{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_13468/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_13468","id":"gutenberg_13468","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13468","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Category: Travel Writing","Jerusalem","Jews -- Restoration","Judaism","Palestine"],"text":"THE NEW JERUSALEM\n\nby\n\nG. K. CHESTERTON\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\nThis book is only an uncomfortably large note-book; and it has\nthe disadvantages, whether or no it has the advantages, of notes that were\ntaken on the spot.  Owing to the unexpected distraction of other duties,\nthe notes were published in a newspaper as they were made on the spot;\nand are now reproduced in a book as they were published in the newspaper.\nThe only exception refers to the last chapter on Zionism; and even\nthere the book only reverts to the original note-book. A difference\nof opinion, which divided the writer of the book from the politics\nof the newspaper, prevented the complete publication of that chapter\nin that place.  I recognise that any expurgated form of it would\nhave falsified the proportions of my attempt to do justice in a very\ndifficult problem; but on re-reading even my own attempt in extenso,\nI am far from satisfied that the proper proportions are kept.\nI wrote these first impressions in Palestine, where everybody\nrecognises the Jew as something quite distinct from the Englishman\nor the European; and where his unpopularity even moved me in the\ndirection of his defence.  But I admit it was something of a shock\nto return to a conventional atmosphere, in which that unpopularity\nis still actually denied or described as mere persecution.\nIt was more of a shock to realise that this most obscurantist of all types\nof obscurantism is still sometimes regarded as a sort of liberalism.\nTo talk of the Jews always as the oppressed and never as the\noppressors is simply absurd; it is as if men pleaded for reasonable\nhelp for exiled French aristocrats or ruined Irish landlords,\nand forgot that the French and Irish peasants had any wrongs at all.\nMoreover, the Jews in the West do not seem so much concerned to ask,\nas I have done however tentatively here, whether a larger and less\nlocal colonial development might really transfer the bulk of Israel\nto a more independent basis, as simply to demand that Jews shall\ncontinue to control other nations as well as their own.  It might be\nworth while for England to take risks to settle the Jewish problem;\nbut not to take risks merely to unsettle the Arab problem,\nand leave the Jewish problem unsolved.\n\nFor the rest, there must under the circumstances be only too\nmany mistakes; the historical conjectures, for they can be no more,\nare founded on authorities sufficiently recognised for me to be permitted\nto trust them; but I have never pretended to the knowledge necessary\nto check them.  I am aware that there are many disputed points;\nas for instance the connection of Gerard, the fiery Templar,\nwith the English town of Bideford.  I am also aware that some are\nsensitive about the spelling of words; and the very proof-readers\nwill sometimes revolt and turn Mahomet into Mohammed.\nUpon this point, however, I am unrepentant; for I never could see\nthe point of altering a form with historic and even heroic fame in our\nown language, for the sake of reproducing by an arrangement of our\nletters something that is really written in quite different letters,\nand probably pronounced with quite a different accent.  In speaking\nof the great prophet I am therefore resolved to call him Mahomet;\nand am prepared, on further provocation, to call him Mahound.\n\nG. K. C.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n CHAPTER I      THE WAY OF THE CITIES\n CHAPTER II     THE WAY OF THE DESERT\n CHAPTER III    THE GATES OF THE CITY\n CHAPTER IV     THE PHILOSOPHY OF SIGHT-SEEING\n CHAPTER V      THE STREETS OF THE CITY\n CHAPTER VI     THE GROUPS OF THE CITY\n CHAPTER VII    THE SHADOW OF THE PROBLEM\n CHAPTER VIII   THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DESERT\n CHAPTER IX     THE BATTLE WITH THE DRAGON\n CHAPTER X      THE ENDLESS EMPIRE\n CHAPTER XI     THE MEANING OF THE CRUSADE\n CHAPTER XII    THE FALL OF CHIVALRY\n CHAPTER XIII   THE PROBLEM OF ZIONISM\n CONCLUSION\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE WAY OF THE CITIES\n\nIt was in the season of Christmas that I came out of my little garden\nin that \"field of the beeches\" between the Chilterns and the Thames,\nand began to walk backwards through history to the place from which\nChristmas came.  For it is often necessary to walk backwards, as a man\non the wrong road goes back to a sign-post to find the right road.\nThe modern man is more like a traveller who has forgotten the name\nof his destination, and has to go back whence he came, even to find out\nwhere he is going.  That the world has lost its way few will now deny;\nand it did seem to me that I found at last a sort of sign-post,\nof a singular and significant shape, and saw for a moment in my mind\nthe true map of the modern wanderings; but whether I shall be able\nto say anything of what I saw, this story must show.\n\nI had said farewell to all my friends, or all those with my own limited\nnumber of legs; and nothing living remained but a dog and a donkey.\nThe reader will learn with surprise that my first feeling of fellowship\nwent out to the dog; I am well aware that I lay open my guard to a lunge\nof wit.  The dog is rather like a donkey, or a small caricature of one,\nwith a large black head and long black ears; but in the mood of the\nmoment there was rather a moral contrast than a pictorial parallel.\nFor the dog did indeed seem to stand for home and everything I was\nleaving behind me, with reluctance, especially that season of the year.\nFor one thing, he is named after Mr. Winkle, the Christmas guest\nof Mr. Wardle; and there is indeed something Dickensian in his union\nof domesticity with exuberance.  He jumped about me, barking like\na small battery, under the impression that I was going for a walk;\nbut I could not, alas, take him with me on a stroll to Palestine.\nIncidentally, he would have been out of place; for dogs have not\ntheir due honour in the East; and this seemed to sharpen my sense\nof my own domestic sentinel as a sort of symbol of the West.\nOn the other hand, the East is full of donkeys, often very\ndignified donkeys; and when I turned my attention to the other\ngrotesque quadruped, with an even larger head and even longer ears,\nhe seemed to take on a deep shade of oriental mystery.\nI know not why these two absurd creatures tangled themselves up\nso much in my train of thought, like dragons in an illuminated text;\nor ramped like gargoyles on either side of the gateway of my adventure.\nBut in truth they were in some sense symbols of the West and the East\nafter all.  The dog's very lawlessness is but an extravagance\nof loyalty; he will go mad with joy three times on the same day,\nat going out for a walk down the same road.  The modern world\nis full of fantastic forms of animal worship; a religion generally\naccompanied with human sacrifice.  Yet we hear strangely little of\nthe real merits of animals; and one of them surely is this innocence\nof all boredom; perhaps such simplicity is the absence of sin.\nI have some sense myself of the sacred duty of surprise;\nand the need of seeing the old road as a new road.  But I cannot\nclaim that whenever I go out for a walk with my family and friends,\nI rush in front of them volleying vociferous shouts of happiness;\nor even leap up round them attempting to lick their faces.  It is in this\npower of beginning again with energy upon familiar and homely things\nthat the dog is really the eternal type of the Western civilisation.\nAnd the donkey is really as different as is the Eastern civilisation.\nHis very anarchy is a sort of secrecy; his very revolt is a secret.\nHe does not leap up because he wishes to share my walk,\nbut to follow his own way, as lonely as the wild ass of Scripture.\nMy own beast of burden supports the authority of Scripture\nby being a very wild ass.  I have given him the name of Trotsky,\nbecause he seldom trots, but either scampers or stands still.\nHe scampers all over the field when it is necessary to catch him,\nand stands still when it is really urgent to drive him.\nHe also breaks fences, eats vegetables, and fulfills other functions;\nbetween delays and destructions he could ruin a really poor man\nin a day.  I wish this fact were more often remembered, in judging\nwhether really poor men have really been cruel to donkeys.\nBut I assure the reader that I am not cruel to my donkey; the cruelty\nis all the other way.  He kicks the people who try to catch him;\nand again I am haunted by a dim human parallel.  For it seems to me\nthat many of us, in just detestation of the dirty trick of cruelty\nto animals, have really a great deal of patience with animals;\nmore patience, I fear, than many of us have with human beings.\nSuppose I had to go out and catch my secretary in a field\nevery morning; and suppose my secretary always kicked me by way\nof beginning the day's work; I wonder whether that day's work\nwould resume its normal course as if nothing had happened.\nNothing graver than these grotesque images and groping speculations\nwould come into my conscious mind just then, though at the back\nof it there was an indescribable sense of regret and parting.\nAll through my wanderings the dog remained in my memory as a\nDickensian and domestic emblem of England; and if it is difficult\nto take a donkey seriously, it ought to be easiest, at least,\nfor a man who is going to Jerusalem.\n\nThere was a cloud of Christmas weather on the great grey beech-woods\nand the silver cross of the cross-roads. For the four roads that meet\nin the market-place of my little town make one of the largest and\nsimplest of such outlines on the map of England; and the shape as it\nshines on that wooded chart always affects me in a singular fashion.\nThe sight of the cross-roads is in a true sense the sign of the cross.\nFor it is the sign of a truly Christian thing; that sharp combination\nof liberty and limitation which we call choice.  A man is entirely\nfree to choose between right and left, or between right and wrong.\nAs I looked for the last time at the pale roads under the load of cloud,\nI knew that our civilisation had indeed come to the cross-roads.\nAs the paths grew fainter, fading under the gathering shadow,\nI felt rather as if it had lost its way in a forest.\n\nIt was at the time when people were talking about some menace\nof the end of the world, not apocalyptic but astronomical;\nand the cloud that covered the little town of Beaconsfield might\nhave fitted in with such a fancy.  It faded, however, as I left\nthe place further behind; and in London the weather, though wet,\nwas comparatively clear.  It was almost as if Beaconsfield had\na domestic day of judgment, and an end of the world all to itself.\nIn a sense Beaconsfield has four ends of the world, for its\nfour corners are named \"ends\" after the four nearest towns.\nBut I was concerned only with the one called London End;\nand the very name of it was like a vision of some vain thing at\nonce ultimate and infinite.  The very title of London End sounds\nlike the other end of nowhere, or (what is worse) of everywhere.\nIt suggests a sort of derisive riddle; where does London End?  As I\ncame up through the vast vague suburbs, it was this sense of London\nas a shapeless and endless muddle that chiefly filled my mind.\nI seemed still to carry the cloud with me; and when I looked up,\nI almost expected to see the chimney-pots as tangled as the trees.\n\nAnd in truth if there was now no material fog, there was any amount\nof mental and moral fog.  The whole industrial world symbolised\nby London had reached a curious complication and confusion,\nnot easy to parallel in human history.  It is not a question\nof controversies, but rather of cross-purposes. As I went\nby Charing Cross my eye caught a poster about Labour politics,\nwith something about the threat of Direct Action and a demand\nfor Nationalisation.  And quite apart from the merits of the case,\nit struck me that after all the direct action is very indirect,\nand the thing demanded is many steps away from the thing desired.\nIt is all part of a sort of tangle, in which terms and things cut\nacross each other.  The employers talk about \"private enterprise,\"\nas if there were anything private about modern enterprise.\nIts combines are as big as many commonwealths; and things advertised\nin large letters on the sky cannot plead the shy privileges of privacy.\nMeanwhile the Labour men talk about the need to \"nationalise\" the mines\nor the land, as if it were not the great difficulty in a plutocracy\nto nationalise the Government, or even to nationalise the nation.\nThe Capitalists praise competition while they create monopoly;\nthe Socialists urge a strike to turn workmen into soldiers and\nstate officials; which is logically a strike against strikes.\nI merely mention it as an example of the bewildering inconsistency,\nand for no controversial purpose.  My own sympathies are\nwith the Socialists; in so far that there is something to be\nsaid for Socialism, and nothing to be said for Capitalism.\nBut the point is that when there is something to be said for one thing,\nit is now commonly said in support of the opposite thing.\nNever since the mob called out, \"Less bread!  More taxes!\"\nin the nonsense story, has there been so truly nonsensical\na situation as that in which the strikers demand Government\ncontrol and the Government denounces its own control as anarchy.\nThe mob howls before the palace gates, \"Hateful tyrant, we demand that you\nassume more despotic powers\"; and the tyrant thunders from the balcony,\n\"Vile rebels, do you dare to suggest that my powers should be extended?\"\nThere seems to be a little misunderstanding somewhere.\n\nIn truth everything I saw told me that there was a large\nmisunderstanding everywhere; a misunderstanding amounting to a mess.\nAnd as this was the last impression that London left on me, so it\nwas the impression I carried with me about the whole modern problem\nof Western civilisation, as a riddle to be read or a knot to be untied.\nTo untie it it is necessary to get hold of the right end of it,\nand especially the other end of it.  We must begin at the beginning;\nwe must return to our first origins in history, as we must return\nto our first principles in philosophy.  We must consider how we\ncame to be doing what we do, and even saying what we say.\nAs it is, the very terms we use are either meaningless or something\nmore than meaningless, inconsistent even with themselves.\nThis applies, for instance, to the talk of both sides\nin that Labour controversy, which I merely took in passing,\nbecause it was the current controversy in London when I left.\nThe Capitalists say Bolshevism as one might say Boojum.\nIt is merely a mystical and imaginative word suggesting horror.\nBut it might mean many things; including some just and rational things.\nOn the other hand, there could never be any meaning at\nall in the phrase \"the dictatorship of the proletariat.\"\nIt is like saying, \"the omnipotence of omnibus-conductors.\"\nIt is fairly obvious that if an omnibus-conductor were omnipotent,\nhe would probably prefer to conduct something else besides an omnibus.\nWhatever its exponents mean, it is clearly something different\nfrom what they say; and even this verbal inconsistency, this mere\nwelter of words, is a sign of the common confusion of thought.\nIt is this sort of thing that made London seem like a limbo\nof lost words, and possibly of lost wits.  And it is here we find\nthe value of what I have called walking backwards through history.\n\nIt is one of the rare merits of modern mechanical travel that it\nenables us to compare widely different cities in rapid succession.\nThe stages of my own progress were the chief cities of\nseparate countries; and though more is lost in missing the countries,\nsomething is gained in so sharply contrasting the capitals.\nAnd again it was one of the advantages of my own progress that it\nwas a progress backwards; that it happened, as I have said,\nto retrace the course of history to older and older things;\nto Paris and to Rome and to Egypt, and almost, as it were, to Eden.\nAnd finally it is one of the advantages of such a return that it\ndid really begin to clarify the confusion of names and notions\nin modern society.  I first became conscious of this when I\nwent out of the Gare de Lyon and walked along a row of cafes,\nuntil I saw again a distant column crowned with a dancing figure;\nthe freedom that danced over the fall of the Bastille.\nHere at least, I thought, is an origin and a standard,\nsuch as I missed in the mere muddle of industrial opportunism.\nThe modern industrial world is not in the least democratic; but it is\nsupposed to be democratic, or supposed to be trying to be democratic.\nThe ninth century, the time of the Norse invasions, was not saintly\nin the sense of being filled with saints; it was filled with pirates\nand petty tyrants, and the first feudal anarchy.  But sanctity\nwas the only ideal those barbarians had, when they had any at all.\nAnd democracy is the only ideal the industrial millions have,\nwhen they have any at all.  Sanctity was the light of the Dark Ages,\nor if you will the dream of the Dark Ages.  And democracy is the dream\nof the dark age of industrialism; if it be very much of a dream.\nIt is this which prophets promise to achieve, and politicians pretend\nto achieve, and poets sometimes desire to achieve, and sometimes\nonly desire to desire.  In a word, an equal citizenship is quite\nthe reverse of the reality in the modern world; but it is still\nthe ideal in the modern world.  