Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 259
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[Page 259]
in the post office; the latter contained some photographs & other material.
This is Easter Monday, and this year the Christian festivals coincide closely with the Jewish passive, the Coptic Easter, and the Moslem holiday Shem-el-Nassim. All four sections of the worlds peoples have a different starting point for the year; a matter concerning you in Australia but little, but having much effect here where do congregate and claim full recognition the each of the four. The Jews are of course the oldest their years numbering more than five thousand, the Christians and the Copts almost the same 1915, while the Mohamedans are thirteen hundred and forty four since their prophet. The Moslems hold sway here being more than ten millions of people while the remainder are about one million, the Copts being the more numerous of them.
Today is the great holiday for the ordinary Mohamedans, the one upon which families set out for picnics & the like, rare indeed in the annual round: If the atmospheric conditions be in the remainder of the Nile valley as at Mena, then it is probable that few will venture forth.
An "Illustrated London News of the 13th March 1915" came into my hands this morning. It is a very interesting issue at pp. 336 & 337 is a double page illustration by Fred K. Villiers, artist of note now in France, showing the French & German trenches at three yards appart, – Just think of it not as far from one another as the walls of my bedroom at No. 219., – a barbed wire fence on each side of the space, marked "French wire" and "German wire", shell holes in all directions, and a few soldiers on the near side running for shelter, dead bodies lieing here & there, a destroyed village smashed trees and farm lands completing the picture. The whole a travesty truly upon the expectation of such wise people as Miss Rose Scott, Mr. Holman, Mrs. Holman, and their friends who a few years ago were preaching far & wide