AN OLD JEWEL IN THE PROPER SETTING 



An Eyewitness's Account of the Reconquest of the Holy 

 Land by Twentieth Century Crusaders 



By Charles W. Whitehair 



SINCE King David, nearly three 

 thousand years ago, captured Jeru- 

 salem and made it his capital, it 

 has been a coveted prize, sought not so 

 much by the nations for its military im- 

 portance as for its sacredness to three of 

 the world's greatest religions. 



For to the Jew and the Mohammedan, 

 as well as the Christian, Jerusalem is 

 'The Holy City." Throughout its his- 

 tory the wearied feet of millions of pil- 

 grims from far-distant lands have never 

 ceased to climb over the rocky Judean 

 hills to pay homage and to worship within 

 its sacred walls. 



To the Jew, as the home of his fore- 

 fathers, it has always been of hallowed 

 memory in spite of the hundreds of years 

 of his exile. 



To the Christian, Jerusalem, with the 

 surrounding country, is truly "The Holy 

 Land," for it is the land of his Lord's 

 birth, His ministry, His crucifixion, His 

 resurrection. Throughout Christendom 

 the names Jerusalem, Mount of Olives, 

 Bethlehem, and Garden of Gethsemane 

 are laden with meaning, even to the 

 smallest school child. 



To the Mohammedan, Jerusalem is 

 second only to Mecca in sanctity. 



Repeatedly besieged, captured, and re- 

 captured, practically all of the great na- 

 tions of history have held sway over the 

 Holy City — the Israelites, Egyptians, 

 Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Assyr- 

 ians, Romans, Saracens, Crusaders, and 

 Turks — and its surrender in the past has 

 nearly always meant the destruction of 

 its buildings and the wholesale slaughter 

 of the population. 



BRITISH CAPTORS WITHHELD SHEEEEiRE 

 FROM THE SACRED CITY 



The treatment which Jerusalem has re- 

 ceived at the hands of her British captors 



stands out in strong contrast to her past 

 history of suffering. 



Realizing the importance of Jerusalem 

 to the Christians, the Jews, and the Mo- 

 hammedans, General Allenby so planned 

 his campaign that he captured the town 

 without firing a single shell into the an- 

 cient walled city. 



However, the capture of Jerusalem 

 is only an isolated incident in the great 

 Palestine campaign. Operating in an in- 

 hospitable, hostile country, where not only 

 food, clothing, and munitions had to be 

 transported from great distances, but 

 even water carried many weary miles to 

 her forces fighting amid oppressive desert 

 heat, Great Britain and her colonies, prac- 

 tically unaided, crushed the Turkish Em- 

 pire. 



To do so she sent a million men to the 

 Holy Land and Mesopotamia, transport- 

 ing them an average distance of about 

 .3,000 miles through submarine-infested 

 seas. And these campaigns were con- 

 ducted simultaneously with the major 

 operations of her armies in Belgium and 

 France and the activities of other hun- 

 dreds of thousands in Macedonia and 

 East Africa ! 



Early in 191 5 the Turkish forces, aided 

 by the Germans, were launched against 

 the Suez Canal — the main artery of the 

 British Empire, connecting Australia, 

 New Zealand, and India with the mother 

 country. In February, a small force of 

 the enemy reached the canal and was 

 driven back ; but in order to protect this 

 vital waterway it became necessary for 

 the British to launch an offensive. 



This meant pushing forward over 150 

 miles of desert, which marked the begin- 

 ning of the long, weary months of fight- 

 ing on the Sinai Peninsula, known as the 

 Desert campaign. America can little 

 realize those awful days of suffering. 



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