At any rate it has no other ideal.\nIf the figure that has alighted on the column in the Place de la\nBastille be indeed the spirit of liberty, it must see a million growths\nin a modern city to make it wish to fly back again into heaven.\nBut our secular society would not know what goddess to put on\nthe pillar in its place.\n\nAs I looked at that sculptured goddess on that classical column,\nmy mind went back another historic stage, and I asked myself\nwhere this classic and republican ideal came from, and the answer\nwas equally clear.  The place from which it had come was the place\nto which I was going; Rome.  And it was not until I had reached Rome\nthat I adequately realised the next great reality that simplified\nthe whole story, and even this particular part of the story.\nI know nothing more abruptly arresting than that sudden steepness,\nas of streets scaling the sky, where stands, now cased in tile and brick\nand stone, that small rock that rose and overshadowed the whole earth;\nthe Capitol.  Here in the grey dawn of our history sat the strong\nRepublic that set her foot upon the necks of kings; and it was from\nhere assuredly that the spirit of the Republic flew like an eagle\nto alight on that far-off pillar in the country of the Gauls.\nFor it ought to be remembered (and it is too often forgotten)\nthat if Paris inherited what may be called the authority of Rome,\nit is equally true that Rome anticipated all that is sometimes\ncalled the anarchy of Paris.  The expansion of the Roman Empire\nwas accompanied by a sort of permanent Roman Revolution, fully as\nfurious as the French Revolution.  So long as the Roman system was\nreally strong, it was full of riots and mobs and democratic divisions;\nand any number of Bastilles fell as the temple of the victories rose.\nBut though I had but a hurried glance at such things, there were\namong them some that further aided the solution of the problem.\nI saw the larger achievements of the later Romans; and the lesson\nthat was still lacking was plainly there.  I saw the Coliseum,\na monument of that love of looking on at athletic sports,\nwhich is noted as a sign of decadence in the Roman Empire and\nof energy in the British Empire.  I saw the Baths of Caracalla,\nwitnessing to a cult of cleanliness, adduced also to prove the luxury\nof Ancient Romans and the simplicity of Anglo-Saxons. All it\nreally proves either way is a love of washing on a large scale;\nwhich might merely indicate that Caracalla, like other Emperors,\nwas a lunatic.  But indeed what such things do indicate,\nif only indirectly, is something which is here much more important.\nThey indicate not only a sincerity in the public spirit,\nbut a certain smoothness in the public services.  In a word,\nwhile there were many revolutions, there were no strikes.\nThe citizens were often rebels; but there were men who were not rebels,\nbecause they were not citizens.  The ancient world forced a number\nof people to do the work of the world first, before it allowed\nmore privileged people to fight about the government of the world.\nThe truth is trite enough, of course; it is in the single word Slavery,\nwhich is not the name of a crime like Simony, but rather of a scheme\nlike Socialism.  Sometimes very like Socialism.\n\nOnly standing idly on one of those grassy mounds under one of\nthose broken arches, I suddenly saw the Labour problem of London,\nas I could not see it in London.  I do not mean that I saw which side\nwas right, or what solution was reliable, or any partisan points\nor repartees, or any practical details about practical difficulties.\nI mean that I saw what it was; the thing itself and the whole thing.\nThe Labour problem of to-day stood up quite simply, like a\npeak at which a man looks back and sees single and solid,\nthough when he was walking over it it was a wilderness of rocks.\nThe Labour problem is the attempt to have the democracy of Paris\nwithout the slavery of Rome.  Between the Roman Republic and the\nFrench Republic something had happened.  Whatever else it was, it was\nthe abandonment of the ancient and fundamental human habit of slavery;\nthe numbering of men for necessary labour as the normal foundation\nof society, even a society in which citizens were free and equal.\nWhen the idea of equal citizenship returned to the world, it found\nthat world changed by a much more mysterious version of equality.\nSo that London, handing on the lamp from Paris as well as Rome,\nis faced with a new problem touching the old practice of getting\nthe work of the world done somehow.  We have now to assume not\nonly that all citizens are equal, but that all men are citizens.\nCapitalism attempted it by combining political equality with\neconomic inequality; it assumed the rich could always hire the poor.\nBut Capitalism seems to me to have collapsed; to be not only\na discredited ethic but a bankrupt business.  Whether we shall\nreturn to pagan slavery, or to small property, or by guilds\nor otherwise get to work in a new way, is not the question here.\nThe question here was the one I asked myself standing on that green\nmound beside the yellow river; and the answer to it lay ahead of me,\nalong the road that ran towards the rising sun.\n\nWhat made the difference?  What was it that had happened\nbetween the rise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the\nFrench Republic?  Why did the equal citizens of the first take it\nfor granted that there would be slaves?  Why did the equal citizens\nof the second take it for granted that there would not be slaves?\nHow had this immemorial institution disappeared in the interval,\nso that nobody even dreamed of it or suggested it?  How was it that\nwhen equality returned, it was no longer the equality of citizens,\nand had to be the equality of men?  The answer is that this equality\nof men is in more senses than one a mystery.  It is a mystery which I\npondered as I stood in the corridor of the train going south from Rome.\nIt was at daybreak, and (as it happened) before any one else\nhad risen, that I looked out of the long row of windows across\na great landscape grey with olives and still dark against the dawn.\nThe dawn itself looked rather like a row of wonderful windows;\na line of low casements unshuttered and shining under the eaves\nof cloud.  There was a curious clarity about the sunrise;\nas if its sun might be made of glass rather than gold.\nIt was the first time I had seen so closely and covering such\na landscape the grey convolutions and hoary foliage of the olive;\nand all those twisted trees went by like a dance of dragons in a dream.\nThe rocking railway-train and the vanishing railway-line seemed to be\ngoing due east, as if disappearing into the sun; and save for the noise\nof the train there was no sound in all that grey and silver solitude;\nnot even the sound of a bird.  Yet the plantations were mostly marked\nout in private plots and bore every trace of the care of private owners.\nIt is seldom, I confess, that I so catch the world asleep,\nnor do I know why my answer should have come to me thus when I was\nmyself only half-awake. It is common in such a case to see some new\nsignal or landmark; but in my experience it is rather the things\nalready grown familiar that suddenly grow strange and significant.\nA million olives must have flashed by before I saw the first olive;\nthe first, so to speak, which really waved the olive branch.\nFor I remembered at last to what land I was going; and I knew the name\nof the magic which had made all those peasants out of pagan slaves,\nand has presented to the modern world a new problem of labour\nand liberty.  It was as if I already saw against the clouds\nof daybreak that mountain which takes its title from the olive:\nand standing half visible upon it, a figure at which I did not look.\n_Ex oriente lux_; and I knew what dawn had broken over the ruins of Rome.\n\nI have taken but this one text or label, out of a hundred such,\nthe matter of labour and liberty; and thought it worth\nwhile to trace it from one blatant and bewildering yellow\nposter in the London streets to its high places in history.\nBut it is only one example of the way in which a thousand things\ngrouped themselves and fell into perspective as I passed farther and\nfarther from them, and drew near the central origins of civilisation.\nI do not say that I saw the solution; but I saw the problem.\nIn the litter of journalism and the chatter of politics, it is too\nmuch of a puzzle even to be a problem.  For instance, a friend\nof mine described his book, _The Path to Rome_, as a journey through\nall Europe that the Faith had saved; and I might very well describe\nmy own journey as one through all Europe that the War has saved.\nThe trail of the actual fighting, of course, was awfully\napparent everywhere; the plantations of pale crosses seemed to crop\nup on every side like growing things; and the first French villages\nthrough which I passed had heard in the distance, day and night,\nthe guns of the long battle-line, like the breaking of an endless\nexterior sea of night upon the very borderland of the world.\nI felt it most as we passed the noble towers of Amiens, so near\nthe high-water mark of the high tide of barbarism, in that night\nof terror just before the turning of the tide.  For the truth which\nthus grew clearer with travel is rightly represented by the metaphor\nof the artillery, as the thunder and surf of a sea beyond the world.\nWhatever else the war was, it was like the resistance of something\nas solid as land, and sometimes as patient and inert as land,\nagainst something as unstable as water, as weak as water; but also as\n_strong_ as water, as strong as water is in a cataract or a flood.\nIt was the resistance of form to formlessness; that version or\nvision of it seemed to clarify itself more and more as I went on.\nIt was the defence of that same ancient enclosure in which stood\nthe broken columns of the Roman forum and the column in the\nParis square, and of all other such enclosures down to the domestic\nenclosures of my own dog and donkey.  All had the same design,\nthe marking out of a square for the experiment of liberty;\nof the old civic liberty or the later universal liberty.\nI knew, to take the domestic metaphor, that the watchdog of the West\nhad again proved too strong for the wild dogs of the Orient.\nFor the foes of such creative limits are chaos and old night, whether they\nare the Northern barbarism that pitted tribal pride and brutal drill\nagainst the civic ideal of Paris, or the Eastern barbarism that brought\nbrigands out of the wilds of Asia to sit on the throne of Byzantium.\nAnd as in the other case, what I saw was something simpler and\nlarger than all the disputed details about the war and the peace.\nA man may think it extraordinary, as I do, that the natural dissolution\nof the artificial German Empire into smaller states should have\nactually been prevented by its enemies, when it was already accepted\nin despair by its friends.  For we are now trying hard to hold\nthe Prussian system together, having hammered hard for four mortal\nyears to burst it asunder.  Or he may think exactly the opposite;\nit makes no difference to the larger fact I have in mind.\nA man may think it simply topsy-turvy, as I do, that we should\nclear the Turks out of Turkey, but leave them in Constantinople.\nFor that is driving the barbarians from their own rude tillage\nand pasturage, and giving up to them our own European and Christian city;\nit is as if the Romans annexed Parthia but surrendered Rome.\nBut he may think exactly the opposite; and the larger and simpler\ntruth will still be there.  It was that the weeds and wild\nthings had been everywhere breaking into our boundaries,\nclimbing over the northern wall or crawling through the eastern gate,\nso that the city would soon have been swallowed in the jungle.\nAnd whether the lines had been redrawn logically or loosely,\nor particular things cleared with consistency or caprice, a line\nhas been drawn somewhere and a clearance has been made somehow.\nThe ancient plan of our city has been saved; a city at least\ncapable of containing citizens.  I felt this in the chance relics\nof the war itself; I felt it twenty times more in those older relics\nwhich even the war had never touched at all; I felt the change\nas much in the changeless East as in the ever-changing West.\nI felt it when I crossed another great square in Paris to look\nat a certain statue, which I had last seen hung with crape\nand such garlands as we give the dead; but on whose plain\npedestal nothing now is left but the single word \"Strasbourg.\"\nI felt it when I saw words merely scribbled with a pencil on a wall\nin a poor street in Brindisi; _Italia vittoriosa_.  But I felt it\nas much or even more in things infinitely more ancient and remote;\nin those monuments like mountains that still seem to look down\nupon all modern things.  For these things were more than a trophy\nthat had been raised, they were a palladium that had been rescued.\nThese were the things that had again been saved from chaos,\nas they were saved at Salamis and Lepanto; and I knew what had\nsaved them or at least in what formation they had been saved.\nI knew that these scattered splendours of antiquity would hardly\nhave descended to us at all, to be endangered or delivered,\nif all that pagan world had not crystallised into Christendom.\n\nCrossing seas as smooth as pavements inlaid with turquoise\nand lapis lazuli, and relieved with marble mountains as clear\nand famous as marble statues, it was easy to feel all that had\nbeen pure and radiant even in the long evening of paganism;\nbut that did not make me forget what strong stars had comforted\nthe inevitable night.  The historical moral was the same whether\nthese marble outlines were merely \"the isles\" seen afar off like\nsunset clouds by the Hebrew prophets, or were felt indeed as Hellas,\nthe great archipelago of arts and arms praised by the Greek poets;\nthe historic heritage of both descended only to the Greek Fathers.\nIn those wild times and places, the thing that preserved both was\nthe only thing that would have permanently preserved either.\nIt was but part of the same story when we passed the hoary\nhills that held the primeval culture of Crete, and remembered\nthat it may well have been the first home of the Philistines.\nIt mattered the less by now whether the pagans were best\nrepresented by Poseidon the deity or by Dagon the demon.\nIt mattered the less what gods had blessed the Greeks in their youth\nand liberty; for I knew what god had blessed them in their despair.\nI knew by what sign they had survived the long slavery under\nOttoman orientalism; and upon what name they had called in the darkness,\nwhen there was no light but the horned moon of Mahound.\nIf the glory of Greece has survived in some sense, I knew why it\nhad ever survived in any sense.  Nor did this feeling of our fixed\nformation fail me when I came to the very gates of Asia and of Africa;\nwhen there rose out of the same blue seas the great harbour of Alexandria;\nwhere had shone the Pharos like the star of Hellas, and where men\nhad heard from the lips of Hypatia the last words of Plato.\nI know the Christians tore Hypatia in pieces; but they did not tear\nPlato in pieces.  The wild men that rode behind Omar the Arab would\nhave thought nothing of tearing every page of Plato in pieces.\nFor it is the nature of all this outer nomadic anarchy that it is\ncapable sooner or later of tearing anything and everything in pieces;\nit has no instinct of preservation or of the permanent needs of men.\nWhere it has passed the ruins remain ruins and are not renewed;\nwhere it has been resisted and rolled back, the links of our long\nhistory are never lost.  As I went forward the vision of our\nown civilisation, in the form in which it finally found unity,\ngrew clearer and clearer; nor did I ever know it more certainly\nthan when I had left it behind.\n\nFor the vision was that of a shape appearing and reappearing among\nshapeless things; and it was a shape I knew.  The imagination was forced\nto rise into altitudes infinitely ancient and dizzy with distance,\nas if into the cold colours of primeval dawns, or into the upper\nstrata and dead spaces of a daylight older than the sun and moon.\nBut the character of that central clearance still became clearer\nand clearer.  And my memory turned again homewards; and I thought it\nwas like the vision of a man flying from Northolt, over that little\nmarket-place beside my own door; who can see nothing below him\nbut a waste as of grey forests, and the pale pattern of a cross.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE WAY OF THE DESERT\n\nIt may truly be said, touching the type of culture at least,\nthat Egypt has an Egyptian lower class, a French middle class and an\nEnglish governing class.  Anyhow it is true that the civilisations\nare stratified in this formation, or superimposed in this order.\nIt is the first impression produced by the darkness and density\nof the bazaars, the line of the lighted cafes and the blaze\nof the big hotels.  But it contains a much deeper truth in all\nthree cases, and especially in the case of the French influence.\nIt is indeed one of the first examples of what I mean by the divisions\nof the West becoming clearer in the ancient centres of the East.\nIt is often said that we can only appreciate the work of England in a\nplace like India.  In so far as this is true, it is quite equally true\nthat we can only appreciate the work of France in a place like Egypt.\nBut this work is of a peculiar and even paradoxical kind.\nIt is too practical to be prominent, and so universal that\nit is unnoticed.\n\nThe French view of the Rights of Man is called visionary;\nbut in practice it is very solid and even prosaic.