collapsed.

In 1911, in the Zionism article in the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Dr.Lucien Wolf, known as the greatest living authority on Jewish history and prophecy, wrote that as the Jews on returning to Palestine

would re-establish there the Levitical polity, the Ottoman empire, and even Christendom, "especially the Roman and Greek churches," never would permit it. Now the Greek church objection was eliminated, as far as a real force is concerned, and the Ottoman power followed it in the next series of events noted.

In 1917, a British Palestine army started from Egypt, for the same objective as did the children of Israel under the Prophet Moses. It built its railway and water supply line from Egypt to Judea. The first week in December, 1917, that army, after severe fighting, was before the walls of Jerusalem. The culminating occurence of the campaign in that year is thus described in The Covenant People, by an eye witness, Commander L. G. A. Roberts, British Royal Navy:

"Remember how Jerusalem was taken. General Allenby did not want to fire a shot at the sacred city. He telegraphed home to the Premier to know what he should do. Bombard Jerusalem or not? The Premier's reply was that he must be left to do as he thought right. That did not satisfy Allenby. He telegraphed home to the King, and the King hold him to make it a matter of prayer. Well, they had a service; the whole of the officers went to prayer. As they were rising from their knees a herald from Jerusalem arrived with a flag of truce, and the governor of Jerusalem surrendered to the British forces. Instead of going into Jerusalem like a proud conqueror, General Allenby went as if he understood it was a holy mission. It was not he or the British army, but the act of God; and Allenby went in, not for conquest of Jerusalem, but for its deliverance. After a few days

*

But Jerusalem was not yet secure from the Turks. In March, 1918, there began the terrific military drive of the German armies in France, forcing back both French and British. From Amiens to Paschendale, the British were crowded with their "backs to the wall," to use their own descriptive words, and were fighting determinedly for every foot of ground. American troops came into the fray, the tide of battle turned, and on November 11, 1918, the military victory on all sides was complete. This is episode two.

III

By the capture of Jerusalem, the Zionist movement was awakened to new life. At first refusing, Britain's secretary for foreign affairs officially issued the much discussed "Balfour declaration" pledging the honor and power of Great Briting to "Palestine as a homeland for the Jews."

The Versailles peace conference convened in 1919. On March 10 of that year, from a great consistory held in Rome, Pope Benedict sent. this message: "It would be a great grief to the Holy See if Palestine were left in the possession of an infidel people (the infidel Turk); but a still greater grief if the sacred places were given into the control of a non-Christian people" (the nonChristian Jew). Thus the Roman Catholic church was officially aligned against the Jews obtaining Palestine as a "homeland," as Dr. Wolf had indicated. The Romish church, in doing this, was consistent with its claim of being the true Christian church

and entitled to the custody of "the sacred places." Then, for the succeeding months the Palestine articles of the Marshall Newspaper Syndicate, publishel in the Deseret News and other papers throughout the country, contained the repeated announcement that the Mohammedans and Christians in Palestine would "resist to the last drop of their blood" the coming of the Jews to that land. The Versailles conference, which finished its labors in June, 1919, made no assignment of the mandate over Palestine.

For two years from its capture in 1917, little was done in Jerusalem save cleaning unsanitary places. It was still the "trodden down" city it had been for ages. But 1920 registered a conclusive development of building up the sacred city, such as never had been known before. The twelve months from April 15, 1920, is the most notable period in the city's history for nearly nineteen centuries, and covers a complete revolution in its condition.

On April 24, 1920, the Supreme Council of the great ratiors of Europe, which was functioning in applying the terms of the Versailles peace treaty, assigned to Great Britain the temporary mandate over Palestine and Mesopotamia, as Anatolia and Thrace were asigned to Greece and Syria to France.

