With the Turks in Palestine

CHAPTER VI

THE SUEZ CAM­PAIGN

I have al­ready spo­ken of the so-​called “req­ui­si­tion­ing” that took place among our peo­ple while I was work­ing at Saffed. This, of course, re­al­ly amount­ed to whole­sale pil­lage. The hand of the Turk­ish loot­ers had fall­en par­tic­ular­ly heavy on carts and draught an­imals. As the Arabs know lit­tle or noth­ing of cart­ing, haul­ing, or the man­age­ment of hors­es and mules, the Turks, sim­ply enough, had “req­ui­si­tioned” many of the own­ers--mid­dle-​aged or el­der­ly men--and forced them to go south to help along with the tremen­dous prepa­ra­tions that were be­ing made for the at­tack on Suez. Among these were a num­ber of men from our vil­lage. In the course of time their fam­ilies be­gan to get the most har­row­ing mes­sages from them. They were ab­so­lute­ly des­ti­tute, no wages be­ing paid them by the Turks; their clothes were drop­ping off them in rags; many were sick. Af­ter much ex­cit­ed plan­ning, it was de­cid­ed to send an­oth­er man and my­self down south on a sort of re­lief ex­pe­di­tion, with a sub­stan­tial sum of mon­ey that had been raised with great dif­fi­cul­ty by our peo­ple. Through the in­flu­ence of my broth­er at the Agri­cul­tur­al Ex­per­iment Sta­tion, I got per­mis­sion from the _mouchtar_ to leave Zi­cron-​Ja­cob, and about the mid­dle of Jan­uary, 1915, I set out for Jerusalem.

To West­ern minds, the idea of the Holy City serv­ing as a base for mod­ern mil­itary op­er­ations must be full of in­con­gruities. And, as a mat­ter of fact, it _was_ an amaz­ing sight to see the streets packed with kha­ki-​clad sol­diers and hear the brood­ing si­lence of an­cient walls shat­tered by the crash of steel-​shod army boots. Here, for the first time, I saw the Ger­man of­fi­cers--quan­ti­ties of them. Strange­ly out of place they looked, with their pink-​and-​white­ness that no amount of hot sun­shine could quite burn off. They wore the reg­ular Ger­man of­fi­cer's uni­form, ex­cept that the _Pick­el­haube_ was re­placed by a kha­ki sun-​hel­met. I was struck by the youth­ful­ness of them; many were noth­ing but boys, and there were weak, dis­so­lute faces in plen­ty--a fact that was lat­er ex­plained when I heard that Pales­tine had been the dump­ing-​ground for young men of high fam­ily whose par­ents were anx­ious to have them as far re­moved as pos­si­ble from the dan­ger zone. Fast's Ho­tel was the great meet­ing-​place in Jerusalem for these young bloods. Ev­ery evening thir­ty or forty would fore­gath­er there to drink and talk wom­en and strat­egy. I well re­mem­ber the evening when one of them--a slen­der young Prus­sian with no back to his head, bracelet­ed and mon­ocled--rose and an­nounced, in the de­ci­sive tones that go with a cer­tain stage of in­tox­ica­tion: “What we ought to do is to hand over the or­ga­ni­za­tion of this cam­paign to Thomas Cook & Sons!”

How­ev­er, the Ger­man of­fi­cers were by no means all in­com­pe­tents. They re­al­ized (I soon found out) that they had lit­tle hope of bring­ing a big army through the Egyp­tian desert and mak­ing a suc­cess­ful cam­paign there. Their ob­ject was to im­mo­bi­lize a great force of British troops around the Canal, to keep the Mo­hammedan pop­ula­tion in Pales­tine im­pressed with Turk­ish pow­er, and to stir up re­li­gious un­rest among the na­tives in Egypt. It must be ad­mit­ted that in the first two of these pur­pos­es they have been suc­cess­ful.

The Turks were less far-​sight­ed. They be­lieved firm­ly that they were go­ing to sweep the En­glish off the face of the earth and en­ter Cairo in tri­umph, and prepa­ra­tions for the march on Suez went on with fever­ish en­thu­si­asm. The ideas of the com­mon sol­diers on this sub­ject were amus­ing. Some of them de­clared that the Canal was to be filled up by the sand­bags which had been pre­pared in great quan­ti­ties. Oth­ers held that thou­sands of camels would be kept with­out wa­ter for many days pre­ced­ing the at­tack; then the thirsty an­imals, when re­leased, would rush in­to the Canal in such num­bers that the troops could march to vic­to­ry over the packed mass­es of drowned bod­ies.

