The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1915-02-14


| the English garrison was only a small
| force at the outbreak of the war, and
presumably the British war Office has
not spared very heavy achievements
| for the Egyptian army Of occupation. But
Egypt is an island surrounded by seas,
seas of sand as well as seas OF water.
Turkish troops moving down from Da-
mascus could be transported by rail only
to NabiOus, forty miles north OF Jerusa-
lem From that city they could entraln
again and be carried over the mountains
of Judea down on to the Plain OF Sharon.
Thence they would find fair marching
across the verdant land Of the Philistipes
until they had left behind them the NINA
rets of GAIA. But before them would
stretch a mere trail of more than 100
miles over a most inhospitable desert.
Few are the GASES in that bleak region
of sand drifts, and an army would eX-
haust at a gulp the bitter, brackish wa
ter of its shallow wells.
Yet the Crescent has soldiers who are
not unaccustOmed or unacclimated to
desert campaigning. and even the French
marched along that trail on Napoleon s
descended upon Egypt they would find
the SueZ Canal running like a fosse
across the desert. Only by powerful.
long-range batteries could they hope to
drive off the British naval patrol and
effect a crossing. If. however. Napoleon
found il impossible to take his little six
and twelve Founders with him and had
to ship them by sea where they were
captured by the British. 1t would heavily
tax the pluck and ingenuity of the Ger
mans to drag big, modern guns through
those long leagues Of sand where wheeled
vehicles are unknown.
No doubt it would be easy enough to
raid the canal and disturb its shipping
for the loyalty of the deniZens of the
desert to the English is not to be trust
ed farther than a rifle can shoot But
the invasion and conquest of Egypt
would be a very different undertaking,
and only to be decided by the relative
80
the combat for the capture of the canal
At the Cross Roads.
As l came to the canal from out of the
no great work of man could be meaner or
more disappointing to look upon. The
smoking tunnels of two or three hidden
ships were seen above the surface of the
desert as they crept at a snail's pace on
their voyage of fifteen or twenty hours
between Port Said and Suez. That was
all. At nearer view from the unimposing
banks the spectacle was poorer still
just a ditch in the sand, hardly wider
than a broad city avenue.
About twenty-five miles from the Port
in the midst OF an Arab village baking in
the sun. That is literally the famous
cross roads. and its name tells the story
FL Kantara, or the bridge" There on
either side OF the canal a trodden path
in the sand marks the ancient caravan
route between Africa and Asia, and there
a ferry links the Asiatic and African ends
of the trail.
By FL Kantara all the conquerors from
Darios and Alexander to Napoleon
marched their armies. and to Ell Kan
tara the Turco-German expedition must
come. For an army cannot go where
il will in a desert broken by sand drifts
and stony ridges and treacherous quag-
mires. It must follow the old trail.
The Gatewat.
Port Said, above all other places. is
where East and West meet, but only to
part as strangers still. 1t is the main
gateway in the wall of ignorance, big
otry. and misunderstanding which I'M
happily divides mankind.
On one side of the gate is the Occi-
dent with a third of humanity. and on
the other the Orient with its vast, I'M
counted masses; on one side the modern
world, on the other the unchanging
world of antiquity: on one side Christen-
dom, on the other Mahometanism, Con-
fucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism; on one
side the homogeneous home, on the other
the polygamous harem; on one side the
materialistic practical West, on the
other the mystic, dreaming East.
As a man passes through that gate
he enters a world almost as different
from his own as another planet. In the
more obvious the more superficial aspects