scientific inbreeding 
 they have greatly improved the quality of their 
 animals. Among the fruit trees cultivated are 
 
164 JERUSALEM 
 
 oranges and mulberries ; but besides these, numerous 
 varieties of trees, flowers, and vegetables are grown. 
 Here are the headquarters of the Palestinian Society 
 of Agriculture. Extensive hot-houses have been 
 constructed. The bamboos shown us in the gardens 
 were said to be the only ones growing in all Pales- 
 tine. Five regular instructors assisted at that time 
 in the work of the colony. A Synagogue and a 
 library crown the knoll on which the colony stands. 
 The view from these over the Plain of Sharon is 
 extensive. 
 
 Other Jewish CoiiONiEs 
 
 (1) Along the Mediterranean Coast, 
 
 1. Ruhamah (Arabic, Djemama), situated about 
 11 miles east of Gaza. Founded in 1911 by a 
 Society of Russian Jews from Moscow. 1270 acres. 
 Staple culture, wheat. 
 
 2. Kastinieh (Arabic, el-Kustineh) , situated about 
 17 miles north of Ruhamah. Founded in 1895 by 
 Russian Jews, 1600 acres. Population 180. Staple 
 culture, wheat, sesame, barley, beans, and almond 
 plantations. 
 
 3. Gederah (Arabic, Katrah), six miles north of 
 Kastinieh. Founded in 1884 by a group of Russian 
 students, 1360 acres. Population 150. Staple 
 products, almonds, also grapes and olives, and some 
 wheat. 
 
 4. Huldah (Arabic, Khuldeh), seven miles east of 
 Katrah, two miles north of the railway station 
 Sedjed, at an altitude of 215 feet. Founded in 1909 
 by the Jewish National Fund which has created 
 these great olive groves in memory of Theodore 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 165 
 
 Herzl, the creator and the first leader of the Zionist 
 organization. 455 acres. Population, 40. These 
 colonists possess the only artesian well in Palestine. 
 
 5. Ekron (Arabic, Akir), the ancient Ekron, 
 situated four miles north-east of Katrah on the road 
 to Ramleh and Lydda, at an altitude of 200 feet. 
 Founded in 1884 by Baron Rothschild, with Russian 
 and Roumanian Jewish settlers, 3570 acres, for the 
 most part arable. Population 320. Staple prod- 
 ucts, wheat, almonds, and dairy farming. 
 
 6. Rechoboth (Arabic, Dar^an), situated two and 
 a half miles north of Ekron and four miles south- 
 west of Ramleh. Founded in 1890 by a group of 
 Polish and Lithuanian Jews. 3250 acres. Popula- 
 tion 900, inclusive of 270 Arabian Jews who have 
 returned to Palestine from the Yemen. A very 
 prosperous colony, producing almonds, oranges, 
 wines and figs, also wheat, oats, melons, bananas, 
 vegetables. 
 
 7. Bir Yacob, "Well of Jacob." Two miles north- 
 east of Rechoboth and two miles west of Ramleh. 
 Founded in 1907 as a working-men's settlement, in- 
 habited partly by Circassians, from the Caucasus. 
 500 acres. Population, 70. Orange and almond 
 plantations, and vegetables. 
 
 8. Wady el-Khanin, "Valley of Roses." Two 
 miles north-west of Rechoboth and four miles west 
 of Ramleh. Nearby is another small colony known 
 as Nes Zion, or, "Flag of Zion." Both founded 
 in 1882 by Jews from Russia, 760 acres. Popula- 
 tion, 200. Orange trees 50,000, almond plantation, 
 grapes and cereals. 
 
 9. Nahalath-Yehudah, on the northern outskirts 
 
166 JERUSALEM 
 
 of Rishon le-Zion. A working-men's settlement, 
 founded in 1913 by the Odessa Committee of the 
 "Lovers of Zion." 
 
 10. Rem Shamen, about one mile north-east of 
 Lydda. Estate of the Jewish National Fund. 
 Founded in 1910. Population, 100. Large planta- 
 tions of olive and other fruit trees ; model dairy and 
 poultry farm. Training farm for Jewish laborers. 
 
 11. Kefar Saba (Arabic, Kafr Saha). Fourteen 
 miles north-east of Jaffa, on the road to Kaifa, and 
 19 miles west of Nablus. A working-men's settle- 
 ment. Founded in 1904, 1750 acres. Almost ex- 
 clusively almond plantations, also olive groves and 
 eucalyptus trees. 
 
 12. Ain Ganim, on the north-eastern outskirts 
 of Petah-Tikweh. A working-men's settlement. 
 Founded in 1910. 700 acres. Population, 100. 
 
 (2) In the Shephelah and Judah. 
 
 1. Artuf. At the entrance of the Wady Surar, 
 or, "Valley of Sorek," 20 miles east of Ashdod, 13 
 miles west of Jerusalem, and about one mile north- 
 east of the station Deir Aban on the Jaffa-Jerusalem 
 railway. Founded in 1896. 1200 acres, some por- 
 tions being rough and rocky. Population 100, 
 mostly Rulgarians. Cereals, and almond planta- 
 tions. 
 
 2. Kefar Uriah. Located about halfway between 
 Artuf and Huldah. Founded in 1913 by a group 
 of Russian Zionists. 435 acres. Was being pre- 
 pared for settlement by a group of 30 laborers when 
 the war broke out. 
 
 3. Abu Shusheh. The site of the ancient Gezer, 
 Located five miles south-east of Ramleh and three 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 167 
 
 miles north-east of Huldah. Founded in 1912. Not 
 actually settled. 
 
 4. Mozah (Arabic, Khurbet Beit MizzaJi), about 
 four miles west of Jerusalem on the road to Jaffa. 
 Founded in 1893. 250 acres, much of it rocky and 
 hilly. Vineyards, olive plantations, vegetables, 
 wheat. Only three houses and a small hotel, in 
 1914. 
 
 (3) About the Sea of Galilee. 
 
 1. El-Fuleh. Located about four miles north- 
 west of Jezreel, and ten miles south of Nazareth, in 
 the Plain of Esdraelon, near Shunem, at the junc- 
 tion of the Haifa-Damascus Railway as it branches 
 toward Jenin and Samaria. 1800 feddans of land. 
 Population, 75; about 15 tile-roofed houses. Wheat 
 the chief staple. 
 
 2. Milhamiyeh. Located four miles south of the 
 Sea of Galilee on the west side of the Jordan River. 
 Founded in 1901. Population, 100; chiefly from 
 Russia and Austria. Synagogue and school at the 
 top of the main thoroughfare. 40 pupils ; language, 
 Hebrew. Chief staple, wheat. A McCormick reaper 
 in use. 
 
 3. Bethania. Located midway between Mil- 
 hamiyeh and the Sea of Galilee. Founded in 1912. 
 Population, 50; few women. Mostly from Russia. 
 Laborers who work the land housed in one big 
 building. 
 
 4. Daganya. About one mile from Semekh, at 
 the south end of the Sea of Galilee. About a score 
 of tile-roofed houses. Chief staple, wheat. 
 
 5. El-Kinnereth. At the south-west corner of the 
 Sea of Galilee, beautifully located, elevated and im- 
 
168 JERUSALEM 
 
 posing. A broad stairway leads up from the sea 
 to the principal buildings. The main street extends 
 parallel with the sea shore. View most attractive. 
 Oat crop gathered by the Russian Jewish peasants 
 on a wagon with hay-rack — a rare sight in 
 Palestine ! 
 
 6. Porea. Directly west of El-Kinnereth, some 
 five miles, up on the hills of Galilee. Inhabitants, 
 Jews from the United States. Land fertile: the 
 name Porea means "fertile." 
 
 7. Kefar Hattin. Six miles north-west of Tiberias. 
 Near the Horns of Hattin where tradition says the 
 Sermon on the Mount was delivered. Fourteen 
 houses, about 75 inhabitants. Staple, cereals. 
 
 8. Magdala, in the southern portion of the Plain 
 of Genneseret. Soil, exceedingly fertile. Irrigated. 
 Wheel-plows in use. Cement manufactory. Popula- 
 tion, 60. German spoken. 
 
 (4) About Lake Huleh in North Galilee. 
 
 1. Rosh Pinah, "Head of the Corner" — (Arabic, 
 Ja'uneh), Located in a valley about five miles 
 north-east of Safed. Yiddish spoken. About 100 
 souls. Founded in 1884. A Rothschild foundation. 
 Fine Synagogue and School. Streets paved. One 
 long avenue of trees, two miles in length. Staples, 
 wheat and almonds. 
 
 2. Mahanaim. About four miles north-east of 
 Rosh Pinah. On account of the character of the 
 water, abandoned. Many houses and public build- 
 ings standing deserted. 
 
 3. Kawash. Called also Mishmar Hayyarden. 
 Located about one mile west of the Bridge over the 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 169 
 
 Jordan, kno^vn to the Arabs as Jisr Benat Yakob, 
 A very small colony. Few orchards. 
 
 4. Zubeid. Called also Essadamalah, 150 in- 
 habitants. At the head of the main street, which 
 runs down to the waters of Lake Merom, stand the 
 Synagogue and School. 
 
 5. MetuUah. Located seven miles north-west of 
 Tell el-Kadi, the ancient Dan of Scripture. Popula- 
 tion, 200 souls. Founded in 1896. The most im- 
 portant colony in North Galilee. 
 
 These are the colonies as they existed at the out- 
 break of the war. In general, they represented two 
 principal classes of Jews: (1) those whose ancestors 
 were expelled from Spain and Portugal under 
 Ferdinand and Isabella towards the end of the 
 fifteenth century ; who, having resided long in Pales- 
 tine, naturally speak Arabic, and wear Arab cos- 
 tume. (2) The majority, however, are modern im- 
 migrants, largely German, Polish, Russian, Hun- 
 garian, Roumanian and Dutch. Nearly all speak 
 German, wear long locks of hair over their temples, 
 dress in mantles of highly colored velvet, their head- 
 gear consisting of heavy fur caps. 
 
 The Zionist movement has greatly increased their 
 number. Their financial support has come from 
 both private benefactors such as Messrs. Montefiore, 
 Rothschild and Hirsch, and societies such as the 
 Jewish Alliance of Russia, the Alliance Israelite 
 Universelle of Paris, and the Jewish Colonization 
 Association established by Baron Hirsch who has 
 given in all not less than $50,000,000 to them. Their 
 aim is to redeem Palestine and make it their future 
 home. 
 
