1957-12-27 — Page 4

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IF YOU HAVE EVER WONDERED WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE ALIVE ON THE DAY OF THE MOST STAGGERING EVENT IN RECORDED HISTORY... HERE IS THE PICTURE IN FULL BACKGROUND DETAIL

THE thunder and lightning now clamoured in the sky. All around in flashes the sodden land was lit: the land of olive hills and temples, of villages grabbing hillsides, of hills falling to chasms, of the rocky hollow rift where the Jordan flowed and the Dead Sea accumulated its salty weight and the Transjordan banks rose steeply like folded felt in

the flashlight.

The flash went out and thunder bellowed after it.

in

The night once more was black. Stars shone gaps between the soaking clouds, and never stopped their movings among the clouds and hills.

winds

Nights like this filled men's eyes with pictures and their ears with sounds;

in their and

minds ideas lived in common, fears and hopes and a general awe.

Shepherds

WO or three

men sheltered Tahir teside Bullen. They were shepherds; their sheep and goats huddled round them.

These shepherds Bved with their docks. They used no dogs trained the but insterd had animals to follow them, and this night they had led the animals into the lee side of rocks.

The shepherds kept watch during the storms, chiefly fear- In wolves or marauding, half- wild scavenging dogs from the villages.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Day

Christ

Was Born..

Portents

A few miles below them in the thou shalt meditate therein day rocky half-wilderness near the und night." northern edge of the Dead Sea Here, at men chanted prayers, Qumian, was already n selle- ment of men for whom the usual work was too violent and slutul, und who prepared themselves for the end of li nil.

This night to

as to them, to Augustus, es tu Herod, us

sleeping round the millions

any Roman Sea, was much as other.

But here remembered

especially

now

by GEORGE GALE

themselves, it seemed to these simple men that an angel stood before them.

They all believed in angcla but they were nonetheless terri- Aed. The angel was full of light; there was light shining all around them on the slope.

The angel said: "Do not be frightened. Listen: I am bringing you glorious news of a great joy which will be shared by every- body. Today, in David's lowa, a deliverer has been boru for you. He is none other than the Lord Messiah. This will prove il for you. You will And O baby wrapped round in strips of cloth, lying in feeding trough."

There was a sudden flash. Tho angel was surrounded with a voet assembly of the armies of Heaven all praising God, and ali singing "Glory be to God on high and on earthi Peace be to men who please Him?"

To Bethlehem

THEN the angels left, disap- peared, returned to Heaven. The shepherds Arst recovered their senses, and rubbed their eyes.

"Well," they said to each other, "by all means let us go and Gös straight to Bethlehem this thing."

Bethlehem was David's city; I wie not far off. They werd Impatient and hurried as best thes could in the dark.

They quickly reached the village. They inquired of a birth. No, there was none of the villagers expecting a, child, but

John the Baptist was to mark In the stable

In eaves around these hills the Dead Sea this night like try the inn. Sorolls that were being written any other.

this night, have lain bidden until Jately, Their the time. He was to say, in wilderness in 30 same nuthors were prepared for the this Messiah, the Deliverer.

years, "Repent, for the King- HEY found the inn.

They Tld not wait to Here, in Wis community. Com of Heaven is at hand!"

exching In these rough

they prepared themselves

John was to full link's

greetings with the landlord bulldings nien arc

the great and Anal war, that prophecy: "A voice cries out in

but went straight away below to chanting from the Law

Make ready the cave, where the stables were ness and the Children of Light, the Lord's road! Put his high and where the infant must be li they have been given by Moses between Die Children of Dark- the wilderness, centuries before.

The war would come soon; waya on order?" and the seventh and last battle the Children of Light would win-

tone

now that

ny off-light others copied out the sucrod books men and women sang their hymns.

Others watched the skles, they secking porients, watching the of stors and moon, that Joshua has swinging

the time for an "this waiting all that been commanded

that there book of the Law shall not de uniraislakable sign

but had been a special birth. mouth, part out of thy

for

Johu the Baptist, whose aged parents probably died when ho was young, was adopted by some such community prob ably this one which was carrying on its strange life by

HURRAH FOR THE

SIX-CLUB PREMIER

He brings a ray of light into the

gloom of Pall Mall

VER since the war cold winds have been blowing

Et ad and up St James's Street, Clubland

has been feeling the draught. Subscriptions have soared, The Thatched House and the Marlborough-Windham have closed their doors. The Bath has merged with the Conservative to produce the irreverent, but aptly named Lavn-tory.

Now the Constitutional is Becking permission to re- build its premises and to hive off most of the floors

by IVAN VATES

Keith Martensit

Socialists Richard Croxton and AJ P. Joyler have been admitted to that hotbed of bishops, the Athenæum

caloric of writers with social and Mr Chuter Edo can

there, seen at the Oxford and Cam- umbillons find a home Mr Evelyn Waugh at their head. bridge. Mr John Strachey and Mr Waugh, indeed, has beauti- Mr Kingsley Martin represent the more intellectual strain in place in his description of the same stable. Bellamy's in Men at Arms.

of the new building as Hu Is the first Prime Minister offices. The project is op- this century to belong to six fully caught the genius of the posed by the LCC. The clubs.

Army and Navy, however, He does not, however, just is having better luck with a belong to them. He uses them. similar scheme on its Pall Mall site.