On May 27, Dr. Herbert Louis Samuels, a Jew who had been post master general of Great Britain, was designated as Lord High Commissioner over Palestine, and went to Jerusalem. On July 1st he appointed an exclusively Jewish council to control the country west of the Dead sea and of the River Jordan. In the week ending July 23 a great Zionist convention of Jews in London adopted the Levitical polity for Palestine.

On July 24, Great Britain appointed the Palestine rehabilitation commission, composed of Lord Reading, (Rufus Daniel Isaacs), formerly lord chief justice of Great Britain, Sir Alfred Mond, formerly British minister of public works and one of the greatest living engineers, and Major James Rothschild, inheritor of the Rothschild wealth-all Jews—and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the country roundabout was fairly instituted, and still goes on.

Surely things were moving rapidly. On August 5, 1920, Jews celebrated the gaining of a "homeland." In Utah, at the "Mormon" tabernacle in Ogden, Apostle David O. McKay was, by invitation, a principal speaker; in the great Tabernacle in Salt Lake City it was Apostle Orson F. Whitney; both meetings were Jewish celebration meetings. At the one in Salt Lake City, President Heber J. Grant, President of the Mormon Church, was made honorary chairman of the committee which raised the fund for the Jews which had been apportioned to Utah. Thus the Mormon Church, in its claim to be the true Church of Jesus Christ, was aligned in favor of the Jews having Palestine, as the Romish church, less than seventeen months before, had taken an opposite stand. These are the only church organizations to make an official record on the Jewish Palestine question. May it be that "there are save it be two churches only"-one against and the other for the House of Israel? On March 23, 1921, Sir Alfred Mond, at a public gathering in New York, declared his intention to use his energies for the erection of a Jewish temple on the site of Solomon's temple, where now stands the Mohammedan mosque.

The foregoing is the principal data in the closing of a great world

epoch, which may be supplemented with the statement that in May, 1922, Pope Pius also objected to Great Britain having the permanent mandate over Palestine, which objection was seconded by the Catholic countries of Italy and France; but on July 24, 1922, came the announcement that the League of Nations council had awarded the permanent mandate to Great Britain, of which empire Palestine is now a part. The "sacred city" is taken.

This is episode three.

The interesting and informing thoughts "between the lines", as the world's affairs go in epochs, have a vital basis in the further fact that nearly nineteen centuries ago Jesus

of Nazareth said, "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled," and Jerusalem is no longer "trodden down" by the Gentile Turk or his co-agencies. Still further, the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith as a Prophet sent of God, said in 1831 that within the generation (using the word in its meaning as a cycle of 100 years) of the revealing of the Gospel that brought the Mormon Church into existence "the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled." The fulfillment of the two predictions culminate as one, being from the same source, in "the spirit of prophecy" which is "the testimony of Jesus."

Now is the day of Israel.

Martha Alcit was bitter with the bitterness of an exile, with the bitterness of a maternal woman denied motherhood. Again she read her younger sister's letter telling of the joy that had lately come to the cozy little home in New England. As she read the letter she detected the note of compassion which she always found or imagined she found in the letters from "back home." Why had she left the easy comfort of wealth to come to this desert wilderness? Because she loved her husband, Joe Alcit and would have followed him anywhere he had chosen to lead. And his love still compensated for all she had to forego. Their tiny log hut was certainly bare enough and yet it was home, and no house however big and fine without Joe could have given hapiness to Martha. She realized this and tried to quell the hurt in spite of her effort to subdue it.

She gazed vacantly out of the narrow window and saw Peggy Salmon coming down the snowy road, carrying in her arms a bundle wrapped in an old gray blanket.

"Her new baby," thought, Martha, "as if four children weren't more than she could properly take care of now. Why couldn't this new little

one have come to me?"

In came Peggy, stamping the snow from her feet. "Want to see the baby?"

Of course Martha did and Peggy unwrapped the tiny little fat creature, scarcely more than a month old, and drew up to the fire.

"Aren't you afraid to bring her out so soon, and in the snow, too? You ought to be careful of yourself, also."