170 JERUSALEM 
 
 The late Captain Conder confidently believed such 
 colonies would do much good. While they have 
 successfully captured the choicest portions of all 
 Palestine, and selected the most desirable location 
 in all the world for their proposed university — the 
 Mount of Olives ; and, in some parts have become 
 a real menace to the native Moslems, having cap- 
 tured the four best paying industries of the country 
 — wine, oranges, almonds and olives — nevertheless, 
 their aim is "not to seize the country by force but 
 rather to conquer it by good will," as a Jew at 
 Petah Tikweh remarked to the writer, and in due 
 time, perhaps, to obtain political independence. 
 This was Mr. Herzl's original programme. And 
 why, he asked, should they not be granted their 
 desire ? They are turning their attention to agricul- 
 ture, and are actually farming before the world's 
 eyes; they purpose to become producers and no 
 longer to serve the world as mere middlemen; they 
 are transforming Palestine into a productive and 
 flourishing garden, and are making a paradise of 
 what was only recently an almost unproductive and 
 barren territory. Palestine really belongs to them. 
 As George Adam Smith is forced to allow, "the land 
 can never remain under a single Gentile power." 
 Why not, therefore, convert it into a sort of Asiatic 
 Switzerland, and make of it a federated state, pro- 
 tected and defended against the ambitious and 
 predatory nations of the world.? 
 
II 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDOM 
 
 THE boundaries of the land of Edom are some- 
 what difficult to define. In the ancient 
 times, it stretched from the brook Zered 
 (Wady el-Ahsy), the Dead Sea, and Wady el- 
 Fikreh on the north, to the Gulf of Akabah on the 
 south, and from the Hajj, or Pilgrim, Route from 
 Damascus to Mecca on the east, to the wilderness 
 of Paran and the Wady el-'Arish on the west. Al- 
 together the territory was not great and cannot 
 have exceeded 13,000 square miles, being about 100 
 miles in extent from north to south and 125 miles 
 from east to west. 
 
 Districts 
 
 It falls topographically into three well-marked 
 divisions: (1) the Western; (2) the 'Arabah; and 
 (3) Mt. Seir proper. 
 
 The Western 
 
 We begin with the western, a desert region now 
 occupied by the 'Azarimeh Arabs. For the most 
 part it is composed of low barren limestone ridges 
 intersected by innumerable wadies, which run in 
 various directions. The ground is covered in some 
 
 171 
 
172 JERUSALEM 
 
 parts with loose flints ; sand and gravei are common 
 to many others. The chief mountains are known 
 as Jebel Magrah, of which Jebel 'Araif is the most 
 conspicuous peak. These are drained westwardly 
 by the Wady el-'Arish, and eastwardly by Wadies 
 Marreh, Fikreh and Ghamr. The southern portion 
 is much more barren than the northern, though 
 even the best portions are, as Palmer describes them, 
 "an extremely ugly and uninteresting piece of coun- 
 try," with "dull featureless hills; wadies like huge 
 ditches, the bottoms paved with smooth blocks of 
 limestone, shrubs and pools of rainwater at long dis- 
 tances, a few Retem bushes and an occasional Seyal 
 tree." The whole region is desolate in the extreme. 
 The mountains are a mass of barren jutting rock; 
 the plains are strewn with black flints: and even 
 the bottoms of the valleys are sandy and for the 
 most part absolutely destitute of all vegetation and 
 animal life. Desolation and dreariness are here so 
 terrible that this western section is quite as dull and 
 uninteresting as can well be imagined. It was in 
 this region that Israel wandered a good portion of 
 the forty years spent by them in the wilderness. 
 
 The 'Arabah 
 
 The second division of Edom is known as the 
 'Arabah. It is a great deep cleft running from 
 north to south through the very heart of the coun- 
 try. The northern end of it for some thirty miles 
 is lower than the sea-level, which is a very remark- 
 able feature — "the most remarkable," according to 
 Humboldt, "on the face of the earth." It lays 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 173 
 
 open the whole geological structure of Mt. Seir. 
 Hull regards the 'Arabah as the Bible's "Wilderness 
 of Zin." Not until the beginning of the last century 
 was the existence of this deep valley known to 
 geographers. Neither Strabo, nor Pliny, nor 
 Ptolemy, nor Josephus, nor any other geographer 
 or historian makes the slightest allusion to it. 
 Burckhardt of Basle in 1810 was the first to explore 
 it. Count de Bertou, a few years later, boasts that 
 he and his party were "the first Europeans who in 
 modern times had traversed the whole extent of the 
 wady from the Dead Sea to 'Akabah"; and he at- 
 tempts to prove that the Jordan River never flowed 
 into the Red Sea as was previously supposed. 
 Burckhardt had advanced the idea that the 'Arabah 
 had formerly been the bed of the Jordan. Hull, on 
 the other hand, finds traces on its western side of 
 an old littoral beach belonging to the period when 
 the waters of the Salt Sea washed the base of the 
 adjoining ridge, which proves that a portion at 
 least of the 'Arabah was an old sea bottom. 
 
 The 'Arabah in general is a dreary sandy desert 
 steppe, consisting of gravel and shingle and marl 
 for the most part, but tufted over with broom and 
 other brush, and here and there with a little pas- 
 turage. Seldom does one find any cultivation, but 
 the valley is by no means destitute of verdure. It 
 varies in breadth from one half a mile at the water- 
 shed to ten or even thirteen miles at its widest part, 
 sloping slightly from east to west and drained both 
 toward the Dead Sea and the Gulf of 'Akabah. 
 Wady el-Jeib is the main artery of the 'Arabah. 
 It is not only deep but broad, flows north and 
 
174 JERUSALEM 
 
 empties into the Dead Sea. The saddle, or water- 
 shed, is about 45 miles north of the head of the 
 Gulf of 'Akabah, or about west of Petra, and is 723 
 feet in altitude above sea-level. High mountains 
 bound the valley on the east, and low ridges on the 
 west. Numerous torrent streams debouch upon it, 
 bringing with them boulders, stones, and gravel and 
 sandy silt, which cover the plain in many cases for 
 hundreds of yards. In some parts there is sand, 
 blown and left "like the waves of the sea," as the 
 writer recorded in his Journal when crossing in 1907 
 from Bozra to 'Ain Hash. Hull also describes 
 enormous mounds of pure white sand rising in dunes 
 30 to 50 feet high, "like the dunes along the sea 
 shore." The shrubs in such places are few, but 
 near water fountains or streams they have all the 
 appearance of a jungle. Being so low in altitude 
 it is correspondingly hot. Count de Bertou says of 
 the 'Arabah: "In this striking and solemn waste 
 where nature is alike destitute of vegetation and 
 inhabitants, man appears but an atom; all around 
 is enveloped in the silence of death, not a bird, not 
 even an insect, is seen. The regular step of our 
 camels returned a dull sound, as if the earth were 
 hollowed beneath their feet; the monotonous chant 
 of the camel driver accompanied at times the step 
 of this inhabitant of the desert, but suddenly stopped 
 as if he feared to awaken nature." 
 
 The 'Arabah has another special feature of more 
 than ordinary interest, namely, the transverse 
 escarpment of clay cliffs in its northern portion, 
 about eight miles south of the south end of the 
 Dead Sea. The late Dr. Edward Robinson identifies 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 175 
 
 them with the "Ascent of the 'Akrabbim" mentioned 
 in Josh. 15:3. They are from 50 to 100 feet in 
 height, and are composed of gravel and sand and 
 chalk and marl which rest on lower beds of white 
 clay. They sweep round in a semi-circular form 
 constituting a great wall of white loam. Along the 
 base of these cliffs fountains of brackish water ooze, 
 causing to grow most luxuriantly canes and shrubs 
 and trees of various tropical species, tamarisks and 
 Nubk, and even palms. The chief fountain is called 
 by the Arabs 'Ain el-'Arus, or "Fountain of the 
 Bride." North of these cliffs are the Sebkha or 
 "Slime Pits" of Genesis 14:10, a terrible and most 
 treacherous morass. Irby and Mangles speak of it 
 as a "rotten and marshy ground." The crest ap- 
 pears to be solid, but it often gives way under one's 
 feet, and not infrequently a horse and his rider, or 
 a beast of burden, sinks out of sight into the soapy, 
 slimy mire. Cf. Ps. 107:34. The other and ex- 
 treme southern end of the 'Arabah is of a somewhat 
 different character, though equally barren. It is 
 formed of beds of marine sand and gravel and con- 
 tains shells, corals and other marine species. For 
 fifteen miles northward from the Gulf of 'Akabah the 
 whole surface is shingled over with silt deposits from 
 the mountains, making this end of the valley like 
 that in the north one of utter desolation. 
 
 Mount Seib 
 
 The eastern section of Edom is that known as 
 Mt. Seir. It consists principally of a range of 
 high mountains stretching for a distance of about 
 
176 JERUSALEM 
 
 100 miles from Wady el-Ahsa to the Gulf of 'Akabah 
 and the desert of Arabia lying to the east. The 
 mountains are composed for the most part of lime- 
 stone, resting upon porphyry granite and rising to 
 an elevation of 4000 or even 5400 feet. Viewed 
 from the west the range is most imposing. The 
 whole table-land to the east maintains approximately 
 the same elevation as the top of the mountains. This 
 eastern section of Edom is divided into two districts : 
 el-Jebel to the north, and esh-Shera' to the south, 
 the boundary between them being, as Burckhardt 
 pointed out, the deep broad canyon of Wady el- 
 Ghuweir. The whole region is dominated by high 
 black summits dropping westwardly and south- 
 wardly by a series of terraces. The region is almost 
 wholly a rolling desert, little of it being actually 
 under cultivation. The mountains of esh-Shera', 
 beginning in the north with Jebel el-Hisheh, rise in 
 the south to an elevation of 5412 feet, and then 
 decline into Jebel el-Hafir and finally into the plain 
 of Kedriyyat. Here the district finds its natural 
 frontier and geographical limit; the limestone ends 
 and the sandstone begins. At this point the moun- 
 tains no longer run in ranges north and south, but 
 east and west. Those around Petra are grand and 
 majestic, but almost perfectly barren; beautiful in 
 their coloring but desolate in their grandeur. Lord 
 Lindsay describes them as "wild and gloomy and 
 dreary" ! South of Petra, the mountains divide into 
 two ranges with a deep irregular gorge between 
 them, the western range being cut through by a 
 series of eight valleys which open out into the 
 'Arabah. The extreme southern portion of this 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 177 
 
 eastern district is a sandy tract, stretching far into 
 Arabia. On the south it fades into the granite 
 formations near the head of the Gulf of 'Akabah, 
 and on the southeast into a swampy district called 
 el-Jafar, whither all the waters of the district flow 
 and die out. 
 
 The Roads in Edom 
 
 The Psalmist asks, "Who will bring me into the 
 strong city, who will lead me into Edom?" No 
 great route now leads or ever has led through this 
 land. Yet Edom's situation between Arabia on the 
 east and Syria and Egypt on the west, compelled 
 her to be a highway of foreign trade. In Roman 
 times, one very important highway ran north from 
 'Ailah or Elath on the Gulf of 'Akabah across Mt. 
 Seir, a little to the east of Petra, passing through 
 Bosta and Odruh, close by Shobek and Dhama and 
 Bozrah, and across the Wady el-Ahsy to Kerak of 
 Moab, and on to Damascus. Remnants of the 
 ancient pavement and scattered mile-stones are still 
 to be found at many points along the route. A 
 Roman road in these parts was paved with black 
 basalt blocks, the road sloping from the center down 
 on each side to the borders, which were raised and 
 distinct. Knolls were levelled, hollows were filled in, 
 and even mountains were excavated in order to make 
 the work of travel and transportation as easy as 
 possible. Military stations along the route became 
 the sites of towns. Petra, though not directly on 
 any trade route, was the most important center of 
 commerce in the entire country. 
 