The army op­er­at­ing against Suez num­bered about one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand men. Of these about twen­ty thou­sand were Ana­to­lian Turks--trained sol­diers, splen­did fight­ing ma­te­ri­al, as was shown by their re­sis­tance at the Dar­danelles. The rest were Pales­tini­an Arabs, and very in­fe­ri­or troops they were. The Arab as a sol­dier is at once stupid and cun­ning: fierce when vic­to­ry is on his side, but un­re­li­able when things go against him. In com­mand of the ex­pe­di­tion was the fa­mous Dje­mal Pasha, a Young Turk gen­er­al of tremen­dous en­er­gy, but pos­sess­ing small abil­ity to see be­yond de­tails to the big, broad con­cepts of strat­egy. Al­though a great friend of En­ver Pasha, he looked with dis­fa­vor on the Ger­man of­fi­cers and, in par­tic­ular, on Bach Pasha, the Ger­man Gov­er­nor of Jerusalem, with whom he had se­ri­ous dis­agree­ments. This dis­like of the Ger­mans was re­flect­ed among the less­er Turk­ish of­fi­cers. Many of these, af­ter long years of ser­vice, found them­selves sub­or­di­nat­ed to young for­eign­ers, who, in ad­di­tion to ar­bi­trary pro­mo­tion, re­ceived much high­er salaries than the Turks. What is more, they were paid in clink­ing gold, where­as the Turks, when paid at all, got pa­per cur­ren­cy.

Beer­she­ba, a pros­per­ous town of the an­cient province of Idumea, was the south­ern base of op­er­ations for the ad­vance on Suez. Some of our vil­lagers had been sent to this dis­trict, and, in search­ing for them, I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty of see­ing at least the tak­ing-​off place of the ex­pe­di­tion. Be­yond this point no Jew or Chris­tian was al­lowed to pass, with the ex­cep­tion of the physi­cians, all of whom were non-​Mo­hammedans who had been forced in­to the army.

Beer­she­ba was swarm­ing with troops. They filled the town and over­flowed on to the sands out­side, where a great tent-​city grew up. And ev­ery­where that the Turk­ish sol­diers went, dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion and in­ef­fi­cien­cy fol­lowed them. From all over the coun­try the finest camels had been “req­ui­si­tioned” and sent down to Beer­she­ba un­til, at the time I was there, thou­sands and thou­sands of them were col­lect­ed in the neigh­bor­hood. Through the lazi­ness and stu­pid­ity of the Turk­ish com­mis­sari­at of­fi­cers, which no amount of Ger­man ef­fi­cien­cy could coun­ter­act, no ad­equate pro­vi­sion was made for feed­ing them, and in­cred­ible num­bers suc­cumbed to star­va­tion and ne­glect. Their great car­cass­es dot­ted the sand in all di­rec­tions; it was on­ly the won­der­ful an­ti­sep­tic pow­er of the East­ern sun that held pesti­lence in check.

The sol­diers them­selves suf­fered much hard­ship. The crowd­ing in the tents was un­speak­able; the wa­ter-​sup­ply was al­most as in­ad­equate as the med­ical ser­vice, which con­sist­ed chiefly of vol­un­teer Red Cres­cent so­ci­eties--among them a unit of twen­ty Ger­man nurs­es sent by the Amer­ican Col­lege at Beirut. Med­ical sup­plies, such as they were, had been tak­en from the dif­fer­ent mis­sion hos­pi­tals and phar­ma­cies of Pales­tine--these “req­ui­si­tions” be­ing made by of­fi­cers who knew noth­ing of med­ical re­quire­ments and sim­ply scooped to­geth­er ev­ery­thing in sight. As a re­sult, one of the army physi­cians told me that in Beer­she­ba he had opened some med­ical chests con­signed to him and found, to his hor­ror, that they were full of mi­cro­scopes and gy­ne­co­log­ical in­stru­ments--for the care of wound­ed sol­diers in the desert!

Vis­its of British aero­planes to Beer­she­ba were com­mon oc­cur­rences. Long be­fore the ma­chine it­self could be seen, its whang­ing, res­onant hum would come float­ing out of the blaz­ing sky, seem­ing­ly from ev­ery­where at once. Sol­diers rushed from their tents, squint­ing up in­to the heav­ens un­til the speck was dis­cov­ered, swim­ming slow­ly through the air; then fol­lowed whole­sale fir­ing at an im­pos­si­ble range un­til the of­fi­cers for­bade it. True to the pol­icy of avoid­ing all un­nec­es­sary harm to the na­tives, these British avi­ators nev­er dropped bombs on the town, but--what was more dan­ger­ous from the Turk­ish point of view--they would un­load pack­ages of pam­phlets, print­ed in Ara­bic, in­form­ing the na­tives that they were be­ing de­ceived; that the Al­lies were their on­ly true friends; that the Ger­mans were mere­ly mak­ing use of them to fur­ther their own schemes, etc. These clev­er­ly word­ed lit­tle tracts came show­er­ing down out of the sky, and at first they were ea­ger­ly picked up. The Turk­ish com­man­ders, how­ev­er, soon an­nounced that any one found car­ry­ing them would pay the death penal­ty. Af­ter that, when the lit­tle bun­dles dropped near them, the na­tives would, run as if from high ex­plo­sive bombs.

