However, the German officers were by no means all incompetents.  They realized (I soon found out) that they had little hope of bringing a big army through the Egyptian desert and making a successful campaign there.  Their object was to immobilize a great force of British troops around the Canal, to keep the Mohammedan population in Palestine impressed with Turkish power, and to stir up religious unrest among the natives in Egypt.  It must be admitted that in the first two of these purposes they have been successful.

The Turks were less far-sighted.  They believed firmly that they were going to sweep the English off the face of the earth and enter Cairo in triumph, and preparations for the march on Suez went on with feverish enthusiasm.  The ideas of the common soldiers on this subject were amusing.  Some of them declared that the Canal was to be filled up by the sandbags which had been prepared in great quantities.  Others held that thousands of camels would be kept without water for many days preceding the attack; then the thirsty animals, when released, would rush into the Canal in such numbers that the troops could march to victory over the packed masses of drowned bodies.

The army operating against Suez numbered about one hundred and fifty thousand men.  Of these about twenty thousand were Anatolian Turks—­trained soldiers, splendid fighting material, as was shown by their resistance at the Dardanelles.  The rest were Palestinian Arabs, and very inferior troops they were.  The Arab as a soldier is at once stupid and cunning:  fierce when victory is on his side, but unreliable when things go against him.  In command of the expedition was the famous Djemal Pasha, a Young Turk general of tremendous energy, but possessing small ability to see beyond details to the big, broad concepts of strategy.  Although a great friend of Enver Pasha, he looked with disfavor on the German officers and, in particular, on Bach Pasha, the German Governor of Jerusalem, with whom he had serious disagreements.  This dislike of the Germans was reflected among the lesser Turkish officers.  Many of these, after long years of service, found themselves subordinated to young foreigners, who, in addition to arbitrary promotion, received much higher salaries than the Turks.  What is more, they were paid in clinking gold, whereas the Turks, when paid at all, got paper currency.

Beersheba, a prosperous town of the ancient province of Idumea, was the southern base of operations for the advance on Suez.  Some of our villagers had been sent to this district, and, in searching for them, I had the opportunity of seeing at least the taking-off place of the expedition.  Beyond this point no Jew or Christian was allowed to pass, with the exception of the physicians, all of whom were non-Mohammedans who had been forced into the army.