 Running almost parallel to this great Roman 
 
178 JERUSALEM 
 
 thoroughfare, there came to be in Mohammedan 
 times the well known Hajj, or Pilgrim Road, which 
 runs from Damascus, via Ma'an, to Mecca. It 
 follows probably the old caravan route from Syria 
 to the Red Sea, the possession of which caused 
 frequent strife between Edom and her neighbors. It 
 is not a carefully constructed highway, but rather 
 a number of closely parallel paths hollowed out by 
 camels' feet. The comparatively modern Hajaz 
 railroad follows in general this route. 
 
 There was, also, no regular route through the 
 'Arabah running, as does the valley, north and 
 south, as the heat there is too intense, and good 
 drinking water is too scarce. The 'Arabah was 
 rather a barrier than a thoroughfare to the trading 
 nomad. The main route north from Elath to Beer- 
 sheba, Gaza and Jerusalem, forsook the 'Arabah at 
 a point opposite Petra, climbed the mountains to 
 the west, bent about the 'Azazimeh plateau, crossed' 
 Wady Fikreh, ascended the Wady el- Yemen to 
 Kurnub, and so ran on to Beersheba. When 
 Judah's frontier extended as far south as Elath, 
 Solomon's cargoes from Ophir (1 Kings 9:26-28), 
 and the tribute of Arabian kings to Jehoshaphat 
 (2 Chrons. 17:11), were quite probably carried over 
 this route. And b}^ this same caravan way the 
 Israelites under Moses probably journeyed from 
 Sinai to Kadeshbarnea, cf. Deut. 1 :2. 
 
 The eastern and western districts of Edom were 
 not connected by special roads, but by numerous 
 wadies or passes. Most of them were exceedingly 
 difBcult for heavily loaded caravans to pass. That 
 known as the Dcrb el-Ghuweir from 'Ain Hash to 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 179 
 
 Shobek is difficult; that from 'Ain Hasb via 'Ain 
 el-Weibeh and Nakb Namela to Wady Musa 
 (Petra) is in part artificial, but also very difficult; 
 while that direct from the 'Arabah to Petra is so 
 steep as to be almost impassable for baggage 
 animals. The most difficult way of all is the way 
 from the Ghor es-Safiyeh up the Wady el-Ahsa to 
 Tafileh. On the other hand, the most notable and 
 easiest of all is that spoken of in Num. 20:19, as 
 "the King's Highway" ; which is best identified with 
 the Nakb ed-Dahal running almost directly east and 
 west between 'Ain Hasb and Bozrah. The writer 
 found this in 1907 a surprisingly comfortable route. 
 
 Springs 
 
 The land of Edom is not altogether waterless, 
 yet water streams are not numerous. In the larger 
 wadies, especially in the eastern section, sometimes 
 copious springs are found, their moisture infiltrating 
 through the soil for long distances and producing 
 considerable vegetation. Even small brooks are not 
 unknown in Mt. Seir. Numerous fountains emerge 
 from between the porous upper strata and the more 
 impervious lower strata of limestone, and again at 
 the union of the latter with the sandstone. But, 
 in general, the geological formation causes a speedy 
 disappearance of the surface waters, hence Edom is 
 everywhere a very thirsty land, more so than even 
 Palestine. On the limestone plateaus, however, 
 where no springs appear, numerous cisterns preserve 
 the winter's rainfall, as do dams and reservoirs in 
 the valleys. Dews are everywhere abundant. 
 
180 JERUSALEM 
 
 Soil Fertility 
 
 Few lands of Edom's size can boast of so wide 
 a range of soils. For the Arabs do occasionally 
 resort to agriculture, sowing a little grain in a 
 roughly plowed field and leaving its irrigation to 
 chance. Speaking of the territory east of the 
 'Arabah, Palmer says: "The country is extremely 
 fertile; goodly streams flow through the valleys, 
 which are filled with trees and flowers, while on 
 the uplands to the east rich pasture lands and corn 
 fields may everywhere be seen." A story in the 
 Talmud describes the astonishment of two Rabbis, 
 visiting the northern part of Edom, at the size of 
 the grapes produced there. And, indeed, in the 
 region between Wady el-Ahsy and Tafileh there are 
 parts which are very fertile and correspondingly 
 fruitful. The stretch between Shobek and Petra is 
 especially rich in oaks. Wady Ghuweir is celebrated 
 for its rich pastures; and the villages Ma'an, Elji, 
 Shobek, Bozrah and Tafileh, for their well cultivated 
 gardens and terraces. An Arab writer in the Mid- 
 dle Ages, Ibn Haukal, describes Edom also as fer- 
 tile and productive. He says: "The mountains are 
 exceptionally rich in products, e.g., oil, almonds, 
 figs, pomegranates and vineyards." There is some- 
 times a slight surplusage of crops which is exported 
 to Arabia, Egypt and Syria; especially, timber, 
 charcoal, oil, cattle, copper, aromatic and medicinal 
 herbs, and vegetable alkalis. Strabo speaks of 
 Edom as "a country well-peopled and abounding in 
 cattle." Doughty tells of "hollow park-like grounds 
 with evergreen oak timber." Musil says, "we rode 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 181 
 
 by many strong Butum trees and along thick brush, 
 and it seemed to me as though I was suddenly 
 plunged into a European wood"; to which Sir 
 Charles Wilson adds, "The general aspect of Edom's 
 limestone plateau is not unlike that of the Sussex 
 Downs or the Yorkshire Wolds. The plateau 
 affords excellent pasture and, where cultivated, 
 yields good crops of barley." That the Edomites 
 took advantage of their resources is evident from 
 Num. 20 :17 in which it is related how Israel offered 
 to reimburse them, if allowed to cross their terri- 
 tory, for any injury done to their crops, even for 
 the water they should drink. 
 
 Trade 
 
 The most productive source of Edom's prosperity, 
 however, in ancient times, was her trade. So long 
 as she held Elath she possessed the key to the trade 
 of the Red Sea, as well as the overland trade by 
 caravan from Arabia in incense, spices and gum 
 arable. Petra was the greatest center of all the 
 land for commerce and trade. It was secluded and 
 well fortified by nature in the mountains. Diodorus 
 Siculus tells us how the Athenians once found in 
 Petra great quantities of frankincense and myrrh, 
 and 500 talents of silver which were stored in the 
 recesses of that famous rock city. Strabo also re- 
 lates that the wares of India and Arabia were 
 brought on camels from the East and South via 
 Petra and sold in the markets of Gaza and Wady 
 el-'Arish. Under the Romans trade was greatly 
 stimulated because of the good roads, and because 
 
182 JERUSALEM 
 
 the government furnished protection against the 
 predatory and hostile hordes round about. 
 
 In view of all this, what may not be expected 
 from the same land under the beneficent influence of 
 a good government? 
 
VI 
 
 SHALL PALESTINE BE HELD IN TRUST 
 BY THE NATIONS? 
 
 An Interview with Dr. John H. Finley 
 Head of the American Red Cross Commission in Palestine 
 
VI 
 
 SHALI] PALESTINE BE HELD IN TRUST 
 BY THE NATIONS? 
 
 Interview with Dk. John H. Finley 
 
 DR. JOHN H. FINLEY, head of the American 
 Red Cross Commission in Palestine, has 
 made a very enlightening statement with 
 respect to the program for the future of the Holy 
 Land. In that statement, which was published in 
 the New York Evening Post, Dr. Finley explains 
 that while he would not presume to offer advice to 
 the Peace Conference, his own desires as to Palestine 
 are: 
 
 1. That Palestine, now redeemed and held in trust 
 by western civilization, be not the possession of any 
 single nation, race or creed, but be preserved by an 
 international agreement and by international guar- 
 antees and administered by some one of the nations 
 as a trustee, for civilization. 
 
 2. That Palestine, because of its relation to mod- 
 em civilization, and having become in the course 
 of the war one of the prizes for which the Allies 
 fought, is too precious a conquest to leave to future 
 risks. 
 
 In the Holy Land at present affairs are adminis- 
 tered by a remarkable group of scholarly, conscien- 
 tious, able men. General AUenby has picked for this 
 work at the outset men of whom Christendom may 
 
 185 
 
186 JERUSALEM 
 
 be proud, notably General Sir Arthur Neong and 
 Colonel Iloris, Governor of Jerusalem. Dr. Finley 
 tells how the British Commander, who is himself an 
 earnest student of sacred history, spent a whole 
 night with an American visitor, poring over the Bible 
 and a standard historical work on the Holy Land, re- 
 freshing his mind as to the spots of greatest interest. 
 That American visitor we take to be Dr. Finley 
 himself. 
 
 While Palestine has suffered heavily from the war 
 and centuries of Turkish misrule, still. Dr. Finley 
 believes, it could be redeemed soon for agricultural 
 and industrial purposes. He tells of an impressive 
 meeting with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one of 
 the most interesting religious personalities in the 
 world today. This eminent Moslem dignitary, al- 
 though almost a recluse, had still kept in touch with 
 the world movement. This is what he said to Dr. 
 Finley and his American Red Cross associates: 
 
 "No one can dispute the fact known to God and 
 confirmed by your noble history, oh, citizens of 
 America, that out of compassion and charity He 
 created you, to do good to humanity, and has 
 through you always accomplished good work, keep- 
 ing you innocent of all evil doing. 
 
 "Joy and gladness to you and may God be 
 praised who showers good as He desires. No one 
 can wonder at this when you are the children of so 
 generous a mother, the great nation, I mean Great 
 Britain, with her glorious past and exalted glory. 
 
 "Your good works cannot be counted; and you 
 should extend your arm from beyond the seas to 
 grasp the hand of that mother, full of love and 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 187 
 
 compassion, for one reason only : to further the cause 
 of the oppressed and to turn aside with blows the 
 hand of the oppressor in this bloody and fearful 
 war, the like of which has never been seen before, and, 
 by God's will, may never be seen again, such glory 
 and honor before God and man will suffice. 
 
 "To extend a helping hand to the children of 
 Syria and Palestine in your native land, America, 
 was not enough, but you have crossed the seas and 
 desert and undergone the hardships of this present 
 time to succor the poor and homeless widows and 
 orphans of all Palestine, and more especially of the 
 Holy City, the city of the prophets of God where 
 we are all now united. 
 
 "On behalf of these in general, and of Moslems 
 in particular, I burn incense on the altars of grati- 
 tude, and pray the great God to make you a good 
 reward, defend you from every evil, make your be- 
 nevolent undertakings successful and hasten the days 
 of peace which we all await impatiently." 
 
 The case of Palestine, Dr. Finley felt, was unique 
 among all countries. Neither Jew nor Gentile nor 
 Moslem had any exclusive title to it; rather, it be- 
 longed to all nations of the Western World tracing 
 their spiritual descent from the works of the law- 
 givers, prophets, singers, and evangelists of Israel. 
 
