In the South African war his cavalry tactics led to his being twice mentioned in dispatches from his Commander-in-Chief, and he was decorated. His big work began in the World War, when he went to France with the first British army, and helped resist the German rush on Paris. Outgunned, overwhelmed by numbers, deluged with high explosives, Allenby with that little army of less than two hundred thousand men, retreated stubbornly, helping to kill Germans, and yielding an awful tribute of death as it went back, step by step, from Mons. With cavalry acting as a screen, he helped British infantry to sell their lives at high price. Time and again he flung his command into positions, often deadly to many of his men, and his own life repeatedly in danger. As stated in the report of Sir John French, it was largely due to Allenby that one of the remnants of the British army was saved from destruction.

Allenby was afterward in the thick of fighting on the Western Front, where he had opportunities for distinction. In 1917, he commanded the right wing of the British in the battle of Arras, one of the most successful British actions fought until the offensive of 1918. His men carried an intricate network of trenches east of Arras, and fought their way along the Scarpe toward Douai. He was then transferred to Egypt, where he built up a careful plan for an advance through Palestine. As one of the original Kitchener generals he had been trained in the school of that organizer. In Egypt now he gave evidence of Kitchener's influence by a keen, long-sighted survey of the task before him. He made a request for additional forces, and refused to move until they came. Only when men, guns, and ammunition arrived in sufficient amount did he strike and then with terrific force.

Never was given a better illustration of the true character of the man than in his careful handling of the delicate situation when he entered Jerusalem and made a declaration to that mixed community which was a model of statesmanship on the part of a military commander. His proclamation, prepared in Arabic, Hebrew, English, French, Italian, Greek, and Russian, contained the following:

"Lest any of you be alarmed by reason of your experience at the hands of the enemy who has retired, I hereby inform you that it is my desire that every person should pursue his lawful business without fear of interruption. Furthermore, since your city is regarded with affection by the adherents of three of the great religions of mankind, and its soil has been consecrated by the prayers and pilgrimages of multitudes of devout people of these three religions for many centuries, therefore I make it known that every sacred building, monument, holy spot, shrine,

traditional endowment, pious bequest or customary place of prayer of whatsoever form of the three religions will be maintained according to the existing customs and beliefs of those to whose faith they are sacred.''

Allenby placed guards over the holy places and gave Moslems special charge over buildings and sites precious to Moslem sentiment. On the day when he was to take formal possession of the city, he came, not on horseback in glittering display, but modestly on foot, approaching the shrine of his own belief. His staff and the civil officers, with attachés from America and other countries, entered on foot with him. His careful regard for all religious feeling, his steps to safeguard the interests of all peoples, were at once appreciated and his fame spread to the surrounding country until a legend grew up about him among Arabs, who regarded his conquest of Jerusalem as an inspired act because, in the name Allenby, they found an equivalent of the words "Allah Allah," meaning God and Prophet. For many generations there had been current among the Arabs and other tribes a prophesy that "He who shall save Jerusalem and exalt her among the nations will enter the city on foot, and his name will be God and Prophet."

The effect he produced in this proclamation undoubtedly helped him in all his military operations from that time onward. He left no stone unturned to fall in with the deeply seated sentiments of Eastern peoples. One of his first actions after entering Jerusalem was to ensure the return of the "Holy Scrolls," a parchment on which are inscribed the fundamental laws and which had been taken to Jaffa, thirty-five miles away, to prevent their falling into the hands of the Turks. Allenby presided at the gathering where they were formally returned. The grateful people gave him, as a memento of the occasion, a copy of the scrolls inclosed in a silver case.1

Allenby was the principal figure at the welcome of the American Red Cross Commission on July 4, when there were assembled representatives of the Allied nations and high dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant, Moslem, Armenian, and other churches. On this occasion Dr. John H. Finley, State Superintendent of Education in New York, head of the Mission in Palestine, made a speech in which he said that America's contribution to the restoration of Palestine was only an intimation of how the people of America and those of all nations were eager to contribute their genius to the spiritual and physical encouragement of people in the Holy City. How Allenby prest on from Jerusalem step by step to the north, to Damascus and Beirut and thence-as 1 Adapted from an article by Frank Dilnot in The Times (New York).

Foch was rounding out his victories in northern France, Picardy, Flanders, the Champagne, and the Argonne-how he reached Aleppo, and no doubt thought of Othello as having once been there, and how finally he entered Constantinople and there met Franchet d'Esperey who a few weeks before had forced Bulgaria to surrender-all this has been told elsewhere in this work as part of his military campaign against the Turk.

SIR WILLIAM RIDDELL BIRDWOOD, BRITISH GENERAL

As Commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps from 1914 to 1918, Sir William Birdwood brought with him a wide knowledge of military affairs supported by a large experience in the field.

Entering the army as a lieutenant in the Fourth Battalion of the Royal Scotch Fusileers in 1883, he was transferred to the Twelfth Lancers in 1885, and to the Eleventh Bengal Lancers in 1886. In 1893 he served as adjutant on the Viceroy of India's Bodyguard. He went to Africa in 1899 as brigade major, serving as secretary to Lord Kitchener, Commander-in-Chief in South Africa in 1902. At the close of this campaign, Birdwood returned to India as quartermaster-general in 1912.