Old Leather

Inside London's

#

arc

Surprisingly enough, in the White's is social, nol Athenacum, that temple of the Establishment, Mr A. J. P. That is what cheers the dwind-political, club. Its members are ling ranks of the regulars.

not just clubmen. They Taylor is prominent, Now Mr Ever since that first trium clubbable men. That does not R. H. S. Crossman has gone to phant evening of his Premler mean that no politicians are to join him. There are the mak ship when he dined with his to found on the books. More ings of quite an interesting litle Chief Whip at the Turt and Vian д score of Tory MPa cell there. talked patronage over oysters belong. But the really ambitious

is

and

clubs it the same tale, Standards of Bervice have fallen, Costs have risen and so have prices. Un-

to.

champagne they

known him as Aman their own heart.

The Athenaeum is sometimes

have MP, the man who means to find pictured as a hotbed of bishops, aher room right at the top, would not There are certainly a lot of And, when a be well advised in these sober them there, Indeed, there are few months later, while drink- days to be associated with the more than a hundred clergymen heard of expedients have being port with Sir Victor Falkes particular cachet which White's of one kind or another. (There resorted

Women have what has always poached on been a man's preserve -

99 guests, and in waltresses, some clubs even as members in their own right in specially created annexes.

at the Carlton, he spoke of offers.

that middle-class lawyer, Sci- wyn Lloyd," the whole of Club- land raised a laugh.

Raffish

Pratt's Club is not just a home from home for Mr Macmillan,

וּי

This may explain why Mr Macmillan ins missed out here. Though it does not explain why Mr Macleod has nol. He may bridge, have joined for the however.

The Socialists

Since Richard Stokes

died

are none at all, of course, at White's).

Old Hat

A

But there is also Mr Stephen But still the smell of old

Polter observing specimens. leather remains, evoking the

And Sir Charles Snow examin- atmosphere of a man's home

ing, one feels, tho: Mastera from "home. On the writing

rather than the New Men tables the mourning paper still He is in a sense At Home there,

For this small, exclusive estab

mixed bag; but on the whole stands. The card room echoca lishment, one of the last of the

Tather Old Hat. Even Me with the sound of serious id proprietary clubs, is owned by white's has been without a Ramsay Macdonald made the ding. The struggle to survive. Els nephew, the Duke of Devon- Socialist, Brooke's which used Athenaeum in his latter days. to preserve the old ways, con- shiro.

to be to Whigs what White's was tinues,

Otherwise, apart from Sir Most of the Prime Minister's to Tories--still has one, Mr E. L. This year struggling.clubmen have received a dilip, Since relations, however, belong. to Mailaliou. Otherwise Brook's is Hartley Shawcross and Sir lesa inlolasting Frank Sosisice and Me Dingle January Britain has had a true White's across the road. Best now just a

Foot, happy with the lawyers clubman at 10 Downing Street.. known to the publle as the club edition of White's.

Aneurin Sir Anthony, of course, belonged on whose steps Mr

Where, then, do Socialists and the actors at the Garrick, was kicked in his

and a handful of Radicals at to the Carlion. But that is com- Bevan

Tory Prime regenerate days, White's has bolong? Many are rather pro- the Reform, Socialists do with man form for

more than vincial. Mr Ian Mikardo "bo-

out club life. Minister, Mr Macmillan can maintained through

Pratt's, two centuries delightfully longs to the Reading Trade notch up the Turf,

Bonus So, came to think of it, do Union Working Men's, Buck's, the Athenacum and the rafish reputation.

the population of beefsteak sa well as the Carl- Among the men of wealth and of the elder, respectable middle- most of

title and good humour a small class leaders like Lord Attlee Britain.

A

this

after John, 30 years stormy night, and leaving this poor and holy community, was

to

He was to bé lying in a feed- fog trough

There they found Joseph and the Child.

Mary and

go out into these rocky immediately they blurted out wantes dressed in a tunic what had happened on the woven from canel's hair, with slopes. They were extreinely

leather belt strapped around excited

rushed upstairs his Coins, and cat off the land, to tell the people in the ins, locuste and wild honey.

aying exactly what had hap-

and

He was to announce that the pened, that in the cattle trough Messiah had arrived, the the Infant was lying for whom Messiah of whom the commu- they had all been walling.

The two soldiers made their

irs

nity at Qumran had dreamed,

that people should confess Jokes; the official was more and Meir sins and have them washed Interested

the girl; tho away by immersing themselves villagers may have shrugged. All were astonished at the In the Jordan,

But this night the people in words of the shepherds.

But Mary, tired now after Qumra: die silent except to

alo.

sing their hymns, recite their her delivery and happy Laws, and copy out their spered took careful note of all that the books. Their ideas, however, shepherds told her and turned

are already in other minds.

The shepherds outside Belble

certainly knew hem teachings of the community

of

the

their words over and over in her mind.

The shepherds did not wait,

a could not, for their flocks were

few miles below them, by the sill on the all sides and their rocky valleys of the Dead Sea. place was with the sheep and

From here came their goals. imagery, the Ideas, the fears and hopes, the awe that filed their minds this stormy night,

The angel

They left full of happiness, pralking God "glorifying and for all the things that they had heard and seën, as it was told unto them."

The storm did not abate. It thundered over Bethlehem, it THE thing is now to try to underat over Jerusalem, it

thundered

Judea thest shepherds Galilee, it thundered over Herod

this a

THE

enter

minds this night

thunderous storm rages;

to

over

and

and it thundered over the men

enter their minds and the minds and women at Qumran, down of those to whom they told by the Dead Sea, who prayed their tale, and of those who and sung and waited for their much later wrote it down.

03 the, Suddenly, perhaps

and their lightning flashed flocks cowered and they wrap- ped their cloaks tighter around

TAIKOO

Messiah.

TOMORROW: The aftermath

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