 Dr. Finley said there was no hurry to make 
 a final settlement of the question. He said Jew, 
 Gentile and Moslem should be thankful that the 
 British were in occupation. He thought it advisable 
 to leave the administration of the country for an 
 indefinite time to Britons, until the preliminary re- 
 construction of the land was well under way, until 
 
188 JERUSALEM 
 
 the world had taken thorough counsel as to the 
 future. The Holy Land at present, Dr. Finley de- 
 clared, was administered by a remarkable group of 
 Britons — scholars who combined with academic learn- 
 ing an executive ability which was everywhere ap- 
 parent in the management of the country. Almost 
 every act of these men. Dr. Finley stated, bore the 
 mark of fine understanding of the native population 
 and respect for their traditions. 
 
 "This fine attitude of the British is apparent in 
 their official as well as unofficial acts," Dr. Finley 
 continued. 
 
 Whatever is done with Palestine, Dr. Finley had 
 this admonition to offer : that the example set by the 
 British be kept in mind; that the rights of all the 
 religious elements that have made the pilgrimage to 
 the Holy Land, and now dwell there, be respected. 
 
VII 
 
 PALESTINE AFTER THE WAR 
 
 The Jerusalem of today — its many nationalities and religions, its 
 
 picturesqueness and its poverty — Characteristics of the 
 
 Holy City and its present population. 
 
 By Theodore Waters 
 a Member of the Christian Herald Staff. 
 
PALESTINE AFTER THE WAR 
 
 The City of Many Nationalities and Religions 
 — Little Tragedies of the Slums — The 
 American Colony's Good Work 
 
 By Theodore Waters 
 
 I GOT my first impression of the Holy City from 
 the second story balcony of the Jerusalem 
 Hotel. The latter is shaped like a wedge or 
 a V where a small street runs into the Jaffa Road, 
 and the balcony is hung on the point of the V, look- 
 ing down the busiest thoroughfare in the city to- 
 wards the Jaffa Gate. Up and down the road the 
 biggest surge of the population ebbs and flows every 
 day. It was very early evening when I first viewed 
 the scene and the crowd for the most part was com- 
 ing towards us, away from the Walled City. Down 
 at the foot of the street was the Jaffa Gate, sur- 
 mounted by the tall, white, square clock-tower with 
 European time on two sides and Turkish time on 
 the other two. It was put there at about the time 
 they knocked down part of the wall to make a special 
 entrance way for Emperor William and his suite and 
 it dominates the situation, beautiful in itself, but 
 monstrously out of keeping with the character of 
 its surroundings, for instance the Tower of David 
 
 191 
 
192 JERUSALEM 
 
 across the way, or the old deserted minaret that 
 looms up from the other extreme of the Castle. 
 From my balcony we could see over the tops of the 
 houses of the city to the slopes of the hills, the 
 nearest of which they called the Hill of Evil Counsel. 
 Over the city flew thousands of swallows, swirling 
 across and back, and on the streets below walked 
 thousands of men, women and children. Every 
 nationality under the sun seemed to be represented 
 and every tongue on earth seemed to be spoken. 
 
 There were priests of all religious persuasions — 
 Greek, Heretical, Uniate, Maronite, Holy Orthodox 
 as to the Greek church; Nestorian, Gregorian (Ar- 
 menian), Coptic (Egyptian), Abyssinian and Jacob- 
 ite representing the Heretical branch; Greek Cath- 
 olic, Chaldean (United Nestorian), Armenian Cath- 
 olic, Coptic Catholic, Abyssinian Catholic, and 
 Syrian Catholic representing the Uniate or Re- 
 united; Maronite as to themselves, and, of course, 
 plain Roman Catholic. These to the experienced 
 eye could be distinguished by their garb and na- 
 tionality as could be the variously clothed nuns. To 
 me, that first evening, they were just a part of the 
 color value of the passing parade. 
 
 Intermingled with the priests could be seen the 
 Jews, the orthodox among whom could easily be 
 distinguished by their round, furry-edged hats, their 
 long gowns and the corkscrew curl hanging in front 
 of each ear. Even the little boys proudly cultivated 
 a wisp of hair which might soon become a greasy 
 curl hanging down to the shoulder. These young- 
 sters were really fair to look upon, for their features 
 were regular and the whiteness of the skin being 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 193 
 
 common. Indeed, there is a saying in Jerusalem: 
 "As fair as a Jewess." Their parents come from 
 every country on earth. Then there were girls of 
 aU nationalities, religions, conditions and morals: 
 Jewish girls, Armenian girls, Syrian girls, European- 
 Christian girls, native Arab girls, Mohammedan 
 girls with their faces veiled, some leading smaller 
 girls, unveiled as yet, and each carefree against the 
 time to come when she would be forced into a pre- 
 mature marriage with some enterprising Mohamme- 
 dan who had money enough to pay for her. Inter- 
 mixed with these were the cigarette-smoking natives, 
 the stately strolling Arab refugees from Salt, be- 
 yond the Jordan, who had come in from the refugee 
 camps or out from the Castle of David, where many 
 of them were quartered at that time. With their 
 long black robes and white head-dresses, they looked 
 picturesque indeed. 
 
 Then there were the omnipresent small boys im- 
 portuning the private soldiers to let them polish 
 their boots, or begging the officers to let them hold 
 their horses and adding thereby to the babel of voices 
 that floated up from the crowd. The people of 
 Jerusalem seem to talk in concert, and he or she 
 who talks loudest has the best of the argument. 
 I once heard a woman shrieking at a vegetable 
 dealer in one of the covered streets of the Walled 
 City. I could hear her long before I could see 
 her, and I hastened towards the sound, full of the 
 idea that a native fight was in progress. When I 
 reached the place, the vender sat among his vege- 
 tables, hunched up, a dogged determined look on 
 his face. His lips were moving but his words were 
 
194 JERUSALEM 
 
 negligible, in fact I could hardly hear them, for 
 over him menaced the woman in an attitude as 
 though about to spring, her fingers spread wide 
 apart, her long arms waving violently, malevolence 
 flaming from her face and a torrent of Arabic hurt- 
 ling from her mouth with a force that illustrated 
 the power of the human lungs to the N'th degree. 
 No one in the immediate neighborhood seemed to pay 
 the slightest attention. I wondered what it was all 
 about, when suddenly the man gave a peculiar move- 
 ment of his body, which apparently was a sign of 
 assent. The woman stopped talking immediately, 
 dropped a coin into his hand, and walked off. It 
 was just a little bargain concluded over a handful 
 of produce! 
 
 So with English, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Yid- 
 dish, Greek, Latin, Armenian, Hindoostani and 
 other languages too numerous to mention, all try- 
 ing to voice their supremacy above the yelling of 
 the donkey boys, the shouts of the camel drivers, 
 the cries of the street peddlers, the neighing of the 
 horses, the noise of the motor lorries, the honking 
 of the auto horns, etc. The Jaffa road below my 
 balcony that May afternoon was a pandemonium. 
 It rose up and enveloped everything as a penumbra 
 of sound to the ear, just as the dazzling whiteness 
 that envelopes everything to the eye. 
 
 For Jerusalem is the white city of the world par 
 excellence. Built on a range of limestone hills, its 
 houses constructed of the same soft rock, the stone 
 walls between its fields are of the same material, and 
 the roads also the same, pulverized. It always was 
 white, but since war came, the heavy motor-lorries 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 195 
 
 passing and repassing, keep on crushing and re- 
 crushing the roadways with the result that a fine 
 almost impalpable dust is constantly rising from 
 them and settling down upon th? buildings, the rail- 
 ings, the fields and the foliage, until everything soon 
 pales under the touch and takes on the universal 
 tint. Were it not for the sunshine — the sunshine 
 that beats down upon everything without interrup- 
 tion, except during the few rainy months — one might 
 liken it to a city enveloped in snow. At night in- 
 deed, the resemblance is marked, and a walk in the 
 moonlight on the roads far out of the city carries with 
 it a ghostly suggestiveness, particularly in the neigh- 
 borhood of historic monuments, that is not quickly 
 cast out of mind. But of course it is the Jerusalem 
 of the daytime, under the sunshine, that conveys the 
 most lasting impression. Indeed, it seems so bright 
 and fair and happy that it was difficult for me to 
 associate it that afternoon with cruelty and want, 
 misery and starvation, a place the very inspiration 
 of which is based on a tragedy enacted many cen- 
 turies ago — a tragedy which has changed the senti- 
 ment of the whole world. Rather did it seem to me 
 more like the land of the Lotus Eaters — "The land 
 where it is always afternoon." 
 
 This, of course, was the mere surface picture — a 
 first colorful view of the most polyglot city on earth. 
 There must be something behind it all. Whence were 
 all these people coming and where were they going .f^ 
 They were all human. They all had blood and bones 
 and must have some form of profitable occupation, 
 else they could not keep on living. They reminded 
 me somewhat of the great New York crowd, which 
 
196 JERUSALEM 
 
 every evening pours out of the Cloak and Suit belt, 
 surges across Union Square, and spreads through 
 the tenements of the East Side. I once followed that 
 New York crowd and the result was not only inter- 
 esting but instructive. I determined to follow this 
 crowd, and see where it went. So I went down from 
 the balcony and strolled up the Jaffa Road. This, 
 of course, would take me away from the Walled 
 City, but it was now evening and very little could 
 be seen in the old city after dark. In fact, it is said 
 to be quite dangerous for the stranger after sun- 
 down and even officers were forbidden to enter then, 
 unless they had a special pass. I had one of these 
 and the wording of it always created amusement 
 among my friends. It was as follows: 
 
 PERMANENT PASS. 
 
 Major Waters of the American Red Cross has permission 
 to enter the Holy City, Jerusalem, at all times of the day 
 and night. Signature. 
 
 I picked my way up the Jaffa road between the 
 camel train on one side and a line of motor lorries 
 on the other, while the moving population chatted 
 its way in and out and led me far afield. We passed 
 a small public park where a military band had been 
 giving an open air concert and the crowd which had 
 been in attendance was just dispersing. They joined 
 our own mob. They seemed to be about three- 
 quarters Jews and one-quarter black-robed monks 
 and they created a counter current which interfered 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 197 
 
 with the even flow of our stream. Presently we came 
 to a high-walled enclosure on the right of the road. 
 Part of the crowd kept on up the road, part turned 
 to the right through a lane. 
 
