Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1910 — GETTING LIGHT FROM JORDAN [ARTICLE]

GETTING LIGHT FROM JORDAN

Scheme to Harness the Sacred River to Bupply Electrlo Current For Cities of Palestine. When one has seen Niagara fretting in its harness and made to light Toronto and to pull its Btreet cars, there Beems no limit to the affront which the engineering genius of a utilitarian age will put on nature. To be fair to the American and Canadian exploiters of the great falls, their chains are cleverly concealed from the tourist’s eye, and it Is possible to watch the wonder of their rainbows and to listen to the music of their voice without suspecting the bases uses to which they have been put"" If there is one river op earth which might, one would halve thought, be immune, by right of its sacred past, from such malpractises, it Is the Jordan. Yet, if the scheme now mooted in Constantinople be given effect, the river of Israel will no longer have but the single use of healing the sins of long-haired’ pilgrims from the Volga, coal-black AbyßSlnlans and pale Copts from the Nile. It will henceforth work an electric lighting plant to give Illumination In Jerusalem and other cities of Palestine. From the purely progressive point of view, it is a matter for congratulation that the new Turkey should have, advanced so far along the lines of modern development as to contemplate such an enterprise. On the other hand, seeing that, so far as I remember, Jerusalem has electric lights already, and in view also of the fact that the far swifter Barada, the rlter of i>m ny . cus, could, though more distant, be easily converted to do the same work without defiling the sacred stream, it Is almost to be hoped that the proposal may fall through. If, however, it is adopted, here will surely be light out of darkness, for the Jordan Is the muddiest stream in all the near east. —Pall Mall Gazette.