realize how thoroughly justified their enthusiasm was. He represented the
very highest type of the British soldier, and more need not be said. On
the morning on which I arrived an attack was in progress and we could hear
the drumming of the guns. The commander-in-chief placed a car at my
disposal and I went around visiting old friends that I had made in
Mesopotamia or still earlier in England, before the war. Among the latter
was Colonel Ronald Storrs, the military governor of Jerusalem. With him I
spent several days. Life in the Holy City seemed but little changed by the
war. There was an interesting innovation in the Church of the Nativity at
Bethlehem. The different Christian religious sects, in particular the
Greek and Latin Catholics, were prone to come to blows in the church, and
bloodshed and death had more than once been the result. To obviate this
it had been the custom to have a regular relief of Turkish soldiers
stationed in the church. Their place was now taken by British and French
and Italians. Each nationality in rotation furnished the guard for a day.
At the festival of the distribution of the Sacred Fire from the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem there were usually a number of accidents
caused by the anxiety to reach the portal whence the fire was given out.
The commander-in-chief particularly complimented Colonel Storrs upon the
orderly way in which this ceremony was conducted under his régime. The
population of Jerusalem is exceedingly mixed--and the percentage of
fanatics is of course disproportionately large. There are many groups that
have been gathered together and brought out to the Holy Land with
distinctly unusual purposes. One such always had an empty seat at their
table and confidently expected that Christ would some day appear to occupy
it. The long-haired Russian and Polish Jews with their felt hats and
shabby frock coats were to be met with everywhere. In the street where the
Jews meet to lament the departed glory of Jerusalem an incongruous and
ludicrous element was added by a few Jews, their bowed heads covered with
ancient derby hats, wailing with undefeated zeal.