TRAMS ON HOLY GROUND

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8681, 14 March 1914, Page 9

TRAMS ON HOLY GROUND

LINE TO RUN FROM JERUSALEM TO BETHLEHEM. LONDON, January 29. The statement that Jerusalem i and its vicinity are to ha modernised by the laying down of an electric lighting plant and the construction of a water supply from Wady Forah, and a tramway between the city and Bethlehem causes little disquiet in quarters where any. vandalism in Jerusalem would be resented moat keenly'. "Really, I think the tramway to Bethlehem will be quite a good thing," said a prominent member of the Palestine exploration . fund committee yesterday. "It will be well outside the city walls, and there is nothing of interest that needs to be jealously preserved on the four or five miles of country road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. For the electric light project, too, there is much to be said, and the water supply is certainly urgently needed.” Up to the present Jerusalem, so far as the city within the old walls is concerned, has suffered singularly little from its contact with twentieth century civilisation. ' The railway terminus is well outside the walls, and practically all ’ the modern hotels and business, houses' are situated in the modem extra-mural quarter. In Palestine generally the development of improved means of communication seems to have had an unexpected effect. "Travellers to-day see much less of the country,’’- said the gentleman quoted, "than they did thirty years ago. Then they, used to wander all over the country j now they stick to the roads and see only what is on the beaten track.”