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"I ascertained all particulars and found this to be the fact: That whereas there are small bodies of troops scattered in certain places, those are needed for local protection of the places where they are; and that whereas there is at Ludd an army of more than twenty thousand men, with guns, great store of supplies, cavalry, and aeroplanes, that army is held in readiness to go to Egypt and cannot for the present be sent against you.
The enemy's army had now been broken into two separate parts, which retired eastwards towards Jerusalem and northwards through Ramleh towards Tul Keram. Throughout the 14th our mounted troops pressed on toward Ramleh and Ludd. On the right, Naaneh, on the railway to Ramleh, was attacked and captured in the morning.
This had the effect of making the future railhead at Ludd. Situate at the cross-roads where the Valley of Ajalon debouches upon the Plain, and the ancient route from Jerusalem to Jaffa crosses the yet more ancient route from Egypt and Gaza to Acre and Damascus, the neighbourhood of Ramleh and Ludd has for many centuries been the site of an important town.
As time passed on, and as, through the spring and summer of 1918, we held a line across Palestine to the north of and covering Jerusalem and Jaffa, railway development proceeded apace, being focussed on Ludd. In spite of the difficulties of railway engineering in the mountains, the broad gauge line was carried from Ludd through Junction Station right up to Jerusalem.
Bodies of desperadoes, armed and disguised, went forth under a leader, styled General Ludd, who divided them into bands, and aligned to each band its work of destruction. Terror reigned around; the inhabitants were commanded to keep in their houses and put out their lights on pain of death.
The instance is striking: but it is not solitary. To the same cause are to be ascribed the riots of Nottingham, the sack of Bristol, all the outrages of Ludd, and Swing, and Rebecca, beautiful and costly machinery broken to pieces in Yorkshire, barns and haystacks blazing in Kent, fences and buildings pulled down in Wales.
Grim, Jeremy and I drove to Ludd in a hired auto, Grim and Jeremy both in Arab costume, and I trying to look like a tourist. Jeremy was supposed to be a travelled Arab intent on guiding me about Damascus for the usual consideration. The platform was crowded, and we secured a compartment in the train without calling much attention to ourselves.
Having spent some time at Ludd, handing in every article of ordnance stores we possessed, except the clothes and equipment on the man, we now were kept busy collecting it all again. In five days we had everything, horses, limbers, field-cookers, Lewis guns, etc., the horses comparing unfavourably with those left behind.
Mabinogion really means tales for the young. Unlike many old tales, too, they are written in prose, not in poetry. One of the stories in The Mabinogion, the story of King Ludd, takes us back a long way. King Ludd was a king in Britain, and in another book we learn that he was a brother of Cassevelaunis, who fought against Julius Caesar, so from that we can judge of the time in which he reigned.
In the neighbourhood of Nottingham, which was the focus of turbulence, the machine-breakers organized themselves in regular bodies, and held nocturnal meetings at which their plans were arranged. Probably with the view of inspiring confidence, they gave out that they were under the command of a leader named Ned Ludd, or General Ludd, and hence their designation of Luddites.
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