\nThe French have a unique and successful trick by which French\nthings are not accepted as French.  They are accepted as human.\nHowever many foreigners played football, they would still consider\nfootball an English thing.  But they do not consider fencing\na French thing, though all the terms of it are still French.\nIf a Frenchman were to label his hostelry an inn or a public house\n(probably written publicouse) we should think him a victim of rather\nadvanced Anglomania.  But when an Englishman calls it an hotel,\nwe feel no special dread of him either as a dangerous foreigner\nor a dangerous lunatic.  We need not recognise less readily\nthe value of this because our own distinction is different;\nespecially as our own distinction is being more distinguished.\nThe spirit of the English is adventure; and it is the essence of adventure\nthat the adventurer does remain different from the strange tribes\nor strange cities, which he studies because of their strangeness.\nHe does not become like them, as did some of the Germans,\nor persuade them to become like him, as do most of the French.\nBut whether we like or dislike this French capacity, or merely\nappreciate it properly in its place, there can be no doubt\nabout the cause of that capacity.  The cause is in the spirit\nthat is so often regarded as wildly Utopian and unreal.\nThe cause is in the abstract creed of equality and citizenship;\nin the possession of a political philosophy that appeals to all men.\nIn truth men have never looked low enough for the success\nof the French Revolution.  They have assumed that it claims\nto be a sort of divine and distant thing, and therefore have\nnot noticed it in the nearest and most materialistic things.\nThey have watched its wavering in the senate and never seen it\nwalking in the streets; though it can be seen in the streets of Cairo\nas in the streets of Paris.\n\nIn Cairo a man thinks it English to go into a tea-shop;\nbut he does not think it French to go into a cafe. And the people\nwho go to the tea-shop, the English officers and officials,\nare stamped as English and also stamped as official.\nThey are generally genial, they are generally generous, but they\nhave the detachment of a governing group and even a garrison.\nThey cannot be mistaken for human beings.  The people going to a cafe\nare simply human beings going to it because it is a human place.\nThey have forgotten how much is French and how much Egyptian\nin their civilisation; they simply think of it as civilisation.\nNow this character of the older French culture must be grasped because\nit is the clue to many things in the mystery of the modern East.\nI call it an old culture because as a matter of fact it runs back\nto the Roman culture.  In this respect the Gauls really continue\nthe work of the Romans, in making something official which comes\nat last to be regarded as ordinary.  And the great fundamental fact\nwhich is incessantly forgotten and ought to be incessantly remembered,\nabout these cities and provinces of the near East, is that they\nwere once as Roman as Gaul.\n\nThere is a frivolous and fanciful debate I have often had with a friend,\nabout whether it is better to find one's way or to lose it, to remember\nthe road or to forget it.  I am so constituted as to be capable\nof losing my way in my own village and almost in my own house.\nAnd I am prepared to maintain the privilege to be a poetic one.\nIn truth I am prepared to maintain that both attitudes are valuable,\nand should exist side by side.  And so my friend and I walk side by side\nalong the ways of the world, he being full of a rich and humane sentiment,\nbecause he remembers passing that way a few hundred times since\nhis childhood; while to me existence is a perpetual fairy-tale,\nbecause I have forgotten all about it.  The lamp-post which moves\nhim to a tear of reminiscence wrings from me a cry of astonishment;\nand the wall which to him is as historic as a pyramid is to me\nas arresting and revolutionary as a barricade.  Now in this,\nI am glad to say, my temperament is very English; and the difference\nis very typical of the two functions of the English and the French.\nBut in practical politics the French have a certain advantage in knowing\nwhere they are, and knowing it is where they have been before.\nIt is in the Roman Empire.\n\nThe position of the English in Egypt or even in Palestine is something\nof a paradox.  The real English claim is never heard in England and never\nuttered by Englishmen.  We do indeed hear a number of false English\nclaims, and other English claims that are rather irrelevant than false.\nWe hear pompous and hypocritical suggestions, full of that which so\noften accompanies the sin of pride, the weakness of provinciality.\nWe hear suggestions that the English alone can establish anywhere\na reign of law, justice, mercy, purity and all the rest of it.\nWe also hear franker and fairer suggestions that the English\nhave after all (as indeed they have) embarked on a spirited\nand stirring adventure; and that there has been a real romance\nin the extending of the British Empire in strange lands.\nBut the real case for these semi-eastern occupations is not\nthat of extending the British Empire in strange lands.\nRather it is restoring the Roman Empire in familiar lands.\nIt is not merely breaking out of Europe in the search\nfor something non-European. It would be much truer to call\nit putting Europe together again after it had been broken.\nIt may almost be said of the Britons, considered as the most\nwestern of Europeans, that they have so completely forgotten\ntheir own history that they have forgotten even their own rights.\nAt any rate they have forgotten the claims that could reasonably be\nmade for them, but which they never think of making for themselves.\nThey have not the faintest notion, for instance, of why hundreds of years\nago an English saint was taken from Egypt, or why an English king\nwas fighting in Palestine.  They merely have a vague idea that George\nof Cappadocia was naturalised much in the same way as George of Hanover.\nThey almost certainly suppose that Coeur de Lion in his wanderings\nhappened to meet the King of Egypt, as Captain Cook might happen\nto meet the King of the Cannibal Islands.  To understand the past\nconnection of England with the near East, it is necessary to understand\nsomething that lies behind Europe and even behind the Roman Empire;\nsomething that can only be conveyed by the name of the Mediterranean.\nWhen people talk, for instance, as if the Crusades were nothing\nmore than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget\nin the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive\nraid against the old and ordered civilisation in these parts.\nI do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; as will be\napparent later, I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it;\nbut certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom\nthat was the thing invaded.  An Arabian gentleman found riding\non the road to Paris or hammering on the gates of Vienna can hardly\ncomplain that we have sought him out in his simple tent in the desert.\nThe conqueror of Sicily and Spain cannot reasonably express surprise at\nbeing an object of morbid curiosity to the people of Italy and France.\nIn the city of Cairo the stranger feels many of the Moslem merits,\nbut he certainly feels the militaristic character of the Moslem glories.\nThe crown of the city is the citadel, built by the great Saladin\nbut of the spoils of ancient Egyptian architecture; and that fact\nis in its turn very symbolical.  The man was a great conqueror,\nbut he certainly behaved like an invader; he spoiled the Egyptians.\nHe broke the old temples and tombs and built his own out of fragments.\nNor is this the only respect in which the citadel of Cairo is set\nhigh like a sign in heaven.  The sign is also significant because\nfrom this superb height the traveller first beholds the desert,\nout of which the great conquest came.\n\nEvery one has heard the great story of the Greeks who cried aloud\nin triumph when they saw the sea afar off; but it is a stranger\nexperience to see the earth afar off.  And few of us, strictly speaking,\nhave ever seen the earth at all.  In cultivated countries it\nis always clad, as it were, in green garments.  The first sight\nof the desert is like the sight of a naked giant in the distance.\nThe image is all the more natural because of the particular formation\nwhich it takes, at least as it borders upon the fields of Egypt,\nand as it is seen from the high places of Cairo.  Those who have seen\nthe desert only in pictures generally think of it as entirely flat.\nBut this edge of it at least stands up on the horizon, as a line\nof wrinkled and hollow hills like the scalps of bald men; or worse,\nof bald women.  For it is impossible not to think of such repulsive\nimages, in spite of real sublimity of the call to the imagination.\nThere is something curiously hostile and inhuman about the first\nappearance of the motionless surges of that dry and dreadful sea.\nAfterwards, if the traveller has happened to linger here and there\nin the outposts of the desert, has seen the British camp at Kantara\nor the graceful French garden town of Ismalia, he comes to take\nthe desert as a background, and sometimes a beautiful background;\na mirror of mighty reflections and changing colours almost as strange\nas the colours of the sea.  But when it is first seen abutting,\nand as it were, advancing, upon the fields and gardens of humanity,\nthen it looks indeed like an enemy, or a long line of enemies;\nlike a line of tawny wild beasts thus halted with their heads lifted.\nIt is the feeling that such vain and sterile sand can yet make\nitself into something like a mountain range; and the traveller\nremembers all the tragedies of the desert, when he lifts up his eyes\nto those accursed hills, from whence no help can come.\n\nBut this is only a first glimpse from a city set among green fields;\nand is concerned rather with what the desert has been in its relation\nto men than with what the desert is in itself.  When the mind has\ngrown used to its monotony, a curious change takes place which I\nhave never seen noted or explained by the students of mental science.\nIt may sound strange to say that monotony of its nature becomes novelty.\nBut if any one will try the common experiment of saying some ordinary\nword such as \"moon\" or \"man\" about fifty times, he will find\nthat the expression has become extraordinary by sheer repetition.\nA man has become a strange animal with a name as queer as that of the gnu;\nand the moon something monstrous like the moon-calf. Something\nof this magic of monotony is effected by the monotony of deserts;\nand the traveller feels as if he had entered into a secret,\nand was looking at everything from another side.  Something of this\nsimplification appears, I think, in the religions of the desert,\nespecially in the religion of Islam.  It explains something of the\nsuper-human hopes that fill the desert prophets concerning the future;\nit explains something also about their barbarous indifference\nto the past.\n\nWe think of the desert and its stones as old; but in one sense\nthey are unnaturally new.  They are unused, and perhaps unusable.\nThey might be the raw material of a world; only they are so raw\nas to be rejected.  It is not easy to define this quality of\nsomething primitive, something not mature enough to be fruitful.\nIndeed there is a hard simplicity about many Eastern things that is\nas much crude as archaic.  A palm-tree is very like a tree drawn\nby a child--or by a very futurist artist.  Even a pyramid is like\na mathematical figure drawn by a schoolmaster teaching children;\nand its very impressiveness is that of an ultimate Platonic abstraction.\nThere is something curiously simple about the shape in which\nthese colossal crystals of the ancient sands have been cast.\nIt is only when we have felt something of this element,\nnot only of simplicity, but of crudity, and even in a sense\nof novelty, that we can begin to understand both the immensity\nand the insufficiency of that power that came out of the desert,\nthe great religion of Mahomet.\n\nIn the red circle of the desert, in the dark and secret place,\nthe prophet discovers the obvious things.  I do not say it\nmerely as a sneer, for obvious things are very easily forgotten;\nand indeed every high civilisation decays by forgetting obvious things.\nBut it is true that in such a solitude men tend to take very simple\nideas as if they were entirely new ideas.  There is a love of\nconcentration which comes from the lack of comparison.  The lonely\nman looking at the lonely palm-tree does see the elementary truths\nabout the palm-tree; and the elementary truths are very essential.\nThus he does see that though the palm-tree may be a very simple design,\nit was not he who designed it.  It may look like a tree drawn\nby a child, but he is not the child who could draw it.  He has not\ncommand of that magic slate on which the pictures can come to life,\nor of that magic green chalk of which the green lines can grow.\nHe sees at once that a power is at work in whose presence\nhe and the palm-tree are alike little children.  In other words,\nhe is intelligent enough to believe in God; and the Moslem,\nthe man of the desert, is intelligent enough to believe in God.\nBut his belief is lacking in that humane complexity that comes\nfrom comparison.  The man looking at the palm-tree does realise\nthe simple fact that God made it; while the man looking at\nthe lamp-post in a large modern city can be persuaded by a hundred\nsophistical circumlocutions that he made it himself.  But the man\nin the desert cannot compare the palm-tree with the lamp-post,\nor even with all the other trees which may be better worth looking\nat than the lamp-post. Hence his religion, though true as far\nas it goes, has not the variety and vitality of the churches\nthat were designed by men walking in the woods and orchards.\nI speak here of the Moslem type of religion and not of the oriental type\nof ornament, which is much older than the Moslem type of religion.\nBut even the oriental type of ornament, admirable as it often is,\nis to the ornament of a gothic cathedral what a fossil forest is\nto a forest full of birds.  In short, the man of the desert tends\nto simplify too much, and to take his first truth for the last truth.\nAnd as it is with religion so it is with morality.  He who believes\nin the existence of God believes in the equality of man.  And it has\nbeen one of the merits of the Moslem faith that it felt men as men,\nand was not incapable of welcoming men of many different races.\nBut here again it was so hard and crude that its very equality was\nlike a desert rather than a field.  Its very humanity was inhuman.\n\nBut though this human sentiment is rather rudimentary it is very real.\nWhen a man in the desert meets another man, he is really\na man; the proverbial two-legged fowl without feathers.\nHe is an absolute and elementary shape, like the palm-tree\nor the pyramid.  The discoverer does not pause to consider\nthrough what gradations he may have been evolved from a camel.\nWhen the man is a mere dot in the distance, the other man does\nnot shout at him and ask whether he had a university education,\nor whether he is quite sure he is purely Teutonic and not Celtic\nor Iberian.  A man is a man; and a man is a very important thing.\nOne thing redeems the Moslem morality which can be set over against\na mountain of crimes; a considerable deposit of common sense.\nAnd the first fact of common sense is the common bond of men.\nThere is indeed in the Moslem character also a deep and most dangerous\npotentiality of fanaticism of the menace of which something may be\nsaid later.  Fanaticism sounds like the flat contrary of common sense;\nyet curiously enough they are both sides of the same thing.\nThe fanatic of the desert is dangerous precisely because he does\ntake his faith as a fact, and not even as a truth in our more\ntranscendental sense.  When he does take up a mystical idea he takes\nit as he takes the man or the palm-tree; that is, quite literally.\nWhen he does distinguish somebody not as a man but as a Moslem,\nthen he divides the Moslem from the non-Moslem exactly as he divides\nthe man from the camel.  But even then he recognises the equality of men\nin the sense of the equality of Moslems.  He does not, for instance,\ncomplicate his conscience with any sham science about races.\nIn this he has something like an intellectual advantage over\nthe Jew, who is generally so much his intellectual superior;\nand even in some ways his spiritual superior.  The Jew has far more\nmoral imagination and sympathy with the subtler ideals of the soul.\nFor instance, it is said that many Jews disbelieve in a future life;\nbut if they did believe in a future life, it would be something\nmore worthy of the genius of Isaiah and Spinoza.  The Moslem Paradise\nis a very Earthly Paradise.  But with all their fine apprehensions,\nthe Jews suffer from one heavy calamity; that of being a Chosen Race.\nIt is the vice of any patriotism or religion depending on race\nthat the individual is himself the thing to be worshipped;\nthe individual is his own ideal, and even his own idol.\nThis fancy was fatal to the Germans; it is fatal to the Anglo-Saxons,\nwhenever any of them forswear the glorious name of Englishmen\nand Americans to fall into that forlorn description.\nThis is not so when the nation is felt as a noble abstraction,\nof which the individual is proud in the abstract.\nA Frenchman is proud of France, and therefore may think himself\nunworthy of France.  But a German is proud of being a German;\nand he cannot be too unworthy to be a German when he is a German.\nIn short, mere family pride flatters every member of the family;\nit produced the arrogance of the Germans, and it is capable of producing\na much subtler kind of arrogance in the Jews.  