pageantry of arms, no pomp and panoply, no display of the mighty strength of a victorious army, no thunderous salutes to acclaim a world-resounding victory destined to take its place in the chronicles of all time.  There was no enemy flag to haul down and no flags were hoisted.  There were no soldier shouts of triumph over a defeated foe, no bells in ancient belfrys rang, no Te Deums were sung, and no preacher mounted the rostrum to eulogise the victors or to point the moral to the multitude.  A small, almost meagre procession, consisting of the Commander-in-Chief and his Staff, with a guard of honour, less than 150 all told, passed through the gate unheralded by a single trumpet note; a purely military act with a minimum of military display told the people that the old order had changed, yielding place to new.  The native mind, keen, discerning, receptive, understood the meaning and depth of this simplicity, and from the moment of high noon on December 11, 1917, when General Allenby went into the Mount Zion quarter of the Holy City, the British name rested on a foundation as certain and sure as the rock on which the Holy City stands.  Right down in the hearts of a people who cling to Jerusalem with the deepest reverence and piety there was unfeigned delight.  They realised that four centuries of Ottoman dominion over the Holy City of Christians and Jews, and ’the sanctuary’ of Mahomedans, had ended, and that Jerusalem the Golden, the central Site of Sacred History, was liberated for all creeds from the blighting influence of the Turk.  And while war had wrought this beneficent change the population saw in this epoch-marking victory a merciful guiding Hand, for it had been achieved without so much as a stone of the City being scratched or a particle of its ancient dust disturbed.  The Sacred Monuments and everything connected with the Great Life and its teaching were passed on untouched by our Army.  Rightly did the people rejoice.

When General Allenby went into Jerusalem all fears had passed away.  The Official Entry was made while there was considerable fighting on the north and east of the City, where our lines were nowhere more than 7000 yards off.  The guns were firing, the sounds of bursts of musketry were carried down on the wind, whilst droning aeroplane engines in the deep-blue vault overhead told of our flying men denying a passage to enemy machines.  The stern voices of war were there in all their harsh discordancy, but the people knew they were safe in the keeping of British soldiers and came out to make holiday.  General Allenby motored into the suburbs of Jerusalem by the road from Latron which the pioneers had got into some sort of order.  The business of war was going on, and the General’s car took its place on the highway on even terms with the lorry, which at that time when supplying the front was the most urgent task and had priority on the roads.  The people had put on gala raiment.  From the outer fringe of Jerusalem the Jaffa road was blocked not