Palestine Portents

COMMONWEALTH (British Commonwealth of Nations)

Thou shalt be visited of the Lord of hosts with thunder and with earthquake. . . .

--ISAIAH 29, 6

. . . . But the Lord was not in the earthquake.

--I KINGS 19, 11.

The Holy Land trembled and was shaken last week from Jerusalem to Jericho (13 miles) and very largely along the banks of Jordan. Outside the quake area were Bethlehem and the Dead Sea on the South; and Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee in the North. Between these two seas (65 miles apart), an area roughly 55 miles in diameter trembled. Killed were some 670 persons--not one of these reputedly a U. S. citizen or Jew. Injured were more than 3,000 natives and a few scattered Occidentals. Property damage, hasty appraisers said, exceeded $1,500,000.

"Acts of God." As is usual during an earthquake, there occurred last week throughout the Holy Land numerous examples of what U. S. courts and lawyers call an "Act of God." Examples:

In the region of Yermuk, as the quake began, a railway train was chuffing steadily along rails laid on the side of a hill only six feet from the edge of a 300-foot precipice. In one of the cars rode Lieutenant Colonel George Stewart Symes, Acting British High Commissioner for Palestine.

The hillside trembled, moved. The train, teetering crazily, swayed outward toward the precipice, then, as the earth rebounded, engine and cars were flung off their rails against the hillside--safe.

On the Mount of Olives, not far from where Jesus the Christ ascended to Heaven, there now stands Government House, the residence of the British High Commissioner, an imposing structure built originally asr the Empress Augusta Victoria Hospice (hotel). The British, easygoing, have left unmolested a pair of astonishing mural paintings in the Chapel. One depicts God the Father. The other, directly opposite and much more imposing in composition, was painted to display in trailing Biblical robes of glory The All Highest, Wilhelm II.

Last week a huge stone, hurling down from a partly wrecked tower, burst through the Chapel roof, obliterated the blasphemous mural of Wilhelm, and finally became motionless below the unscathed portrait of Jehovah.

Another part of Government House, in which were the apartments of High Commissioner Baron Plumer,* was completely shaken down. He, lucky, was in England last week.

At the Fountain of the Virgin, where once the Blessed Virgin traditionally drew water and washed the swaddling clothes of the Infant Savior, several women were engaged last week in similar tasks when the earthquake came. Although part of the ledge of the holy well crumbled and fell among them none were injured.

Jewish Relief. Although no Jew was killed in Palestine last week, many were rendered homeless by the destruction of their houses; and students at the Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem found most of its buildings unsafe or utterly shaken down.

Responding to this condition, many a rich U. S. Jew followed last week the example of Manhattan dry goods merchant Nathan Straus who cabled $25,000 to Palestine, instructing that it be used for feeding and caring for earthquake sufferers without distinction of race or creed.

*Field-Marshal Baron Plumer is virtually "self-made." From 1876 onward he rose steadily through the ranks of officers until, in 1915, he commanded the Second British Army, in France, at the victorious action of Messines during the Third Battle of the Marne. Accordingly he was created Baron Plumer of Messines after the War, and granted -L-30,000. As A. D. C. General to the King, during part of the War, Field-Marshal Plumer won the liking and confidence of His Majesty, George V, who subsequently appointed him Governor of Malta 1919-24, and in 1925, High Commissioner for Palestine.