New Paths through Old Palestine

by Margaret Slattery

For its water Jerusalem had depended upon winter rains to fill its great cisterns. The houses had underground reservoirs, some of which had not been cleaned in more than twenty years. At the Mosque of Omar was a large reservoir where the water from the springs about Solomon’s Pools flowed down through a great aqueduct built by the Romans when Herod ruled over the Jews. The searching engineers had found springs in the hills with fresh, pure water running to waste and, at the rate of fourteen thousand gallons an hour, it is now pumped up to the top of a high hill, run by gravity down through a long pipe-line to a great reservoir that has been built and carefully protected on the outskirts of the city. Direct lines take this pure water to the hospitals and into the city streets. Despite the shrinking of the population, caused by the evacuation of the Turk, more than ten times as much water has been used as in previous years, which silences the oft-repeated statement that the people would not appreciate the water if they had it. We were interested to learn that some of the pipes had been sent to Egypt to be forwarded for use in Palestine by the American Red Cross Commission after we entered the war. But the Commission found that the need for water which we had anticipated had been practically answered by the Royal Engineers.

One is deeply impressed by the change in the record of contagious diseases. The reduction in cholera, smallpox, typhoid, and typhus is remarkable. Even under the sound of booming guns, children’s welfare bureaus were organized, lessons in health given, nurses trained and kitchens opened to provide food for the babies, the sick and the old. The workers of the American Red Cross deserve and receive full gratitude for their enthusiastic and intelligent work in and about the City in those days immediately following its surrender.

The people on David Street seemed to have lost something of the fear that writers of the past saw in their haunted faces. It may be the fact that now they are free. The old-time pressure and petty persecution by corrupt officials is past. The Turkish prison no longer yawns threateningly. A trader may go unmolested about his work. The heavy taxation demanded in the past by a succession of officers, from the least to the greatest, has disappeared. Contentment not known for untold generations reigns in humble homes.

From the brow of the Mount of Olives where they lay sleeping under white crosses—these also “fling to us the torch.”

It may be for this reason that on both occasions of our visit to the Wailing Place there were but few present and they were old men, old women, and some very young children. Young manhood was not there, it was hard at work. Many of the older boys and girls were in school. The leader of the group chanting the Lamentations that morning was an old white-haired patriarch with eyes of fire. He was the only one of the group that did not interrupt his wailing to look at us. One tall, strong, impressive specimen of womanhood moved along the line to quiet some women whose wailing had become a piercing shriek or to straighten out a child who irreverently chased a playmate up and down the path. The guide said that her name was Miriam and that she had a son with much money in England. Erect and fine, forceful and devout, she reminded us of that other Miriam who led her people to victory. Here and there one saw women’s strong faces stained with tears and marked with suffering. They leaned against the foundation stones of the old Temple area in an abandonment of emotion and sorrow. Near the end of the line was a very old man leaning tremblingly upon his staff. Jamil said that he was repeating one phrase over and over. “O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance!” His voice was bitter and full of anguish. A great wave of pity swept over us for these and all they have suffered, and yet survived. Against those massive walls of the past, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian had hurled their hosts and battered them to earth. They had risen again only to meet the Roman and the Saracen, the brave Crusader and the unspeakable Turk until in very truth they lay “in heaps.” Piled one above another, the various cities lie waiting until the hammer and spade of the excavator shall open up all their secrets for us. Buried deep down in the earth is that early city of the Jebusites, over it the glorious city of Solomon, the city heroically brought again into being by Nehemiah, the city of Herod which Titus hammered into ruins and Hadrian rebuilt, above it the city of the Saracens built after their wave of conquest, the city of the Crusaders, and now the city of the Turks, standing boldly above the ruins of the long past. It stands, the protected property of a new conqueror who loves it, whose army chose the hardest road to victory to save it from the marks of war, whose people have come into it with knowledge that they may overcome its ignorance, a conqueror who bears no malice, who is tolerant of the Jew and the Mohammedan though he worships at the Cross which they hate.

As if reading our thoughts, the guide said quietly, “Some day it will be only the wall for the wailing that we shall see. There will be no more need for wailing, and the children will forget. So the young prophets among the Jews say in the markets. We shall see.”

We walked through a section of the Temple area and out past the Austrian Hospice through the Damascus Gate where, according to agreement, the carriage waited.

The road out to the spot where the Mount of Olives drops abruptly to the plain has been repaired, stray shell holes filled in and a large section of new road built since that wonderful day when the last line of Turks were driven from the position they thought secure. The air was as clear as an October day at home and the shining city “compact together” seemed substantial and strong. It was along the high ridge of Olivet that, in the pressure of the days when relief workers toiled twelve and fifteen hours without respite, they came to renew their strength. In the home of the Greek Patriarch more than one strong soul, overcome for the moment by the ceaseless stream of dirty, hopeless, despairing human things that he must strive to save from the wreckage of war, found, in the white moonlight sifting down over the hill, in the kindly stars, in the silence and in sacred memories, courage to attempt again tasks that had been called impossible.

We had been gazing so steadily at the city that when the driver suddenly stopped we turned in surprise. There on a gently sloping stretch of ground, close to the road at the left, stood row after row of crosses over the resting places of Scot and Londoner, Welshman and Irishman, Indian and Anzac who had paid for the Holy City with his life. On some of the crosses fresh green garlands were hanging, and on one a wreath with English holly.