allow me--" My voice trailed off suggestively.

"How could you get one?" he asked.

"Oh, I have friends here in Saffed but I _must_ be able to sleep in a
nice place."

"Of course; certainly. What would you suggest?"

"That hotel kept by the Jewish widow might do," I replied.

More amenities were exchanged, the upshot of which was that my four
friends and I were given permission to sleep at the inn--a humble place,
but infinitely better than the mosque. It was all perfectly simple.

[ILLUSTRATION: SOLDIERS' TENTS IN SAMARIA]

CHAPTER III

THE GERMAN PROPAGANDA

So passed the days of our training, swiftly, monotonously, until the
fateful December morning when the news came like a thunderbolt that
Turkey was about to join hands with Germany. We had had reports of the
war--of a kind. Copies of telegrams from Constantinople, printed in
Arabic, were circulated among us, giving accounts of endless German
victories. These, however, we had laughed at as fabrications of a
Prussophile press agency, and in our skepticism we had failed to give
the Teutons credit for the successes they had actually won. To us, born
and bred in the East as we were, the success of German propaganda in the
Turkish Empire could not come as an overwhelming surprise; but its
fullness amazed us.

It may be of timely interest to say a few words here regarding this
propaganda as I have seen it in Palestine, spreading under strong and
efficient organization for twenty years.

In order to realize her imperialistic dreams, Germany absolutely needed
Palestine. It was the key to the whole Oriental situation. No mere
coincidence brought the Kaiser to Damascus in November, 1898,--the same
month that Kitchener, in London, was hailed as Gordon's avenger,--when
he uttered his famous phrase at the tomb of Saladin: "Tell the three
hundred million Moslems of the world that I am their friend!" We have
all seen photographs of the imperial figure, draped in an amazing
burnous of his own designing (above which the Prussian _Pickelhaube_
rises supreme), as he moved from point to point in this portentous
visit: we may also have seen Caran d'Ache's celebrated cartoon (a
subject of diplomatic correspondence) representing this same imperial
figure, in its Oriental toggery, riding into Jerusalem on an ass.

The nations of Europe laughed at this visit and its transparent purpose,
but it was all part of the scheme which won for the Germans the
concessions for