All things con­sid­ered, it is won­der­ful that the Turk­ish demon­stra­tion against the Canal came as near to ful­fill­ment as it did. Twen­ty thou­sand sol­diers ac­tu­al­ly crossed the desert in six days on scant ra­tions, and with them they took two big guns, which they dragged by hand when the mules dropped from thirst and ex­haus­tion. They al­so car­ried pon­toons to be used in cross­ing the Canal. Guns and pon­toons are now at rest in the Mu­se­um at Cairo.

Just what took place in the at­tack is known to very few. The En­glish have not seen fit to make pub­lic the de­tails, and there was lit­tle to be got from the de­mor­al­ized sol­diers who re­turned to Beer­she­ba. Piece by piece, how­ev­er, I gath­ered that the at­tack­ing par­ty had come up to the Canal at dawn. Find­ing ev­ery­thing qui­et, they set about get­ting across, and had even launched a pon­toon, when the British, who were ly­ing in wait, opened a ter­rif­ic fire from the far­ther bank, backed by ar­mored lo­co­mo­tives and aero­planes. “It was as if the gates of Je­han­num were opened and its fires turned loose up­on us,” one sol­dier told me.

The Turks suc­ceed­ed in get­ting their guns in­to ac­tion for a very short while. One of the men-​of-​war in the Canal was hit; sev­er­al hous­es in Is­mail­ia suf­fered dam­age; but the in­vaders were soon driv­en away in con­fu­sion, leav­ing per­haps two thou­sand pris­on­ers in the hands of the En­glish. If the lat­ter had cho­sen to do so, they could have an­ni­hi­lat­ed the Turk­ish forces then and there. The tick­lish state of mind of the Mo­hammedan pop­ula­tion in Egypt, how­ev­er, has led them to adopt a pol­icy of le­nien­cy and of keep­ing to the de­fen­sive, which sub­se­quent de­vel­op­ments have more than jus­ti­fied. It is char­ac­ter­is­tic of Eng­land's fac­ul­ty for hold­ing her colonies that bat­ter­ies manned by Egyp­tians did the finest work in de­fense of the Canal.

The re­ac­tion in Pales­tine af­ter the de­feat at Suez was tremen­dous. Just be­fore the at­tack, Dje­mal Pasha had sent out a tele­gram an­nounc­ing the over­whelm­ing de­feat of the British van­guard, which had caused wild en­thu­si­asm. An­oth­er lat­er tele­gram pro­claimed that the Canal had been reached, British men-​of-​war sunk, the En­glish­men rout­ed--with a loss to the Turks of five men and two camels, “which were af­ter­wards re­cov­ered.” “But,” added the tele­gram, “a ter­ri­ble sand-​storm hav­ing arisen, the glo­ri­ous army takes it as the wish of Al­lah not to con­tin­ue the at­tack, and has there­fore with­drawn in tri­umph.”

These re­ports hood­winked the ig­no­rant na­tives for a lit­tle while, but when the stream of hag­gard sol­diers, wound­ed and ex­haust­ed, be­gan pour­ing back from the south, they guessed what had hap­pened, and a fierce re­vul­sion against the Ger­mano-​Turk­ish regime set in. A few weeks be­fore the ad­vance on Suez, I was in Jaf­fa, where the en­thu­si­asm and ex­cite­ment had been at fever-​pitch. Pa­rades and cel­ebra­tions of all kinds in an­tic­ipa­tion of the tri­umphal march in­to Egypt were tak­ing place, and one day a camel, a dog, and a bull, dec­orat­ed re­spec­tive­ly with the flags of Rus­sia, France, and Eng­land, were driv­en through the streets. The poor an­imals were hor­ri­bly mal­treat­ed by the na­tives, who rained blows and flung filth up­on them by way of giv­ing con­crete ex­pres­sion to their con­tempt for the Al­lies. Mr. Glaze­brook, the Amer­ican Con­sul at Jerusalem, hap­pened to be with me in Jaf­fa that day; and nev­er shall I for­get the ex­pres­sion of pain and dis­gust on his face as he watched this melan­choly lit­tle pro­ces­sion of scape­goats hur­ry­ing along the street.