 I asked an Englishman where the two streams were 
 going. He pointed out that the great majority were 
 Jews and were on their way to the Jewish Colonies, 
 a number of which were located in the suburbs of 
 the City. The crowd that turned to the right would 
 enter a gate not far along and short-cut through the 
 Russian Compound and so reach their own Colony 
 by the shortest route. I determined to follow them. 
 I turned to the right and presently entered the gate 
 and came upon a scene that was to become very 
 familiar to me, for, as it turned out later, the Amer- 
 ican Red Cross party, to which I was attached, took 
 up its quarters in this very compound. It was a 
 large enclosure with groups of buildings, the biggest 
 of which was a Hospice in which were quartered the 
 Russian pilgrims (men) who flocked to Jerusalem 
 during pilgrimage season in Peace times. It now 
 was concerned with many activities that had nothing 
 to do with the Russian Church. Looking around, 
 it was hard to believe that on this very spot Alex- 
 ander the Great appeared before Jerusalem and met 
 the high priest in his pontifical robes, and reverently 
 saluting the "Sacred Name" inscribed on the priest's 
 mitre, exclaimed, according to Murray : "I adore not 
 the man, but the God with whose priesthood he is 
 honored. When I was at Dios, in Macedonia, pon- 
 dering how to subdue Asia, I saw this figure in a 
 dream and he encouraged me to advance, promising 
 to give me the Persian Empire. I look upon this as 
 
198 JERUSALEM 
 
 an omen, therefore, that I have undertaken the ex- 
 pedition by divine command, and that I shall over- 
 throw the Persian Empire." Following which Alex- 
 ander granted the people of Jerusalem many im- 
 portant privileges. 
 
 The crowd passed out of a gate and again scat- 
 tered through various streets, the trend being to 
 the right. Presently we came to groups of buildings 
 that looked for all the world like model tenements, 
 except that they were not more than two stories high. 
 The thinning crowd entered these or kept on in 
 search of others just like them, the non- Jewish part 
 of the population dodging into detached habitations 
 here and there. After all, it was just the same old 
 New York crowd, dispersing among its tenements 
 but under different and more picturesque conditions. 
 
 I forged ahead and presently found myself skirt- 
 ing the wall of the old City. The road ran under 
 the wall, and the battlemented character of the stone 
 construction looked very impressive in the gathering 
 twilight. The way turned squarely around the north- 
 east corner of the wall and led down into the Valley 
 of the Kedron. I followed over and up the face of 
 the Mount of Olives. It was steep, but well worth 
 the climb, for night was now falling and the lights 
 of the City were beginning to shine out. Everything 
 was rapidly being swallowed up in the gathering 
 gloom, but I had a general idea of the location of 
 the principal points of interest as they had been 
 described to me. I knew, for instance, that the 
 Temple Area lay far below me, across the Kedron, 
 just inside the City Wall. I was considering the 
 wonderful history of the Temple Area, when sud- 
 
A Lace-making Madonna. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 199 
 
 denly there came floating across the intervening 
 space the voice of the Muezzin calling the faithful to 
 evening prayer. It was a musical sound flowing 
 through the night, for the Muezzin is usually picked 
 among other things for the excellence of his singing 
 voice. Years ago, he had to be blind as well, so 
 that from the lofty gallery of his minaret he could 
 not look down into the harem courtyards of neigh- 
 boring houses. 
 
 The voice coming from the main tower of the 
 Temple Area is said to be one of the most musical 
 in Jerusalem. But it would be hard to say, for now 
 farther away another voice could be heard calling 
 "Allah is great and Mohammed is his prophet." And 
 then another and another and still others. It was a 
 wonderful concert — an aeolian effect rising above 
 the Holy City and merging into a concert of sound 
 which, when it finally died away, left the silence 
 tinged with something too weird to describe. I sat 
 on the hillside looking down at the slowly disappear- 
 ing lights of the City when presently far in the dis- 
 tance I heard a different sort of concert — a combi- 
 nation of barks and shrill long-drawn-out howls. 
 Stray dogs? No. Jackals, browsing around among 
 the graves of the Jewish and Moslem cemeteries on 
 the slopes of the hill. Ugh! It was depressing, 
 decidedly. All of my feeling of rapport with the 
 idealistic Jerusalem faded away. It was as though 
 the hair of Mahomet over which the faithful will one 
 day walk over the Kedron and so on to Paradise, 
 had snapped. But so has it always been with Jeru- 
 salem. Maintained on a structure of beautiful 
 ideals, Pagan, Jewish, Mohammedan, Christian, the 
 
200 JERUSALEM 
 
 jackals of humanity have always been there to gnaw 
 at her vitals. 
 
 I scrambled down the hill and along the dark 
 roads, and so to the hotel and to bed, for I meant 
 to be up early in the morning and follow that crowd 
 back to its daily tasks. 
 
 Sure enough, the crowd was on its way back to 
 the Walled City when I walked towards the Jaffa 
 Gate next morning, and the swallows as usual were 
 flying overhead. The sun was already beating down 
 steadily on our heads. I had with me a young 
 American who had lived in Jerusalem for some time, 
 doing relief work. Ah yes, relief work. That re- 
 minded me. Where were all the misery and want 
 and starvation and disease? The people around me 
 seemed fairly happy, chattering earnestly and even 
 gaily, judging from the frequent laughter. In fact, 
 my day's observation had confirmed my first im- 
 pression that this was the land of Peter Pan, the 
 land where the people never grow up. Of course, I 
 knew that misery was prone to hide its head, that 
 the poverty of New York City, for instance, is not 
 to be found along Broadway, where the tourist likes 
 to foregather. Nevertheless I had a very distinct 
 recollection of tales told me by missionaries who were 
 compelled to leave Palestine when the United States 
 entered the war — tales of men, women and children 
 gathering wolfishly around public soup pots where 
 they fought for extra bits and cried for more ; tales 
 of little children turned out to die because their 
 parents could not feed them, children who were 
 found later under arches in the public streets nearly 
 (dead with exposure and too weak from starvation 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 201 
 
 to crawl away — ^little human alley cats ; tales of the 
 women, with their broods of naked youngsters, who 
 stood in the gates of the city moaning the wail of 
 the dying, "Oh, God, I'm starving." Where were 
 these? I asked my companion. "You shall see," he 
 replied, tersely. 
 
 We continued our walk to the Jaffa Gate. At this 
 point and at right angles to the Jaffa Road is the 
 road that leads to Bethlehem. At one side of it and 
 under the shadow of the Castle of David was a long 
 line of vegetable and fruit venders. I suddenly re- 
 membered something else which I had been told. I 
 asked : "Isn't that where the line of lepers used to 
 be?" He acknowledged as much, but was not able 
 to tell me just what had become of them. Also he 
 did not know what had become of the innumerable 
 dogs which used to snap at one's heels. In fact he 
 opined that Jerusalem had lost several of its char- 
 acteristics as a "Turkish City*" But I resolved to 
 find out what had become of the lepers and the dogs 
 just the same. At any rate, there was no particular 
 necessity for walking in the middle of the street at 
 this place. 
 
 We threaded our way through the thickening 
 throng of tall able-bodied men who apparently did 
 nothing for a living, black-robed women, refugees 
 from Salt, with tatooed lips and chins which gave 
 them a repulsive appearance, greasy water carriers, 
 who shoved their slimy goat-skins through the crowd 
 regardless of who got wet, little boys and girls who 
 ran after us and waile3 for "backsheesh" with a 
 monotony that convinced us it was a continuous per- 
 formance, blind men who were projected bodily into 
 
202 JERUSALEM 
 
 our persons by their attendants who made sure by 
 this means that we did not overlook them. Per- 
 meating all, the smell of the people; emanating from 
 all, the sweat of their bodies and over all the sun- 
 shine, beating upon head and head alike but carry- 
 ing with it the saving grace of a powerful antiseptic. 
 
 As we passed the Tower of David and turned the 
 corner of the Castle to the right, we looked up and 
 in almost every window of this ancient pile there 
 were faces of refugees, the people from Salt. Part 
 of the moat that surrounded the Castle had obviously 
 been filled in to make the main street through the 
 Jaffa Gate. Children were playing in the place that 
 had once been a formidable obstacle to the foes of 
 the defenders. Children ran all over the place, on 
 the drawbridge, or rather on the rickety wooden 
 structure that now takes its place. Probably there 
 were children playing in the dungeon, for it must 
 have been cool down there, away from the sun's heat. 
 Dungeons are not such terrible places under certain 
 conditions, and I reflected that many a man in 
 America has sat in his cellar to cool off on a hot 
 summer day. The people in the upper floors of the 
 Castle had evidently tried to approximate this effect 
 by partly walling up the windows with piled-up 
 rocks. 
 
 I thought we were going into the Castle, but my 
 guide suddenly turned away and walked across the 
 street to a wall with a gate in it, about which a crowd 
 of women and children were congregated. He opened 
 the gate and we stepped inside. I have been in some 
 curious assemblages in my time, but this was most 
 curious indeed. It was a soup kitchen operated by 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 203 
 
 means of moneys sent from England and America. 
 The courtyard we had entered was crowded with 
 women — veiled Mohammedan women for the most 
 part — and with girls and boys and old men, each 
 with a pitcher or a tin bucket or a receptacle of some 
 sort, all waiting to have a day's rations ladled out 
 to them. 
 
 So here were the people who used to throng the 
 streets crying for bread. Yes, here were the people. 
 A number of these kitchens had been established and 
 every day a member of each family would come and 
 fight for a place in the line, be identified, and go off 
 with the soup to fill the empty stomachs at home. 
 Of course, there was the usual deafening chatter, 
 the vociferous berating by guards who tried to hold 
 the crowd back, the perilous work of rescuing one's 
 soup through the crowd when one got it. 
 
 I was much interested in the efforts of one little 
 boy, possibly nine years old, who was convoying a 
 bucket of soup from the big kettle to the outer gate. 
 It was all he could carry, and must have been for 
 a family of ten. Holding the handle with both hands, 
 and bending over the precious liquid, he backed away, 
 making passage for himself through the crowd by a 
 series of thumps of his shoulders until he could go 
 no further. He then laid the bucket on the floor 
 and got on his hands and knees, out of my sight. 
 He must have climbed between a man's legs, for I 
 next saw him struggling beyond the man towards 
 the door of the soup kitchen itself, and the bucket 
 was with him. He could not carry it down the 
 steps, so he laid it on the top step, ran down and 
 around to the side, where he could easily get it off 
 
204 JERUSALEM 
 
 on his arm. He staggered to the gate where a guard 
 proceeded to let him out, but not before another 
 little fellow had managed to stick his finger in the 
 soup and lick it clean. The owner of the soup bucket 
 cursed the religion of the other's forefathers as pas- 
 sionately as possible, and then the gate closed upon 
 him and he was gone. 
 
 This cursing the religion of another's forefathers 
 is very common and even the small children indulge 
 in it. I was walking along in the old City one Sun- 
 day morning with one of our party who spoke Arabic 
 fluently when some urchins, possibly seven or eight 
 years of age, came out of a gate. One of them turned 
 towards another and exclaimed violently in Arabic. 
 I asked what he said. My companion replied: "He 
 said: 'May God curse the father of her who told 
 me.' " What she could have told him did not ap- 
 pear, nor did it matter, for the expression was not 
 uncommon, and was notable only in that it came from 
 the lips of one so young. 
 
 "Where do these people live.?" I asked, and was 
 informed that the Salt refugee women were from the 
 Tower of David across the street. Some Jews lived 
 in the Jewish quarter and the natives, Mohammedan 
 and Christian, lived in hovels for the most part scat- 
 tered throughout the city. 
 
