e trembling rock of barbaric rule nearly fell on him and killed him.
By a sudden movement of lawlessness the Turkish military authorities
sent to him, demanding the English documents left in his custody.
He refused to give them up; and he knew what he was doing.
In standing firm he was not even standing like Nurse Cavell against
organised Prussia under the full criticism of organised Europe.
He was rather standing in a den of brigands, most of whom
had never heard of the international rules they violated.
Finally by another freak of friendliness they left him and his
papers alone; but the old man had to wait many days in doubt,
not knowing what they would do, since they did not know themselves.
I do not know what were his thoughts, or whether they were far from
Palestine and all possibilities that tyranny might return and reign
for ever. But I have sometimes fancied that, in that ghastly silence,
he may have heard again only the guns of Lee and the last battle
in the Wilderness.

If the mention of the American Consul refers back to the oppression
of the past, the mention of the Military Governor brings back
all the problems of the present. Here I only sketch these groups
as I first found them in the present; and it must be remembered
that my present is already past. All this was before the latest
change from military to civil government, but the mere name
of Colonel Storrs raises a question which is rather misunderstood
in relation to that change itself. Many of our journalists,
especially at the time of the last and worst of the riots,
wrote as if it would be a change from some sort of stiff militarism
to a liberal policy akin to parliamentarism. I think this a fallacy,
and a fallacy not uncommon in journalism, which is professedly
very much up to date, and actually very much behind the times.
As a fact it is nearly four years behind the times, for it is
thinking in terms of the old small and rigidly professional army.
Colonel Storrs is the very last man to be called militaristic in
the narrow sense; he is a particularly liberal and enlightened type
of the sort of English gentleman who readily served his country in war,
but who is rather particularly fitted to serve her in politics
or literature. Of course many purely professional soldiers have
liberal and artistic tastes; as General Shea, one of the organisers
of Palestinian victory, has a fine taste in poetry, or Colonel Popham,
then deputy Governor of Jerusa