The Washington herald., 1915-01-31


to Jerusalem along the probable line Of the Turco-
German CAMPAIGN against the British In ssypt.
Another article will be pubIIShsd next Sunday In
this series Of stories Of the great backgrounds Of the
war as Mr.. Morgan saw then In his recent journey
along the route Of NaPOIsOn'T eanpaIsaL
A T the tomb of saladin. in a court of
n the great mosque of Damascus,
/ y there lies a Maltese cross in
wreath of silver and gold. That
cross is the tribute of the German En-
peror to the memory of the greatest Of
the soldiers of the crescent
The celebrated pilgrimage of Emperor
hlIllam II to Palestine in 1898 marked
the opening Of a new era in a land of un-
counted eras. and all up and down the
Aslatlc shore many things date from the
tfme when the Kaiser was here" For
seldom has the Caliph of the Prophet
been honored with call from a Chris
uan monarch
Roads We're hastily improved and con-
stfucted for the visitors reception Part
OF 9 the oid wall Of Jerusalem, by the
Jana Gate. was torn away to admit the
Emperors carriage into the city, where
wheeled vehicles never had been seen
More than 100 Turkish dignitaries were
uetalled 10 wait upon his ma jesty
throughout his journey, and the sultan
exhausted the resources Of Oriental hos
pltahty III his intentions To his brother
sovereign and guest.
The kaiser in the Holy Land
Landing at Beirut from his YACHT
Empress 1Ourneyed to Baalbeck and Da-
maScus. and afteTward across the Plain
OF sharon and over the Mountains of
Judea TO the Holy City. Their court and
their servants together numbered a full
llVO, and the table in the aKiser's own
Glning tent was regularly laid for not
sSs man 100 persons, including the MEM
nerS or his military staff and the ladies'
in-waiting Of the Kaiserin, while there
We're more than LOO horses and mules in
tho caravan.
Wharpyer bo
ihe impress of his remarkable Individual
!IN. lie visited and encouraged the sew
SraI German colonies in Palestine. He
directed that German church be built
In the center of Jerusalem where il rises
now close bv the Church of the HOLY
ScpuIchre. He inaugurated plans for a
iiIlouern German hospital in that city and
inspired movement for Germanizing
the country generally.
saw a tablet which he caused to be
paced on wall amid the beautiful ruins
't lhe graf Roman temple at BaaIbeck
WhlCh teSutes in Turkish and German
10 his admiration of the majestic wreck
After he had returned home. he Dispatch
cd party of German arCha eologists Ia
Baalbeck to clear away the tangled mass
OF debris left by centuries of wars and
earthquakes and erect anew the fallen
VANS and noble columns. Mark Twain
Nhen ne was an innocent abroad, re-
named his horse for Baalbeck after yis-
lllnE the place. because. as he said, the
animal was the most magnificent ruin i'm
lSaalbeck. however can have been OnIv
dlmIy seen before the Kaiser cleaned and
polished it up.
But the most interesting memento I
saw Of the Kaiser's visit to the near
East is that eight pointed cross of the
crusaders by the grave of the Kurd
VINO planted the crescent on the gates
OF Jerusale lem six centuries and more
ago 1t happened that while I was
looking at ii. the hour arrived for aft
rrnOOn prayer. and from lofty gal
mil fIat
itsef skyward a thousand years,
muezzin Whined above the roofs of the
city. Allan is Great, l testify that
there Is no God but Allah and Mahomet
Is the prophet of Allah"'
In the dusk within the vast edifice
hundreds of sheeted wOrshipers were
prostrating themselves on stones worn
and EroOved by the pious kne4 of
thirty generations of the faithful. Let
on in his plaintive falsetto. Let US
go and save our souls. Allah is great,
There is no God but Allah"
The cross on the tomb of Saladin
looked abSurdly out of place then and
II seemed that its donor had been guilty
ul a Grotesque incOngruity. But today.
when cross and crescent are unfurled
side by side in great war, that wreath
reposlnE above the dust Of the Saracen
Is seen to be symbol and a pledge of
the alliance between the Kaiser and
key.
Plague Spot.
1t is by no means the first time, how
ever. that Christian and Moslem have
joined their standards in warfare. Ger
many has only followed the example of
her enemies, the allies. For in the
1rimean war of 1896 England and
France allied themselves with Turkey
against Russia. and il was on their in
sistent motion that the Turk was taken
into the family of Christian nations
and admitted to the concert of the
For a century and more the existence
OF the huge and moribund empire of the
Sultan, licensed and maintained as a
necessary evil in the balance of power
has been the folly and the crime of
Christendom. If let alone, it must long
ago have sunk beneath the burden Of
It's own slOth and fecbleness. But for
fear that some rival might seize the
larger share i'm the division of its cf-
frcts. one jealous nation after another
uftenest England, has kept il alive and
thereby put of the inevitable day of
reckoning.
An the while the sick man Of the
Fast" has been suffered TO scatter
abroad the deadly germs of his dis
ease, uncounted thousands have fallen
before the knife of medieval fanaticism
i'm Turkey itself, and many thousands
more in the wars bred in that political
plague spot. At Tilsit, in 1907, Napo-
leon went to the rescue of the Sultan
from the ambitions of the Gar and
thereby brought upon himself the
awful Russian war of 1912. and all the
chain of disasters that stretched from
bloody war OF Greek independence, the
Crimean and the Turco- Russian wars
all sprang from the same source. The
recent horrible struggles in the Bal
kans had like origin, and the con-
tagion had spread until now the world
is down with the fever. Meanwhile the |
sick man of the East" is hobblinE |
about on crutches made in Germany" !
dragging out his existence and prolong-
ing the agony of his dissolution.
All the time he has been dying by !
inches. his empire falling away from his |
year by year. A century ago he held all |
at the Iron Gates of the Danube clear to |
the shores Of the Persian Gulf. Greece |
tore herself free in 1S2S. RoumanIa. Bull /
gaTia. Servia. and Bosnia were pried of |
in 1873 Lately the Balkan wars have |
rolled back the Sultan's boundary along |
to the vanishing point on the map OF |
Europe. and italy has snatched Tripoli, |
while England now declares the inde- |
pendence Of Egypt. the last remaining
foothold Of the Turk in Africa.
4 Patchwork Empire.
The empire that remains is but a |
wrrtched patchwork of many allen and |
hostile peoples knit together by the sword
Of a hated conqueror. II Is not that the |
Turk has the heart of q monster. He |
Is not such bad fellow after all He is |
only out of place in the modern world /
and belongs some 400 years back in the |
history Of the human race.
@SSe