 Meanwhile we were forgetting my crowd returning 
 to its occupations of the day, so we resolved to walk 
 out awhile and see what had become of it. We strolled 
 along to the entrance of David Street, one of the 
 most important thoroughfares of the old City. Be- 
 ginning at the Jaffa Gate David Street extends prac- 
 tically due east to the Temple Area, thus dividing 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 205 
 
 the city in half, north and south. Beginning at the 
 Damascus Gate on the north, Damascus Street runs 
 due south to a Kttle eastward of Zion Gate. Thus 
 the city is cut into four quarters. That to the north- 
 east is the Mohammedan Quarter; to the north-west 
 is the Christian Quarter; to the south-east the Jew- 
 ish Quarter, and to the south-west the Armenian 
 Quarter. Each is, of course, characteristic of the 
 people who inhabit it, but on David Street the four 
 quarters meet in common. 
 
 David Street is really a narrow lane, a series of 
 wide steps which run up or down, according to the 
 slope of the land. On each side are the shops and 
 stalls of merchants, and everything is sold in it and 
 in the wretched intersecting thoroughfares, from 
 vegetables to gold rings. Sweetmeat venders, shoe- 
 makers, bakers, jewelers, tailors, curio brokers, 
 butchers, money changers, fruiterers and others too 
 numerous to mention, harangue the crowd that 
 shoves its way through the narrow spaces, and 
 which includes everybody and everything from a Con- 
 sular Cavass to fat-tailed sheep and long-eared goats. 
 Very quickly we had turned off of David Street and 
 entered stone-covered byways that smelled like damp 
 caverns, as indeed they were. Ever and anon some 
 one would enter a door in the wall of these caverns, 
 mount a flight of steps, and come out on top into 
 the sunshine, where stone hovels, one-roomed homes, 
 were lived in by poor families, and had been so lived 
 in for centuries. 
 
 We climbed up to one of these groups of cliff 
 dwellings. There were probably eight or ten single- 
 room homes in the place, four stone walls each in- 
 
206 JERUSALEM 
 
 habited by from two to ten persons, to judge from 
 the children running in and out. As far as I could 
 see, there were no sanitary appliances. Some of the 
 people, particularly children, lay sick on the floor 
 of their hovels. Why any of them had escaped death 
 by disease, was a mystery to me. 
 
 And that was a subject of speculation among 
 many of my friends. Was it possible, argued one, 
 that these people had lived so long amidst disease 
 and dirt and general unsanitary conditions, that all 
 but the very weak ones had become as it were in- 
 oculated against pestilence .^ For, be it remembered, 
 these were not refugees driven to such stress by the 
 exigencies of war, they were the regular dwellers 
 of the place, who had lived in this way long before 
 the war was thought possible, and who, left to them- 
 selves, will go on living in this way long after war 
 is over. In that, of course, they are different from 
 the refugees. They do not constitute the same prob- 
 lem. People there are who expect to change all 
 this - soon as the immediate refugee problem has 
 been disposed of. But there are other people who 
 say it cannot be done, that East is East and West 
 is West, and that oil and water are more easily 
 mixed; that these people have the traditions, the 
 habits and — most important of all — the mode of 
 thought of centuries behind them, and that before 
 they could become Westerners in spirit and principle, 
 they would have to be born again. 
 
 "You can see one reason," said my guide, "why 
 some of the people desire to live in the outer city, 
 can you not.f* Even though they come here to work," 
 he added. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 207 
 
 I admitted that suoh a move to the suburbs was 
 most commendable. But he was not sure that they 
 were animated by such uplifting instinct. He 
 thought it was more because they had been 
 "crowded out" of the choice home sites we had 
 just examined. "After all," he commented, "they 
 love the squalor and the dirt. Take it away from 
 them and they would be lonely. Drive your East 
 Sider into the suburbs of New York, and he would 
 get back at the earliest opportunity. Put him on 
 Fifth Avenue, and the severe, clean, straight-front 
 houses, with no one hanging from the windows, would 
 get on his nerves. He would yearn for Avenue A." 
 
 I saw some more of "the squalor and the dirt" 
 later in the day, when I accompanied a Red Gross 
 doctor on his rounds among the poor. We were 
 accompanied also by a woman Settlement worker. 
 We entered the Old City through the New Gate and 
 took our way down the crooked alleys which are 
 called streets here. Some of these were covered 
 ways, and on the roofs were stone hovels in which 
 people lived out their lives. The stench of centuries 
 was in the air of these tunnels. Strange people 
 watched us curiously, and I thought resentfully, as 
 we stepped gingerly along in our endeavor to avoid 
 the filth under foot. After a while we came to an 
 old door in the wall. Our woman worker, who had 
 been there before, turned and pushed open th« door 
 and began mounting a flight of stone steps. They 
 turned and curved and at last stumbled out upon an 
 inclosure — or what might be called an elevated yard 
 — around which was a collection of stone horek. 
 Everything is built of stone in this country. Faces 
 
208 JERUSALEM 
 
 appeared at the bleared windows of the hovels and 
 then people began to come out of the doors. Evi- 
 dently we were an event in this aerie. Going 
 up to the closed door of one house, our worker 
 pushed it open and peered within. A woman, with 
 streeling hair and very little clothes, welcomed her 
 and pointed to what I at first thought was a heap 
 of rags on the floor. The woman touched it gently 
 with her dirty bare foot. There was a convulsive 
 movement of the heap. Some of the rags uplifted, and 
 out peered the bearded face of an emaciated man. 
 He looked curiously into the face of our woman 
 worker, and then fearfully at the doctor, for the 
 latter, being of the Red Cross, had on the uniform 
 of a captain in the United States army, and the 
 people, driven as they have been Ly Turks in uni- 
 form ever on the lookout for extra taxes, look at 
 all uniforms askance. Reassured, however, he told 
 his symptoms and was prescribed for with as much 
 dispatch as was consistent with an examination. 
 There was but one room in this "house," and that 
 room had probably been as it was for a thousand 
 years. There was practically nothing in it as far 
 as I could see; heaps of clothing in one corner, not 
 a table, not a chair, but children, near naked, moving 
 about under foot. 
 
 We went out into the sunshine and over the sloppy 
 stones preparatory to going down into the noisome 
 alley below. Almost immediately the worker was 
 besieged with petitions from women who had gath- 
 ered about the door and who knew of other sick 
 ones in the surrounding hovels and wanted them to 
 be treated. It was not to be, however, as the au- 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 209 
 
 thorities had designated a number of urgent cases, 
 and these must be attended to first. So down we 
 went again to the alley and along until we came to 
 another door much like the first, and through into 
 a courtyard of uneven levels and the usual amount 
 of dirt. Women and children abounded, of course, 
 and they led us readily to the door of the house 
 where a sick child awaited our ministrations. The 
 worker and the doctor went in. I took a hasty look 
 and concluded to wait outside. 
 
 The patient was a little boy — a very sick little 
 boy, as any one would have known at a glance. He 
 moaned and cried while the doctor diagnosed his 
 malad}^ They had raised him from his pallet of 
 rags, and the movement caused him to lose what 
 little dinner he had evidently eaten. The doctor 
 noticed that he had been eating bread, and said it 
 was not just the thing for the little fellow to eat 
 in his condition. But as bread, in limited quantities 
 at that, was all the family could afford, the advice 
 was lost. He indicated to the worker that the child 
 would have to be taken to the hospital at once. Then 
 there was a great uproar. Take to the hospital .^^ 
 No! No! No! They would butcher him at the 
 hospital! This feeling, which is common among the 
 poor all over the world, was quieted when it was 
 explained that the boy would probably die if he 
 were not taken to the hospital. Meantime the 
 women, some of them with families in prospect, 
 crowded around the door and the children ran 
 around under foot. "Tell them to keep those women 
 and children away from that child," said the doctor 
 to the worker just before we left the place. "It is 
 
210 JERUSALEM 
 
 contagious." "What is it?" I asked as we wended 
 our way through the alley. "He is coming down 
 with typhus," replied the doctor sententiously. "But 
 you will see more of it before we return." 
 
 And we did, many cases. In fact, Jerusalem had 
 at the time not only many cases of typhus, but the 
 doctors said the disease was on the increase. But 
 why go on describing case after case of men, women 
 and children down with infectious diseases .f* How 
 can they help but be? Filth and squalor among the 
 inhabitants, conditions unsanitary to the last de- 
 gree. People living as they did a thousand years 
 ago. It was not the fault of the present authorities. 
 They have done all they can up to date to change 
 matters for the better. But the job is huge — bigger 
 in fact than one can appreciate without close inves- 
 tigation. It is the heritage left by past rulers. Cen- 
 turies of fatalism and oppression have left the seal 
 of their influence upon the people and they are not 
 to be changed in a day. I could see it even in 
 Egypt, which, as everybody knows, has improved 
 wonderfully in the last decades; yet even there the 
 lethargy of the East is all too apparent. No one 
 there ever thinks of swatting one of the millions of 
 flies that make life all but unbearable in the day- 
 time, and this aside from the danger of disease 
 transmitted through this agency. Very few think 
 of screening windows. People go around carrying 
 fly-swishers (a decorative handle holding a wisp of 
 horsehair) with which to chase the pestiferous insect 
 on to someone else. And Egypt has progressed. 
 Why should not more or as much be expected of 
 Jerusalem ? 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 211 
 
 We came out of the old town through the Gate 
 of Herod, and presently our guide remarked that 
 over behind a little rise of ground was the Garden 
 Tomb. Would we like to stroll that way? No, 
 we did not think we would on this day, when within 
 less than a thousand yards of the tomb of Christ 
 we had so lately watched so many men, women and 
 children, the spoil of the centuries, being drawn 
 down so remorselessly, as it seemed, into the pit of 
 
 misery, disease and death. 
 
 ***** 
 
 One morning I visited the Tower of David. It 
 lies just inside the Jaffa Gate and forms part of 
 the wall of the city. The present wall is the third 
 that has been erected. The first wall is traditionally 
 that erected in the time of David. The second wall, 
 built during the Roman period, is the wall of the 
 time of Christ. The present wall was erected by Sulie- 
 mann the Magnificent, centuries later. So in some- 
 what the same manner the Tower of David has had 
 its periods. It is asserted here positively that the 
 lower part was of David's time, but that the upper 
 parts were added as the centuries rolled on. How 
 they could have manipulated such large pieces of 
 rock in those early days is a mystery akin to that 
 cff the Pyramids. The great moat surrounding this 
 castle is partly filled up; but it must have been a 
 most effective defense in its day. And the great pile 
 must also have proved a strong bastile for those who 
 offended the kings. But now all is changed and 
 nothing is left but the very rocks themselves. Yet 
 you can walk through the old stone rooms, mount- 
 ing floor upon floor until you stand far above the 
 
212 JERUSALEM 
 
 city. You may even mount up the stairs of the mina- 
 ret which surmounts the pile and gaze for miles over 
 the surrounding landscape. 
 
