GAZA. (From a Correspondent with the Army in Egypt.) It is amusing for us who have been in the advance from El Arish to read in some of the picturesque chronicles of the day how the Wadi Ghuzzeh, the river of Gaza, "that just divides the Desert from the Sown," is the true geographical boundary between Egypt and Syria, marking where vegetation begins. Rafa, it appears, is but a political milestone set in the sands, and it was only at Gaza that our army entered the Land of Promise. We who have read our Bibles and who have tramped the fifty miles from the Wadi El Arish to the Wadi Ghuzzeh know otherwise. Of old for the Children of Israel the inhospitable desert ended at the river of Egypt, the Wadi El Arish and for the last three months we have appreciated and enjoyed each successive stage from the barren sand to the green loveliness of the Philistine -and Turkish-stronghold. We have passed through the promise of Bourj (reminiscent of some Crusader's castle) to the fulfilment of Sheik Zoweid, and thence along rolling downs and waving meadows to Rafa, now famous not only as the scene of Sir Philip Chetwode's dashing raid, but as the site of a March race-meeting, brilliant as any gathering on Ascot's heath. And after we passed that boundary stone at Rafa not a sign of the desert remained, save the broad sand dunes which fringe the sea. At our next halting place of Khan Yunie, whence, according to tradition, Samson took Delilah to wife, we imagined ourselves in one of the home counties. Our camps lay in orchards and parks surrounded by cactus hedges, and we could pluck fruit and nuts off the trees around our bivouacs. Leaving that belt of fruitfulness, the descent to the Wadi Ghuzzeh through barley fields was almost a relapse to a commonplace greenness. It is amusing also to read in another commentary on the first attack on Gaza that "the district through which the advance from Rafa had to be made is quite waterless; every drop of water for men and animals had to be brought up in pipes." We, and the horses and camels with us, would have been somewhat parched if we had had to depend on the pipes, but in fact there is abundant water all along the track. It only requires to be "developed"; and, though it may seem curious to the home expert, the army is provided with field companies of engineers for that purpose. Since we left Arish we have been put "on the country" in a new sense, and scarce a drop of water for men and animals has come by pipe. The difficulty arises only in distributing the water from the wells during the actual engagements. Gaza at a distance looks like a smaller Damascus; a girdle of trees is spread around for two or three miles, and the town nestles amid the verdure, save the big mosque which dominates the wooded heights. To the southeast rises the natural fortress of Ali Muntar (the Watch Tower), which from time immemorial has made the town hard to capture. In former ages it must have been girt with solid walls; now it is a labyrinth of trenches and redoubts. But when the guns and snipers are at rest the vista over the gentle, undulating hills and the cornfields and olive groves and fruit gardens is of idyllic peace. War loses half its evil in the East because it is so free from ugliness. Gaza, whose Hebrew name means "The Strong" has many a time caused a check in the invaders' progress. For centuries it was a center of struggle between the Philistines and the Hebrews; and even Alexander the Great, who conquered the whole of the East in a few years, had to lay regular siege to it. A thousand years later Omar, the Arab conqueror, found it a greater stumbling-block than even Jerusalem itself; and Saladin had to make his greatest efforts before he wrested it from the Crusaders, who had established there one of the chief fortresses of the Latin kingdom. The Tartar hordes razed its walls and citadel, but Gaza remains a place of great strength and strategic importance. Here a ridge runs across the coastal plain to the Shefelah, the range of lowlying hills that front the rugged backbone of the Judean hills, and the army that has passed it may sweep along the Valley of Sharon till it reaches Haifa and Acre, and the great plain of Esdraelon, the main artery between Egypt and Syria. Gaza in peaceful times is the center of a fertile agricultural district and a busy Bedouin mart. It has a population of some 35,000 souls, coming next to Jerusalem and Jaffa in the number of its inhabitants. Its trading importance is marked by the presence of some 600 Greeks and a British consular agent and a branch of the Jewish Palestine Bank, the AngloPalestine Company. Before the war the roadstead was visited by the smaller steamships of the Austrian-Lloyd and the Khedivieh lines for the corn The Manchester Guardian. traffic, although there was no regular port of call for passengers. In the way of buildings and monuments the place has not much to boast. Naturally the spot where Samson carried off the gates, and the place where he was buried, have been identified, and there are ruins of the old citadel. The Church Missionary Society had a school and hospital, and an enterprising German settler had erected a steam-mill (doubtless sheltering emplacements for guns). Otherwise modern ideas and methods have made little inroad, and