gardens, Chambers of Commerce, branches of the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, the Jerusalem School of Music, subsequently presented to the Jewish community. Indigenous industries, that had been allowed to die out, were revived under the auspices of the Pro-Jerusalem Society, of which more will be said hereafter. In 1918 a well-known British architect was summoned from London to examine and report upon the state of the venerable mosques and other buildings in the ancient Temple enclosure in Jerusalem, which had been neglected by the Turks and allowed to fall into decay. Large sums were spent upon improving the roads of Palestine, the bridges destroyed during the military operations were strengthened or rebuilt, and a steel bridge was thrown across the Ghoraniyeh passage of the Jordan.
The state of Jerusalem in December, 1917, can hardly be imagined by those who see it now. No sanitary arrangements of any sort existed in the old city, and practically none in the new. As the only water supply was derived from private rain-fed cisterns, it was impossible to do very much to combat the resulting evils until a proper water supply had been introduced. Seven military sanitary sections were lent by the army and placed at the disposal of the Governorate. In addition to this, it was made the work of one special sweeper to patrol the Via Dolorosa from end to end and to keep it free from pollution. Later in the spring of 1918, to the intense satisfaction of the inhabitants, the Commander-in-Chief gave the order for a piped water supply to be put into Jerusalem. At Arrub, south of Bethlehem, pumps were erected over an ancient reservoir, said to have been excavated by Pontius Pilate. Palestinians of all classes were not slow to remark that the Turks, after an occupation which had lasted over four hundred years, had left Jerusalem, as regards the water supply, slightly worse than they found it, whereas the British Army, whilst still uncertain of its tenure, had, in a few months, endowed the city with a supply which rendered it, to a certain extent, independent of the chances of the weather.
