Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-12-14
Jerusalem Delivered.

What Richard OF the Lion Heart and his knight
Iy hosts strove vainly to accomplish ages long
ago, the British under General Allenby now have
brought to pass The City of the Holy Sepulchre
has been delivered from the Turk. The starry
ideal for which the Crusades poured their tides
of chivalry eastward through two hundred adj
venturous years at last has been achieved, in the
midst of vaster Crusade for honor and free
dom and humanity.
How the poetry of the event shines from the
very names set down in General Allenbys lacouic
dispatch. ION December the SIXTH he writes,
the British advanced up Hebron road to a point
ten miles north of that place." the same road
along which thousands of years before went the
band of spies sent forth by Moses to search the
land of Canaan: And they assembled by the
south and came unto Hebron The Generals re-
port continues. "On the seventh our troops on the
right flank were two miles southwest of Beth
Iehem." Bethlehem!
And il came to pass. as the angels we're
gone away from them into heaven, the shep-
herds said one to another. Let go
even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing
which is come to pass. which the Lord has
made known to us And they came with
haste and found Mary, and Joseph, and the
babe lying in a manger."
Today" concludes the epochaI report, Brit
ish forces occupied Jerusalem" For more than
thirty centuries from the time it was captured
by David and rebuilt as the golden capital of his
kingdom. to its destruction by Nebuchadnez-
Ear and its slow restoration by returned captives.
on to its conquest by Alexander and later by
Rome on through the romantic years of Godfrey
dc Bouillon and England's king OF the Lion Heart,
Jerusalem has been stage of historic and touching
Iy human dramas-has felt the fire and siege of
war after war. the clash of divers races and civ
ilizations fallen from purple to sackcloth and
risen and fallen again, has dreamed and suffer
ca like Him who through her streets the cross
OF his crucifixion bore"
Save for brief interludes the city has been in
Moslem hands for more than twelve hundred
years. The Turks had come to regard it ir-
revocably theirs and to boast of their unbroken
hold on the shrine of Christendom. This fact
alone would make the British capture of Jerusa-
lem event of high consequence, even if no fur
ther military consideration were involved. To
have lost this age-old trophy, this towering wit
ness of the Crescents victory the Cross, will
shake Turkish morale for more deeply than did
the fall of Bagdad. The loss of thirty-five
thousand OF their troops in the Palestine
paign Is serious indeed to a nation whose man
power is so deeply war-draned. But incompara-
bly, more serious is the loss of prestige suffered
by the Government at Constantnople and the
loss OF faith in the all-mightiness of the Kaiser
who had set himself up as souI-brother of the
Mohammedan and invincible protector of the
Turk against all the world.
1t is quite conceivable that the moral reflex of
this viii so hasten Turkeys military collapse,
which is toregone, that she may be put out of
the war, at least reduced to impotence, before
winter is fairly over; the resultant effect
on the Bulgar-Teuton alliance would be of
tremendous import. In any event, the Turco-
Teuton menace against Egypt and India has been
blocked and, as far as human provision
tend, rendered forever impossible of fulfillment.
Beaten in Mesopotamia and Palestine alike Tur-
key must limp powerless from the stage; and with
her. Germany's hopes of dominion in the Near
and Far East will make their exit. Thus in the
shadow Of the City of David the schemes of the
Hohenzollern COMPOUNDED and the day of his
destruction brought nearer.