Quite lately, the Byzantine capitals have been too brightly regilded. They will tone down in time.

When we first saw the mosque, it was too late to go in; but we could just get a glimpse of it from the entrance at the bottom of King David Street. An Arab planted himself in our way and began to be informative. I said I would rather see the mosque for the moment, and hear about it tomorrow; would he be so kind as to move to one side? To this he answered: “I am an Arab and I shall stay where I please. This mosque belongs to me, not you.” So much for Arab charm.

This evening we went to Bethlehem. It was already dusk, and we could hardly distinguish the magnificent rows of columns which support the basilica. The guides were almost more tiresome than at the Sepulchre. I left Christopher to see the manger, or whatever it is they show, by himself.

Jerusalem, September 7th.—As I was sitting beneath an olive tree in the court of the Dome of the Rock, an Arab boy came to share the shade and repeat his lessons out loud. They were English lessons. “Gulfs and promòntories, gulfs and promòntories, gulfs and promòntories,” he reiterated.

“It’s not promòntories,” I interrupted, “but pròmontories.”

“Gulfs and pròm-òntories, gulfs and pròm-òntories, gulfs and pròm-òntories. Deliver Mosul, deliver Mosul, deliver Mosul. Gulfs and…” He said he was first in his drawing class, and hoped to go to Cairo, where he could study to be an artist.

Stockley gave a dinner-party last night, at which two Arab guests proved good company. One of them, who used to be in the Turkish Foreign Office, knew Kemal and his mother in the old days. The War found him consul at Salonica, whence he was deported by Sarrail to Toulon—an unnecessary hardship since the Turkish frontier was so near, and one which lost him all his furniture and possessions. Talk turned on the Arlosorov, the Jewish leader, who was shot on the sands of Jaffa while walking with his wife. The murderers are supposed to have been Jewish revisionists, an extreme party that want to be rid of the English and set up a Jewish state. I don’t know how long they think the Arabs would suffer a single Jew to exist once the English went.

This morning we went to Tel Aviv as the guests of Mr. Joshua Gordon, chief showman of the Jewish agency. At the municipality, where Christopher was received as the son of his father, the walls were hung with portraits of the apostles of Zionism: Balfour, Samuel, Allenby, Einstein, Reading. A map showed the development of the place by years, from a struggling Utopia of only 3000 people to a bursting community of 70,000. Over Jaffa hock in the Palestine Hotel, I tried the Arab arguments on Mr. Gordon. He was contemptuous. A commission had been set up to look after landless Arabs. It could only find a few hundred. Meanwhile, the Arabs of Transjordania were begging the Jews to go there and develop the country.

I asked if it might not pay the Jews to placate the Arabs, even at inconvenience to themselves, with a view to peace in the future. Mr. Gordon said no. The only possible basis of an Arab-Jewish understanding was joint opposition to the English, and this the Jewish leaders would not countenance. “If the country is to be developed, the Arabs must suffer, because they don’t like development.