From this particular\nsort of self-deception the more savage man of the desert is free.\nIf he is not considering somebody as a Moslem, he will consider\nhim as a man.  At the price of something like barbarism, he has\nat least been saved from ethnology.\n\nBut here again the obvious is a limit as well as a light to him.\nIt does not permit, for instance, anything fine or subtle in\nthe sentiment of sex.  Islam asserts admirably the equality of men;\nbut it is the equality of males.  No one can deny that a noble\ndignity is possible even to the poorest, who has seen the Arabs\ncoming in from the desert to the cities of Palestine or Egypt.\nNo one can deny that men whose rags are dropping off their backs can\nbear themselves in a way befitting kings or prophets in the great\nstories of Scripture.  No one can be surprised that so many fine\nartists have delighted to draw such models on the spot, and to make\nrealistic studies for illustrations to the Old and New Testaments.\nOn the road to Cairo one may see twenty groups exactly like that\nof the Holy Family in the pictures of the Flight into Egypt;\nwith only one difference.  The man is riding on the ass.\n\nIn the East it is the male who is dignified and even ceremonial.\nPossibly that is why he wears skirts.  I pointed out long ago\nthat petticoats, which some regard as a garb of humiliation for women\nare really regarded as the only garb of magnificence for men,\nwhen they wish to be something more than men.  They are worn by kings,\nby priests, and by judges.  The male Moslem, especially in his\nown family, is the king and the priest and the judge.  I do not mean\nmerely that he is the master, as many would say of the male in many\nWestern societies, especially simple and self-governing societies.\nI mean something more; I mean that he has not only the kingdom\nand the power but the glory, and even as it were the glamour.\nI mean he has not only the rough leadership that we often give\nto the man, but the special sort of social beauty and stateliness\nthat we generally expect only of the woman.  What we mean when we\nsay that an ambitious man wants to have a fine woman at the head\nof the dinner-table, that the Moslem world really means when it expects\nto see a fine man at the head of the house.  Even in the street\nhe is the peacock, coloured much more splendidly than the peahen.\nEven when clad in comparatively sober and partly European costume,\nas outside the cafes of Cairo and the great cities, he exhibits\nthis indefinable character not merely of dignity but of pomp.\nIt can be traced even in the tarbouch, the minimum of Turkish\nattire worn by all the commercial classes; the thing more commonly\ncalled in England a fez.  The fez is not a sort of smoking cap.\nIt is a tower of scarlet often tall enough to be the head-dress\nof a priest.  And it is a hat one cannot take off to a lady.\n\nThis fact is familiar enough in talk about Moslem and oriental\nlife generally; but I only repeat it in order to refer it back\nto the same simplification which is the advantage and disadvantage\nof the philosophy of the desert.  Chivalry is not an obvious idea.\nIt is not as plain as a pike-staff or as a palm-tree. It is a delicate\nbalance between the sexes which gives the rarest and most poetic\nkind of pleasure to those who can strike it.  But it is not\nself-evident to a savage merely because he is also a sane man.\nIt often seems to him as much a part of his own coarse common sense\nthat all the fame and fun should go to the sex that is stronger\nand less tied, as that all the authority should go to the parents\nrather than the children.  Pity for weakness he can understand;\nand the Moslem is quite capable of giving royal alms to a cripple\nor an orphan.  But reverence for weakness is to him simply meaningless.\nIt is a mystical idea that is to him no more than a mystery.\nBut the same is true touching what may be called the lighter side of\nthe more civilised sentiment.  This hard and literal view of life gives\nno place for that slight element of a magnanimous sort of play-acting,\nwhich has run through all our tales of true lovers in the West.\nWherever there is chivalry there is courtesy; and wherever there\nis courtesy there is comedy.  There is no comedy in the desert.\n\nAnother quite logical and consistent element, in the very logical\nand consistent creed we call Mahometanism, is the element\nthat we call Vandalism.  Since such few and obvious things alone\nare vital, and since a half-artistic half-antiquarian affection\nis not one of these things, and cannot be called obvious,\nit is largely left out.  It is very difficult to say in a few\nwell-chosen words exactly what is now the use of the Pyramids.\nTherefore Saladin, the great Saracen warrior, simply stripped\nthe Pyramids to build a military fortress on the heights of Cairo.\nIt is a little difficult to define exactly what is a man's duty to\nthe Sphinx; and therefore the Mamelukes used it entirely as a target.\nThere was little in them of that double feeling, full of pathos and irony,\nwhich divided the hearts of the primitive Christians in presence of\nthe great pagan literature and art.  This is not concerned with brutal\noutbreaks of revenge which may be found on both sides, or with chivalrous\ncaprices of toleration, which may also be found on both sides;\nit is concerned with the inmost mentality of the two religions,\nwhich must be understood in order to do justice to either.\nThe Moslem mind never tended to that mystical mode of \"loving yet leaving\"\nwith which Augustine cried aloud upon the ancient beauty, or Dante\nsaid farewell to Virgil when he left him in the limbo of the pagans.\nThe Moslem traditions, unlike the medieval legends, do not suggest\nthe image of a knight who kissed Venus before he killed her.\nWe see in all the Christian ages this combination which is not\na compromise, but rather a complexity made by two contrary enthusiasms;\nas when the Dark Ages copied out the pagan poems while denying\nthe pagan legends; or when the popes of the Renascence\nimitated the Greek temples while denying the Greek gods.\nThis high inconsistency is inconsistent with Islam.  Islam, as I\nhave said, takes everything literally, and does not know how to play\nwith anything.  And the cause of the contrast is the historical\ncause of which we must be conscious in all studies of this kind.\nThe Christian Church had from a very early date the idea of\nreconstructing a whole civilisation, and even a complex civilisation.\nIt was the attempt to make a new balance, which differed from the old\nbalance of the stoics of Rome; but which could not afford to lose\nits balance any more than they.  It differed because the old system\nwas one of many religions under one government, while the new\nwas one of many governments under one religion.  But the idea\nof variety in unity remained though it was in a sense reversed.\nA historical instinct made the men of the new Europe try hard\nto find a place for everything in the system, however much might\nbe denied to the individual.  Christians might lose everything,\nbut Christendom, if possible, must not lose anything.  The very\nnature of Islam, even at its best, was quite different from this.\nNobody supposed, even subconsciously, that Mahomet meant to restore\nancient Babylon as medievalism vaguely sought to restore ancient Rome.\nNobody thought that the builders of the Mosque of Omar had looked\nat the Pyramids as the builders of St. Peter's might have looked\nat the Parthenon.  Islam began at the beginning; it was content with\nthe idea that it had a great truth; as indeed it had a colossal truth.\nIt was so huge a truth that it was hard to see it was a half-truth.\n\nIslam was a movement; that is why it has ceased to move.\nFor a movement can only be a mood.  It may be a very necessary movement\narising from a very noble mood, but sooner or later it must find its\nlevel in a larger philosophy, and be balanced against other things.\nIslam was a reaction towards simplicity; it was a violent simplification,\nwhich turned out to be an over-simplification. Stevenson has somewhere\none of his perfectly picked phrases for an empty-minded man;\nthat he has not one thought to rub against another while he waits\nfor a train.  The Moslem had one thought, and that a most vital one;\nthe greatness of God which levels all men.  But the Moslem had not one\nthought to rub against another, because he really had not another.\nIt is the friction of two spiritual things, of tradition and invention,\nor of substance and symbol, from which the mind takes fire.\nThe creeds condemned as complex have something like the secret of sex;\nthey can breed thoughts.\n\nAn idealistic intellectual remarked recently that there were\na great many things in the creed for which he had no use.\nHe might just as well have said that there were a great many\nthings in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ for which he had no use.\nIt would probably have occurred to him that the work in question\nwas meant for humanity and not for him.  But even in the case\nof the _Encyclopedia_, it will often be found a stimulating\nexercise to read two articles on two widely different subjects\nand note where they touch.  In fact there is really a great deal\nto be said for the man in _Pickwick_ who read first about China\nand then about metaphysics and combined his information.\nBut however this may be in the famous case of Chinese metaphysics,\nit is this which is chiefly lacking in Arabian metaphysics.\nThey suffer, as I have said of the palm-tree in the desert,\nfrom a lack of the vitality that comes from complexity,\nand of the complexity that comes from comparison.  They suffer\nfrom having been in a single movement in a single direction;\nfrom having begun as a mood and ended rather as a mode,\nthat is a mere custom or fashion.  But any modern Christian thus\ncriticising the Moslem movement will do well to criticise himself\nand his world at the same time.  For in truth most modern things\nare mere movements in the same sense as the Moslem movement.\nThey are at best fashions, in which one thing is exaggerated\nbecause it has been neglected.  They are at worst mere monomanias,\nin which everything is neglected that one thing may be exaggerated.\nGood or bad, they are alike movements which in their nature can only\nmove for a certain distance and then stop.  Feminism, for instance,\nis in its nature a movement, and one that must stop somewhere.\nBut the Suffragettes no more established a philosophy of the sexes\nby their feminism than the Arabs did by their anti-feminism. A woman\ncan find her home on the hustings even less than in the harem;\nbut such movements do not really attempt to find a final home for\nanybody or anything.  Bolshevism is a movement; and in my opinion\na very natural and just movement considered as a revolt against\nthe crude cruelty of Capitalism.  But when we find the Bolshevists\nmaking a rule that the drama \"must encourage the proletarian spirit,\"\nit is obvious that those who say so are not only maniacs but,\nwhat is more to the point here, are monomaniacs.  Imagine having\nto apply that principle, let us say, to \"Charley's Aunt.\"\nNone of these things seek to establish a complete philosophy\nsuch as Aquinas founded on Aristotle.  The only two modern men\nwho attempted it were Comte and Herbert Spencer.  Spencer, I think,\nwas too small a man to do it at all; and Comte was a great enough\nman to show how difficult it is to do it in modern times.\nNone of these movements can do anything but move; they have not\ndiscovered where to rest.\n\nAnd this fact brings us back to the man of the desert, who moves\nand does not rest; but who has many superiorities to the restless\nraces of the industrial city.  Men who have been in the Manchester\nmovement in 1860 and the Fabian movement in 1880 cannot sneer\nat a religious mood that lasted for eight hundred years.\nAnd those who tolerate the degraded homelessness of the slums\ncannot despise the much more dignified homelessness of the desert.\nNevertheless, the thing is a homelessness and not a home; and there\nruns through it all the note of the nomad.  The Moslem takes literally,\nas he takes everything, the truth that here we have no abiding city.\nHe can see no meaning in the mysticism of materialism,\nthe sacramental idea that a French poet expressed so nobly,\nwhen he said that our earthly city is the body of the city of God.\nHe has no true notion of building a house, or in our Western\nsense of recognising the kindred points of heaven and home.\nEven the exception to this rule is an exception at once terrible\nand touching.  There is one house that the Moslem does build\nlike a house and even a home, often with walls and roof and door;\nas square as a cottage, as solid as a fort.  And that is his grave.\nA Moslem cemetery is literally like a little village.  It is a village,\nas the saying goes, that one would not care to walk through at night.\nThere is something singularly creepy about so strange a street\nof houses, each with a door that might be opened by a dead man.\nBut in a less fanciful sense, there is about it something profoundly\npathetic and human.  Here indeed is the sailor home from sea,\nin the only port he will consent to call his home; here at last\nthe nomad confesses the common need of men.  But even about this\nthere broods the presence of the desert and its dry bones of reason.\nHe will accept nothing between a tent and a tomb.\n\nThe philosophy of the desert can only begin over again.\nIt cannot grow; it cannot have what Protestants call progress\nand Catholics call development.  There is death and hell\nin the desert when it does begin over again.  There is always\nthe possibility that a new prophet will rediscover the old truth;\nwill find again written on the red sands the secret of the obvious.\nBut it will always be the same secret, for which thousands\nof these simple and serious and splendidly valiant men will die.\nThe highest message of Mahomet is a piece of divine tautology.\nThe very cry that God is God is a repetition of words, like the\nrepetitions of wide sands and rolling skies.  The very phrase is like\nan everlasting echo, that can never cease to say the same sacred word;\nand when I saw afterwards the mightiest and most magnificent\nof all the mosques of that land, I found that its inscriptions\nhad the same character of a deliberate and defiant sameness.\nThe ancient Arabic alphabet and script is itself at once so elegant\nand so exact that it can be used as a fixed ornament, like the egg\nand dart pattern or the Greek key.  It is as if we could make\na heraldry of handwriting, or cover a wall-paper with signatures.\nBut the literary style is as recurrent as the decorative style;\nperhaps that is why it can be used as a decorative style.\nPhrases are repeated again and again like ornamental stars or flowers.\nMany modern people, for example, imagine that the Athanasian Creed\nis full of vain repetitions; but that is because people are too lazy\nto listen to it, or not lucid enough to understand it.  The same\nterms are used throughout, as they are in a proposition of Euclid.\nBut the steps are all as differentiated and progressive as in a\nproposition of Euclid.  But in the inscriptions of the Mosque whole\nsentences seem to occur, not like the steps of an argument, but rather\nlike the chorus of a song.  This is the impression everywhere produced\nby this spirit of the sandy wastes; this is the voice of the desert,\nthough the muezzin cries from the high turrets of the city.\nIndeed one is driven to repeating oneself about the repetition,\nso overpowering is the impression of the tall horizons of those\ntremendous plains, brooding upon the soul with all the solemn weight\nof the self-evident.\n\nThere is indeed another aspect of the desert, yet more ancient\nand momentous, of which I may speak; but here I only deal\nwith its effect on this great religion of simplicity.  For it is\nthrough the atmosphere of that religion that a man makes his way,\nas so many pilgrims have done, to the goal of this pilgrimage.\nAlso this particular aspect remained the more sharply in my memory\nbecause of the suddenness with which I escaped from it.  I had not\nexpected the contrast; and it may have coloured all my after experiences.\nI descended from the desert train at Ludd, which had all the look\nof a large camp in the desert; appropriately enough perhaps,\nfor it is the traditional birthplace of the soldier St. George.\nAt the moment, however, there was nothing rousing or romantic\nabout its appearance.  It was perhaps unusually dreary; for heavy\nrain had fallen; and the water stood about in what it is easier\nto call large puddles than anything so poetic as small pools.\nA motor car sent by friends had halted beside the platform;\nI got into it with a not unusual vagueness about where I\nwas going; and it wound its way up miry paths to a more rolling\nstretch of country with patches of cactus here and there.\nAnd then with a curious abruptness I became conscious that\nthe whole huge desert had vanished, and I was in a new land.\nThe dark red plains had rolled away like an enormous nightmare;\nand I found myself in a fresh and exceedingly pleasant dream.\n\nI know it will seem fanciful; but for a moment I really felt as if I\nhad come home; or rather to that home behind home for which we\nare all homesick.  The lost memory of it is the life at once\nof faith and of fairy-tale. Groves glowing with oranges rose behind\nhedges of grotesque cactus or prickly pear; which really looked\nlike green dragons guarding the golden apples of the Hesperides.\nOn each side of the road were such flowers as I had never seen\nbefore under the sun; for indeed they seemed to have the sun in them\nrather than the sun on them.  