The Holy War

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THE HOLY WAR
The Turk "But he is so great."
William "No one is great, save Allah, and I am his prophet."

Surely the artist when he drew this was endowed with the wisdom of the seer, the vision of the prophet. For it was drawn before the days in which I write, before the Russian giant had proved his greatness on the body of the Turk, before the bludgeon-strokes in the Caucasus, the heart-thrust of Erzerum, the torrent of pursuit of the broken Turks to Mush and Trebizond.

We know—and I am grateful for the chance to voice our gratitude to him—the greatness of our Russian Ally. We remember the early days when the Kaiser's hosts were pouring in over France, and the Russian thrust into Galicia drew some of the overwhelming weight from the Western Front. We realize now the nobility of self-sacrifice that flung an army within reach of the jaws of destruction, that risked its annihilation to draw upon itself some of the sword-strokes that threatened to pierce to the heart of the West. Our national and natural instinct of admiration for a hard fighter, and still greater admiration for the apex of good sportmanship, for the friend or foe who can "take a licking," who is a "good loser," went out even more strongly to Russia in the dark days when, faced by an overwhelming weight of metal, she was forced and hammered and battered back, losing battle-line after battle-line, stronghold after stronghold, city after city; losing everything except heart and dogged punishment-enduring courage.

And how great the Russian truly is will surely be known presently to the Turk and to the masquerading false "Prophet of Allah."

"No one is great save Allah," says William, and even as the Turk spoke more truly than he knew in calling the Russian great, even as he was bitterly to realize the greatness, so in the fullness of time must William come to realize how great is the Allah of the Moslem, the Christian God Whom he has blasphemed, and in Whose name he and his people have perpetrated so many crimes and abominations.

BOYD CABLE.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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