the bazaars are hidden in narrow, tortuous lanes, characteristic of a small city and market town. They were the meeting place of the caravans that passed between Syria and Egypt, and the Bedouin of the Sinai Peninsula had their chief markets here. Gaza was to Sinai as Damascus is to Syria. As the first big railway station in Palestine of the trunk line from Africa to Asia, Gaza would enjoy a new importance. The fruitfulness of the country would be increased manifold when scientific methods and machinery are brought to the aid of nature and the neglect and mischief of man are no longer allowed to frustrate the bounty of God. And among the places where civilization will spring up anew, Gaza, which has been celebrated under the rule of Philistines and Hebrews, Persians, and Hellenistic Greeks, Romans and Byzantines, Saracens and Crusaders, will surely be counted one of the new-old cities of the East. FOOD AT THE FRONT. BY "AN IRISH OFFICER AT THE FRONT." [The late Major Willie Redmond was a frequent contributor to our columns of articles reflecting some phase of life in the battle zone which appeared as by "An Irish Officer at the Front." Shortly before the battle of Messines the following article was received from Major Redmond.-The London Chronicle.] In these days when so much is being heard as to the absolute necessity for "rationing" the nation it may be of interest to consider the question of food in relation to the Army in the field. Most people will agree that wherever a shortage is to be experienced the Army is the very last place where it should be felt. The fighting men must certainly be the first care of everyone. That they should have supplies freely and regularly is the first essential of the whole food question. People at home not engaged in very trying occupations may be able to get along on "short commons," but men in the hard circumstances of life at the front cannot. Unless the Army is well fed it cannot-with all the will in the world-fight and endure the rigors of active service. Many of the recently captured German prisoners were men suffering from hunger They fought hard, as our casualties show, but hunger will tell on the best of soldiers. It is, and should be, the first duty of every patriotic person to take all care that hunger shall never tell upon our Army in the field. So far the supply of food for the troops has been one of the marvels of the war. The way in which quantities of good food have been provided, and the way in which it is regularly passed along from the bases to the very front line, is all a triumph of organization which is hardly realized sufficiently at home. It may be that, in the natural attention which is concentrated on the men who actually storm along and drive the enemy before them, the work of the Army Service Corps is not adequately recognized. And yet the day and night devotion of the men of that branch of the Army merits enormous praise. The British Expeditionary Force has never been left wanting in supplies. Be the advance slow or rapid, it has not mattered-the supplies are always there. This involves an amount of neverending, methodical work of the most arduous description. It involves the construction of long new lines of railways and the erection of hundreds, thousands even, of stores. To follow the Army's rations from the factory and slaughterhouse to the "dump" behind the front lines is to follow a long trail of organization and skilful management which is beyond all praise. And it should be well remembered that all the handling of the enormous supplies of food and stores has to be undertaken by troops. From the unloading of the vessel to the pushing of the trolley up to the line the work has all to be done by soldiers. It happens sometimes in war that local civilian labor is available for Army transport work. In this war on the West Front at least no such labor is available. Labor has gone in France to the Army, and only the very old are left, and hence it is the enormous work in connection with the import and distribution of Army supplies has to be undertaken by our troops. This fact is not sufficiently appreciated at home. It is not only in the line, but all through from the line to the sea literally everything has to be done by the Expeditionary Force. of the men show it. If everyone at home who may feel a passing grievance at having to forego some luxury or accustomed article of food would only concentrate a little thought on the man in the trench it would soon scatter all sense of grievance! Remember, if there is in the home lands comparative plenty and security it is solely and entirely due to the mud-stained, rugged soldier who holds the line. The country depends on him to defend the line, and he depends on the country to sustain him while he does so. The man in the trench cannot leave his post for anything. He depends on his comrades to bring him his necessary food each day. His comrades in their turn depend upon the people at home, and it is "up" to every man, woman, and child at home to see that the men in the line shall never be disappointed at the hour each evening when the "Ration Party" arrives. It may be of interest to follow the rations of a battalion from the railhead to the trench. At the nearest station the quartermaster of