For its water Jerusalem had depended upon winter rains to fill its great cisterns. The houses had underground reservoirs, some of which had not been cleaned in more than twenty years. At the Mosque of Omar was a large reservoir where the water from the springs about Solomon’s Pools flowed down through a great aqueduct built by the Romans when Herod ruled over the Jews. The searching engineers had found springs in the hills with fresh, pure water running to waste and, at the rate of fourteen thousand gallons an hour, it is now pumped up to the top of a high hill, run by gravity down through a long pipe-line to a great reservoir that has been built and carefully protected on the outskirts of the city. Direct lines take this pure water to the hospitals and into the city streets. Despite the shrinking of the population, caused by the evacuation of the Turk, more than ten times as much water has been used as in previous years, which silences the oft-repeated statement that the people would not appreciate the water if they had it. We were interested to learn that some of the pipes had been sent to Egypt to be forwarded for use in Palestine by the American Red Cross Commission after we entered the war. But the Commission found that the need for water which we had anticipated had been practically answered by the Royal Engineers. One is deeply impressed by the change in the record of contagious diseases. The reduction in cholera, smallpox, typhoid, and typhus is remarkable. Even under the sound of booming guns, children’s welfare bureaus were organized, lessons in health given, nurses trained and kitchens opened to provide food for the babies, the sick and the old. The workers of the American Red Cross deserve and receive full gratitude for their enthusiastic and intelligent work in and about the City in those days immediately following its surrender. The people on David Street seemed to have lost something of the fear that writers of the past saw in their haunted faces. It may be the fact that now they are free. The old-time pressure and petty persecution by corrupt officials is past. The Turkish prison no longer yawns threateningly. A trader may go unmolested about his work. The heavy taxation demanded in the past by a succession of officers, from the least to the greatest, has disappeared. Contentment not known for untold generations reigns in humble homes. [Illustration: From the brow of the Mount of Olives where they lay sleeping under white crosses—these also “fling to us the torch.”]