A NEW ZEALANDER LOOKS at JERUSALEM

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 144, 14 December 1940, Page 18

A NEW ZEALANDER LOOKS at JERUSALEM

AMERICANS ATTACKED

THIS is the end of only the first day in Jerusalem, but I feel the urge to write while so much which is new is freshly pictured in my mind," says the letter of a New 'Zealander on service abroad. It is a long hop from the Western Desert to the Holy City of almost legendary fame, but I do not want to think too much of the nightmare of getting here. The first six hours in theMersa Special, just a seething mass of humanity, white men, black men, Englishmen, Colonials, Bedouins with their goats and chickens, puffing across the desert, all with one purpose in view, to put as many miles as possible between the windswept wastes of sand and'desolate monotony, and their own particular Mecca of the moment. Let's forget the five dreary changes of train, the almost complete lack of food and sleep for twenty-four hours. But I would show you the first sign of beauty on the journey. At Kantara Easx, one leaves the Port Said Express and travels by ferry across the Suez Canal. The barge is chock-a-block, teeming with members of all races and colours, crossing the real Rubicon from West to East. There is almost a full moon looming over the desert horizon and casting glittering ripples over the famous Ditch. Hardly a word is,spoken, the excitable near-Orientals are as quiet as the more stoical Europeans. Although not yet at the frontier the necessary. formalities take place as everyone leaves thebarge, and the white-robed figures of the, Transjordan police lurk in the shadows making very sure that no one makes the crossing outside the turnstile. Palestine.is the goal of thousands of Jews and it is part of the agreement with the Arabs that this immigration be strictly controlled and kept to an arranged quota, so it is easily understood that illicit entry is saved from becoming a booming industry only by the most constant vigilance on the part of the administration. Added to this is the constant fear of enemy agents filtering through, so the.course of the civilian across the border is a fairly tortuous one. After travelling all night, we awoke to find dawn breaking over hills and dales of orange groves. A macabre touch to such a scene of bountiful plenty is the grim shape of a loopholed watch-tower with the astrakhan ala Cossack can of the Palestine police showing over the rampart. At present all is quiet on the Arab-Jew front, but underneath all there simmers the deadly feud of the two races. Every little house, be .it neat little western bungalow or more pretentious landowners eastern dwelling, has one thing in common, massive iron shutters ready to swing over window and door leaving only the menacing slits for rifle fire. It brings back memories of the Wild West stories of Fennimore Cooper and the old cowboy and Indian days on the prairies. The train runs over rails which less than two years ago were being constantly wrecked by mines,. whilst from the hills on either side Arabs sniped Jews, and the Jew wasn't slow to retaliate. Palestine is not a friendly country, there are none of the cheerful greetings of the Egyptian to the stranger. Jew and Arab alike regard the British with suspicion, but their inherent good sense tells them that the hatchet must be buried at least temporarily until the present common peril is past. There cannot be another Lawrence, another Revolt in the Desert, as the Arabs feel that England has broken faith with them in permitting this huge influx of Jews to usurp them from their lands. The logic of this, of course, is a matter of opinion, and I for one would not 5 like to endorse either side. One is \ forced to forget the strife and turmoil i as the train, snake-like, creeps up through the valley, climbing through . what I will always remember as The . Valley of Colour. Autumn-tinted shrubs, green grape-vines, and red slate-rock mingling in a "maze of bril- ( liance, whilst little squares of ter- < raced garden show the live green of vegetables growing in bountiful pro- c fusion. At last we see ahead on the skyline the rising walls of Old Jerusalem, and . the Tower of David. The train pulls , into the modern station and for a brief ; time while you pass through the broad ": street of modern Jerusalem, you can forget the East -and almost imagine yourself in some provincial New Zea- " land town. For the most part the l, people are wearing Western clothes, : and wearing them well, and it is only 1 here and there one glimpses the hurrying Arab in the traditional white 1 headdress or the orthodox Jew in his r round fur-trimmed cap and Shirley 1 Temple curls hanging over his ears. t And so we arrive at what was the c Hotel Fast, catalogued 'by Thomas Cook '\ as being the second hotel of Jerusalem, s This has been purchased and is con- 1 trolled by the Australians as a soldiers' i club. As it previously belonged to a -s German syndicate, I don't suppose the i owners have seen much of the pur- c chase money. The soldier tourist could c not be better catered for, and I could f go into rhapsodies over the Aus- £ tralian lagers, the menus with the ac- c cent on ice cream and poultry, and the crisp white sheets and "h. and c." in i every room, while the quality of the baths could only be appreciated to their