Clusters and crowds of crimson anemones\nwere of a red not to be symbolised in blood or wine; but rather\nin the red glass that glows in the window dedicated to a martyr.\nOnly in a wild Eastern tale could one picture a pilgrim or\ntraveller finding such a garden in the desert; and I thought\nof the oldest tale of all and the garden from which we came.\nBut there was something in it yet more subtle; which there must\nbe in the impression of any earthly paradise.  It is vital to such\na dream that things familiar should be mixed with things fantastic;\nas when an actual dream is filled with the faces of old friends.\nSparrows, which seem to be the same all over the world, were darting\nhither and thither among the flowers; and I had the fancy that they\nwere the souls of the town-sparrows of London and the smoky cities,\nand now gone wherever the good sparrows go.  And a little way\nup the road before me, on the hill between the cactus hedges,\nI saw a grey donkey trotting; and I could almost have sworn that it\nwas the donkey I had left at home.\n\nHe was trotting on ahead of me, and the outline of his erect\nand elfish ears was dark against the sky.  He was evidently\ngoing somewhere with great determination; and I thought I knew\nto what appropriate place he was going, and that it was my fate\nto follow him like a moving omen.  I lost sight of him later,\nfor I had to complete the journey by train; but the train followed\nthe same direction, which was up steeper and steeper hills.\nI began to realise more clearly where I was; and to know that\nthe garden in the desert that had bloomed so suddenly about me\nhad borne for many desert wanderers the name of the promised land.\nAs the rocks rose higher and higher on every side, and hung\nover us like terrible and tangible clouds, I saw in the dim grass\nof the slopes below them something I had never seen before.\nIt was a rainbow fallen upon the earth, with no part of it\nagainst the sky, but only the grasses and the flowers shining\nthrough its fine shades of fiery colour.  I thought this also was\nlike an omen; and in such a mood of idle mysticism there fell\non me another accident which I was content to count for a third.\nFor when the train stopped at last in the rain, and there was no other\nvehicle for the last lap of the journey, a very courteous officer,\nan army surgeon, gave me a seat in an ambulance wagon; and it was\nunder the shield of the red cross that I entered Jerusalem.\n\nFor suddenly, between a post of the wagon and a wrack of rainy cloud\nI saw it, uplifted and withdrawn under all the arching heavens\nof its history, alone with its benediction and its blasphemy,\nthe city that is set upon a hill, and cannot be hid.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE GATES OF THE CITY\n\nThe men I met coming from Jerusalem reported all sorts of\ncontradictory impressions; and yet my own impression contradicted\nthem all.  Their impressions were doubtless as true as mine;\nbut I describe my own because it is true, and because I think it\npoints to a neglected truth about the real Jerusalem.  I need not say\nI did not expect the real Jerusalem to be the New Jerusalem; a city\nof charity and peace, any more than a city of chrysolite and pearl.\nI might more reasonably have expected an austere and ascetic place,\noppressed with the weight of its destiny, with no inns except monasteries,\nand these sealed with the terrible silence of the Trappists;\nan awful city where men speak by signs in the street.\nI did not need the numberless jokes about Jerusalem to-day,\nto warn me against expecting this; anyhow I did not expect it,\nand certainly I did not find it.  But neither did I find what I\nwas much more inclined to expect; something at the other extreme.\nMany reports had led me to look for a truly cosmopolitan town,\nthat is a truly conquered town.  I looked for a place like Cairo,\ncontaining indeed old and interesting things, but open on every side\nto new and vulgar things; full of the touts who seem only created\nfor the tourists and the tourists who seem only created for the touts.\nThere may be more of this in the place than pleases those\nwho would idealise it.  But I fancy there is much less of it\nthan is commonly supposed in the reaction from such an ideal.\nIt does not, like Cairo, offer the exciting experience of twenty\nguides fighting for one traveller; of young Turks drinking American\ncocktails as a protest against Christian wine.  The town is quite\ninconvenient enough to make it a decent place for pilgrims.\nOr a stranger might have imagined a place even less Western than Cairo,\none of those villages of Palestine described in dusty old books\nof Biblical research.  He might remember drawings like diagrams\nrepresenting a well or a wine-press, rather a dry well, so to speak,\nand a wine-press very difficult to associate with wine.  These hard\ncolourless outlines never did justice to the colour of the East, but even\nto give it the colour of the East would not do justice to Jerusalem.\nIf I had anticipated the Bagdad of all our dreams, a maze of bazaars\nglowing with gorgeous wares, I should have been wrong again.\nThere is quite enough of this vivid and varied colour in Jerusalem,\nbut it is not the first fact that arrests the attention,\nand certainly not the first that arrested mine.  I give my own first\nimpression as a fact, for what it is worth and exactly as it came.\nI did not expect it, and it was some time before I even understood it.\nAs soon as I was walking inside the walls of Jerusalem, I had\nan overwhelming impression that I was walking in the town of Rye,\nwhere it looks across the flat sea-meadows towards Winchelsea.\n\nAs I tried to explain this eccentric sentiment to myself, I was\nconscious of another which at once completed and contradicted it.\nIt was not only like a memory of Rye, it was mixed with a memory\nof the Mount St. Michael, which stands among the sands of\nNormandy on the other side of the narrow seas.  The first part\nof the sensation is that the traveller, as he walks the stony\nstreets between the walls, feels that he is inside a fortress.\nBut it is the paradox of such a place that, while he feels in a sense\nthat he is in a prison, he also feels that he is on a precipice.\nThe sense of being uplifted, and set on a high place, comes to him\nthrough the smallest cranny, or most accidental crack in rock\nor stone; it comes to him especially through those long narrow\nwindows in the walls of the old fortifications; those slits\nin the stone through which the medieval archers used their bows\nand the medieval artists used their eyes, with even greater success.\nThose green glimpses of fields far below or of flats far away,\nwhich delight us and yet make us dizzy (by being both near and far)\nwhen seen through the windows of Memling, can often be seen from\nthe walls of Jerusalem.  Then I remembered that in the same strips\nof medieval landscape could be seen always, here and there, a steep\nhill crowned with a city of towers.  And I knew I had the mystical\nand double pleasure of seeing such a hill and standing on it.\nA city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid; but it is more\nstrange when the hill cannot anywhere be hid, even from the citizen\nin the city.\n\nThen indeed I knew that what I saw was Jerusalem of the Crusaders;\nor at least Jerusalem of the Crusades.  It was a medieval town, with walls\nand gates and a citadel, and built upon a hill to be defended by bowmen.\nThe greater part of the actual walls now standing were built by Moslems\nlate in the Middle Ages; but they are almost exactly like the walls\nthat were being built by the Christians at or before that time.\nThe Crusader Edward, afterwards Edward the First, reared such\nbattlements far away among the rainy hills of Wales.  I do not know\nwhat elements were originally Gothic or what originally Saracenic.\nThe Crusaders and the Saracens constantly copied each other while\nthey combated each other; indeed it is a fact always to be found\nin such combats.  It is one of the arguments against war that are\nreally human, and therefore are never used by humanitarians.\nThe curse of war is that it does lead to more international imitation;\nwhile in peace and freedom men can afford to have national variety.\nBut some things in this country were certainly copied from\nthe Christian invaders, and even if they are not Christian they\nare in many ways strangely European.  The wall and gates which\nnow stand, whatever stood before them and whatever comes after them,\ncarry a memory of those men from the West who came here upon\nthat wild adventure, who climbed this rock and clung to it so\nperilously from the victory of Godfrey to the victory of Saladin;\nand that is why this momentary Eastern exile reminded me so strangely\nof the hill of Rye and of home.\n\nI do not forget, of course, that all these visible walls and towers\nare but the battlements and pinnacles of a buried city, or of many\nburied cities.  I do not forget that such buildings have foundations\nthat are to us almost like fossils; the gigantic fossils of some\nother geological epoch.  Something may be said later of those lost\nempires whose very masterpieces are to us like petrified monsters.\nFrom this height, after long histories unrecorded, fell the forgotten\nidol of the Jebusites, on that day when David's javelin-men\nscaled the citadel and carried through it, in darkness behind his\ncoloured curtains, the god whose image had never been made by man.\nHere was waged that endless war between the graven gods of the plain\nand the invisible god of the mountain; from here the hosts carrying\nthe sacred fish of the Philistines were driven back to the sea\nfrom which their worship came.  Those who worshipped on this hill\nhad come out of bondage in Egypt and went into bondage in Babylon;\nsmall as was their country, there passed before them almost the whole\npageant of the old pagan world.  All its strange shapes and strong\nalmost cruel colours remain in the records of their prophets;\nwhose lightest phrase seems heavier than the pyramids of Egypt;\nand whose very words are like winged bulls walking.  All this historic or\npre-historic interest may be touched on in its turn; but I am not dealing\nhere with the historic secrets unearthed by the study of the place,\nbut with the historic associations aroused by the sight of it.\nThe traveller is in the position of that famous fantastic who tied\nhis horse to a wayside cross in the snow, and afterward saw it\ndangling from the church-spire of what had been a buried city.\nBut here the cross does not stand as it does on the top of a spire;\nbut as it does on the top of an Egyptian obelisk in Rome,--\nwhere the priests have put a cross on the top of the heathen monument;\nfor fear it should walk.  I entirely sympathise with their sentiment;\nand I shall try to suggest later why I think that symbol\nthe logical culmination of heathen as well as Christian things.\nThe traveller in the traveller's tale looked up at last and saw,\nfrom the streets far below, the spire and cross dominating a Gothic city.\nIf I looked up in a vision and saw it dominating a Babylonian city,\nthat blocked the heavens with monstrous palaces and temples,\nI should still think it natural that it should dominate.\nBut the point here is that what I saw above ground was rather the Gothic\ntown than the Babylonian; and that it reminded me, if not specially\nof the cross, at least of the soldiers who took the cross.\n\nNor do I forget the long centuries that have passed over the place\nsince these medieval walls were built, any more than the far\nmore interesting centuries that passed before they were built.\nBut any one taking exception to the description on that ground\nmay well realise, on consideration, that it is an exception\nthat proves the rule.  There is something very negative about\nTurkish rule; and the best and worst of it is in the word neglect.\nEverything that lived under the vague empire of Constantinople\nremained in a state of suspended animation like something frozen\nrather than decayed, like something sleeping rather than dead.\nIt was a sort of Arabian spell, like that which turned princes\nand princesses into marble statues in the _Arabian Nights_.\nAll that part of the history of the place is a kind of sleep;\nand that of a sleeper who hardly knows if he has slept an hour or a\nhundred years.  When I first found myself in the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem,\nmy eye happened to fall on something that might be seen anywhere,\nbut which seemed somehow to have a curious significance there.\nMost people are conscious of some common object which still\nstrikes them as uncommon; as if it were the first fantastic sketch\nin the sketch-book of nature.  I myself can never overcome the sense\nof something almost unearthly about grass growing upon human buildings.\nThere is in it a wild and even horrible fancy, as if houses could\ngrow hair.  When I saw that green hair on the huge stone blocks of\nthe citadel, though I had seen the same thing on any number of ruins,\nit came to me like an omen or a vision, a curious vision at once\nof chaos and of sleep.  It is said that the grass will not grow\nwhere the Turk sets his foot; but it is the other side of the same\ntruth to say that it would grow anywhere but where it ought to grow.\nAnd though in this case it was but an accident and a symbol,\nit was a very true symbol.  We talk of the green banner of the Turk\nhaving been planted on this or that citadel; and certainly it\nwas so planted with splendid valour and sensational victory.\nBut this is the green banner that he plants on all his high cities\nin the end.\n\nTherefore my immediate impression of the walls and gates was\nnot contradicted by my consciousness of what came before and\nwhat came after that medieval period.  It remained primarily\na thing of walls and gates; a thing which the modern world\ndoes not perhaps understand so well as the medieval world.\nThere is involved in it all that idea of definition which those who do\nnot like it are fond of describing as dogma.  A wall is like rule;\nand the gates are like the exceptions that prove the rule.\nThe man making it has to decide where his rule will run\nand where his exception shall stand.  He cannot have a city\nthat is all gates any more than a house that is all windows;\nnor is it possible to have a law that consists entirely of liberties.\nThe ancient races and religions that contended for this city agreed\nwith each other in this, when they differed about everything else.\nIt was true of practically all of them that when they built a city they\nbuilt a citadel.  That is, whatever strange thing they may have made,\nthey regarded it as something to be defined and to be defended.\n\nAnd from this standpoint the holy city was a happy city;\nit had no suburbs.  That is to say, there are all sorts\nof buildings outside the wall; but they are outside the wall.\nEverybody is conscious of being inside or outside a boundary; but it\nis the whole character of the true suburbs which grow round our great\nindustrial towns that they grow, as it were, unconsciously and blindly,\nlike grass that covers up a boundary line traced on the earth.\nThis indefinite expansion is controlled neither by the soul of the city\nfrom within, nor by the resistance of the lands round about.  It destroys\nat once the dignity of a town and the freedom of a countryside.\nThe citizens are too new and numerous for citizenship; yet they\nnever learn what there is to be learned of the ancient traditions\nof agriculture.  The first sight of the sharp outline of Jerusalem\nis like a memory of the older types of limitation and liberty.\nHappy is the city that has a wall; and happier still if it\nis a precipice.\n\nAgain, Jerusalem might be called a city of staircases.\nMany streets are steep and most actually cut into steps.\nIt is, I believe, an element in the controversy about the cave\nat Bethlehem traditionally connected with the Nativity\nthat the sceptics doubt whether any beasts of burden could\nhave entered a stable that has to be reached by such steps.\nAnd indeed to any one in a modern city like London or Liverpool\nit may well appear odd, like a cab-horse climbing a ladder.\nBut as a matter of fact, if the asses and goats of Jerusalem\ncould not go up and downstairs, they could not go anywhere.\nHowever this may be, I mention the matter here merely as adding another\ntouch to that angular profile which is the impression involved here.\nStrangely enough, there is something that leads up to this impression\neven in the labyrinth of mountains through which the road winds\nits way to the city.  The hills round Jerusalem are themselves\noften hewn out in terraces, like a huge stairway.  This is mostly\nfor the practical and indeed profitable purpose of vineyards;\nand serves for a reminder that this ancient seat of civilisation\nhas not lost the tradition of the mercy and the glory of the vine.\nBut in outline such a mountain looks much like the mountain\nof Purgatory that Dante saw in his vision, lifted in terraces,\nlike titanic steps up to God.  And indeed this shape also is symbolic;\nas symbolic as the pointed profile of the Holy City.\nFor a creed is like a ladder, while an evolution is only like a slope.\nA spiritual and social evolution is generally a pretty slippery slope;\na miry slope where it is very easy to slide down again.\n\nSuch is something like the sharp and even abrupt impression produced\nby this mountain city; and especially by its wall with gates\nlike a house with windows.  A gate, like a window, is primarily\na picture-frame. The pictures that are found within the frame are\nindeed very various and sometimes very alien.  Within this frame-work\nare indeed to be found things entirely Asiatic, or entirely Moslem,\nor even entirely nomadic.  But Jerusalem itself is not nomadic.