I have already spoken of the so-called "requisitioning" that took place
among our people while I was working at Saffêd. 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