Evening Post. SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1927. IN TWO CAPITALS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 112, 14 May 1927, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1927. IN TWO CAPITALS

By a happy coincidence the day which brought Australia's Capital into being brought us also the news of another great ceremonial which, though in a much further distant land, was a matter of still more intimate concern for New Zealand. At Jerusalem on Saturday Lord Allenby unveiled the War Memorial Chapel on the Mount of Olives which commemorates the freeing of the Holy Land from the Turk and the price at which it was done. Flanking the curved walls on which the names of the Empire's missing are inscribed, said our cabled report, are pylons bearing the Australian and New Zealand coats-of-arms. Inside the chapel isithe mosaic, the gift of New Zealand, containing six figures symbolical of victory, peace; patriotism, faith, humanity, and hope. It was fitting that Lord Allenby, who led the great crusade, should have j performed the principal ceremony, | and that in the unveiling of her special memorial Neiv Zealand should have been represented by her High Commissioner. At Ramleh, apparently on the same day, the Bishop of Jerusalem dedicated the cemetery where 1885 of the Empire's dead, including sixty Australians and eighty New Zealanders, are buried. It was close to Ramleh that the Anzac Mounted Division, on its great drive of sixty-five miles in eight days, fought the brilliant action of Ayun Kara, in a country that is full of the memories of the Crusaders. That association is happily commemorated in Colonel Powles's book on "The New Zealanders in Sinai and Palestine," by a photograph of "The Brigade Passing Over the Old Crusader Bridge at Zebra."

It was not far from Ramleh and Zebra that Richard I. stood in sight of Jerusalem but covering his face 'with his hands refused to look at the city which he was unable to take. "Ah, Lord God," he said, "I pray that I may never see thy Holy City, if so be that ,1 may not rescue it from the hands of Thine enemies." Associations going back thousands of years instead of hundreds were recalled when the Mayor of Rechoboth, hearing that the commander of the Division was a New Zealander, sent him a flagon of wine with the message, "From the Oldest Colony in the World to the Youngest." The Jews who had colonised Canaan three thousand years ago were glad to welcome these new colonists from over the sea. It was not so that their ancestors welcomed the earlier Crusaders. For the Crusaders of those days the slaying of such infidels as Saracens and Jews was a pious duty which they were proud to carry out. When Jerusalem fell to the First Crusaders in 1199, the massacre of 70,000 of its inhabitants followed, and the character of Richard I. and the manner in which he treated his prisoners at Acre and elsewhere indicate how he would have discharged his trust if he had been privileged to rescue the Holy City from "the enemies of God." But times have changed. If, we are less pious, we are also less ferocious. When Allenby entered Jerusalem on the 11th December, 1917, he entered as no conqueror of Jerusalem had ever entered before. He entered quietly and on foot to show that he came as a friend and deliverer and not to replace one tyranny by another. The tyranny which the Turk had exercised over Palestine for exactly four hundred years was at an end, and freedom was to take its place. Jerusalem, which had been almost obliterated by at least two previous conquests, had found a benevolent conqueror at last.

There were' of course disappointments when Britain after the War received her mandate to govern Palestine and to carry out her promise to provide the Jews with a national home, But British justice and British patience are steadily reducing the extravagances both of Zionists and anti-Zionists to reason. The speed of the process may be measured by the contrast between the peril incurred by Lord Balfour when he visited Jerusalem to open the Hebrew University two years ago and the perfect harmony which appears to have prevailed during Lord Allenby's visit. The country is steadily settling down to the conditions

of such a just and tolerant government as it has not enjoyed for cen- j turics, and will surely recognise in! the civil administration which Britain is providing a boon just as great as the work of her soldiers. Reverting to the military aspect of last baturdny's ceremonials, we must not omit to note that Australia played the part in them which rightfully belonged to the senior partner of the Anzac Division, and that h er military representative is credited in the following message with quite the | most interesting of the remarks that were cabled:— General Dodds speaking at Bamlcli, recalled that the Palostlno campaign included the mightiest host of horsemen over raised. Detachments of the Australian units engaged in it wefo assembled, at Canberra and reviewed by the Duke of York. They carried for the fust time standards emblazoned with the namea Gaza, Bconhoba, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Damascus. Regarding the first of these statemenu, we may point out that Colonel Fowles merely credits Lord Alienby with the mightiest host of horsemen smcee the days of Darius, but we do not pretend to say who is right. The second of General Dodds's points is of more substantial value. Even the pacifist may be thrilled by the thought that the Australian units that fought in Palestine were represented in Monday's ceremonial at Canberra, and that their standards bore for the first time the names of Gaza, Beersheba, Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Damascus. With these great names, dating back to the days of Abraham, the name of the youngest of the world's cities is now associated, and we trust that the association may abide. The great deeds accomphshed by our soldiers under Lord Allenby's command in one of the oldest of countries should serve to remind these young lands that, whatever geography may say, their interests and destinies are indissolubly linked with the, older civilisations, and that a self-centred isolation is a temptation to which they should never succumb.

The far cry from Canberra to Jerusalem—from the city which has just been born to the aged city where our people have just been honouring the valour that has renewed its life —suggests another thought—a comparison and a contrast in capitals. Canberra owes its existence to the jealousy between Sydney and Melbourne. Jealousy between Judah and Benjamin may have had something to do with the origin of Jerusalem, but what made the city great and kept the city going through centuries of neglect, devastation, oppression,- and alien rule? "Prima facie," Jerusalem had no right to exist as a capital at all. "The most impressive fact about Judaea—at least in face of her history," says Sir George Adam Smith, "is her natural unfitness for the growth of a great city." The mystery by which that barren plateau grew nevertheless what is in one respect the greatest of the world's cities he explains as follows:—

Neither Bethlehem nor Hebron, nor any other part of that plateau, bears tokens of civic promise. Throughout Judaea these are absolutely lacking. She has no harbours, no river, no great trunk road, no convenient market for tho nations on either side of her. In thoir commerce with each other, theso pass by Judaea, finding their emporiums in the cities of Philistia, or, as of old, .at Petra and Bosra, on tho east of the Jordan. Gaza has outdone Hobron as the port of the desert. Jerusalom is no match for Shochem in fertility or convenience of site. Tho whole plateau stands aloof, waterless, on the road to nowhere. There aro nono of the natural conditions of a great city. And yet it was here that She arose who, more than Athens and more than Rome, taught tho nations civic justice, and gave her name to tho ideal city men aro ever striving to build on earth, to the City of God that shall one- day descend from heaven—tho New Jerusalem. For her builder was not Nature nor the wisdom of men, but on that secluded and barren site, the Word of God, by her prophets, laid her eternal foundations in righteousness, and reared her walls in her people's faith in God.