Another class of these fanatics are the howlers, who have a great organization in Turkey, and have probably been largely concerned in inciting feeling against the Armenians. I have visited their mosques, but I despair of adequately describing their religious gymnastics. They work themselves into a frenzy, jumping and bending, and gasping and howling out the name of God. The dervishes of the interior parts of Turkey often take knives and cut themselves and each other in religious ecstasy. They go into fits and foam at the mouth, and most of them think that the killing of a Christian is a sure passport to heaven. I would say, however, that these people are the cranks of Mohammedanism, and that they are not a fair sample of the Moslem world. Nevertheless, they have had no small part in bringing about the miseries of Armenia. CHAPTER XXXIII PALESTINE AND SYRIA UNDER NEW RULERS Switch on your radiophone and let us listen together this evening to a talk from Jerusalem where John Bull sits in the seats of the mighty and the voice of the terrible Turk is no more heard in the land. The Holy City is quiet. The women are sitting, as of old, on the housetops under the stars, while across the valley on the Mount of Olives sparks from the wireless tower flash out to the corners of our modern world. If we listen carefully we may hear the familiar chug-chug of an American automobile whose driver to-morrow will take a party of pilgrims over the road to Bethlehem. Or perhaps he will start on the longer trip to the ruins of old Jericho and the River Jordan, or even a tour of all the Holy Land, most of which can now be reached in a motor car. As we listen we learn that the High Commissioner, who rules in the name of His Britannic Majesty, met to-day with his advisory council, representing the people of Palestine. From the report of their proceedings we learn what is going on in the reborn Promised Land. This council has ten members appointed by the Commissioner. Four of them are Moslems, who make up four fifths of the population of Palestine, three are Jews, identified with the Zionist movement, and three are Christians. Just as the membership of the advisory council is divided among the three groups for whom Jerusalem is a holy place and a religious centre, so, too, are the positions in the government to-day held by Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans. There are three official languages—Arabic, English, and Hebrew. The government, we are told, is in good condition, and the country is self-supporting, paying its way out of its revenues. Nevertheless, the taxes with which the Turks used to squeeze and harness the people have been reduced and some of them have been abolished. At the same time, where the Turk and his tax-gatherers, as the Arabs say, “never gave us so much as a drink of cold water,” the new rulers are providing much-needed improvements with the public funds.