My doctor arrived from Roman, distant an hour's normal train journey. It took him twelve, hanging on to an engine together with fifty other men. Some dropped off quite quietly into the snow-drifts when they grew tired. On every skyline, he added, and in every valley, they saw horses with broken legs, left to die, turning and turning in endless circles of pain, and he heard them screaming despite the uproar of machinery which drowned most hearing.

In our English hospital there is a man who has had his foot amputated. He lay pinned under a burning car. A hatchet was brought by a doctor to a French officer standing near, and the doctor said: "Do it if you can; I have no instruments and feel paralyzed." The Frenchman did the thing in the whole horror of the sunlight, whilst the Russian privates who were his charge took advantage of the opportunity and pillaged private passenger luggage on the train!

Later. I think that it can be definitely assumed now that all danger of our being obliged to leave Jassy in the immediate future is over. Russians and Roumanians alike are standing on the Sereth, and the Germans do not seem to be particularly anxious to cross. A little success does much to restore balance, and we have already voiced the somewhat ambitious dream of seeing the enemy driven back in the spring. I ask for only one reward for all that we are going through, and that to drive down behind them in my motor! It would be worth anything to go back like that-into our own house.

But disease is coming, and that was a horror which we had forgotten. There is a terrible shortage of wood, and, in the absence of all other material, fire is the only reliable disinfectant. Lice overrun the hospitals and we are unable to combat them, for we have no serums and no disinfectants. Petrol, which might serve our purpose at a pinch, is also lacking now. The doctors are reduced to vinegar.

March, 1917.-The Russian coup d'état has come and the Government here is having some anxious moments. It is unlikely, however, that anything serious will transpire. The Royal Family is very popular and is faithfully served by the administration. All Russians, of course, are in a ferment, but it is reassuring to notice that they have not lost sight of the common ideals of the war.

Telegraphic news from America is palpitating, and brings the end of the war within sight, at any rate, of our

own generation. Unfortunately everything worth doing takes an immense amount of time in this world, and one cannot hope for things to begin to happen for a long time. It is rather discouraging that the crisis in Russia should have come to a head at this moment, speaking, naturally, from our own point of view, which is the only one that appears, through force of circumstances, important. The Roumanians and Russians were just learning to stand up to their three-legged race, and now all the knots have had to be loosened to give the latter a chance to stretch cramped knees. We had begun to talk of a big spring offensive, and now the only thing that is obvious is that waiting will be our indefinite lot.

Later. The war situation has come to a complete standstill: it is hard to believe that anything more can ever happen here.

Seven hundred thousand Russians are said to be on our front, who could, undoubtedly, just sweep across the country, driving all before them, and lead us back into Bucarest. But their very numbers make them a difficult army to equip and feed. At present they lack munitions, fodder, guns and railways, so it all looks pretty hopeless, and one can but be thankful for them as a definite, solid buffer which will require a lot of moving. There are very few enemy divisions in front of them, and we are told that these consist principally of Turks and Bulgarians. It makes one rather ill to think how easy complete victory could be and how unlikely it is.

May, 1917.-We are told that we stand upon the brink of action. Certain it is that at no time since she entered the war has Roumania stood to the fight so well prepared as now. In retrospect, it is wonderful to realize all that has been accomplished despite inexperience and shortage of material. The word "starvation makes us smile nowadays, for we are almost surfeited by the luxury of supplies brought by regular transport systems from Russia. Further, the whole undulating surroundings of Jassy are cloaked green with growing corn.

It has been interesting to discover what solace can be found in days of the most anxious uncertainty by contact with things young and care-free. All the English children were sent home months ago, and we miss their atmosphere so horribly that anything small and happy finds welcome

here. I have noticed that Roumanians who took but the most cursory interest in a nursery world before they went to war have become almost ostentatiously parental lately. The whole aspect of Jassy has lost the impression it used to give of having been a most ill-chosen picnic site where it had very lately and copiously rained. We can almost flatter ourselves that we live in a flourishing military center. French blue and gray and English khaki almost predominate about the streets now that the Russian units have moved into scattered canvas cities.

