With the Zionists in Gallipoli (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1916. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV FORMATION OF THE ZION MULE CORPS From the days of my youth I have always been a keen student of the Jewish people, their history, laws and customs. Even as a boy I spent the greater part of my leisure hours poring over the Bible, especially that portion of the Old Testament which chronicles battles, murders, and sudden deaths, little thinking that this Biblical knowledge would ever be of any practical value in after life. It was strange, therefore, that I, so imbued with Jewish traditions, should have been drawn to the land where the Pharaohs had kept the Children of Israel in bondage for over four hundred years; and it was still more strange that I should have arrived in Egypt just at the psychological moment when General Sir John Maxwell, the Commander-in-Chief, was looking out for a suitable officer to raise and command a Jewish unit. Now, such a thing as a Jewish unit had been unknown in the annals of the world for some two thousand years--since the days of the Maccabees, those heroic Sons of Israel who fought so valiantly, and for a time so successfully, to wrest Jerusalem from the grasp of the Roman legions. It had happened that there had come down to Egypt out of Palestine many hundreds of people who had fled from thence to escape the wrath of the Turks. These people were of Russian nationality but of Jewish faith, and many of them strongly desired to band themselves together into a fighting host and place their lives at the disposal of England, whom the Jews have recognised as their friend and protector from time immemorial. Indeed, by many it is held that the British people are none other than some of the lost tribes; moreover, we have taken so much of Jewish national life for our own, mainly owing to our strong Biblical leanings, that the Jews can never feel whi...