 But if you take this journey today, you will be 
 surprised at the occupants of the castle. No longer 
 the kings and the feastings. No longer the warriors 
 shooting their arrows through the narrow slitted 
 windows. The Tower of David today is filled with 
 a crowd of more or less miserable wretches. Arabs 
 who come from far along the Jordan. Men who 
 wear long black robes and white head-coverings deco- 
 rated with two black cords. Women whose lips have 
 been tattooed. People whose one purpose in life 
 seems to be to do nothing but smoke cigarettes and 
 rear large numbers of children, who squabble with 
 one another and run all over the place. And over 
 all, the inevitable dirt ! These people are on rations, 
 fed to them by the military authorities, and who have 
 done everything possible to make their lot as pleas- 
 ant as it could be made for a nomadic people cooped 
 up in a city. But contrast the situation with that 
 which existed when this castle was young. What a 
 difference ! 
 
 Even so, it is better that it should at last come 
 to be a haven of refuge even for such benighted 
 heathen as now occupy it, than be a place of revel- 
 ing for kings and their concubines, or a place of long- 
 drawn-out punishment for poor captives, for whom 
 it was a torture chamber, without chance of escape. 
 
 "Come along and see the fellaheen," said Dr. 
 Harry C. Hurd, one of our physicians, who, from 
 the very first, had been working among the refugees. 
 **You will find them interesting." 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 213 
 
 Hurd is the type of the genial physician whose 
 one object in life seems to be the acquisition of a 
 greater knowledge of the science of curing disease 
 and its application with a broad sympathy among 
 the suffering people. We climbed into a motor ac- 
 companied by Marcus. Marcus, by the way, is one 
 of the characters of the Unit. He is more than that ; 
 he is an institution, is Marcus — a product of the 
 peculiar stress through which Jerusalem has passed. 
 He says he is fourteen years old. But he looks much 
 younger and acts much older. He can read and write 
 English, Russian, French, and Arabic, and he can 
 speak but not write German. He has passed 
 through all the regimes, Turkish, German and 
 English, and he has taken toll of each in the acquir- 
 ing of languages and backsheesh. Yet, strangely 
 enough, he is both industrious and honest, and he 
 is the sole support of his widowed mother. If you 
 would know what he looks like, imagine a gnome 
 about three and a half feet high, as broad as a 
 brownie and as brown as a berry, with two big dark 
 eyes that shine out of the middle of a perpetual 
 smile. 
 
 "Let us first go to the old Turkish prison," said 
 the doctor. 
 
 We rode on toward the outskirts of the city and 
 stopped in front of an iron-barred stone building 
 that had once been the detaining-place for people 
 who did not agree in politics with the former rulers. 
 We went inside and through to a middle courtyard 
 containing some trees under which men, women and 
 children lay stretched in the shade. Some of them 
 were sick and some were not, but all seemed oppressed 
 
214 JERUSALEM 
 
 with various stages of despair. And little wonder, 
 for these people had once lived out in the surround- 
 ing hills and vales, content to take care of their little 
 places in happiness. But the war had swept their 
 all away, and so they had wandered in to Jerusalem 
 as soon as it was taken by the British and had been 
 assigned to this old structure, where there is at least 
 shelter from the sun by day and from the chill by 
 night. For sustenance they depend upon rations 
 served to them daily by the military authorities. 
 For the rest, they beg and occasionally work. And 
 if there was no love of home in the world or the 
 memory of loved ones long since slain, they might 
 be accorded happy. But a roof over one's head and 
 enough food in one's stomach are not all that is neces- 
 sary to the sum of happiness. 
 
 The doctor went around among them, advising 
 here, prescribing there, with little Marcus chatter- 
 ing his interpretations in his voluble way. 
 
 "This man, he have a great beeg pain in hees 
 head. It hurt heem in the back of hees neck." 
 
 The man was lying in the midst of his family, on 
 a blanket spread upon the ground. The doctor ex- 
 amined him, first insisting that he take off a wide 
 neckcloth that nearly covered his head. Under the 
 neckcloth was a rag that covered the back of the 
 neck. The man demurred when the doctor attempted 
 to take it away. Said Marcus: 
 
 "He say not to do that because he will not get 
 well if you take it from heem.'* 
 
 But the doctor did take it away, and then he 
 uttered an exclamation. "Just look at that, will 
 you.'"' And everybody looked. 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 215 
 
 In the back of the man's neck was a piece of cord. 
 It entered the skin at the side of the neck, continuing 
 under the skin across to the other side, where the 
 end came through. The two ends of the cord had 
 been brought together on the outside and tied in a 
 knot. Naturally it had suppurated, and the chance 
 of blood poison was very great; but the man cher- 
 ished it because it was the "cure" of a well-known 
 native "doctor," who had ordered that it be kept 
 there for seven years, after which the man's chronic 
 headache would disappear and the cord might be 
 taken out. It was shudderful even to think of. Yet 
 the practice is by no means uncommon. 
 
 The doctor proceeded to give the man relief by 
 other means, and continued his work among the peo- 
 ple, until he had visited all the ailing ones the prison 
 contained. 
 
 In the car again we sped away out of town toward 
 the hills, and presently we came to an encampment 
 of fellaheen, as the country-dwelling Arabs are 
 called. They were picturesque in a forlorn way, 
 their tents made of what looked like burlap, their 
 clothes dilapidated, their cooking utensils dingy and 
 dirty. The flat sides of the tents were raised so 
 that it was easy to see the interiors. 
 
 In one tent, on a pile of bedding, lay a woman. 
 The doctor found her with a fever and diagnosed the 
 case as malaria. It seemed to be the prevailing ail- 
 ment among these people, and it seemed to rage in 
 most of the tents. Men and women crowded around 
 with little children in their arms, and to these the 
 doctor paid particular attention, for he is one of 
 those sympathetic souls for whom the moan of a 
 
216 JERUSALEM 
 
 child means just a little more than the complaint of 
 an adult. 
 
 We got through after a while, and then we wended 
 our way across the hills to an ancient monastery, 
 once filled with Armenian monks. It was the retreat 
 of pious pilgrims in the early centuries of the Chris- 
 tian era, but now it is the haven of refugees who, 
 like their brothers of the Turkish prison, find in it 
 a temporary harbor after the privations of war. 
 It is full of large rooms with walls painted with 
 pictures of saints and the likenesses of dignitaries 
 of the Greek Church. Lying around on the floors 
 were all sorts and conditions of men, women and 
 children, and, as in the prison, some sick and some 
 not. And some there were who merely pretended 
 to be ill, so that they might be sent to a hospital, 
 where perchance greater quantities of food were to 
 be had. But the doctor had an abundant intuition 
 which enabled him to detect the sham from the real 
 thing, so he was not to be imposed upon. 
 
 There was enough of the real, however, to take 
 up all of his attention. In one room an old man lay 
 dying under a window through which a beam of the 
 setting sun came and shone upon his face. It was 
 to be probably his last sensation from the outside 
 world of nature. Across the room lay an old woman. 
 She was half naked, dirty and blind. The doctor 
 did what he could for her, but there was very little 
 he could do. Her span of life was practically run. 
 The gloom of the room followed us out into the sun- 
 shine, and would not be dispelled. We crossed the 
 courtyard and came upon a young mother sobbing 
 over a baby, perhaps two years old. The doctor 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 217 
 
 lifted up the covering that rested raggedly upon it. 
 Its stomach was swelled enormously. "Enlarged 
 spleen," remarked the man of medicine, and gave 
 directions for having the suffering child removed at 
 once to the hospital. 
 
 On the way out of the monastery, we looked into 
 the chapel — the last evidence of what the ancient 
 functions of the old pile had been. There was one 
 lone monk in attendance. He took us back of the 
 altar and allowed us to gaze down into a hole in 
 the floor at a remnant of the root of a tree which 
 he declared to be the identical tree from which the 
 cross of Christ had been cut. The thought of the 
 world-stirring tragedy implied in his assertion only 
 added to our gloom, so we hurried out to the motor 
 car and back to Jerusalem. 
 
 "Some things they are very bad to see," remarked 
 little Marcus as we sped along. "My Doctor Hurd, 
 he is not happy today." 
 
 Jerusalem is full of little stories that are well 
 worth the telling. 
 
 I was walking up the road that leads toward the 
 Russian Compound where we are quartered, when the 
 door of a shop opened and out stepped a little old 
 man with a broom in his hand. The place was the 
 Jerusalem depot of the British and Foreign Bible 
 Society. The old man, who had on no hat, looked 
 like the personification of Socrates, or at least like 
 the commonly accepted likeness of the latter. His 
 pate was bald on top, but it was edged with long 
 white hair that hung upon his shoulders. His thick 
 
218 JERUSALEM 
 
 unkempt beard was also as white as snow and hung 
 far down his breast. His face was yellow, as is 
 common with those of advanced years, for his age 
 must have been far past the threescore-and-ten 
 mark. His name is Whelan — Michael Matthew 
 ^helan — and he is one of the well-known characters 
 of the city. This is his story, which, by the way, 
 was not told by himself: 
 
 When Turkey entered the war there was a great 
 scurrying on the part of all the English and their 
 sympathizers to leave Palestine. The general de- 
 parture in fact took on the semblance of a panic, 
 and among others who wanted to get away was the 
 young man who was temporarily in charge of the 
 Bible depot. He was in doubt what to do with the 
 stock of Bibles. He couldn't take them with him, 
 and he did not know whom to place in charge. Then 
 along came Whelan. He had met Whelan before, 
 and knew him for a student of prophecy. Whelan 
 was stranded and was literally without a place to 
 sleep, but being an American he was without much 
 fear of the Turk. He offered to take charge. The 
 custodian promptly fled and Whelan as promptly 
 moved in. He procured an old cot somewhere and 
 moved it in behind the counter. He slept there by 
 night and waited for customers during the day. Few 
 came, and he had to depend upon kind-hearted 
 friends for food. 
 
 One day the door opened, and in stalked a Turkish 
 officer who demanded the payment of taxes. 
 
 "Taxes !" replied Whelan. "Why, if I had money 
 to pay you taxes, I'd have spent it for something 
 to eat long ago." 
 
ITS RM)EMPTION AND FUTURE 219 
 
 The Turk told him that if he did not pay up, 
 his stock of Bibles would be taken. Whelan merely 
 replied that he had no money. The Turk shrugged 
 his shoulders and promised to return. He did in a 
 short time, and renewed his threats. Whelan, having 
 nothing to give, sat tight and waited for the Turk 
 to act. 
 
 Presently a squad of Turkish soldiers came and 
 began to take the Bibles off the shelves and tie them 
 up in packages for removal. Then another Turkish 
 officer walked in and began to examine them. Some 
 were in the Greek language, some in Russian, and 
 others in languages he did not recognize at all. He 
 demanded of Whelan to know what good were such 
 Bibles to do the Turk. Where they could be sold.? 
 Whelan didn't know and couldn't tell him. He was 
 an angry Turk. Plainly there was no graft to be 
 had there, so he mentioned a few maledictions to 
 Whelan and went off in a rage, leaving the Bibles 
 standing on the counter. Whelan undid the pack- 
 ages and put the Bibles back on the shelves. 
 
