For this was the great camp that was the pivot of the greatest campaign;
and from that balcony I had looked on something all the more
historic because it may never be seen again. As the dusk fell
and the moon brightened above that great ghostly city of canvas,
I had fallen into talk with three or four of the officers at the base;
grizzled and hard-headed men talking with all the curious and almost
colourless common sense of the soldier. All that they said was objective;
one felt that everything they mentioned was really a thing
and not merely a thought; a thing like a post or a palm-tree. I
think there is something in this of a sympathy between the English
and the Moslems, which may have helped us in India and elsewhere.
For they mentioned many Moslem proverbs and traditions,
lightly enough but not contemptuously, and in particular another
of the proverbial prophecies about the term of Turkish power.
They said there was an old saying that the Turk would never depart
until the Nile flowed through Palestine; and this at least
was evidently a proverb of pride and security, like many such;
as who should say until the sea is dry or the sun rises in the west.
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