with terrific violence, we never giving up possession of it,
though it was stormed again and again by an enemy who, it is fair to
admit, displayed fine courage and not a little skill. That hill-top at
this period had to submit to a thunderous bombardment, and the Mosque
of Nebi Samwil became a battered shell. Here are supposed to lie the
remains of the Prophet Samuel. The tradition may or may not be well
founded, but at any rate Mahomedans and Christians alike have held
the place in veneration for centuries. The Turk paid no regard to the
sanctity of the Mosque, and, as it was of military importance to him
that we should not hold it, he shelled it daily with all his available
guns, utterly destroying it. There may be cases where the Turks will
deny that they damaged a Holy Place. They could not hide their guilt
on Nebi Samwil. I was at pains to examine the Mosque and the immediate
surroundings, and the photographs I took are proof that the wreckage
of this church came from artillery fired from the east and north, the
direction of the Turkish gun-pits. It is possible we are apt to be
a little too sentimental about the destruction in war of a place of
worship. If a general has reason to think that a tower or minaret
is being used as an observation post, or that a church or mosque is
sheltering a body of troops, there are those who hold that he is
justified in deliberately planning its destruction, but here was a
sacred building with associations held in reverence by all classes and
creeds in a land where these things are counted high, and to have set
about wrecking it was a crime. The German influence over the Turk
asserted itself, as it did in the heavy fighting after we had taken
Jerusalem. We had batteries on the Mount of Olives and the Turk
searched for them, but they never fired one round at the Kaiserin
Augusta Victoria Hospice near by. That had been used as Falkenhayn's
headquarters. General Chetwode occupied it as his Corps Headquarters
soon after he entered Jerusalem. There was a wireless installation and
the Turks could see the coming and going of the Corps' motor cars. I
have watched operations from a summer-house in the gardens, and no
enemy plane could pass over the building without discovering the
purpose to which it was put. And there were spies. But not one shell
fell within the precincts of the hospice because it was a German
building, containing the statues of the Kaiser and Kaiserin, and (oh,
the taste o