the battalion attends with the transport officer. From the train the goods are taken and transported in wagons to the quartermaster's stores. Here they are apportioned out between the companies and taken charge of by the company quartermaster-sergeants. Each evening the transport officer, accompanied often by the quartermaster, sets out, and, with the transport wagons, wends his way with the food to the "dump" near the trenches occupied by the battalion. This journey is often hazardous and trying, and often has to be undertaken under heavy shell fire, and many a gallant fellow has lost his life in bringing the supplies to his comrades in the trenches. From the "dump" near the line the ration parties from the battalion every night draw the rations and carry them up to the very front. With the rations come the letters and parcels and papers, so that the arrival of the ration party is the one great event in the day looked forward to in the trenches by the officers and men alike. The last stage of the journey of the supplies is often long and toilsome. The men carry everything on their shoulders, that most useful of all things at the front, the sandbag, being used for the purpose as a rule. In wet and heavy weather the conveying of the food to the line is a wearisome and trying business and very often extremely difficult. Generally the food is cooked in a trench some way back from the front and carried up to the firing line in as warm a state as possible. As to the cooking, it varies naturally. In some battalions blessed with good cooks and enterprising quartermasters the food is well prepared and appetizing; though, indeed, in the ordinary run of things it is difficult to offer the much variety. However, the open air and the constant exercise combine to whet the appetite, and plain as it may be the food is good, and the men, goodness knows, are ready enough for it. men On To visit a trench at meal-time is an experience. Where they can and how they can the men take their food. the fire step, in the dug-out, standing, sitting or lounging against the parapet these brave fellows have their frugal meal. The guns are thundering, the shells may burst right in the trench at any moment. Dinner-time for the men in the line is no time of ease or relaxation. And yet it is marvelous what high spirits prevail! As though they recognized that the best possible is being done for them, the troops make the best of everything and accept with appreciation every little extra effort made for their comfort. And this brings the writer to make the suggestion that there should be no falling off in the stream of comforts sent from home to the men abroad. The parcel, however little it may contain, is welcome, not so much for what it is as for the evidence which it contains of kindly thought at home. A letter, a postcard, even an old paper from home is of infinite comfort and encouragement to the man in the line. Anything at all to let him see that if he is sacrificing much for others those others at least remember him. Nothing is so galling to the soldier as the bare idea that he is forgotten at home. Let such an idea never have a real foundation even in a single case. The writer has seen the eagerness The London Chronicle. with which the coming of the post is awaited, and has noted the disappointment of those who seldom receive a letter. Write then to the man at the front, and above all let him know that whatever economy or privation has to be endured at home, at least all people there will take good care that no ration party shall ever toil at night up to the front line emptyhanded! That must never, never happen. Whoever may have to go short the ration party must always have a full load. That is the very least due to the brave defenders of the line which separates all we hold dear from the advance of German military despotism. W. GREEN IVORY. TRIVIA. What a bore it is, waking up in the morning always the same person! I wish I were unflinching and emphatic, and had big bushy eyebrows and a Message for the Age. I wish I were a deep Thinker or a great Ventriloquist. I should like to be refined-looking and melancholy, the victim of a hope less Passion-to love in the old stilted way, with impossible adoration and despair under the pale-faced Moon. I wish I could get up; I wish I were the world's greatest Violinist. I wish I had lots of silver and first editions and green ivory. APPEARANCE AND REALITY. It is pleasant to saunter out in the morning sun and idle along the summer streets with no purpose. But is it Right? I am not really bothered by these Questions-the old, threadbare puzzles of Ethics and Philosophy, that lurk around the London corners to waylay me. I have got used to them; and hard pavements, is it a mere vision, a figment of the Mind, or does it remain there, permanent and imposing, when I stop thinking about it? Often, as I saunter along Piccadilly or Bond Street, middle-aged and not unhappy, I please myself with the Berkeleian notion that Matter has no existence, that this so solid-seeming World is all idea, all appearance—that I am carried soft through space inside an immense Thought-bubble, a floating, impalpable, diaphanous, opal-tinted Dream. PROPERTY. I should be very reluctant to think that there was anything fishy or |