One of the young men joined us on the roof and contributed his share of the description of the next thrilling days. It was on December 11th, 1917, that General Allenby, Commander-in-Chief, took formal possession of the City. He would not enter through the break in the old wall made when the former Kaiser with his great retinue entered as a Crusader. Indeed orders have been given to have the break closed. Allenby would carry no flag. On foot and accompanied by a Guard that altogether numbered about one hundred fifty, he stood on Mount Zion on the steps of the Citadel at the entrance to David’s Tower. He had been met outside the narrow gate by the Guard representing all branches, faiths and races that make up the British Army. Behind him, as he stood on the steps with his staff, were the leading men of the City, ready to listen to the reading of the Proclamation. There were no shouts of victory, no trumpets, no evidence of the spirit of triumph over a foe. The Proclamation was read in Arabic and English, in Hebrew and Greek, in Russian, in French and Italian. As the people, standing respectfully in the open spaces and upon the housetops, heard each in his own tongue that all men might “pursue their lawful business without fear,” and the promise that “every Holy Place, revered and held sacred by any faith, will be defended and protected,” a look, first of incredulity, then of confidence, passed over their faces. Many Mohammedans ran from the square to repeat the words in homes from which some fearful ones had not dared to come. Murmurs and gestures of approval were given on every side. The windows of the Red Crescent Hospital were filled with faces of those who, though very ill or badly wounded, could not miss this significant moment of the Great War. All the promises made that day have been sacredly kept, our friends told us.
In the old Turkish barrack square the Commander-in-Chief met the heads of all the religious communities. The sheikhs in charge of the Mosque of Omar, the representatives of the Priests and Patriarchs of the Latin, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Coptic churches who had been deported by the Turks, the heads of the Jewish communities, the Syrian Church, the Greek Catholic, the Abyssinian and the Anglican Churches, all were there. It was indeed a cosmopolitan company as to religious faiths. “The bright color of the holiday dress which most of the people had put on, I can see in detail at this moment,” said our friend. “Not one step in that simple ceremony shall I ever forget. In two hours, leaving guards over all holy places, with Mohammedan officers and soldiers from the Indian regiments to guard the Mosque of Omar, the General walked back through the Old Jaffa Gate as he had come, received the salute of his troops, entered his car and went down to the fighting area.”
The relief workers took up the heavy burden of bringing food to the people whose thin bodies and pale faces showed the effect of months of starvation diet. All supplies must come up over roads muddy and torn by heavy traffic, crowded with army food and equipment that must have right-of-way. The task was one that taxed patience and energies to the utmost. The health commission assumed the equally great task of clearing the streets of unspeakable filth left in the wake of the Turkish rule, our friends shouldered their burden of securing medical attention and food for the sick, helpless and wounded men.
“Only gradually,” said our friend walking up and down on the roof, her cheeks flushed by the memories of days so vividly recalled, “did we come to realize that this Holy City was free. It was as though we had been going about in heavy chains that, suddenly taken from us, had left us too dazed to move. We unconsciously looked for old restrictions, old threats, old taxes suddenly to be laid upon us. Despite the glory of its past,” she added, leaning far over the parapet to look out upon it, “the City in all its long history was never so truly the City of Zion as now.”
When we went back to our hotel, standing at the windows from which the wounded had looked, we felt that though other scenes of many cities in many lands would fade with the years, the description of that day when a victorious army under the leadership of a great General, a true soldier, and a Christian gentleman had, beneath the shadow of the Tower, proclaimed a message of possession more truly in accord with the word and teaching of Jesus than any ever recorded in history, would never leave us.
The sunset that night was more glorious than any we had seen. The hills were on fire with it, the Gate was gold. Then the valleys darkened, the streets were still, the crowd of Arab and Greek, Jew and Moslem, the shepherds, the merchant with his camels, the shopmen and the traveler, all sought shelter. It was night, and we looked for the last time out on the hills to the place where the stars shone over Bethlehem. Never did more reluctant pilgrims leave a Holy Place.