 In the course of time, the English under General 
 Allenby entered Jerusalem. And presently in their 
 wake came the Port Said agent of the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society. He walked into the depot and 
 there sat Whelan, clad in a nondescript costume that 
 was a cross between that of a whirling dervish and 
 the slop-chest of a stranded sailor. He told Whelan 
 who he was. Whelan was not at all impressed. Any 
 one might walk in there and tell him that tale. He 
 was in charge and meant to remain in charge. The 
 agent began to think he had a problem on his hands. 
 He could never leave this strangely clad old man 
 
220 JERUSALEM 
 
 to represent his society, and besides the place was 
 very dirty. Furthermore, he had heard that, since 
 the EngHsh came in, Whelan had been selhng many 
 Bibles. Whelan admitted it. But, protested the 
 agent, those Bibles belonged to his society, and of 
 course the money should have gone to it. Said 
 Whelan: "How could I send the money to your 
 society when there was no way to send it?" 
 
 A new thought dawned on the agent. "Do you 
 mean," he replied, "that you've got the money.?" 
 Whereupon Whelan informed him that he had the 
 money intact, except what he had spent for the bare 
 necessities of life. 
 
 The agent did not oust Whelan, and he was glad 
 he did not when he heard of another incident con- 
 cerning the old man. It will be remembered that 
 when General Allenby entered the city he did it in 
 so unostentatious a manner that the praise of it 
 went around the world. But there was one other 
 happening attendant on that entry that many peo- 
 ple here accept as a presage that Jerusalem will not 
 pass back into the hands of the Turk. Just as the 
 generals entered the gate a little white-bearded old 
 man pressed his way through the crowd and, wav- 
 ing aloft one of the best Bibles from the depot, 
 pressed it into the hand of the nearest general (he 
 could not reach Allenby), and exclaimed: "Enter 
 the Holy City in the name of the Lord!" 
 
 Yes, old Whelan is one of the characters of the 
 city. Many English officers have heard of him, and 
 almost any day you will find one or more sitting in 
 the depot listening to the old man discourse on the 
 Bible. Some people have called him a crank, but he 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 221 
 
 manages to sell a great many Bibles just the same. 
 
 I forgot to say that when the agent for the society 
 
 realized, during his first visit to Whelan, the kind 
 
 of person he was, he asked the old man on leaving 
 
 if there was anything he could do for him, and the 
 
 reply was characteristic: 
 
 "No, I guess not. But yes, now that I think of it, 
 
 you might send me a shirt. I have not had one on 
 
 for months." 
 
 * n^ * * * 
 
 However, it must not be surmised from the fore- 
 going that there is nothing but gloom and misery 
 in Jerusalem. It so happened that on my entrance 
 to the Sacred City it was my portion to be shunted 
 into those bypaths of hopelessness which it does not 
 usually befall the occasional visitor or tourist to 
 tread; and so, while I am calling it as forcibly as 
 possible to your attention, in order to show how 
 much Jerusalem really needs the help of the Chris- 
 tian world, there is another side which needs a glori- 
 ous mention. That is the side which includes its 
 deliverance from the Turks. Never has the city 
 apparently been as happy as since the Turk was 
 driven out, and the real wish of the people is that he 
 never will be allowed to come back. Already the 
 present army has started in to look after the wel- 
 fare of the people. The roads have been improved 
 and widespread sanitation is receiving large atten- 
 tion. The introduction of fresh running water is 
 being arranged. The maladies and the foibles of the 
 people are being treated from the humanitarian 
 standpoint. The exorbitant system of taxes is 
 abolished. 
 
222 JERUSALEM 
 
 The people are learning that oppression has been 
 suppressed, that they are privileged to live their own 
 lives as well as they may, consistent with law and 
 order. And the effect on the public mind is already 
 apparent. I can see the vision of a new Jerusalem, 
 I mean it in a civic sense, and I can see it also as 
 the most wonderful shrine in the world, to which 
 people from every part of the earth will come with 
 wonder and delight to find their ideals fulfilled, 
 and their reverence for the name of Christ exalted 
 indeed. 
 
 This was substantiated by an experience imme- 
 diately following my excursion with the Red Cross 
 Doctor. There were two roads home to our hotel, 
 and I chose to follow that taken by the settlement 
 worker. It led me past the domicile of the American 
 Colony. We approached the high wall and touched 
 a push button in the wall. We were almost imme- 
 diately admitted through a gate into a compound, 
 and the effect was as though we had been transported 
 magically from the East to the West. Without the 
 wall, all was hot sunshine and white dust; within 
 the wall, the sunshine shone as well, but all was green, 
 and the white dust didn't seem to be so perceptible; 
 in fact, it was a garden in which little children in 
 American dress ran about on the nicely kept paths 
 and upon grass which grew between the flower beds. 
 We were ushered into a house, thick-walled, like all 
 the houses in Jerusalem, but furnished in western 
 style. Almost all the houses I had been in so far 
 were of Mohammedan character. Mohammedans do 
 not believe in pictures; in fact, pictures are for- 
 bidden. The chief furnishing of the living rooms 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 223 
 
 seems to be a couch or divan which runs continu- 
 ously around the walls, a convenient place for re- 
 clining; but in this house there were modern furni- 
 ture, beautiful pictures and a welcome in the truest 
 Western fashion. 
 
 The hostess was Mrs. Bertha E. Vester, and she 
 told us stories of the days when the Turks ruled 
 Jerusalem, and how, when the war broke out, she 
 realized the necessity of opening a hospital for the 
 benefit of wounded soldiers. She secured the use of a 
 hotel just inside of the Jaffa Gate, and with the help 
 of some of the members of the American Colony and 
 one or two doctors who were available, proceeded to 
 take care of such wounded soldiers as were assigned 
 them by the Turkish army. The whole idea was 
 humanitarian, yet her efforts were looked upon with 
 suspicion by the Turks. The little band of workers 
 was without supplies, and bandages had to be washed 
 and used over and over again. They kept up the 
 work under the most trying circumstances, until 
 finally the English captured the city, and Jerusalem 
 was delivered. 
 
 During that dark period, almost no word of the 
 progress of the war was received in the city, the 
 Turkish censorship being of the strictest character. 
 It was a time of the greatest anxiety. Never a day 
 passed without the possibility of some member of 
 the family being carried away into captivity by the 
 Turks, and probably, had it not been for the won- 
 derful work which was being done in the hospital, 
 even the earnest workers of the American Colony 
 might have been carried off; but even the Turks 
 recognized the tremendous good the American 
 
^24 JERUSALEM 
 
 Colony was doing. It was a time when the crying 
 of starving orphans in the streets was a daily occur- 
 rence. Many of these orphans were taken in and 
 harbored by the American Colony, although their 
 food supply was already too scanty for even their 
 own use. 
 
 There was a time when the American Colony was 
 supplied with plenty of means to be applied to the 
 relief of the poor of Jerusalem, but now it was only 
 possible for them to share what at times became^ 
 literally, a crust of bread. Most of the able-bodied 
 men of the city had been forced to join the army. 
 Available food went first to the army, and the 
 widows and the children left behind had nothing but 
 the scrapings of already emptied larders. To show 
 the difference, the following story may be related : 
 
 Before the general European war had started, 
 the Christian Herald of New York received a sum 
 of money to be used for helping the women and chil- 
 dren of Palestine. At the time it was thought best 
 to send this money to the American Colony, which, 
 in its turn, was to use it in employing women and 
 teaching children in the making of lace. This lace 
 was to be sent to the United States and sold, and 
 the proceeds were to be sent back again to Palestine, 
 so that more and more women might be employed, 
 and thus earn an honorable livelihood. Any profits 
 made from the sale of lace were to be turned back 
 for the promulgation of the charity, as was originally 
 intended by the people who contributed the initial 
 amount. The plan worked well and hundreds of 
 women were able to make a livelihood. Some of the 
 lace was even sold in Jerusalem, and the money re- 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 225 
 
 ceived was used to employ more women. Finally, a 
 large quantity of lace had been made and was about 
 to be shipped to the United States, when the declara- 
 tion of war disorganized all shipping facilities. 
 Everybody who could get away had made arrange- 
 ments to go, and a veritable panic seized all for- 
 eigners who were afraid of being detained by the 
 Turks. The last party of these, mostly Americans, 
 left on a warship. What to do with the lace, how- 
 ever, was a problem, and the American Colony even 
 sent a representative in the person of Mr. John D. 
 Whiting, to arrange for sending a trunk-load of lace 
 to the United States on the last warship that left 
 the Mediterranean shores. Mr. Whiting was unable 
 to accomplish his purpose and had to bring the lace 
 back from the seaport to Jerusalem. 
 
 Of course, all business stopped in Jerusalem, ex- 
 cept where the necessaries of life were concerned, and 
 naturally the making of lace waned, as there was no 
 possibility of selling it. Samples of the lace were 
 placed on sale in the American Colony's store, but 
 until the English entered Jerusalem, hardly any of 
 it was disposed of. Then a strange and yet natural 
 thing happened. English officers, visiting the store, 
 began to purchase pieces of the lace as souvenirs to 
 send home to their mothers, their wives, or their 
 sweethearts. The lace business, which had been 
 started by the money sent by the Christian Herald 
 subscribers, immediately sprang into being again. 
 A building for the housing of the workers was se- 
 cured for the American Colony, and hundreds of 
 women who had been idle for a long period began 
 to apply for thread to make more lace. 
 
226 JERUSALEM 
 
 "Come," said Mrs. Vester, "and let me show you 
 something in the way of constructive charity." 
 
 She led me through the garden and through a field 
 to a stone building protected from the road by a 
 stone wall. We entered the first floor. All the rooms 
 were crowded with women and young girls, some of 
 them knitting and some engaged at pieces of fancy- 
 work, representative of various districts surround- 
 ing Jerusalem. Some of the women were expert lace- 
 makers, and the younger ones were all learning the 
 art. 
 
 "You see," said Mrs. Vester, "here is where we 
 train them. Later, when they have become proficient, 
 they may go home and keep up the work without 
 the necessity of coming here every morning. We 
 have employed teachers who hold classes every day, 
 so that these young girls will not be without the 
 advantages of some intellectual training while they 
 are learning to make lace. They are being taught 
 better Arabic and English. Since the British Forces 
 arrived in Jerusalem, the girls are particularly 
 anxious to learn English. One of the chief benefita 
 is the fact that they are kept from running th^ 
 streets. I cannot make too much of the importance 
 of this. Of course, it is not as bad in Jerusalem 
 as it was, but in the old days, when the Turk was 
 in control, the probability of an unprotected girl 
 going wrong was very great. This was not due to 
 any natural bent in the wrong direction, but because 
 so many of them were without the very necessaries 
 of life and were willing to do anything to procure 
 them. 
 
 "The girls are very happy in their work," she 
 
ITS REDEMPTION AND FUTURE 227 
 
 added. "They are earning an honest livelihood, and 
 are not compelled to accept charity. It is our inten- 
 tion to extend this work, so that every girl who 
 wants to do so can learn the art of lacemaking and 
 make a living by it." 
 
 THE END