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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



(No. 27.) 



IMPORTANT NOTICE. 



All correspondence must be written in one of the 

 following languages and in the characters indicated: — 



English. 

 French. 

 Italian. 



Hebrew (Hebrew character). 

 Arabic. 



Yiddish (Latin or Hebrew character). 

 Spanish-Hebrew (old Hebrew character;. 

 Russian. 

 Armenian. 

 Greek. 

 Spanish. 

 Portuguese. 

 Dutch. 

 Amharic. 



German (Latin or German character). 

 All other correspondence will be destroyed. 



Military Governor. 



JERUSALEM is THE MODERN BAB-EE 



Fifteen languages ought to be enough for any community, but the 

 last line of this official proclamation, issued in the Holy City after 

 the British occupation, is no joke. There are lots of other tongues 

 spoken in the capital of Palestine in addition to the ones catalogued. 

 These, however, are the principal languages to be heard in the streets 

 and observed on the signboards. 



connected with the administration. There 

 were no records left ; not even title deeds 

 of private property. Private and public 

 institutions had been pillaged. 



No medical attention was to be had 

 anywhere in the city, but within 24 hours 



after the British oc- 

 cupation two hospitals 

 were opened for the 

 civilian population. 



The Governor and 

 his staff personally 

 went to every bakery 

 during the first few 

 days, to see that the 

 women and children 

 got bread and were 

 not crowded away by 

 the men. Nine hun- 

 dred tons of cereals 

 are now brought to Je- 

 rusalem every month, 

 and every precaution 

 is taken to see that 

 the city has sufficient 

 food. 



The problem of gov- 

 ernment was far more 

 complicated than ap- 

 pears on the surface, 

 for in Jerusalem more 

 languages are spoken 

 than in any other city 

 in the world — a fact 

 indicated by one of 

 the official notices re- 

 produced on this page. 



Fortunately, the 

 Military Governor is 

 splendidly fitted for 

 his task, for he knows 

 the Near East, having 

 been during the past 



f/r^ few years in the 



w/O v ? Egyptian Government 



service. He knows 

 the oriental mind, and 

 realizes how impossi- 

 ble it is to deal with 

 orientals, without 

 knowing something 

 about their religion 

 and their mode of liv- 

 ing and thinking. He 

 is able to speak flu- 

 ently Arabic, French, 

 Italian, Greek, Eng- 

 lish, German, and Turkish and is now 

 mastering Hebrew. 



During his services in Egypt, Colonel 

 Storrs became very popular with the 

 Moslems — a fact which gave him a good 

 standing in Jerusalem, as the majority 