Now, how­ev­er, all was changed. The Arabs, who take de­feat bad­ly, turned against the au­thor­ities who had got them in­to such trou­ble. Ru­mors cir­cu­lat­ed that Dje­mal Pasha had been bought by the En­glish and that the de­feat at Suez had been planned by him, and per­sons keep­ing an ear close to the ground be­gan to hear mut­ter­ings of a gen­er­al mas­sacre of Ger­mans. In fact, things came with­in an ace of a bloody out­break. I knew some Ger­mans in Jaf­fa and Haifa who firm­ly be­lieved that it was all over with them. In the de­feat­ed army it­self the Turk­ish of­fi­cers gave vent to their ha­tred of the Ger­mans. Three Ger­man of­fi­cers were shot by their Turk­ish com­rades dur­ing the re­treat, and a fourth com­mit­ted sui­cide. How­ev­er, Dje­mal Pasha suc­ceed­ed in keep­ing or­der by means of stern re­pres­sive meth­ods and by the fear roused by his large body-​guard of faith­ful Ana­to­lians.

[IL­LUS­TRA­TION: RAIL­ROAD STA­TION SCENE BE­TWEEN HAIFA AND DAM­AS­CUS/CAMELS BRING­ING IN NEW­LY CUT TREES, DAM­AS­CUS]

We felt sure that the Turk­ish de­feat would put a damper on the ar­ro­gance of the sol­diery. But even the Mo­hammedan pop­ula­tion were hop­ing that the Al­lies would push their vic­to­ry and land troops in Syr­ia and Pales­tine; for though they hat­ed the in­fi­del, they loved the Turk not at all, and the coun­try was ex­haust­ed and the block­ade of the Mediter­ranean by the Al­lies pre­vent­ed the im­port and ex­port of ar­ti­cles. The or­anges were rot­ting on the trees be­cause the an­nu­al Liv­er­pool mar­ket was closed to Pales­tine, and oth­er crops were in sim­ilar case. The coun­try was short, too, of petroleum, sug­ar, rice, and oth­er sup­plies, and even of match­es. We had to go back to old cus­toms and use flint and steel for fire, and we sel­dom used our lamps. Mon­ey was scarce, too, and, Turkey hav­ing de­clared a mora­to­ri­um, cash was of­ten un­ob­tain­able even by those who had mon­ey in the banks, and much dis­tress en­sued.

As the de­feat­ed army was pour­ing in from the south, I de­cid­ed to leave Beer­she­ba and go home. The roads and the fields were cov­ered with dead camels and hors­es and mules. Hun­dreds of sol­diers were strag­gling in dis­or­der, many of them on leave but many de­sert­ing. Soon af­ter the de­feat at the Canal sev­er­al thou­sand sol­diers de­sert­ed, but an amnesty was de­clared and they re­turned to their reg­iments.

When I ar­rived at Jerusalem I found the city filled with sol­diers. Dje­mal Pasha had just re­turned from the desert, and his quar­ters were guard­ed by a bat­tery of two field guns. No­body knew what to ex­pect; some thought that the coun­try would have a lit­tle more free­dom now that the sol­diery had lost its brag­gado­cio, while oth­ers ex­pect­ed the law­less­ness that at­tends dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion. I went to see Con­sul Glaze­brook. He is a true Amer­ican, a South­ern­er, for­mer­ly a pro­fes­sor of the­ol­ogy at Prince­ton. He was most earnest and de­vot­ed in be­half of the Amer­ican cit­izens that came un­der his care, ren­der­ing at Jerusalem the same sort of ser­vice that Am­bas­sador Mor­gen­thau has ren­dered at Con­stantino­ple. He was prac­ti­cal­ly the on­ly man who stood up for the poor, de­fense­less peo­ple of the city. He re­ceived me kind­ly, and I told him what I knew of con­di­tions in the coun­try, what I had heard among the Arabs, and of my own fears and ap­pre­hen­sions. He was vis­ibly im­pressed and he ad­vised me to see Cap­tain Deck­er, of the U.S.S. Ten­nessee, who was then in Jaf­fa, promis­ing to write him­self to the cap­tain of my pro­posed vis­it.

I went to Jaf­fa the same day and af­ter two days' de­lay suc­ceed­ed in see­ing Cap­tain Deck­er, with the fur­ther help of Mr. Glaze­brook, who took me with him. The po­lice in­ter­fered and tried to keep me from go­ing aboard the ship, but af­ter long dis­cus­sions I was per­mit­ted to take my place in the launch that the cap­tain had sent for the con­sul.

Cap­tain Deck­er was in­ter­est­ed in what I had to say, and at his re­quest I dic­tat­ed my sto­ry to his stenog­ra­pher. What be­came of my re­port I do not know,--whether it was trans­mit­ted to the De­part­ment of State or whether Cap­tain Deck­er com­mu­ni­cat­ed with Am­bas­sador Mor­gen­thau,--but at all events we soon be­gan to see cer­tain re­forms in­au­gu­rat­ed in parts of the coun­try, and these re­forms could have been ef­fect­ed on­ly through pres­sure from Con­stantino­ple. The pres­ence of the two Amer­ican cruis­ers in the Mediter­ranean wa­ters has with­out any doubt been in­stru­men­tal in the sav­ing of many lives.