"People often ask how it is that the future of Palestine presents such difficulties. The reason is simply that Jerusalem--you cannot separate Jerusalem from Palestine--is the sacred city of so many creeds and warring faiths. Not only is it the holy place of all the Christian churches,--and two of them quarrel bitterly over it, the Greeks and the Latins,--but it is also one of the most sacred places in the Mohammedan world. Mecca and Medina are hardly more sacred than the Mosque of Omar. That is a fact which is often ignored by Europeans, who forget that to turn the Mohammedans out of the temple inclosure would disturb the whole Moslem world, from the Straits Settlements to Albania. We must never forget that Mohammedan pilgrims from India visit Jerusalem, just as Christian pilgrims visit it from Europe. Lastly, Jerusalem is profoundly sacred to the Jews, and the Jews are beginning to be locally numerous and important. Most certainly there are no elements of difficulty wanting in the problem of the future of Palestine." History records the fact that rivalry over the care of the traditional holy places helped to precipitate one European war--that of the Crimea. In the study of the Eastern Question, we have seen that the prophecy of Daniel 11 marks Jerusalem as still a storm center in the closing scenes. A British consul in Jerusalem, in the days following the Crimean War, set forth suggestively his view of one of the factors in the Eastern Question. He wrote: "The very heart and kernel of the Eastern Question can only be reached in the Holy City, Jerusalem, where the Eastern and Western churches are still wrestling as of old for the mastery.... Now as heretofore, disguise the object as they may, they are striving for a prize which has not been destined by divine Providence for either; and this prize is no less than a virtual dominion over the Christian world, from a throne of government within the sanctuaries of the Holy City; and the possession of that throne would involve possession of the key to universal dominion."--_"Stirring Times: Records from Jerusalem Consulate Chronicles," by James Finn, introductory note by editor, p. xxiii._ Foretold in Prophecy By every consideration--political, racial, and religious--the Near East supplies all the elements for involving the whole world when once the sweeping displacements begin which the prophecy foretold, and for which statesmen in our day have sought to prepare.