In the course of his military career he was several times wounded, and repeatedly mentioned in the dispatches. He served in command of the detached landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps above Gaba Tepe at Gallipoli. Altho a strict disciplinarian as a commander in the field, he was much liked by his men who felt the magnetism of his personality and were always eager to carry out whatever orders were issued by him.2

TASKER HOWARD BLISS, CHIEF OF STAFF, UNITED STATES ARMY

General Bliss was born at Lewisburg, Pa., December 31, 1853. He was graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1875, and in 1884 from the United States Artillery School with honors. His military career began as a second lieutenant in the First Artillery, June 16, 1875. Five years later he was promoted to first lieutenant, and in 1892 became the captain in the commissary of subsistence, rising to the rank of major in 1898, and of lieutenantcolonel as Chief Commissary of Subsistence of the Volunteers, 1898-1899. In 1902 he attained the rank of brigadier-general of the United States Army.

At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, General Bliss was military attaché at the United States Legation at Madrid, 2 Compiled from "Who's Who, 1918-1919" (London).

Spain. He served through the Porto Rican campaign in 1898, in which year he was appointed a member of the board of officers to select camp sites for United States troops in Cuba. From December, 1898, to May, 1902, he was Collector of Customs of the port of Havana and Chief of the Cuban Custom Service. He negotiated the treaty of reciprocity between Cuba and the United States, 1902, and 1903 was Commandant of the Army War College. During 1905 and 1906 he was in command of the Department of Luzon, P. I., and from 1906 to 1909 of the Department of Mindanao. From August, 1910, to June, 1911, he commanded the Department of California, and during the Mexican insurrection, March to June, 1911, was in charge of a provisional brigade on the Mexican border. From 1911 to 1913 he was commander of the Department of the East, and from 1913 to 1915, of the Southern Department Cavalry Division.

General Bliss was appointed a member of the General Staff of the United States Army and Assistant Chief of the Staff, 1915, and rose to the rank of Chief of the Staff, September 22, 1917. On October 6, 1917, he was confirmed Commanding General of the United States Army, and served as such throughout the Great War, being appointed a member of the Allied Conference in 1917, and also a member of the Supreme War Council in France, 19171918. He served also as Military Representative of the United States at the Peace Conference.3

ALEXIS A. BRUSILOFF, RUSSIAN GENERAL

Brusiloff, Russian commander from early in the war until after the final defeat in the summer of 1917, was sixty-four years old when the war began, but looked forty-five. He had long served Russia as a soldier, having taken part, as a captain and then as a major, in the Russo-Turkish conflict of 1877. He was described as one who lived by his nerves, and his sense of duty. Soldiers worshiped him, altho he never courted popularity, and talked to them seldom. When he did talk, it was with a matter-of-fact abruptness, but in his few words lay knowledge of the soldier's soul. He had skill in finding the direct road to a soldier's heart. His physical endurance at sixty-four was still amazing. One of the best cavalrymen in Europe, he could out-distance many younger horsemen. Whenever his automobile got stuck in black soil, he would continue his way on horseback, and when the going was impossible for horses, as in the Pinsk swamps, he would go on foot, jumping from clump of soil to clump of soil in places Compiled from "Who's Who, 1918-1919" and The Times (New York).

where water prevailed, and never showed fatigue. "How old values have been upset!" he once remarked to M. Breshkovsky of the Petrograd Bourse Gazette. "Take Skobeleff"-naming one of the most distinguished generals of the war of 1877. "Is it thinkable that an ostentatious, decorative general like that, galloping about at the front in a white uniform and on a white horse, should exist to-day? Possibly he would last a quarter of an hour. Should Germans fire a few volleys in that direction, nothing would have been left of the dashing horseman. In 1877 that splendid bravado had an object and meaning in his conduct-it was to serve as an inspiration to his troops. But now, when everything spectacular has disappeared from the surface, and been buried, Skobeleff would have been seen at best by about two regiments only."

Brusiloff was born in the Russian Caucasus, in a little semiOriental city named Kutais, about half-way between Poti, the Black Sea port, and the summit of Kazbek, which is some 3,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc. His father was a soldier and a general, trained, like so many Russians, in wars in the Caucasus. The Brusiloffs for generations had been distinguished in Russian military and political history. The general kept with care a curious packet of ancient documents, each of which conveyed the thanks of a sovereign of Russia to a member of his house. He went to school at Tiflis, in the Caucasus, and thereafter to a Russian military school where he distinguished himself. Back to the Caucasus he went afterward as a lieutenant of dragoons and entered thoroughly into the daring and adventurous life traditional with regiments quartered in the Caucasus, a life that Lermontoff and Tolstoy have depicted so well. Brusiloff had a heart for every adventure; but most of all, loved perilous boar and bear hunts in Caucasian forests. He earned a reputation as one of the best riders in that region, whether after hounds or in regimental steeplechase. In a sense that reputation determined his destiny.

When in the late spring of 1877 Alexander II declared war against Turkey, and sent armies southward to deliver Bulgaria from oppression, the Czar's brother, the Grand Duke Nicholasfather of the Grand Duke Nicholas of this war-was put in command of armies operating in European Turkey, while another brother, the Grand Duke Michael, commanded against the Turks in Asia, fighting southward toward Erzerum by way of Ardahan and Kara. While taking part in that war on a distant front, Brusiloff saw little or no actual fighting, but, after the war ended, when Grand Duke Nicholas the elder undertook to reorganize at Petrograd the Cavalry School for Officers, which had been founded by his uncle, Alexander I, he chose as head of the school Colonel