CHAPTER XXXIII
PALESTINE AND SYRIA UNDER NEW RULERS
Switch on your radiophone and let us listen together this evening to a talk from Jerusalem where John Bull sits in the seats of the mighty and the voice of the terrible Turk is no more heard in the land. The Holy City is quiet. The women are sitting, as of old, on the housetops under the stars, while across the valley on the Mount of Olives sparks from the wireless tower flash out to the corners of our modern world.
If we listen carefully we may hear the familiar chug-chug of an American automobile whose driver to-morrow will take a party of pilgrims over the road to Bethlehem. Or perhaps he will start on the longer trip to the ruins of old Jericho and the River Jordan, or even a tour of all the Holy Land, most of which can now be reached in a motor car.
As we listen we learn that the High Commissioner, who rules in the name of His Britannic Majesty, met to-day with his advisory council, representing the people of Palestine. From the report of their proceedings we learn what is going on in the reborn Promised Land. This council has ten members appointed by the Commissioner. Four of them are Moslems, who make up four fifths of the population of Palestine, three are Jews, identified with the Zionist movement, and three are Christians. Just as the membership of the advisory council is divided among the three groups for whom Jerusalem is a holy place and a religious centre, so, too, are the positions in the government to-day held by Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans. There are three official languages—Arabic, English, and Hebrew.
The government, we are told, is in good condition, and the country is self-supporting, paying its way out of its revenues. Nevertheless, the taxes with which the Turks used to squeeze and harness the people have been reduced and some of them have been abolished. At the same time, where the Turk and his tax-gatherers, as the Arabs say, “never gave us so much as a drink of cold water,” the new rulers are providing much-needed improvements with the public funds.
Before the British came the Arabs had a saying that the Turk would rule the Holy Land until the Nile flowed into Palestine. This ancient prophecy has been almost literally fulfilled, for when the British built the military railroad from Egypt into Palestine they laid all the way beside it a pipe-line carrying water pumped from the Nile. A great tank in the hills on the Hebron road, built by Pontius Pilate, has been restored, and now holds five million gallons of water, which is piped into Jerusalem. The streets have been cleaned, the beginnings of a sewerage system put in, and the natives have started to learn the use of a covered garbage can. Even the mosquitoes, descendants of those who bit the Crusaders, have been driven out and have gone to the other side of Jordan to smite the Bedouins. Plans for the further extension of the city beyond the walls have been prepared, and its growth will be directed accordingly.
A native police force has been recruited to keep order in the place of the troops which have been gradually reduced in number. All the holy places are still carefully protected. The British were able to keep the Mosque of Omar under Moslem guard by using soldiers from their own Indian troops made up of followers of the Prophet.
The men of a New Zealand regiment who were Masons held a meeting in the secret cavern under the Holy Rock in the Mosque said to be the place where King Solomon founded their order. There were thirty-two Masons from twenty-seven different lodges, who took part in this meeting, while an old sheik acted as doorkeeper.
The differences in religion keep bobbing up in Jerusalem, giving the British and the advisory council some ticklish questions to deal with. For example, when the military bands started to give concerts in a public square in the outer city, they played three afternoons a week—Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Grand Mufti, head of the Jerusalem Moslems, solemnly protested, saying the band played Saturday for the Jewish Sabbath and on Sunday for the Christians, but was slighting the Mohammedans, who observed Friday. So now the bands play four days a week.