full after two bathless months in the desert. Our first morning was officially "free," but really was busily spent in eating, drinking, and bathing, with a visit to the barber on the premises for a shave, shampoo, haircut, and even a face massage; then to the laundry to turn in every article of clothing, and purchase new shorts and shirts to tide us over. Do we feel like a million dollars, or do we feel like a million dollars? Our first excursion into the old walled city was in company with an Australian M.P. (police, not Parliament), and for one of this usually unfavoured breed he turned out to be a thoroughly good fellow and knew his graft as a guide. And so through the Jaffa Gate, the gate through which Allenby rode when he took Jerusalem from the Turks. During the curfew these gates were locked from sunset to sunrise, and even now the wise man comes out before the sun goes down. The Old City itself is a veritable warren of lanes and steps nearly completely covered by arches overhead giving most streets very little light. As Jerusalem is so much ' a city of the hills nearly every little street has a different level and donkeys, camels, and even cows pick their way confidently up and down the little flights of steps. Of course you do not see any motors here, and the favourite means of carrying goods is by porters. These poor, tattered creatures, along with the water-carriers, carry amazing loads and one old man we saw was staggering up King David Street with two sacks of grain on his back, a total weight of about three hundredweight. We soon came to the Wailing Wall, and although it was officially described as an off-day for wailing owing to some fast keeping the Jews indoors, there was quite a number of them making the most miserable noises imaginable. Some were almost in a fanatical frenzy as they swayed from side to side and beat their heads upon the wall. Well-dressed women, youths, and elderly men mingle with poorly-clad Jews in black gowns and saucer caps. There are Jews, dozens of them here and a little further, on the steps leading away from the wall, are many beggars reading the Old Testament in singsong Yiddish with a tin or piece of cloth on the pavement beside them for alms. Beggars in general have you in rather a tight spot in the Holy Land When you are leaving some particularly venerated relic, and if you are not entirely a heretic, you find it rather | hard to refuse the blind man who can beat you to pick up the half-acca you drop or the filthy, veiled creature who whines at your elbow. You need some sort of courage to refuse these charities in this atmosphere. Baksheesh I in the Old City is a booming industry, i so before going out you change rome piastres for. a pocketful of the rr*nute coins peculiar to the East, and in the course of the afternoon receive about fifty appeals, and judiciously award sums ranging from about a farthing to a penny to about twenty-five of them. Next, the Holy Sepulchre. This magnificent church containing the rock on which the Cross was finally placed is i notable for the strange way in which

the different sects intermingle. In the same chapel are altars belonging to the Catholics, Armenians, and Greeks, i and in the weird candlelight dark- ! habited monks of the different churches I glide noiselessly in and out of the ; shadows. Amongst all these relics of 1 the Christian Church there is an air of tawdriness; beautiful buildings with priceless mosaics are ruined by the inclusion of all the tinselled junk imaginable; glass beads, hideous pictures, and trinkets of no artistic or intrinsic value ruin the dignity of these places which should mean so much to the Christian world. The Armenians display the worst taste. As far as Jerusalem is concerned. Protestants just don't seem to exist; everything is Greek, Armenian, Roman, or Russian. A Methodist would feel almost as out of place in the Holy Sepulchre as a Moslem. Our next visit is to the First Station of the Cross, contained in a convent leading from which is the Ecce Homo Arch (Pontius Pilate) "Behold the Man." This convent was of particular interest to us because of the nun who showed us around. She was a Frenchwoman of about 60 or perhaps 70, and the most broadminded and witty woman I have met for a long time. A medal was earned by one of the lads; she asked us what church we belonged to, and Rosey replied Presbyterian, not so good, I, Anglican, a little better, and the grave Gregory said he really doubted if he was anything. I really felt that this was a bad moment, but the old lady thought it quite a joke and refused to believe it, accusing him of succumbing to the affectation of the moment, and she wasn't really in the least upset as she said he would undoubtedly grow out of it. So the crisis passed. The convent has an orphanage attached, and we were taken to see the children at their lessons, and although it was nearly 5 o'clock, they were still hard at it. These children were all Arabs the nuns had picked up in the streets, mostly literally starving and without a soul or a/home to call their own. They are very bright at languages and toddlers of five and six had quite a fair knowledge of French and English. In the evening we decided to taste the wild delights of night life in the Holy City. It's a wow! There is a total "black-out" and after falling down most of the marble steps at the hotel entrance we beat around the inky darkness of the Jaffa Road, and discovered in turn the Carlton, Ritz, and Marina. What debauchery, a mild glass of very poor beer is drunk to the accompaniment of a three-piece band and finally at the Marina, after drinking four gin slings in mournful succession, we decided we were keeping the managemsnt out of bed and went forth to battle again with the murky night. On the way back we struck a little place about four by six, from which came the strains of- a violin. We wafted in and up and were enchanted for an hour by a nondescript little Jew playing a fiddle as I have never heard it played before. It was magnificent,

and by constant plying of liqueur brandy and collections of odd' coins, we kept the human wreck afloat until nearly 2 a.m. At 8 o'clock the next morning, the three of us, determined not to miss anything, set off again with our guide to the Mosque of Omar. It is a wonderful piece of architecture, the mosaics of the huge dome showing a thousand colours. There is a dignity about this Moslem Mosque that is sadly missing in any of the Christian antiquaries; everything is symmetrically simple, and the inch-thick rugs from the Shah of Persia are the final touch of rich magnificence. The piece of tiling from the dome which I am sending you is nearly one thousand four hundred years old, and is the first piece to fall from the inside of the dome. Workmen were cleaning the roof while we were there and this, the first decay of ancient craftsmanship, almost fell on my head. From the Mosque we went down below the level of the Old City Wall to Solomon's stables, and what a string of horses that lad ran. The stalls from them run for hundreds of feej; in all directions and the fodder store is about the size of the Wellington Town Hall.

"One of the clearest cases of deliberate terroristic shooting at civilians on record in England" was described by a special correspondent of the NewYork afternoon paper "P.M." in a dispatch from London recently. The incident occurred, he says, at a Sussex country house of two wealthy Americans, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Treglown, who had as a weekend guest at the time Mr. Harvey Klemmer, Special Attache at the American Embassy. Seven German planes flying so low that one of them took the top off a pear tree at the end of the garden came over during the afternoon. They machinegunned the house and garden, although "there was no conceivable military reason for such action within miles." Mrs. Treglown saved herself by diving under a rhododendron bush, the correspondent says, and escaped uninjured, although four planes sprayed machinegun fire all round her.