The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1917-05-11
ARMIES ON THE PLAINS
OF ARMACEDDON
Shows some Interesting Connection.
With Bible History-Points Out
william T. Ellis in Boston
script.


One OF the big, old words. with a
navor OF mystery to it, that is being
brought into the world of reality by
the present war is "Armageddon." or
"Har M~egeddon," as the latest trans
latlons write it. Commonly used as
a hgure OF speech-as 1--WE stand at
Armageddon and battle for the Lord"
--Armageddon is really a place on
the map, which thousands of Ameri.
cans have visited. Its history ranks
with that of the most famous battle
fields of earth, and in the Rook of
heVelatlon 1t Is indicated as the scene
evil.
Just now Armageddon is holding
the interest of students of operations
in the Near East, for the British army
in the Holy Land is steadily drawing
nearer to it, and there are obvious
considerations of strategy which
make it the possible scene of a treat
battle. One has to rub his ewes as
he studies the war maps of TODAY. to
make sure that what he sees thereon
is real and not romance. PROPHETS.
fiction writer's and preachers should
be the ones to deal with these story
DOCK places, and not sober journal
lists. 1T seems almost like religious
fanaticism for one to be talking
about an impending battle at Armag-
eddon. Yet, as the railroad adver-
tisements say, Look at the map"
BRITISH troops are now marching
northward through Palestine. Their
objective is the overthrow of the
Syrian army, long commanded bv
Djemal Pasha, and now centering in
the oldest living city in the world, Da-
mascus. After the Syrian army has
been dealt with, the British troops,
which drove the enemy from the
Sinai peninsula. thus making safe the
Suez canal, will seek to effect a
junction with the forces from Bag
dad, and with the Russian allies from
the Caucasus. AS the allied soldiers
converge upon Aleppo, which is the
great railway center up near the
head of the Mediterranean, they will
be drawing nearer to the Turco-Teu-
tonic base at Constantinople, which
is the ultimate objective of the opera
! ton.
, All this involves Armageddon for
two In the first place. the
enemy are scarcely likely to sit in
Damascus awaiting the arrival of the
British. The Syrian army will doubt
less try to intercept the foe at a ON
venient place. AS the Turks would
follow the railway from Damascus
and as the British would also use the
prolongation of the same railway.
| which vI1nc Ip,,p tl,o,,-l A. ~-:lJI.
OF Palestine to Hebron and Beershe-
ba, the collision will in all likelihood
come onthe railroad. But the Turks
have to guard against a landing of
the allies at Haifa, which is a seaport
of Damascus; so they would scarcely
go below the old Haifa Railway.
If the foregoing two paragraphs,
dry and technical though they be,
have been followed, it is clear that
the junction of the opposing forces
will be nowhere else than the plain
of Megiddo, or Armageddon, where
the old Haifa Railway to Damascus
is Joined by the new German railway
down through Palestine. Arranged.
don is now a railway junction, or
the route between Suez and Damas.
Gus, even as it was a meeting place
of the great highways between Egypt
and Assyria, in the days when Pha-
roah Necho and Josiah, king of Is
rael. fought thereon. Because the
East and the West met at Armaged-
don this plain won its fame as a bat
tleground of empire. 1t became a
synonym for the place of decision.
Twelve miles wide at its greatest
width. and more than forty miles long
measured from the Mediterranean to
the Jordan river, the great plain of
Megiddo, or of Esdraelon, as it is
more commonly called, is a rare bat
tlefield, which soldiers from the days
of the Pharaohs and the Caesars to
Napoleon and Lord Kitchener have
praised and utilized.
II is easily located on any Bible
map. o other sketch of Palestine, on
the border between the hills of Cali
lee and the hills of Samaria. Naza-
| reth, the boyhood home of Jesus,
looks down upon it from its northern
edge. Mount Tabor and Mount Gil
boa stand sentinel at its eastern
gates. where it debouches into the
deep valley of the Jordan river. To
Ine west, along the Sparkling Meui-
terranean. crouches Mount Carmel,
its length more than a dozen miles
and its crest so picturesque that it is
called "the mountain of a thousand
valleys" At the upper and western
end of Carmel lies the seaport of
Haifa, predominantly German; and
the to ancient Accre, or
Ptolemais. famous in Roman and
Crusader history. The site of Accre
is at the other end of the Bay of
Accre, which terminates Esdraelon on
the west. At the lower and eastern
end of Carmel is the great headland,
overlooking the plain, upon which
Elijah had his famous contest with
the priests of Baal-one of the de-
cisive struggles connected with the
plain of Armageddon.
Through the plain of Armageddon,
and past the town of Megiddo, from
which the name is derived, runs the
French railroad which links Haifa
with Damascus, and owe which myr-