Empire_ What Ruling the World Did to the British - Jeremy Paxman [114]
To Lloyd George, who claimed to have been familiar with the kings of Israel long before he had known the names of the kings and queens of England, the capture of Jerusalem was more resonant than most victories. For the first time since 1914, celebratory bells pealed at Westminster Abbey. Yet victory and occupation of the city would have to be handled carefully, for the empire claimed to protect all religious beliefs. Indeed, Allenby himself could hardly have been unaware of the sensitivity of the issue: there were 90,000 Indians – many of them Muslim – deployed in Egypt, Palestine and, later, Syria. A ‘D-notice’ – that distinctively British form of censorship – had already gone out to all newspapers advising that there was to be no suggestion of a religious element to the capture. But Jerusalem was Jerusalem, and the most theologically contentious city in the world had been in Muslim hands since the Middle Ages. An official camera crew was dispatched to witness the historic moment when a place sacred to three faiths was ‘liberated’.
The thing to avoid was any hint that Allenby came as a ‘crusader’. Specifically, there was to be no suggestion of the bombast which had marked the Kaiser’s visit to Jerusalem in 1898, when he had ridden into the city accompanied by brass bands, standard bearers, squadrons of enormous German hussars in burnished helmets, detachments of Turkish lancers and the sultan’s bodyguard in wide blue oriental trousers, red waistcoats and green turbans. He had been followed by a cavalcade of pashas who looked as though they ate nothing but Turkish Delight three times a day. The Kaiser himself sat smugly on his horse, his chest splattered with decorations and his shining helmet decorated with what he took to be a silk keffiyeh. Allenby, by contrast, obeyed the stage directions he had been given, dismounting from his horse and entering the city by the Jaffa Gate on foot in his British army uniform. He was attended by the usual small gaggle of staff officers, among them Major T. E. Lawrence, who had borrowed a uniform for the occasion. The politicians also insisted that Allenby be accompanied by representatives of France, Italy and the United States, despite the fact that they had played no part in the fighting, much of which had been conducted by Australian and New Zealand troops. To forestall unpleasantness with other Christian denominations, the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem was denied a role, even though he had offered to dress as an army chaplain for the day. No flags were hoisted. Allenby walked to the Citadel, where Pilate is believed to have judged Jesus, and there proclaimed martial law, asked people to continue going about their daily business and promised to protect all sacred sites. As the Daily Mirror explained to any of its readers who might be worried that the British weren’t making quite enough of their victory, ‘This is because British generals and the British people hate boasting.’ Unlike the arrogant Kaiser, Allenby was in Jerusalem merely to see fair play. It was not so much a victory as the shouldering of a high responsibility.
Just before Christmas, Lloyd George rose in the House of Commons and invited MPs to imagine how 1917 would look from the vantage point of 2017. He believed, he said, that ‘these events in Mesopotamia and Palestine will hold a much more conspicuous place in the minds and in the memories of the people than many an event which looms much larger for the moment in our sight’. He was wrong. Most of today’s British have long forgotten, even if in the Middle East they remember their history slightly better.*
Allenby stayed firmly on message, repeatedly stating in the years ahead that his campaign had not been a crusade, that many of his soldiers had been Muslims and that Jerusalem’s significance lay in its strategic position.