Show THE fatalistic TURK 1 how he brava death at the not holy city of if hi if faith the accounts given by the pil pilgrims grim s I 1 of the way in which cholera attacked them are teril terrible ble in their grim fatalism ism says the london spectator june 24 two days before the courban courbat bairam upward of one hundred thousand ns arabs turks and indians had gathered on th the e sacred mount to heir hear the solemn address which is delivered to those who wish to become hadji many of these people were in the most wretched condition and some hid had not even a loaf of bread it was here that the disease appears t to 0 have struck them like the blast of a a poisoned wind when next day the onward movement to the holy city began it was found that the ground wal wa strewn like a battlefield with the dead au and dying an and d so terribly virulent was the type of infection thus engendered that it was says the account impossible for any living creature to approach the place the authorities seem however to have realized that something must be done and that the bodies could not be left to rot accordingly a turkish regiment was sent to perform the work of burial and to remove any of the pilgrims who still lived never did troops in hi the heat beat of battle receive a command more fraught with peril the risk as it proved was literally greater than that of facing machine guns and the moral effect was far more terrible there are ten men who will face death to one who will face death by cholera yet these turkish soldiers with the fatalistic courage of their race obeyed as they obeyed at plevna the battalion when it reached tho the mount wash was seven hundred strong after the work had been done two hundred men only remained to go back to the coast five fire hundred of the soldiers had died of cholera that is nearly three quarters of the regiment perished in the work of burial no doubt english troops would have been upheld by many considerations by religious feeling and by the instinct of mercy and they would moreover have been well fed the turkish troops probably felt the sense of pity very little and their officers were almost certainly men with anything but a high sense of conduct they acted merely from the most naked sense of the duty of not flinching at a command it was an order given from afar and aird from above and that and faith are ta to thom them all oud one |