The admirals have, it is true, requested Djevad Pasha to order all the Turks in the island disarmed with the exception of the Turkish soldiers. If he refuses they threaten to ask for his recall, but this is a very poor conclusion after all the fuss that has been made, and the trouble the interference of the Powers has caused. * * * * * There is good news from the Soudan. After the British had taken the town of Abu Hamed, about which we told you a short while since, they continued to advance up the Nile toward the next important town that lay in their route to Khartoum. This town was Berber. It was expected that the Mahdists would make a fierce resistance at this place, and the British troops were prepared for severe fighting. What was their surprise on reaching Berber to find that the Mahdists had fled before them, and were encamped at the city of Matammeh, where they intended to make a stand against the invading army. Berber had been left in the hands of a few Soudanese who were friendly to the English, and willingly permitted them to take possession of the town. This city is only about two hundred miles from Khartoum, and no place of importance now lies in the way of the British advance on Khartoum, the Mahdist stronghold. * * * * * A very interesting movement is on foot to secure the return of the Jews to Palestine. We are all familiar with the beautiful story of Moses, and how he led the Jewish people out of their captivity in Egypt into the promised land of Palestine. We can follow out the history of the kingdom of Israel through its years of prosperity under David and Solomon; we can read how the Jews again became a conquered people, and fell under the rule of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and how under the leadership of Maccabeus they once more became a nation, only to fall into the hands of the Romans. History tells us how they revolted again and again under the Roman rule, and how at last, in the year 135 A.D., Jerusalem was taken by the Roman Emperor, and the Jews, driven from their country, ceased to be a nation, and were scattered over the face of the earth. From the year 135 Palestine remained in the hands of the Romans, and when they became converted to Christianity this land was regarded by them with great veneration. Bethlehem of Judea, where Jesus Christ was born, is in Palestine, and Jerusalem, where He suffered death on the cross, was the capital of Judea. In the sixth century Palestine fell into the hands of the Mohammedans, and it was to rescue the Holy City from the hands of unbelievers that the Christians of Europe first undertook those long and terrible wars which are known in history as the Crusades. The Christians finally conquered Jerusalem, and established a Christian kingdom there which lasted for eighty years, when the celebrated Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, reconquered the Holy City.