And that’s the end of it.” The sons of the desert have had enough apologists lately. I find it more refreshing to contemplate an expanding budget—the only one in the world at the moment—and congratulate the Jews.

The Italians were another snake in Mr. Gordon’s grass. Some time ago, he and others had tried to start an Anglo-Palestinian shipping line, which might carry the mails instead of Italian boats. They failed, for lack of English co-operation. The Italians offer free education in Rome to all Palestinians, with reduced fares thrown in. Admittedly, only about 200 a year go. But Mr. Gordon grew bitter when he considered the difficulties encountered by any student who wishes to finish his education in London, even at his own cost.

After visiting the orange-belt and the opera-house, we went to bathe. Suddenly, out of the crowd on the sea-front, stepped Mr. Aaranson of the Italia. “Hello, hello—you here too? Jerusalem’s so dead at this time of year, isn’t it? But I may look in tomorrow. Goodbye.”

If Tel Aviv were in Russia, the world would be raving over its planning and architecture, its smiling communal life, its intellectual pursuits, and its air of youth enthroned. But the difference from Russia is, that instead of being still only a goal for the future, these things are an accomplished fact.

Jerusalem, September 10th.—Yesterday we lunched with Colonel Kish. Christopher entered the room first. But the Colonel made for me with the words: “You, I can see, are Sir Mark Sykes’s son”—the implication being, we supposed, that no Englishman of such parentage could possibly wear a beard. During lunch our host informed us of King Feisal’s death in Switzerland. On the wall hung a fine painting of Jerusalem by Rubin, whom Mr. Gordon had meant us to visit in Tel Aviv if he had not been away.

I went to swim at the Y.M.C.A. opposite the hotel. This necessitated paying two shillings, the waiving of a medical examination, changing among a lot of hairy dwarves who smelt of garlic, and finally having a hot shower accompanied by an acrimonious argument because I refused to scour my body with a cake of insecticide soap. I then reached the bath, swam a few yards in and out of a game of water-football conducted by the Physical Director, and emerged so perfumed with antiseptic that I had to rush back and have a bath before going out to dinner.

We dined with the High Commissioner, most pleasantly. There were none of those official formalities which are very well at large parties, but embarras small ones. In fact, but for the Arab servants, we might have been dining in an English country-house. Did Pontius Pilate remind his guests of an Italian squire?

There was a dance at the hotel when we got back. Christopher met a school friend in the bar, who begged him, in the name of Alma Mater, to remove his beard. “I mean to say, Sykes, you know, daffinitely, no I don’t like to say it, well I mean, daffinitely, never mind, I’d rather not say daffinitely, you see old boy it’s like this, I mean daffinitely I should take off that beard of yours if I were you, because people daffinitely think you know, I mean, no honestly I won’t say it, no daffinitely I can’t, it wouldn’t be fair, daffinitely it wouldn’t, well then if you really want to know, you’ve pressed me for it haven’t you, daffinitely, it’s like this, I mean people might think you were a bit of a cad you know, daffinitely.”

When everyone had gone to bed, I walked to the old town. The streets were shrouded in fog; it might have been London in November. In the church of the Holy Sepulchre, an Orthodox service was in progress at the Tomb, accompanied by a choir of Russian peasant women. Those Russian chants changed everything; the place grew solemn and real, as the white-bearded bishop in his bulbous diamond crown and embroidered cope emerged from the door of the shrine into the soft blaze of candles.