BRITISH SAMSONS AT THE GATES OF GAZA.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 June 1917, Page 6

BRITISH SAMSONS AT THE GATES OF GAZA.

13H' WILL SEE TEE BRITISH IN THE CONTROL OF THE CRADLE OF . CHRISTIANITY. f ' 'Sir Archibald Murray lias crossed the •desert, and arrived with his many Bri;tis> Samsons at the 'Gates of Gaza — "Which is the Damascus of the soutli of Palestine, and which was to the Afrikanders of ancient days the gate to Asia. • Sir Archibald has heavily defeated tbout 20.000 of the enemy, taken 900 ■'prisoners, and captured the general com''tnanding and tiie whole staff of a Turkish, division, and now he is within fifty ijniles of Jerusalem. ; 50 MILES FROM JERUSALEM. Easter time is an unforgettable event in Jerusalem, and it would be a dramatic thing if news came this week that British and .Australian cavalry had entered the Holy City, and if British troops instead of Turkish troops kept order within the Church of the 'Holy Sepulchre on the great days of Easter. For the victorious troops at Gaza numbered among them Anzac and Yeomanry, lriounted troops, and the Welsh, Kent, Sussex, Hereford, Middlesex, and 'Surrey regiments—the Crusaders of 1917. "Having rendered Egypt absolutely secure from any possible attack, General Murray is pressing on the heels of the retreating Turks, and in consequence of his brilliant success is threatening alike Beerslieba and ■ Jerusalem, the latter lying some fifty miles in a north-easterly direction from Gaza," says the Telegraph. "Possibly our cavalry already sees before it the walls of Jerusalem; whilo the proximity of British troopers to the streets of so famous a city makes a strange and moving appeal to the historic imagination. '■Of course, the Syrian railway system is the main factor in the whole problem. Beersheba is the terminus of the trunk railway through Syria, which continues in a northerly direction for some four hundred miles as far as Aleppo, the Bagdad line." THE NEW CRUSADERS. "The prestige which has accrued to -us in occupying Bagdad, the chief town of Arab commerce, the once capital of an Empire which extended to Spain and Turkestan, would be excelled by oar coming as new Crusaders to the capital of Christianity," writes Sir Harry Johnston in the Evening News. "We may rest assured that no effort will be spared to that end, as it is an essential aim of thi? war for life and peace that the hand of the. Turk —that race which provoked the Crusades eight hundred and twenty years ago—shall be lifted off all those regions of the Near Eaßfc where the population is not predominantly Turkish in language and affinities. "It is fairly safe to prophesy that 1917 will see the British in control of the cradle of Christianity." "Great Britain must in the after-war settlement annex the Peninsula of Sinai and Uit it as a strong garrison of British troops for the defence of the Suez Canal," says Sir Harry. "In such a case as this there could not be, much danger of giving a trial to the idea, of a Jewish State in' Palestine. I cannot but think that in a general way the more Jews there are in the great parallelogram between the Syrian coast, the sands <4 Arabia, the course of the Euphrates, and the markets of Aleppo a::d Antioch, the quicker and more peaceful will be the development and re-civilisation of this cradle of the great civilisations." TO PROTECT THE CANAL. "Syria "fy well understood to be an object of French interest," says the Daily Chronicle, " but the future of Palestine has never been publicly earmarked. The project for constituting a Zionist Stat* there under British protection has a great deal to commend it. , The restoration of Judaism of what must always •be the ideal focus of its persistent national and spiritual life would be a noble addition to the programme for emancipating small nations. From the military point of view, a control of Palestine by the Power which controls tho Suez Canal is of high importance to the security of the latter. Indeed, the experience of the present war renders it very doubtful if the Canal can ultimately be held, in a military sense, on any other terms." WAY FOR THE ARABS. "For the Jews and the 'Arabs, .who form the majority, the Allies are carrying on a real war of liberation. It was, indeed, the savage Inhumanity with which the Young Turks treated the Arabs of Syria that roused their brethren in the Hedjaz to revolt. A Turkish retreat through Palestine and Syria will be a retreat through hostile populations," says the Times. "The desecration of the Places under the more fanatical of tho rulers of Egypt led to that immense event in tho history of the world, the Crusades. The story has its historic its romantic, and its very sordid sides—all of them pregnant with reflections for the statesman and for the student." "The identification of Turkey with Islam is a blunder for which there is no historic justification, and we are about to take advantage of that blunder, by remarking a new and worthier Islamic civilisation," says the military' correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. "The Arabs are the repositories of all that is good and progressive in Islam, and the proclamation of Sir Stanley Maude to the Arabs of Mesopotamia is the first step in a new British Eastern policy which will devolve on tho Arabs the primacy in Islam which is historically their due. "Historically, again, Syria and Mesopotamia are one seat' of the great Semitic .civilisations, of which there are only two surviving representatives, the Arabs and the Jews. In the wide expanse between the Mediterranean and the Persfon Gulf there is room for a revival of both civilisations." A GLIMPSE AT GAZA. iSir George Adam Smith, the Principal of Aberdeen 'University, in his classic book on the Holy Land, gives a vivid idea of the importance of Gaza, before which our troops have been victorious. He says:— "Gaza is the southern counterpart of Damascus. It is a site of abundant fertility on the edge of a great desert—a harbor for the wilderness, and a market for the nomads; or.ee, as Damascus is still, the rendezvous of a great pilgrimage; and as Damascus was the first i great Syrian station across the desert from Assyria), ao Gaza is .the natural lOUtawt aArost the d«Beri> from Ejtypt.

; j The Bedouin from a hundred miles away come into the bazaars for the cloth, weapons, and pottery. The inhabitants were characterised as 'lovers of pilgrims/ whom, no doubt, like the Damascenes, they found profitable. As from Damascus, so "from Gaza, great trade routes travelled in all directions—to Egypt, to South Arabia, and, in the 'times of the Nabatean Kingdom, .to Petra and Palmyra Amos curses Gaza for trafficking in slaves from E'dom." AN itaIORTAITj MAN. Gaza has one immortal man's name attached to its history—Samson the Strong. '"The Book of Judges narrates low Samson 'went to Gaza. . . and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoulders and how he 'loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah' (Judges icvi. 1-4). She cut off his hair, discovering from him that in it lay the secret of his strength, when the Philistines fell upon him 'and put out lu9 eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, ana bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.' "There he was brought to the temple to 'make them sport,' and took hold of the 'two middle pillars upon whiqli the house stood, and on which it was borne up,' and he said, "Let me die with the Philistines." And he bowed himself with all his might, and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein? "This is tho great scene which Milton has described in his 'Samson Agonistes': " 'Samson hath quit himself Like Samson, and heroically hath finish'd A life heroic, on his enemies j Fully revenged.'"