\nNothing could be less like a mere camp of tents pitched by Arabs.\nNothing could be less like the mere chaos of colour in a temporary\nand tawdry bazaar.  The Arabs are there and the colours are there,\nand they make a glorious picture; but the picture is in a Gothic frame,\nand is seen so to speak through a Gothic window.  And the meaning of all\nthis is the meaning of all windows, and especially of Gothic windows.\nIt is that even light itself is most divine within limits;\nand that even the shining one is most shining, when he takes upon\nhimself a shape.\n\nSuch a system of walls and gates, like many other things thought rude\nand primitive, is really very rationalistic.  It turns the town,\nas it were, into a plan of itself, and even into a guide to itself.\nThis is especially true, as may be suggested in a moment,\nregarding the direction of the roads leading out of it.\nBut anyhow, a man must decide which way he will leave the city;\nhe cannot merely drift out of the city as he drifts out of the modern\ncities through a litter of slums.  And there is no better way to get\na preliminary plan of the city than to follow the wall and fix the gates\nin the memory.  Suppose, for instance, that a man begins in the south\nwith the Zion Gate, which bears the ancient name of Jerusalem.\nThis, to begin with, will sharpen the medieval and even the Western\nimpression first because it is here that he has the strongest\nsentiment of threading the narrow passages of a great castle;\nbut also because the very name of the gate was given to this south-western\nhill by Godfrey and Tancred during the period of the Latin kingdom.\nI believe it is one of the problems of the scholars why the Latin\nconquerors called this hill the Zion Hill, when the other is obviously\nthe sacred hill.  Jerusalem is traditionally divided into four hills,\nbut for practical purposes into two; the lower eastern hill where\nstood the Temple, and now stands the great Mosque, and the western\nwhere is the citadel and the Zion Gate to the south of it.\nI know nothing of such questions; and I attach no importance to\nthe notion that has crossed my own mind, and which I only mention\nin passing, for I have no doubt there are a hundred objections to it.\nBut it is known that Zion or Sion was the old name of the place\nbefore it was stormed by David; and even afterwards the Jebusites\nremained on this western hill, and some compromise seems to have\nbeen made with them.  Is it conceivable, I wonder, that even in\nthe twelfth century there lingered some local memory of what had\nonce been a way of distinguishing Sion of the Jebusites from Salem\nof the Jews?  The Zion Gate, however, is only a starting-point here;\nif we go south-eastward from it we descend a steep and rocky path,\nfrom which can be caught the first and finest vision of what stands\non the other hill to the east.  The great Mosque of Omar stands\nup like a peacock, lustrous with mosaics that are like plumes\nof blue and green.\n\nScholars, I may say here, object to calling it the Mosque of Omar;\non the petty and pedantic ground that it is not a mosque and was\nnot built by Omar.  But it is my fixed intention to call it\nthe Mosque of Omar, and with ever renewed pertinacity to continue\ncalling it the Mosque of Omar.  I possess a special permit from\nthe Grand Mufti to call it the Mosque of Omar.  He is the head\nof the whole Moslem religion, and if he does not know, who does?\nHe told me, in the beautiful French which matches his beautiful manners,\nthat it really is not so ridiculous after all to call the place\nthe Mosque of Omar, since the great Caliph desired and even designed\nsuch a building, though he did not build it.  I suppose it is\nrather as if Solomon's Temple had been called David's Temple.\nOmar was a great man and the Mosque was a great work, and the two were\ntelescoped together by the excellent common sense of vulgar tradition.\nThere could not be a better example of that great truth for\nall travellers; that popular tradition is never so right as when it\nis wrong; and that pedantry is never so wrong as when it is right.\nAnd as for the other objection, that the Dome of the Rock\n(to give it its other name) is not actually used as a Mosque, I\nanswer that Westminster Abbey is not used as an Abbey.\nBut modern Englishmen would be much surprised if I were to refer to it\nas Westminster Church; to say nothing of the many modern Englishmen\nfor whom it would be more suitable to call it Westminster Museum.\nAnd for whatever purposes the Moslems may actually use their\ngreat and glorious sanctuary, at least they have not allowed\nit to become the private house of a particular rich man.\nAnd that is what we have suffered to happen, if not to Westminster Abbey,\nat least to Welbeck Abbey.\n\nThe Mosque of Omar (I repeat firmly) stands on the great eastern\nplateau in place of the Temple; and the wall that runs round\nto it on the south side of the city contains only the Dung Gate,\non which the fancy need not linger.  All along outside this\nwall the ground falls away into the southern valley; and upon\nthe dreary and stony steep opposite is the place called Acaldama.\nWall and valley turn together round the corner of the great\ntemple platform, and confronting the eastern wall, across the ravine,\nis the mighty wall of the Mount of Olives.  On this side there\nare several gates now blocked up, of which the most famous,\nthe Golden Gate, carries in its very uselessness a testimony\nto the fallen warriors of the cross.  For there is a strange\nMoslem legend that through this gate, so solemnly sealed up,\nshall ride the Christian King who shall again rule in Jerusalem.\nIn the middle of the square enclosure rises the great dark Dome\nof the Rock; and standing near it, a man may see for the first time\nin the distance, another dome.  It lies away to the west, but a little\nto the north; and it is surmounted, not by a crescent but a cross.\nMany heroes and holy kings have desired to see this thing,\nand have not seen it.\n\nIt is very characteristic of the city, with its medieval medley and huddle\nof houses, that a man may first see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre\nwhich is in the west, by going as far as possible to the east.\nAll the sights are glimpses; and things far can be visible and things\nnear invisible.  The traveller comes on the Moslem dome round a corner;\nand he finds the Christian dome, as it were, behind his own back.\nBut if he goes on round the wall to the north-east corner of the Court\nof the Temple, he will find the next entrance; the Gate of St. Stephen.\nOn the slope outside, by a strange and suitable coincidence,\nthe loose stones which lie on every side of the mountain city\nseemed to be heaped higher; and across the valley on the skirts\nof the Mount of Olives is the great grey olive of Gethsemane.\n\nOn the northern side the valley turns to an artificial trench,\nfor the ground here is higher; and the next or northern gate bears\nthe name of Herod; though it might well bear the name either\nof Godfrey or Saladin.  For just outside it stands a pine-tree,\nand beside it a rude bulk of stone; where stood these great\ncaptains in turn, before they took Jerusalem.  Then the wall runs\non till it comes to the great Damascus Gate, graven I know not\nwhy with great roses in a style wholly heraldic and occidental,\nand in no way likely to remind us of the rich roses of Damascus;\nthough their name has passed into our own English tongue and tradition,\nalong with another word for the delicate decoration of the sword.\nBut at the first glance, at any rate, it is hard to believe that\nthe roses on the walls are not the Western roses of York or Lancaster,\nor that the swords which guarded them were not the straight swords\nof England or of France.  Doubtless a deeper and more solemn memory\nought to return immediately to the mind where that gate looks down\nthe great highway; as if one could see, hung over it in the sky for ever,\nthe cloud concealing the sunburst that broods upon the road to Damascus.\nBut I am here only confessing the facts or fancies of my first impression;\nand again the fancy that came to me first was not of any such\nalien or awful things.  I did not think of damask or damascene\nor the great Arabian city or even the conversion of St. Paul.\nI thought of my own little house in Buckinghamshire, and how the edge\nof the country town where it stands is called Aylesbury End,\nmerely because it is the corner nearest to Aylesbury.\nThat is what I mean by saying that these ancient customs are more\nrational and even utilitarian than the fashions of modernity.\nWhen a street in a new suburb is called Pretoria Avenue, the clerk\nliving there does not set out from his villa with the cheerful hope\nof finding the road lead him to Pretoria.  But the man leaving\nAylesbury End does know it would lead him to Aylesbury; and the man\ngoing out at the Damascus Gate did know it would lead him to Damascus.\nAnd the same is true of the next and last of the old entrances,\nthe Jaffa Gate in the east; but when I saw that I saw something\nelse as well.\n\nI have heard that there is a low doorway at the entrance to a famous\nshrine which is called the Gate of Humility; but indeed in this sense\nall gates are gates of humility, and especially gates of this kind.\nAny one who has ever looked at a landscape under an archway\nwill know what I mean, when I say that it sharpens a pleasure\nwith a strange sentiment of privilege.  It adds to the grace\nof distance something that makes it not only a grace but a gift.\nSuch are the visions of remote places that appear in the low gateways\nof a Gothic town; as if each gateway led into a separate world;\nand almost as if each dome of sky were a different chamber.\nBut he who walks round the walls of this city in this spirit will come\nsuddenly upon an exception which will surprise him like an earthquake.\nIt looks indeed rather like something done by an earthquake;\nan earthquake with a half-witted sense of humour.  Immediately at\nthe side of one of these humble and human gateways there is a great gap\nin the wall, with a wide road running through it.  There is something\nof unreason in the sight which affects the eye as well as the reason.\nIt recalls some crazy tale about the great works of the Wise Men\nof Gotham.  It suggests the old joke about the man who made\na small hole for the kitten as well as a large hole for the cat.\nEverybody has read about it by this time; but the immediate impression\nof it is not merely an effect of reading or even of reasoning.\nIt looks lop-sided; like something done by a one-eyed giant.\nBut it was done by the last prince of the great Prussian imperial system,\nin what was probably the proudest moment in all his life of pride.\n\nWhat is true has a way of sounding trite; and what is trite has\na way of sounding false.  We shall now probably weary the world\nwith calling the Germans barbaric, just as we very recently wearied\nthe world with calling them cultured and progressive and scientific.\nBut the thing is true though we say it a thousand times.  And any one who\nwishes to understand the sense in which it is true has only to contemplate\nthat fantasy and fallacy in stone; a gate with an open road beside it.\nThe quality I mean, however, is not merely in that particular contrast;\nas of a front door standing by itself in an open field.\nIt is also in the origin, the occasion and the whole story of the thing.\nThere is above all this supreme stamp of the barbarian; the sacrifice\nof the permanent to the temporary.  When the walls of the Holy City\nwere overthrown for the glory of the German Emperor, it was hardly\neven for that everlasting glory which has been the vision and\nthe temptation of great men.  It was for the glory of a single day.\nIt was something rather in the nature of a holiday than anything\nthat could be even in the most vainglorious sense a heritage.\nIt did not in the ordinary sense make a monument, or even a trophy.\nIt destroyed a monument to make a procession.  We might almost say\nthat it destroyed a trophy to make a triumph.  There is the true\nbarbaric touch in this oblivion of what Jerusalem would look like a\ncentury after, or a year after, or even the day after.  It is this\nwhich distinguishes the savage tribe on the march after a victory from\nthe civilised army establishing a government, even if it be a tyranny.\nHence the very effect of it, like the effect of the whole Prussian\nadventure in history, remains something negative and even nihilistic.\nThe Christians made the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Moslems\nmade the Mosque of Omar; but this is what the most scientific\nculture made at the end of the great century of science.\nIt made an enormous hole.  The only positive contribution of\nthe nineteenth century to the spot is an unnaturally ugly clock,\nat the top of an ornamental tower, or a tower that was meant to\nbe ornamental.  It was erected, I believe, to commemorate the reign\nof Abdul Hamid; and it seems perfectly adapted to its purpose,\nlike one of Sir William Watson's sonnets on the same subject.\nBut this object only adds a touch of triviality to the much more\ntremendous negative effect of the gap by the gate.  That remains a parable\nas well as a puzzle, under all the changing skies of day and night;\nwith the shadows that gather tinder the narrow Gate of Humility;\nand beside it, blank as daybreak and abrupt as an abyss, the broad\nroad that has led already to destruction.\n\nThe gap remains like a gash, a sort of wound in the walls; but it\nonly strengthens by contrast the general sense of their continuity.\nSave this one angle where the nineteenth century has entered,\nthe vague impression of the thirteenth or fourteenth century rather\ndeepens than dies away.  It is supported more than many would suppose\neven by the figures that appear in the gateways or pass in procession\nunder the walls.  The brown Franciscans and the white Dominicans\nwould alone give some colour to a memory of the Latin kingdom\nof Jerusalem; and there are other examples and effects which are\nless easily imagined in the West.  Thus as I look down the street,\nI see coming out from under an archway a woman wearing a high white\nhead-dress very like those we have all seen in a hundred pictures\nof tournaments or hunting parties, or the Canterbury Pilgrimage\nor the Court of Louis XI.  She is as white as a woman of the North;\nand it is not, I think, entirely fanciful to trace a certain\nfreedom and dignity in her movement, which is quite different\nat least from the shuffling walk of the shrouded Moslem women.\nShe is a woman of Bethlehem, where a tradition, it is said, still claims\nas a heroic heritage the blood of the Latin knights of the cross.\nThis is, of course, but one aspect of the city; but it is one\nwhich may be early noted, yet one which is generally neglected.\nAs I have said, I had expected many things of Jerusalem,\nbut I had not expected this.  I had expected to be disappointed\nwith it as a place utterly profaned and fallen below its mission.\nI had expected to be awed by it; indeed I had expected to be frightened\nof it, as a place dedicated and even doomed by its mission.\nBut I had never fancied that it would be possible to be fond of it;\nas one might be fond of a little walled town among the orchards\nof Normandy or the hop-fields of Kent.\n\nAnd just then there happened a coincidence that was also something\nlike a catastrophe.  I was idly watching, as it moved down\nthe narrow street to one of the dark doorways, the head-dress,\nlike a tower of white drapery, belonging to the Christian woman\nfrom the place where Christ was born.  After she had disappeared\ninto the darkness of the porch I continued to look vaguely\nat the porch, and thought how easily it might have been a small\nGothic gate in some old corner of Rouen, or even Canterbury.\nIn twenty such places in the town one may see the details that\nappeal to the same associations, so different and so distant.\nOne may see that angular dogtooth ornament that makes the round\nNorman gateways look like the gaping mouths of sharks.\nOne may see the pointed niches in the walls, shaped like windows\nand serving somewhat the purpose of brackets, on which were\nto stand sacred images possibly removed by the Moslems.\nOne may come upon a small court planted with ornamental trees\nwith some monument in the centre, which makes the precise impression\nof something in a small French town.  There are no Gothic spires,\nbut there are numberless Gothic doors and windows; and he who\nfirst strikes the place at this angle, as it were, may well feel\nthe Northern element as native and the Eastern element as intrusive.\nWhile I was thinking all these things, something happened which in\nthat place was almost a portent.\n\nIt was very cold; and there were curious colours in the sky.\nThere had been chilly rains from time to time; and the whole\nair seemed to have taken on something sharper than a chill.\nIt was as if a door had been opened in the northern corner of the heavens;\nletting in something that changed all the face of the earth.\nGreat grey clouds with haloes of lurid pearl and pale-green were coming\nup from the plains or the sea and spreading over the towers of the city.\nIn the middle of the moving mass of grey vapours was a splash\nof paler vapour; a wan white cloud whose white seemed somehow more\nominous than gloom.  It went over the high citadel like a white\nwild goose flying; and a few white feathers fell.\n\nIt was the snow; and it snowed day and night until that Eastern\ncity was sealed up like a village in Norway or Northern Scotland.\nIt rose in the streets till men might almost have been drowned\nin it like a sea of solid foam.  And the people of the place told\nme there had been no such thing seen in it in all recent records,\nor perhaps in the records of all its four thousand years.