The train, going twice each week down from Jerusalem and connecting with the train for Cairo, had begun to carry both sleeping compartments and dining car. We boarded it late that night at the foot of the long hill. Before it was light, we had pulled out of the Jerusalem station and did not get even one more glimpse of the city set on a hill. Instead when we opened our eyes we were almost out of the Judean Hills and soon were moving along through desert-rimmed lowlands. Then the desert itself lay about us for hours, livened by occasional caravans that also were going down to Egypt. Once an airplane flew over us and on into the glare of the cloudless sky. We thought often of Joseph and Mary and the Child fleeing through this lonely desert, to find in alien Egypt refuge from the jealous wrath of the Roman king. How rapidly the world has learned to cover time and space since then! How slow has been its progress toward the kingdom the Child, whom Herod feared, had come to build. God grant that now over the new paths through old Palestine messengers bearing Good Will may come with all speed.
At Kantara we saw a company of Jews sent by the Zionists into Palestine. They were a weary group, their faces bore marks of deep suffering. They spoke Russian only, so we could not talk with them. They were going by train to Haifa. We could only hope that their sorrows were over and that in the land of their fathers they would find peace, a chance to forget, shelter, food and a home. But we could not feel sure. The threatening words we had heard from the lips of the Arab, the protests on the part of the Jews that there was not land enough in Palestine capable of bearing crops to give food to those who now struggled to live, the bitter race hatreds and religious feuds very near the surface always ready to burst into flame,—these things made us doubtful. The transformation within a generation of this land of Palestine into a safe and happy home for all the Jews of all the world seems but the futile day dream of children when one faces conditions as they are. Many lands have done many things to the Jew who once in simplicity worshiped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and tried sincerely, not only to obey the great commandments of Moses, but to teach them to his children. Whether again they can gather from all lands and bring with them the best who shall say? It may be that the fervent exhortations of rabbis, the wisdom of judges, the training of educators, the science of agriculturists, the modern irrigation miracles of engineers, the proper placing of peoples, will make of Palestine a modern state where the dream of economists, political and social, will one day be demonstrated in action. The only spot we saw that seemed like the coming of the day was Ramallah, the city that had to be taken by storm before the troops could reach Jerusalem and visited by us to see the splendid work of the schools of the Quakers who for long years have given learning and new life to children of Syrian and Armenian, and now and then to a Moslem or a Jew. From that little town between six and seven hundred Jews and Syrians had emigrated to America. Since the war many had returned and were rapidly building the city. Others had sent money to rebuild the homes of their families. These homes were of stone built two stories high with the flat roof but with plenty of space for light and air. Gardens surrounded many of them and trees were being planted everywhere. The children were well nourished, well clothed, and well trained. It helped us to have more confidence in the dreams with the fulfilment of which all Christendom is in sympathy. If only patience and unselfishness can be set as watchmen over against the door of enthusiasm! We were told that the Hebrew High Commissioner of Jerusalem looks to Ramallah as a prophecy.
We sat for a while on the journey from Kantara to Cairo with a British officer and a nurse who had seen hard service during the war and is now in charge of a number of stations where the native nurses meet her to report progress and receive further instructions. She helps them to understand the care of mothers and young babies and trains them to fight the terrible diseases of the eye that result in a staggering percentage of blindness. The native girls are taking up their work with enthusiasm, even the little children are sharing in the campaign against flies. “That is a far harder campaign than any we have ever waged when you consider the people you have to train to fight,” said the officer. And remembering the flies on our days at Suez and Port Said, we could agree with him. It was nearly midnight when she left the train at a little station in the sand. Her man-servant was waiting with her horse and we watched her ride off to her hospital out there somewhere in the blackness. “No finer women on God’s earth than those who wear that uniform,” said the officer.
A half hour or more and he left us. He was a lover of the desert and almost made us forget how pitiless, how cruel, how destitute of all that makes life for most of us, it is. He knew the names of all the stars and when they would appear in the velvet sky over his great stretch of camps. He loved the cold of the night and was not afraid of the heat of midday, he loved the sunrise and sunsets and “the desert-folk worth many times the puny men of cities.” He, too, rode off into the darkness.