"Oh, we're both strong. Aren't we, honey? A little snow won't hurt us," and Peggy drew the little thing toward the fire. What a crude little bundle it was, utterly lacking in all the fineness and daintiness with which Martha had once associated newly arived humanity. A faded blue outing flannel petticoat peeped beneath a dress of coarse cotton which had once been white, but was now a dingy gray which told of many improper washings. Not a bit of lace or embroidery relieved the unmistakable poverty of the attire. Martha imagined the snowy cobwebby textures that billowed about the little form of the newborn son of sister Edith's.

"See, I brought her in her best white dress. I made it over from an old piece of white stuff I saved for a long time. It's pretty nice, don't you think so?"

tha, and her eyes filmed. Yes, com"Yes, it's real nice," gasped Marpared to the colored gingham in which she had seen some of the little ones arrayed in this pioneer community, it was "nice," Even though she had lived in the settlement five years now, she still rebelled against the coarse makeshifts everywhere apparent about her.

Peggy noticed some faint lack of heartiness in the reply. There certainly was some secret distress in Martha's face, in spite of her light

attempt to hide it as she bent over the baby. She still held the letter in her hand from her sister, Edith.

"Had some bad news, Martha?" "Oh, no, just a surprise letter from my sister, Edith, to say she had a son. Such a surprise. Never gave me a hint, and wouldn't let anyone write for her. Wanted to tell me herself. Why her baby must be just the same age as yours." Martha bent over the child and fondled it with fresh interest. Though her attitude was all tenderness, the pain in her heart made her wish to thrust the child back in the mother's arms and send it awaywhere her own lack would not so poignantly confront her.

Peggy did not stay long, but before going she dropped a word about Christmas which gave Martha a start. With no children in the house, one is apt to forget the nearness of the great festival. She had always managed to send a Christmas box back to New England filled with dainty gifts made from a trousseau utterly unfitted to the exigencies and associations of her pioner life. Passing years had sadly depleted her store and now she wondered just what she could make fine enough and dainty enough to suit Edith's baby.

She opened her cedar chest, the ore luxurious article of furtniture in her little home. She had brought it with her, in spite of all oposition, filled with linens and finery.

Once again she unwrapped her wedding dress, a creation all sheer white. daintiness. Finest of linen with most exquisite of Valenciennes lace, this was the gown she had chosen to wear on that summer five years ago, and here in the cedar chest it had rested ever since so carefully wrappd that now it merged as fresh and crisp as new. Silk or satin she might have worn, but the softness and fineness

of washable fabric had always made the great appeal to her.

"Fine enough for the christening robe of a princess,' the modiste had said when she first fingered the dainty stuff. The words came back with startling clearness. Martha unwrapped the gown hastily, but carefully, and went back to the window.

A few log cabins stood out in lonely isolation against a white treeless background. Sage brush pushed its grayness out of the white. In the distance icy mountains with purple shadows and outcroppings of bleak brown crags seemed to wall the little settlement in from all the cheer of the great busy world beyond.

What would Edith think of this barren valley-Edith who would never know, nor wish to know, the courage the uncomplaining unselfishness of pioner life, the upwelling of things of the spirit which more than equalled the lack of bodily luxuries. Martha was glad she had come with Joe; she had lived in experiencing the elemental as Edith would never live. But could Edith know all, she would bestow on her pioneer sister an unwelcome pity, a concern which Martha resented because of its lack of understanding the fundamentals of the situation. Edith should never know all and this year as usual Christmas gifts must bear no hint of the rigors of life.

She wondered if Edith would remember the wedding dress. Of course not. Her mind was too open to new impressions to dwell on the past. The unwelcome words of the modiste refused to be quieted. At last Martha went back to the chest. There Joe found her when he came in for the evening meal.

"What, Martha, going to make more Christmas presents?"

Manlike, he had never grasped the