\n\nAll this came later; but for me at the moment, looking at the scene\nin so dreamy a fashion, it seemed merely like a dramatic conclusion\nto my dream.  It was but an accident confirming what was but an aspect.\nBut it confirmed it with a strange and almost supernatural completeness.\nThe white light out of the window in the north lay on all the roofs\nand turrets of the mountain town; for there is an aspect in which\nsnow looks less like frozen water than like solidified light.\nAs the snow accumulated there accumulated also everywhere\nthose fantastic effects of frost which seem to fit in with\nthe fantastic qualities of medieval architecture; and which\nmake an icicle seem like the mere extension of a gargoyle.\nIt was the atmosphere that has led so many romancers to make\nmedieval Paris a mere black and white study of night and snow.\nSomething had redrawn in silver all things from the rude ornament\non the old gateways to the wrinkles on the ancient hills of Moab.\nFields of white still spotted with green swept down into the valleys\nbetween us and the hills; and high above them the Holy City lifted\nher head into the thunder-clouded heavens, wearing a white head-dress\nlike a daughter of the Crusaders.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE PHILOSOPHY OF SIGHT-SEEING\n\nVarious cultivated critics told me that I should find\nJerusalem disappointing; and I fear it will disappoint them that I\nam not disappointed.  Of the city as a city I shall try to say\nsomething elsewhere; but the things which these critics have\nespecially in mind are at once more general and more internal.\nThey concern something tawdry, squalid or superstitious about the shrines\nand those who use them.  Now the mistake of critics is not that they\ncriticise the world; it is that they never criticise themselves.\nThey compare the alien with the ideal; but they do not at the same\ntime compare themselves with the ideal; rather they identify\nthemselves with the ideal.  I have met a tourist who had seen\nthe great Pyramid, and who told me that the Pyramid looked small.\nBelieve me, the tourist looked much smaller.  There is indeed another\ntype of traveller, who is not at all small in the moral mental sense,\nwho will confess such disappointments quite honestly, as a piece\nof realism about his own sensations.  In that case he generally suffers\nfrom the defect of most realists; that of not being realistic enough.\nHe does not really think out his own impressions thoroughly;\nor he would generally find they are not so disappointing after all.\nA humorous soldier told me that he came from Derbyshire, and that\nhe did not think much of the Pyramid because it was not so tall\nas the Peak.  I pointed out to him that he was really offering\nthe tallest possible tribute to a work of man in comparing it\nto a mountain; even if he thought it was a rather small mountain.\nI suggested that it was a rather large tombstone.  I appealed\nto those with whom I debated in that district, as to whether they\nwould not be faintly surprised to find such a monument during\ntheir quiet rambles in a country churchyard.  I asked whether\neach one of them, if he had such a tombstone in the family,\nwould not feel it natural, if hardly necessary, to point it out;\nand that with a certain pride.  The same principle of the higher realism\napplies to those who are disappointed with the sight of the Sphinx.\nThe Sphinx really exceeds expectations because it escapes expectations.\nMonuments commonly look impressive when they are high and often\nwhen they are distant.  The Sphinx is really unexpected,\nbecause it is found suddenly in a hollow, and unnaturally near.\nIts face is turned away; and the effect is as creepy as coming into a room\napparently empty, and finding somebody as still as the furniture.\nOr it is as if one found a lion couchant in that hole in the sand;\nas indeed the buried part of the monster is in the form of a\ncouchant lion.  If it was a real lion it would hardly be less\narresting merely because it was near; nor could the first emotion\nof the traveller be adequately described as disappointment.\nIn such cases there is generally some profit in looking at the monument\na second time, or even at our own sensations a second time.\nSo I reasoned, striving with wild critics in the wilderness;\nbut the only part of the debate which is relevant here can\nbe expressed in the statement that I do think the Pyramid big,\nfor the deep and simple reason that it is bigger than I am.\nI delicately suggested to those who were disappointed in the Sphinx\nthat it was just possible that the Sphinx was disappointed in them.\nThe Sphinx has seen Julius Caesar; it has very probably seen St. Francis,\nwhen he brought his flaming charity to Egypt; it has certainly looked,\nin the first high days of the revolutionary victories, on the face\nof the young Napoleon.  Is it not barely possible, I hinted\nto my friends and fellow-tourists, that after these experiences,\nit might be a little depressed at the sight of you and me?\nBut as I say, I only reintroduce my remarks in connection with a\ngreater matter than these dead things of the desert; in connection\nwith a tomb to which even the Pyramids are but titanic lumber,\nand a presence greater than the Sphinx, since it is not only a riddle\nbut an answer.\n\nBefore I go on to deeper defences of any such cult or culture,\nI wish first to note a sort of test for the first impressions\nof an ordinary tourist like myself, to whom much that is really full\nof an archaic strength may seem merely stiff, or much that really\ndeals with a deep devotional psychology may seem merely distorted.\nIn short I would put myself in the position of the educated\nEnglishman who does quite honestly receive a mere impression\nof idolatry.  Incidentally, I may remark, it is the educated\nEnglishman who is the idolater.  It is he who only reverences\nthe place, and does not reverence the reverence for the place.\nIt is he who is supremely concerned about whether a mere object\nis old or new, or whether a mere ornament is gold or gilt.\nIn other words, it is he who values the visible things rather\nthan the invisible; for no sane man can doubt that invisible things\nare vivid to the priests and pilgrims of these shrines.\n\nIn the midst of emotions that have moved the whole world out\nof its course, girt about with crowds who will die or do murder\nfor a definition, the educated English gentleman in his blindness\nbows down to wood and stone.  For the only thing wrong about that\nadmirable man is that he is blind about himself.\n\nNo man will really attempt to describe his feelings, when he first\nstood at the gateway of the grave of Christ.  The only record relevant\nhere is that I did not feel the reaction, not to say repulsion,\nthat many seem to have felt about its formal surroundings.\n\nEither I was particularly fortunate or others are\nparticularly fastidious.  The guide who showed me the Sepulchre\nwas not particularly noisy or profane or palpably mercenary;\nhe was rather more than less sympathetic than the same sort of man\nwho might have shown me Westminster Abbey or Stratford-on-Avon. He\nwas a small, solemn, owlish old man, a Roman Catholic in religion;\nbut so far from deserving the charge of not knowing the Bible,\nhe deserved rather a gentle remonstrance against his assumption\nthat nobody else knew it.  If there was anything to smile at,\nin associations so sacred, it was the elaborate simplicity with\nwhich he told the first facts of the Gospel story, as if he were\nevangelising a savage.  Anyhow, he did not talk like a cheap-jack\nat a stall; but rather like a teacher in an infant school.\nHe made it very clear that Jesus Christ was crucified in case\nany one should suppose he was beheaded; and often stopped in his\nnarrative to repeat that the hero of these events was Jesus Christ,\nlest we should fancy it was Nebuchadnezzar or the Duke of Wellington.\nI do not in the least mind being amused at this; but I have no reason\nwhatever for doubting that he may have been a better man than I. I\ngave him what I should have given a similar guide in my own country;\nI parted from him as politely as from one of my own countrymen.\nI also, of course, gave money, as is the custom, to the various monastic\ncustodians of the shrines; but I see nothing surprising about that.\nI am not quite so ignorant as not to know that without the monastic\nbrotherhoods, supported by such charity, there would not by this\ntime be anything to see in Jerusalem at all.  There was only one\nclass of men whose consistent concern was to watch these things,\nfrom the age of heathens and heresies to the age of Turks and tourists;\nand I am certainly not going to sneer at them for doing no practical work,\nand then refuse to pay them for the practical work they do.\nFor the rest, even the architectural defacement is overstated,\nthe church was burned down and rebuilt in a bad and modern period;\nbut the older parts, especially the Crusaders' porch, are as\ngrand as the men who made them.  The incongruities there are,\nare those of local colour.  In connection, by the way, with what I\nsaid about beasts of burden, I mounted a series of steep staircases\nto the roof of the convent beside the Holy Sepulchre.  When I got\nto the top I found myself in the placid presence of two camels.\nIt would be curious to meet two cows on the roof of a village church.\nNevertheless it is the only moral of the chapter interpolated here,\nthat we can meet things quite as curious in our own country.\n\nWhen the critic says that Jerusalem is disappointing he generally\nmeans that the popular worship there is weak and degraded,\nand especially that the religious art is gaudy and grotesque.\nIn so far as there is any kind of truth in this, it is\nstill true that the critic seldom sees the whole truth.\nWhat is wrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself.\nHe does not honestly compare what is weak, in this particular world\nof ideas, with what is weak in his own world of ideas.  I will take\nan example from my own experience, and in a manner at my own expense.\nIf I have a native heath it is certainly Kensington High Street,\noff which stands the house of my childhood.  I grew up in that\nthorough-fare which Mr. Max Beerbohm, with his usual easy exactitude\nof phrase, has described as \"dapper, with a leaning to the fine arts.\"\nDapper was never perhaps a descriptive term for myself;\nbut it is quite true that I owe a certain taste for the arts\nto the sort of people among whom I was brought up.  It is also true\nthat such a taste, in various forms and degrees, was fairly common\nin the world which may be symbolised as Kensington High Street.\nAnd whether or no it is a tribute, it is certainly a truth that most\npeople with an artistic turn in Kensington High Street would have been\nvery much shocked, in their sense of propriety, if they had seen\nthe popular shrines of Jerusalem; the sham gold, the garish colours,\nthe fantastic tales and the feverish tumult.  But what I want such\npeople to do, and what they never do, is to turn this truth round.\nI want them to imagine, not a Kensington aesthete walking down\nDavid Street to the Holy Sepulchre, but a Greek monk or a Russian\npilgrim walking down Kensington High Street to Kensington Gardens.\nI will not insist here on all the hundred plagues of plutocracy\nthat would really surprise such a Christian peasant; especially that\ncurse of an irreligious society (unknown in religious societies,\nMoslem as well as Christian) the detestable denial of all dignity\nto the poor.  I am not speaking now of moral but of artistic things;\nof the concrete arts and crafts used in popular worship.\nWell, my imaginary pilgrim would walk past Kensington Gardens till\nhis sight was blasted by a prodigy.  He would either fall on his\nknees as before a shrine, or cover his face as from a sacrilege.\nHe would have seen the Albert Memorial.  There is nothing so conspicuous\nin Jerusalem.  There is nothing so gilded and gaudy in Jerusalem.\nAbove all, there is nothing in Jerusalem that is on so large\na scale and at the same time in so gay and glittering a style.\nMy simple Eastern Christian would almost certainly be driven to\ncry aloud, \"To what superhuman God was this enormous temple erected?\nI hope it is Christ; but I fear it is Antichrist.\"  Such, he would think,\nmight well be the great and golden image of the Prince of the World,\nset up in this great open space to receive the heathen prayers\nand heathen sacrifices of a lost humanity.  I fancy he would feel\na desire to be at home again amid the humble shrines of Zion.\nI really cannot imagine _what_ he would feel, if he were told\nthat the gilded idol was neither a god nor a demon, but a petty\nGerman prince who had some slight influence in turning us into\nthe tools of Prussia.\n\nNow I myself, I cheerfully admit, feel that enormity in Kensington Gardens\nas something quite natural.  I feel it so because I have been\nbrought up, so to speak, under its shadow; and stared at the graven\nimages of Raphael and Shakespeare almost before I knew their names;\nand long before I saw anything funny in their figures being carved,\non a smaller scale, under the feet of Prince Albert.\nI even took a certain childish pleasure in the gilding of\nthe canopy and spire, as if in the golden palace of what was,\nto Peter Pan and all children, something of a fairy garden.\nSo do the Christians of Jerusalem take pleasure, and possibly\na childish pleasure, in the gilding of a better palace,\nbesides a nobler garden, ornamented with a somewhat worthier aim.\nBut the point is that the people of Kensington, whatever they might\nthink about the Holy Sepulchre, do not think anything at all about\nthe Albert Memorial.  They are quite unconscious of how strange\na thing it is; and that simply because they are used to it.\nThe religious groups in Jerusalem are also accustomed to their\ncoloured background; and they are surely none the worse if they still\nfeel rather more of the meaning of the colours.  It may be said that\nthey retain their childish illusion about _their_ Albert Memorial.\nI confess I cannot manage to regard Palestine as a place where a\nspecial curse was laid on those who can become like little children.\nAnd I never could understand why such critics who agree\nthat the kingdom of heaven is for children, should forbid it\nto be the only sort of kingdom that children would really like;\na kingdom with real crowns of gold or even of tinsel.\nBut that is another question, which I shall discuss in another place;\nthe point is for the moment that such people would be quite as much\nsurprised at the place of tinsel in our lives as we are at its place\nin theirs.  If we are critical of the petty things they do to glorify\ngreat things, they would find quite as much to criticise (as in\nKensington Gardens) in the great things we do to glorify petty things.\nAnd if we wonder at the way in which they seem to gild the lily,\nthey would wonder quite as much at the way we gild the weed.\n\nThere are countless other examples of course of this principle\nof self-criticism, as the necessary condition of all criticism.\nIt applies quite as much, for instance, to the other great complaint\nwhich my Kensington friend would make after the complaint about\npaltry ornament; the complaint about what is commonly called backsheesh.\nHere again there is really something to complain of; though much of\nthe fault is not due to Jerusalem, but rather to London and New York.\nThe worst superstition of Jerusalem, like the worst profligacy\nof Paris, is a thing so much invented for Anglo-Saxons that it might\nbe called an Anglo-Saxon institution.  But here again the critic\ncould only really judge fairly if he realised with what abuses\nat home he ought really to compare this particular abuse abroad.\nHe ought to imagine, for example, the feelings of a religious\nRussian peasant if he really understood all the highly-coloured\nadvertisements covering High Street Kensington Station.\nIt is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money\nas to see the rich asking for more money.  And advertisement is\nthe rich asking for more money.  A man would be annoyed if he found\nhimself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats\nfor a penny; or all shouting with one voice, \"Give me money.\"\nYet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout\nwould assault the ear.  \"Budge's Boots are the Best\" simply means\n\"Give me money\"; \"Use Seraphic Soap\" simply means \"Give me money.\"\nIt is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our\ntowns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements.\nMost of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy\ngentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably\nvery particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes.\nThey disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses.\nTo see such men crowding and clamouring for more wealth would\nreally be a more unworthy sight than a scramble of poor guides;\nyet this is what would be conveyed by all the glare of gaudy\nadvertisement to anybody who saw and understood it for the first time.\nYet for us who are familiar with it all that gaudy advertisement\nfades into a background, just as the gaudy oriental patterns\nfade into a background for those oriental priests and pilgrims.\nJust as the innocent Kensington gentleman is wholly unaware\nthat his black top hat is relieved against a background,\nor encircled as by a halo, of a yellow hoarding about mustard,\nso is the poor guide sometimes unaware that his small doings are\ndark against the fainter and more fading gold in which are traced\nonly the humbler haloes of the Twelve Apostles.\n\nBut all these misunderstandings are merely convenient illustrations and\nintroductions, leading up to the great fact of the main misunderstanding.