Needless to say, there is much that still remains to be done. The army no longer starves for the necessities, such as ammunition and sanitary supplies, but it hungers for delicacies and details. These will all come, in time, I suppose, just as the other and more immediate requirements came; but it would be a tragic mistake to launch forth again without them. The Roumanians, luckily, realize the danger of such action, and their leaders are too clever to stumble into the pitfall of foolhardiness which always lurks for those who have lately escaped from danger. But the army, as a whole, is straining to take the offensive, and it is so wonderful that the men should feel thus after all that they have suffered that it seems almost cruel to tie their hands. English and French officers alike agree that a capital fighting force has grown up, no one quite knows how, out of the demoralization of the last few months, and it is impossible to give a sufficiency of credit to the leaders who have built

it up.

June, 1917.-I have been wondering whether any one would care to read this diary. Roumania is deserving of notice and appreciation. She has proved herself, and in the greatest manner which does not savor of ostentation. All that has been lately accomplished spells silent work and no small devotion to what has grown in this our century to be the greatest cause. Strangers who had knowledge and experience, who came to put machinery in motion, remain here, it is true. But they stay to work, and are no longer required to lead. The army trusts its officers, the nation appreciates its King. And we outsiders feel that we want to go home and tell the family of Allies that our little brother Roumania has grown into a man of whom we have reason to be very proud.

THE FRENCH KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM

BY ALFRED EMERSON

No less than three spokesmen of high position in and under the British Government have abandoned the reserve which combatant nations commonly and rightly maintain about their intended disposals of their conquests as long as a fight is on, with reference to Palestine. In the words of the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Balfour, "the Government views with favor the establishment of Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people, and will use its best efforts for the facilitation of this object." Now, the British Government is not given to quixotic fireworks. It means what it says. And it must have given the amplest consideration to the problem of what it ought to do, could do and would do, why, how, where and when, with the support of its own people and of its Allies reasonably assured, before reaching this momentous decision. It must be extraordinarily confident not only of the complete victory of its armed forces in that quarter of the world, but of an early triumph in the heart of Judea, to publish its purpose thus broadcast when its troops only stood at the gates of Palestine.

At this writing the advance of a British army from Egypt across the repellent Sinai peninsula, and its successive occupations of Gaza, Ascalon and Joppa have brought General Allenby's outposts to within four miles of Jerusalem, where they have halted to bring up their reënforcements and a siege-train. Already the press mouthpieces of the German Government are laying all the stress they can on the poor fortification of Jerusalem, and upon its very insignificant strategic and economic value. But even they cannot gainsay the prodigious retentissement that England's prob

able early seizure of the Holy City is bound to have in the Moslem, Jewish and Christian world, whether a Christian Te Deum be sung in the mosque of Omar on Christmas Day, 1917, or not. Certainly the native population of Judea and Syria, Arab, Syrian, Greek, Jew and Roman Catholic, has nothing but the harshest oppression to thank its Ottoman rulers and their German advisers for, and will quickly learn to regard the surrender of county by county to the Franks as a happy deliverance.

Altogether, the present moment would be a unique one for America to launch a naval and military expedition at Antioch and the contiguous region of north Syria. Failing this decisive secondage, England's unaided and fairly rapid successes in Palestine foreshadow the slower Allied conquest of all Syria even so, before which no serious campaign across Anatolia overland can be contemplated after Russia's military collapse. In any case, the impending fall of Jerusalem lifts England's two fronts in Asia Minor into sharp prominence, and it will inevitably lend much force to the long unaccountably disfavored plan of hitting the enemy hardest wherever he is the weakest. In other words, their victory at Jerusalem may persuade the western nations to conduct their offensives in eastern Europe and in Asia Minor in earnest. Their contrary course heretofore is responsible for their worst collective disasters both east and west.

We are widely familiar with the story and the glory of Solomon's capital in ancient times; not so with its fortunes under the Roman Empires West and East, under its Moslem caliphs and sultans, and under their western adversaries the Crusaders. My discussion of the last phase of its medieval history is suggested by the reflection that no chapter of the Holy Land's experience is fraught with better lessons for public men observing its wretched present and solicitous for its happier future to remember than Europe's former great effort to embody Syria in the family of Christendom.

The great dream of the Crusaders found its earthly embodiment in the Christian principalities of the Near East. And it remains a live tradition to this day on account of them.

Have a Venetian boatman sail you to the Armenian island monastery of San Lazzaro in the lagoon, and a polyglot monk will show you the sword of Leo V de Lusignan, our last king," among its historic relics. And likely enough