274
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
of Christendom, Jewry, and Mohammedanism were being desecrated. I had seen so much hatred, fanaticism, hypocrisy, and
bloodshed in Jerusalem that I doubted I could look upon it as
anything but a city of carnage and death. When the devout
pilgrim utters Jerusalem, Yerushalayim (Hebraic) or EI Kudz
(Arabic), the word trembles on his lips, and he is swept by
ecstasy. A reporter cannot live by tradition and sentiment
alone. Facts are facts. Guns arc guns. Men with their brains
and flesh ripped out by shrapnel their bodies mutilated and
left to rot and stink under the sun speak more realistically of
the spirit of the "Holy City" than the blind emotion of pilgrims.
THE BREAKTHROUGH!
ZION GATE became the focal point now. Since midnight
a steady, rhythmic barrage had concentrated upon it. Then,
about two a.m., a ponderous and massive projectile of some
kind was shot with a blast from the dark pools of the Yemin
Moshe quarter below us, recurring at about three-minute intervals. When it crashed against the Gate and at various
points along the wall—the maximum range could not have
been more than five hundred yards—the earth and the firmament shuddered. Was this the "Davidka"? A giant flash
suddenly leaped up from the Armenian monastery, and my
heart twinged. Had a "Davidka" been misdirected there?
How many died? What irreparable damage was done to the
ancient cathedral? The painful tragedy of the Armenians' position: caught between two fires, pummeled by both sides in a
war in which they had no interest, and which was bound to
hurt them more than either of the principals.
I looked at the time. It was three o'clock. I had been
on watch for six hours. At exactly 3.15 a.m. two young
sappers crawled to the hinges of Zion Gate, carrying dynamite