and Jerusalem was to be
defended to the last. German officers came hurrying south, lorries
were rushed down with stores until there were six hundred German lorry
drivers and mechanics in Jerusalem. Reinforcements arrived and the
houses of the German Colony were turned into nests of machine guns.
The pains the Germans were at to see their plans carried out
were reflected in the fighting when we tried to get across the
Jerusalem-Nablus road and to avoid fighting in the neighbourhood
of the Holy City. But all this effort availed them nought. Our
dispositions compelled the enemy to distribute his forces, and when
the attack was launched the Turk lacked sufficient men to man his
defences adequately. And German pretensions in the Holy Land, founded
upon years of scheming and the formation of settlements for German
colonists approved and supported by the Kaiser himself, were shattered
beyond hope of recovery, as similar pretensions had been shattered at
Bagdad by General Maude. The Turks had made their headquarters at the
Hospice of Notre Dame in Jerusalem, and, taking 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