City. Possibly only a
small percentage of the Army believed they were taking part in a great
mission, not a great proportion would claim to be really devout men,
but they all behaved like Christian gentlemen. One Londoner told me
he had thought the scenes of war had made him callous and that the
ruthless destruction of those things fashioned by men's hands in
prosecuting the arts of peace had prompted the feeling that there was
little in civilisation after all, if civilisation could result in so
bitter a thing as this awful fighting. Man seemed as barbaric as in
the days before the Saviour came to redeem the world, and whether
we won or lost the war all hopes of a happier state of things were
futile. So this Cockney imagined that his condition showed no
improvement on that of the savage warrior of two thousand years ago,
except in that civilisation had developed finer weapons to kill with
and be killed by. The finer instincts had been blunted by the naked
and unashamed horrors of war. But the lessons taught him before war
scourged the world came back to him on getting his first view of the
Holy City. He felt that sense of emotion which makes one wish to be
alone and think alone. He was on the ground where Sacred History was
made, perhaps stood on the rock the Saviour's foot had trod. In the
deep stirring of his emotions the rougher edges of his nature became
rounded by feelings of sympathy and a belief that good would come out
of the evil of this strife. That view of Jerusalem, and the knowledge
of what the Holy Sites stand for, made him a better man and a better
fighting man, and he had no doubt the first distant glimpse of the
Holy City had similarly affected the bulk of the Army. That bad
language is used by almost all troops in the field is notorious,
but in Jerusalem one seldom heard an oath or an indecent word. When
Jerusalem was won and small parties of our soldiers were allowed to
see the Holy City, their politeness to the inhabitants, patriarch or
priest, trader or beggar, man or woman, rebuked the thought that the
age of chivalry was past, while the reverent attitude involuntarily
adopted by every man when seeing the Sacred Places suggested that no
Crusader Army or band of pilgrims ever came to the Holy Land under a
more pious influence. Many times have I watched the troops of General
Allenby in the streets of Jerusalem. They bore themselves as soldiers
and gentlemen, and if they had been selected to go there s