p.

4.

Saturday Oct 11th Well darling - this recruiting meeting was quite
an affair, I must tell you all about it. Ben came along
with me, as interpreter. Having had quite an amout of
practice by now with lectures to the Coy & so on, we
are pretty good together. I know just how many sentences
he can cope with in each go - he is able to sense
when I am stopping to allow him to carry on translating,
when I am pausing for effect, or to find a word.

First of all we met Zaharoff - you remember me
telling you about him? who took us to dinner at Ritz
in Tel Aviv. The meeting was at a Cinema in the city -
all Jewish cinemas are closed on Friday evenings. There
we found an enormous crowd - between 2 & 3,000 I should
imagine, because it was a big place & many people
were standing. On the platform I found various
people - including Mr Shartok, who is the head of the
political department of the Jewish Agency, & after Dr
Weizman, who is mostly in England & America.
Probably the most important Jew in Palestine today:
& a Major Aran, who is English, a member of the
Samuel family, bears the distinction of being the
first Palestinian Jew (that sounds a little contradictory
but he left England some years ago, & joined up as a
Palestinian) to command a Jewish unit - he is R.A.S.C..
The Chairman kicked off in Hebrew of course I could
not understand a word - but Shartok who was sitting
next to me kept me roughly informed. Aran then
made the first speech. Then the Chairman was up
again. I heard my name mentioned, & found tht I
was on next. I drew several round of loud applause
in my first few sentences, by telling them that