Item 03: Frank Hurley war diary, 24 January-13 August 1918 - Page 24
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[Page 24]
with a protecting wire around it, and the place being below ground and dimly lit, impresses one more as a tomb. Streams come and go and reverently kneel before the birth place, wrapt in adoration, maintain a ceaseless hum with their fervent prayers. Even in this dark chamber a guard is placed, as infact there is before all the temples and places of worship. There are numerous chapels like catacombs, beneath the ground, hewn out of the solid rock, dedicated to the various saints. This place is the apocryphal scene of the massacre of the Bethlehem infants.
What is particularly impressive about this old church, and true also, is the fact:- that whilst every other church in Palestine was converted by the Moslems into Mohmmidan places of worship, the church of the Nativity remained christian,