The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1917-12-26
"JERUSALEM DELIVERED"

'JERUSALEM DELIVERED"
Boston Globe: The capture of Je.
rusalem by Christian army startles
echoes down the corridors of twenty.
five centuries. What Athens is TO the
empire of the intellect, what Rome is
to the empire of physical might, .Je-
rusalem is to the empire of the spirit.
The Holy City has been the symbol of
mans religious aspirations through all
the centuries since the Hebrew prophets
celebrated her splendors or bewaied
her moral decay. Five hundred years
before the Christian era. Isaiah en-
visaged the cooperative commonwealth
and hymned the dawn of world peace
Ageless. amid the wreck of empires,
Jerusalem has stood, the fiery symbol
of mans aspiring spirit
1t is an odd historic irony that the
magnificent heritage OF religious
thought which the Jews have be.
queathed to Christendom should have
been rewarded by centuries of perse.
cution. The west can master the ma
terial world. The spiritual world Is
the realm of the east. The west goes
to the orient for its religions, even as
the Crusaders went I'M those two amaz.
ing centuries between 1894 and 1898
when no less than eight waves of
European Christendom spent themselves
on the shores of Islam.
Then 1t was that Jerusalem became
to the peoples OF Christendom the
vision and the IDEAL the goal and the
end the story and the song Political.
ly the Crusades were a failure. OF all
eight only the first succeeded in cap
turing the Holy City and setting up a
kingdom of Jerusalem for its precari-
Gus existence of ninety years. Once,
for ten years. the German emperor.
Frederick Barbarossa. obtained the city
by diplomacy. after which the Saracen
flood closed over il again for seven
centuries more. But socially the Cru
sades were liberal education TO the
semi-barbarous Europe of the middle
ages. The Greeks and Saracens became
the involuntary schoolmasters of the
Franks. Teutons and Britons. In these
crusades. moreover, each European ma
ton found its nationality by losing its
provincialism.
Today the Crusaders armor is a uni
form of khaki. His crossbow and cata-
put. his spear and battleax are rifle
cannon, railway and airplane. once
more. after the lapse of seven cen
turies since Edward L. the last of the
Crusaders. faced toward Jerusalem. the
British have besieged and, this time.
taken il. Politically this event is of
prime importance. Together with the
capture of Bagdad it rehabilitates in
the eyes of the Orient the prestige of
British arms SO vitally injured by the
Turks at Gallipoli. 1t is also a shrewd
thrust at Germany's dream of empire
in the near east
That Germany should have defaulted
1-,,.- L. rfs.l, oil - Ion
Two years ago the Germans were on
the offensive against the Suez canal,
and it was the sudden realization of
the British that the desert barrier had
ceased to protect that canal which
caused this counter-thrust. Germany
has her hands full in Europe, and the
Turk knows that no conference of the
nations of Christendom will ever yield
Jerusalem to the sultan again. So the
indolent Turk will no longer sit cross
legged at the door of the holy sepu-
chre and the Turkish barracks will no
longer hold the entrance to the church
of the Manger at Bethlehem.
Britain's pledge that Jerusalem shall
be for the Jews has sent a thrill of JOY
to the myriad hearts of Israel. and the
wandering nation now, for the first
time i'm eighteen centuries. beholds a
promise or return 10 lts dnClent
home.
To the Christian this triumph over
the Moslem comes as to him who long
ago suffered and struggled for an ideal
only TO realize centuries later in the
moment of success that he has OUT
grown IL i'm the discipline of the suffer
ing and struggle. For Jerusalem, the
place for which the Jews have la
mented all these centuries. has become
a greater than mortal city Ages OF
story and song. OF longing and exile
have glorified il. The whole literature.
poetry, thought. music and art of the
western world rings with that sacred
name: Chaucer. Tasso. the Arthurian
romances. the tales of chivalry. folk
song. hymnology. legend, the political
system of great democracies. the
dreams of Utopian reforrners. The
mighty wings of Zion beat in the verses
of the medieval mystics as the harps
OF Zion resound In the orchestral tu-
mutt OF wagner's "Parsifal."
Go where we will. on the immeasur-
able steppes OF Russia. where the lone.
brooding thought OF Tolstoy met the
spirit of the Nazarene. or i'm the bleak
forest wilds OF New England. where
the Puritan refugees founded Bible
commonwealth. the Holy City of the
prophets and seers has been before us
lifting mems eyes to the vision and the
gleam.
For. captured or recaptured. Jerusa-
lem has long since ceased to be place.