their cue from the Hun, carried away all the furniture belonging to that French religious institution.  They had also deported some of the heads of religious bodies.  Falkenhayn wished that all Americans should be removed from Jerusalem, issuing an order to that effect a fortnight before we entered.  Some members of the American colony had been running the Red Crescent hospital, and Turkish doctors who appreciated their good work insisted that the Americans should remain.  Their protest prevailed in most cases, but just as we arrived several Americans were carried off.

I have asked many men who were engaged in the fight for Jerusalem what their feelings were on getting their first glimpse of the central spot of Christendom.  Some people imagine that the hard brutalities of war erase the softer elements of men’s natures; that killing and the rough life of campaigning, where one is familiarised with the tragedies of life every hour of every day, where ease and comfort are forgotten things, remove from the mind those earlier lessons of peace on earth and goodwill toward men.  That is a fallacy.  Every man or officer I spoke to declared that he was seized with emotion when, looking from the shell-torn summit of Nebi Samwil, he saw the spires on the Mount of Olives; or when reconnoitring from Kustul he got a peep of the red roofs of the newer houses which surround the old City.  Possibly only a small percentage of the Army believed they were taking part in a great mission, not a great proportion would claim to be really devout men, but they all behaved like Christian gentlemen.  One Londoner told me he had thought the scenes of war had made him callous and that the ruthless destruction of those things fashioned by men’s hands in prosecuting the arts of peace had prompted the feeling that there was little in civilisation after all, if civilisation could result in so bitter a thing as this awful fighting.  Man seemed as barbaric as in the days before the Saviour came to redeem the world, and whether we won or lost the war all hopes of a happier state of things were futile.  So this Cockney imagined that his condition showed no improvement on that of the savage warrior of two thousand years ago, except in that civilisation had developed finer weapons to kill with and be killed by.  The finer instincts had been blunted by the naked and unashamed horrors of war.  But the lessons taught him before war scourged the world came back to him on getting his first view of the Holy City.  He felt that sense of emotion which makes one wish to be alone and think alone.  He was on the ground where Sacred History was made, perhaps stood on the rock the Saviour’s foot had trod.  In the deep stirring of his emotions the rougher edges of his nature became rounded by feelings of sympathy and a belief that good would come out of the evil of this strife.  That view of Jerusalem, and the knowledge of what the Holy Sites stand for, made him a better man and a better fighting man, and he had