The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-06-15

time he stood on the nrlng-SJep or ms trench on ID" day, waiting for the given minute of ''zero hour" to go over the top? No, it was not that. Yet that was a high moment, never-to-be- forgotten experience. Many man lived lifetime during that brief wait.
 Was it on that November morning, 1918, near midday when airplanes from American G. H. Q. flew over and drop ped official orders announcing that the armistice had been signed and that all firing was to cease at given moment that the war was over? No, not even that climactic experience furnished the supreme thrill of the times. And yet men went fairly beside themselves when the full significance of those orders reached their benumbed consciousness. Companies, battalions and divisions were halted in their tracks. Their ad- vances and marches were diverted from previous objectives. Detachments of allied troops soon were passing and be- ing passed. The French poilus every where, emotional by nature, were shout ing 'Finis le guerre"-the war is end ed !! On the return marches westward the old men, the women and little children gathered along the streets of the vil- lages, threw flowers, handed out pieces of brown bread, beamed and smiled and actually kissed 'les Americaines," all the while shouting, finis le guerre! It was a great experience; those were high thrilling moments. But no; not even that was the really great moment
 Better Than The First
 Time came when sailing orders were issued again. This time to return to the states. Thereafter, nothing was routine or commonplace. Every tour of duty was play. The rain and mud didn't matter any more. Embarking was a picnic. When the anchors were lifted and the great transport moved out pointed her prov westward, a yachting party of young college folk on a south ern lake and moonlit night in June, would have been tame and flat by com parison.. A few hours and thousands of khaki-clad men were straining their eyes to catch the first glimpse of land American land-home. Then came the moment: there, at first indistinct and gray in the fog, then little more sharp in outline, and now clearcut and in bold relief, massive and majestic, stood glorious visiOn-the Statue of Liberty That was the moment That vision symbolized home It epitomized Amer flea. Here we were-home again.
 Their Return
 What must have been the feelings of those Jews who had been exiled seventy years, and now allowed to come home again.
 In 5S6 B. c. Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty king of Babylon had carried them away. As long as this king lived, Babylon was the foremost power among the nations of that day. But as soon as Nebuchadnezzar died his empire be- gan to crumble to pieces. On the night that Belshazzar saw the hand writing on the wall the Babylonian em- pire came to an end.
 A new world-power arose. This was Persia. In the place of Belshazzar, Cyrus, commander of the Persians, made an old man named Darius, king until the time when he was ready to take the kingdom for himself. Persia was the third world-kingdom of history.
 The first was Assyria with her capi- tai at Nineveh. She carried away the ten tribes of Israel in 71S B. c. That was about two hundred years before this homecoming for Judah.
 The second was the Babylon, or Chaldean kingdom, whose armies sacked carried away the people of the southern kingdom, Judah.
 And the third was the Persian king dom, whose monarch issued the order or decree which permitted the Jews to return home and rebuild the temple.
 One day soon after Cyrus had re- turned to the capital after the series of remarkable expeditions by which he set up the greatest empire that had ap-