no bells in
ancient belfrys rang, no Te Deums were sung, and no preacher mounted
the rostrum to eulogise the victors or to point the moral to the
multitude. A small, almost meagre procession, consisting of the
Commander-in-Chief and his Staff, with a guard of honour, less than
150 all told, passed through the gate unheralded by a single trumpet
note; a purely military act with a minimum of military display told
the people that the old order had changed, yielding place to new. The
native mind, keen, discerning, receptive, understood the meaning and
depth of this simplicity, and from the moment of high noon on December
11, 1917, when General Allenby went into the Mount Zion quarter of the
Holy City, the British name rested on a foundation as certain and sure
as the rock on which the Holy City stands. Right down in the hearts of
a people who cling to Jerusalem with the deepest reverence and piety
there was unfeigned delight. They realised that four centuries of
Ottoman dominion over the Holy City of Christians and Jews, and 'the
sanctuary' of Mahomedans, had ended, and that Jerusalem the Golden,
the central Site of Sacred History, was liberated for all creeds from
the blighting influence of the Turk. And while war had wrought this
beneficent change the population saw in this epoch-marking victory a
merciful guiding Hand, for it had been achieved without so much as a
stone of the City being scratched or a particle of its ancient dust
disturbed. The Sacred Monuments and everything connected with the
Great Life and its teaching were passed on untouched by our Army.
Rightly did the people rejoice.

When General Allenby went into Jerusalem all fears had passed away.
The Official Entry was made while there was considerable fighting on
the north and east of the City, where our lines were nowhere more than
7000 yards off. The guns were firing, the sounds of bursts of musketry
were carried down on the wind, whilst droning aeroplane engines in the
deep-blue vault overhead told of our flying men denying a passage to
enemy machines. The stern voices of war were there in all their harsh
discordancy, but the people knew they were safe in the keeping of
British soldiers and came out to make holiday. General Allenby motored
into the suburbs of Jerusalem by the road from Latron which the
pioneers had got into some sort of order. The business of war was
going on, and the General's car took its place on the highway on even
terms with the l