266
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
an added wall and the bedsprings. Amid the world's most
concentrated and historic excitement, the lot of us, somewhat
bored, snuffed out our candles and crawled into bed. Outside,
the new State of Israel, the Arabs, and the British slugged it
out in blood on the first night of Israel's independence.
SUNDAY AT TERRA SANCTA
SUNDAY morning was even more radiant than the Shahhat
—and even more frightful! The British Broadcasting Company had reported "restrained joyfulness" in Egypt. "This is
like the Crusades all over again. Only this time the Arabs have
gone out to save the Holy Land," it said. Cairo boasted: "This
war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre
which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the
Crusades."
Tel Aviv had been bombed by Egyptian planes, and Egyptian and Arab Legion forces were marching upon both Tel
Aviv and Jerusalem, bound on their mission of "extermination and momentous massacre." The Jewish sector of the Old
City, which had survived for centuries, had a night of terror
as Arab gangs attacked its few hundred Haganah fighters, who
defended some two thousand civilians, most of whom were
elderly orthodox men and women who had refused to leave
their homes.
Dressed in a fresh shirt, I walked to Terra Sancta College.
A Franciscan monk opened the door and ushered me into a
chapel far removed from the hatreds of man. I was alone.
Fresh-cut flowers graced the simple altar. On my left an oil
lamp burned. The stained glass behind the altar was radiant
with living images of His disciples. In a niche was a statue of
the young Jesus, surrounded with flowers. In this chapel I saw
no pomp, no pageantry, no gaudy display of gold, silver, brass,
or foil. There was nothing here to befog direct communion