Just what took place in the attack is known to very few.  The English have not seen fit to make public the details, and there was little to be got from the demoralized soldiers who returned to Beersheba.  Piece by piece, however, I gathered that the attacking party had come up to the Canal at dawn.  Finding everything quiet, they set about getting across, and had even launched a pontoon, when the British, who were lying in wait, opened a terrific fire from the farther bank, backed by armored locomotives and aeroplanes.  “It was as if the gates of Jehannum were opened and its fires turned loose upon us,” one soldier told me.

The Turks succeeded in getting their guns into action for a very short while.  One of the men-of-war in the Canal was hit; several houses in Ismailia suffered damage; but the invaders were soon driven away in confusion, leaving perhaps two thousand prisoners in the hands of the English.  If the latter had chosen to do so, they could have annihilated the Turkish forces then and there.  The ticklish state of mind of the Mohammedan population in Egypt, however, has led them to adopt a policy of leniency and of keeping to the defensive, which subsequent developments have more than justified.  It is characteristic of England’s faculty for holding her colonies that batteries manned by Egyptians did the finest work in defense of the Canal.

The reaction in Palestine after the defeat at Suez was tremendous.  Just before the attack, Djemal Pasha had sent out a telegram announcing the overwhelming defeat of the British vanguard, which had caused wild enthusiasm.  Another later telegram proclaimed that the Canal had been reached, British men-of-war sunk, the Englishmen routed—­with a loss to the Turks of five men and two camels, “which were afterwards recovered.”  “But,” added the telegram, “a terrible sand-storm having arisen, the glorious army takes it as the wish of Allah not to continue the attack, and has therefore withdrawn in triumph.”

These reports hoodwinked the ignorant natives for a little while, but when the stream of haggard soldiers, wounded and exhausted, began pouring back from the south, they guessed what had happened, and a fierce revulsion against the Germano-Turkish regime set in.  A few weeks before the advance on Suez, I was in Jaffa, where the enthusiasm and excitement had been at fever-pitch.  Parades and celebrations of all kinds in anticipation of the triumphal march into Egypt were taking place, and one day a camel, a dog, and a bull, decorated respectively with the flags of Russia, France, and England, were driven through the streets.  The poor animals were horribly maltreated by the natives, who rained blows and flung filth upon them by way of giving concrete expression to their contempt for the Allies.  Mr. Glazebrook, the American Consul at Jerusalem, happened to be with me in Jaffa that day; and never shall I forget the expression of pain and disgust on his face as he watched this melancholy little procession of scapegoats hurrying along the street.