from any Turkish attempt to retake it. The book, in fact, tells
the story of the twenty-third fall of Jerusalem, one of the most
beneficent happenings of all wars, and marking an epoch in the
wonderful history of the Holy Place which will rank second only to
that era which saw the birth of Christianity. All that occurred in the
fighting on the Gaza-Beersheba line was part and parcel of the taking
of Jerusalem, the freeing of which from four centuries of Turkish
domination was the object of the first part of the campaign. The Holy
City was the goal sought by every officer and man in the Army; and
though from the moment that goal had been attained all energies were
concentrated upon driving the Turk out of the war, there was not a
member of the Force, from the highest on the Staff to the humblest
private in the ranks, who did not feel that Jerusalem was the greatest
prize of the campaign.

In a second volume I shall tell of that tremendous feat of arms which
overwhelmed the Turkish Armies, drove them through 400 miles of
country in six weeks, and gave cavalry an opportunity of proving that,
despite all the arts and devices of modern warfare, with fighters
and observers in the air and an entirely new mechanism of war, they
continued as indispensable a part of an army as when the legions
of old took the field. This is too long a story to be told in this
volume, though the details of that magnificent triumph are so firmly
impressed on the mind that one is loth to leave the narration of them
to a future date. For the moment Jerusalem must be sufficient, and if
in the telling of the British work up to that point I can succeed in
giving an idea of the immense value of General Allenby's Army to the
Empire, of the soldier's courage and fortitude, of his indomitable
will and self-sacrifice and patriotism, it will indeed prove the most
grateful task I have ever set myself.