\nIt is a misunderstanding of the whole history and philosophy\nof the position; that is the whole of the story and the whole\nmoral of the story.  The critic of the Christianity of Jerusalem\nemphatically manages to miss the point.  The lesson he ought to\nlearn from it is one which the Western and modern man needs most,\nand does not even know that he needs.  It is the lesson of constancy.\nThese people may decorate their temples with gold or with tinsel;\nbut their tinsel has lasted longer than our gold.\nThey may build things as costly and ugly as the Albert Memorial;\nbut the thing remains a memorial, a thing of immortal memory.\nThey do not build it for a passing fashion and then forget it,\nor try hard to forget it.  They may paint a picture of a saint as gaudy\nas any advertisement of a soap; but one saint does not drive out another\nsaint as one soap drives out another soap.  They do not forget their\nrecent idolatries, as the educated English are now trying to forget\ntheir very recent idolatry of everything German.  These Christian\nbodies have been in Jerusalem for at least fifteen hundred years.\nSave for a few years after the time of Constantine and a few years after\nthe First Crusade, they have been practically persecuted all the time.\nAt least they have been under heathen masters whose attitude towards\nChristendom was hatred and whose type of government was despotism.\nNo man living in the West can form the faintest conception\nof what it must have been to live in the very heart of the East\nthrough the long and seemingly everlasting epoch of Moslem power.\nA man in Jerusalem was in the centre of the Turkish Empire as a man\nin Rome was in the centre of the Roman Empire.  The imperial power\nof Islam stretched away to the sunrise and the sunset; westward to\nthe mountains of Spain and eastward towards the wall of China.\nIt must have seemed as if the whole earth belonged to Mahomet to those\nwho in this rocky city renewed their hopeless witness to Christ.\nWhat we have to ask ourselves is not whether we happen in\nall respects to agree with them, but whether we in the same\ncondition should even have the courage to agree with ourselves.\nIt is not a question of how much of their religion is superstition,\nbut of how much of our religion is convention; how much is custom\nand how much a compromise even with custom; how much a thing made facile\nby the security of our own society or the success of our own state.\nThese are powerful supports; and the enlightened Englishman,\nfrom a cathedral town or a suburban chapel, walks these wild\nEastern places with a certain sense of assurance and stability.\nEven after centuries of Turkish supremacy, such a man feels,\nhe would not have descended to such a credulity.  He would\nnot be fighting for the Holy Fire or wrangling with beggars\nin the Holy Sepulchre.  He would not be hanging fantastic\nlamps on a pillar peculiar to the Armenians, or peering into\nthe gilded cage that contains the brown Madonna of the Copts.\nHe would not be the dupe of such degenerate fables; God forbid.\nHe would not be grovelling at such grotesque shrines; no indeed.\nHe would be many hundred yards away, decorously bowing towards\na more distant city; where, above the only formal and official\nopen place in Jerusalem, the mighty mosaics of the Mosque of Omar\nproclaim across the valleys the victory and the glory of Mahomet.\n\nThat is the real lesson that the enlightened traveller should learn;\nthe lesson about himself.  That is the test that should really be put\nto those who say that the Christianity of Jerusalem is degraded.\nAfter a thousand years of Turkish tyranny, the religion of a London\nfashionable preacher would not be degraded.  It would be destroyed.\nIt would not be there at all, to be jeered at by every prosperous tourist\nout of a _train de luxe_.  It is worth while to pause upon the point;\nfor nothing has been so wholly missed in our modern religious\nideals as the ideal of tenacity.  Fashion is called progress.\nEvery new fashion is called a new faith.  Every faith is a faith\nwhich offers everything except faithfulness.  It was never so necessary\nto insist that most of the really vital and valuable ideas in the world,\nincluding Christianity, would never have survived at all if they\nhad not survived their own death, even in the sense of dying daily.\nThe ideal was out of date almost from the first day;\nthat is why it is eternal; for whatever is dated is doomed.\nAs for our own society, if it proceeds at its present rate of progress\nand improvement, no trace or memory of it will be left at all.\nSome think that this would be an improvement in itself.  We have come\nto live morally, as the Japs live literally, in houses of paper.\nBut they are pavilions made of the morning papers, which have to be\nburned on the appearance of the evening editions.  Well, a thousand\nyears hence the Japs may be ruling in Jerusalem; the modern Japs who\nno longer live in paper houses, but in sweated factories and slums.\nThey and the Chinese (that much more dignified and democratic people)\nseem to be about the only people of importance who have not yet\nruled Jerusalem.  But though we may think the Christian chapels\nas thin as Japanese tea-houses, they will still be Christian;\nthough we may think the sacred lamps as cheap as Chinese lanterns,\nthey will still be burning before a crucified creator of the world.\n\nBut besides this need of making strange cults the test not of\nthemselves but ourselves, the sights of Jerusalem also illustrate\nthe other suggestion about the philosophy of sight-seeing. It is true,\nas I have suggested, that after all the Sphinx is larger than I am;\nand on the same principle the painted saints are saintlier\nthan I am, and the patient pilgrims more constant than I am.\nBut it is also true, as in the lesser matter before mentioned,\nthat even those who think the Sphinx small generally do not\nnotice the small things about it.  They do not even discover\nwhat is interesting about their own disappointment.  And similarly\neven those who are truly irritated by the unfamiliar fashions\nof worship in a place like Jerusalem, do not know how to discover\nwhat is interesting in the very existence of what is irritating.\nFor instance, they talk of Byzantine decay or barbaric delusion,\nand they generally go away with an impression that the ritual\nand symbolism is something dating from the Dark Ages.\nBut if they would really note the details of their surroundings,\nor even of their sensations, they would observe a rather curious fact\nabout such ornament of such places as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre\nas may really be counted unworthy of them.  They would realise\nthat what they would most instinctively reject as superstitious does\nnot date from what they would regard as the ages of superstition.\nThere really are bad pictures but they are not barbaric pictures;\nthey are florid pictures in the last faded realism of the Renascence.\nThere really is stiff and ungainly decoration, but it is not\nthe harsh or ascetic decoration of a Spanish cloister; it is much\nmore like the pompous yet frivolous decorations of a Parisian hotel.\nIn short, in so far as the shrine has really been defaced it\nhas not been defaced by the Dark Ages, but rather if anything\nby the Age of Reason.  It is the enlightened eighteenth century,\nwhich regarded itself as the very noonday of natural culture\nand common sense, that has really though indirectly laid its\ndisfiguring finger on the dark but dignified Byzantine temple.\nI do not particularly mind it myself; for in such great matters I\ndo not think taste is the test.  But if taste is to be made the test,\nthere is matter for momentary reflection in this fact; for it\nis another example of the weakness of what may be called fashion.\nVoltaire, I believe, erected a sort of temple to God in his own garden;\nand we may be sure that it was in the most exquisite taste of the time.\nNothing would have surprised him more than to learn that,\nfifty years after the success of the French Revolution, almost every\nfreethinker of any artistic taste would think his temple far less\nartistically admirable than the nearest gargoyle on Notre Dame.\nThus it is progress that must be blamed for most of these things:\nand we ought not to turn away in contempt from something antiquated,\nbut rather recognise with respect and even alarm a sort of permanent\nman-trap in the idea of being modern.  So that the moral of this\nmatter is the same as that of the other; that these things should\nraise in us, not merely the question of whether we like them,\nbut of whether there is anything very infallible or imperishable\nabout what we like.  At least the essentials of these things endure;\nand if they seem to have remained fixed as effigies, at least they\nhave not faded like fashion-plates.\n\nIt has seemed worth while to insert here this note on the philosophy\nof sight-seeing, however dilatory or disproportionate it may seem.\nFor I am particularly and positively convinced that unless these things\ncan somehow or other be seen in the right historical perspective\nand philosophical proportion, they are not worth seeing at all.\nAnd let me say in conclusion that I can not only respect the sincerity,\nbut understand the sentiments, of a man who says they are not\nworth seeing at all.  Sight-seeing is a far more difficult and\ndisputable matter than many seem to suppose; and a man refusing it\naltogether might be a man of sense and even a man of imagination.\nIt was the great Wordsworth who refused to revisit Yarrow;\nit was only the small Wordsworth who revisited it after all.\nI remember the first great sight in my own entrance to the Near East,\nwhen I looked by accident out of the train going to Cairo, and saw far\naway across the luminous flats a faint triangular shape; the Pyramids.\nI could understand a man who had seen it turning his back and retracing\nhis whole journey to his own country and his own home, saying, \"I will go\nno further; for I have seen afar off the last houses of the kings.\"\nI can understand a man who had only seen in the distance Jerusalem\nsitting on the hill going no further and keeping that vision for ever.\nIt would, of course, be said that it was absurd to come at all,\nand to see so little.  To which I answer that in that sense\nit is absurd to come at all.  It is no more fantastic to turn\nback for such a fancy than it was to come for a similar fancy.\nA man cannot eat the Pyramids; he cannot buy or sell the Holy City;\nthere can be no practical aspect either of his coming or going.\nIf he has not come for a poetic mood he has come for nothing; if he has\ncome for such a mood, he is not a fool to obey that mood.  The way\nto be really a fool is to try to be practical about unpractical things.\nIt is to try to collect clouds or preserve moonshine like money.\nNow there is much to be said for the view that to search for a mood\nis in its nature moonshine.  It may be said that this is especially\ntrue in the crowded and commonplace conditions in which most\nsight-seeing has to be done.  It may be said that thirty tourists\ngoing together to see a tombstone is really as ridiculous as thirty\npoets going together to write poems about the nightingale.\nThere would be something rather depressing about a crowd\nof travellers, walking over hill and dale after the celebrated\ncloud of Wordsworth; especially if the crowd is like the cloud,\nand moveth all together if it move at all.  A vast mob assembled\non Salisbury Plain to listen to Shelley's skylark would probably\n(after an hour or two) consider it a rather subdued sort of skylarking.\nIt may be argued that it is just as illogical to hope to fix beforehand\nthe elusive effects of the works of man as of the works of nature.\nIt may be called a contradiction in terms to expect the unexpected.\nIt may be counted mere madness to anticipate astonishment, or go\nin search of a surprise.  To all of which there is only one answer;\nthat such anticipation is absurd, and such realisation will\nbe disappointing, that images will seem to be idols and idols\nwill seem to be dolls, unless there be some rudiment of such\na habit of mind as I have tried to suggest in this chapter.\nNo great works will seem great, and no wonders of the world\nwill seem wonderful, unless the angle from which they are seen\nis that of historical humility.\n\nOne more word may be added of a more practical sort.  The place where\nthe most passionate convictions on this planet are concentrated is not\none where it will always be wise, even from a political standpoint,\nto air our plutocratic patronage and our sceptical superiority.\nStrange scenes have already been enacted round that fane where the\nHoly Fire bursts forth to declare that Christ is risen; and whether\nor no we think the thing holy there is no doubt about it being fiery.\nWhether or no the superior person is right to expect the unexpected,\nit is possible that something may be revealed to him that he really\ndoes not expect.  And whatever he may think about the philosophy\nof sight-seeing, it is not unlikely that he may see some sights.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE STREETS OF THE CITY\n\nWhen Jerusalem had been half buried in snow for two or three days,\nI remarked to a friend that I was prepared henceforward to justify\nall the Christmas cards.  The cards that spangle Bethlehem with frost\nare generally regarded by the learned merely as vulgar lies.\nAt best they are regarded as popular fictions, like that which made\nthe shepherds in the Nativity Play talk a broad dialect of Somerset.\nIn the deepest sense of course this democratic tradition is truer\nthan most history.  But even in the cruder and more concrete sense the\ntradition about the December snow is not quite so false as is suggested.\nIt is not a mere local illusion for Englishmen to picture\nthe Holy Child in a snowstorm, as it would be for the Londoners\nto picture him in a London fog.  There can be snow in Jerusalem,\nand there might be snow in Bethlehem; and when we penetrate to the idea\nbehind the image, we find it is not only possible but probable.\nIn Palestine, at least in these mountainous parts of Palestine,\nmen have the same general sentiment about the seasons as in the West\nor the North.  Snow is a rarity, but winter is a reality.\nWhether we regard it as the divine purpose of a mystery or the human\npurpose of a myth, the purpose of putting such a feast in winter\nwould be just the same in Bethlehem as it would be in Balham.\nAny one thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean\nby it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer\nsun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.\n\nIn other words, the semi-tropical nature of the place, like its\nvulgarity and desecration, can be, and are, enormously exaggerated.\nBut it is always hard to correct the exaggeration without exaggerating\nthe correction.  It would be absurd seriously to deny that Jerusalem\nis an Eastern town; but we may say it was Westernised without\nbeing modernised.  Anyhow, it was medievalised before it was modernised.\nAnd in the same way it would be absurd to deny that Jerusalem\nis a Southern town, in the sense of being normally out of the way\nof snowstorms, but the truth can be suggested by saying that it\nhas always known the quality of snow, but not the quantity.\nAnd the quantity of snow that fell on this occasion would have\nbeen something striking and even sensational in Sussex or Kent.\nAnd yet another way of putting the proportions of the thing would\nbe to say that Jerusalem has been besieged more often and by more\ndifferent kinds of people than any town upon the globe; that it has\nbeen besieged by Jews and Assyrians, Egyptians and Babylonians, Greeks\nand Romans, Persians and Saracens, Frenchmen and Englishmen;\nbut perhaps never before in all its agony of ages has it ever really\nbeen besieged by winter.  In this case it was not only snowed on,\nit was snowed up.\n\nFor some days the city was really in a state of siege.\nIf the snow had held for a sufficient number of days it might have\nbeen in a state of famine.  The railway failed between Jerusalem\nand the nearest station.  The roads were impassable between\nJerusalem and the nearest village, or even the nearest suburb.\nIn some places the snow drifted deep enough to bury a man,\nand in some places, alas, it did actually bury little children;\npoor little Arabs whose bodies were stiff where they had fallen.\nMany mules were overwhelmed as if by floods, and countless trees struck\ndown as if by lightning.  Even when the snow began at last to melt it\nonly threatened to turn the besieged fortress into a sort of island.\nA river that men could not ford flowed between Jerusalem and the Mount\nof Olives.  Even a man walking about the ordinary streets could easily\nstep up to his knees or up to his waist.  Snow stood about like a new\nsystem of natural barricades reared in some new type of revolution.\nI have already remarked that what struck me most about the city was\nthe city wall; but now a new white wall stood all round the city;\nand one that neither friend nor foe could pass.\n\nBut a state of siege, whatever its inconveniences,\nis exceedingly convenient for a critic and observer of the town.\nIt concentrated all that impression of being something compact and what,\nwith less tragic attendant circumstances, one might call cosy.\nIt fixed the whole picture in a frame even more absolute than\nthe city wall; and it turned the eyes of all spectators inwards.\nAbove all, by its very abnormality it accentuated the normal\ndivisions and differences of the place; and made it more possible\nto distinguish and describe them like _dramatis personae_.\nThe parts they played in the crisis of the snow were very like\nthe parts they played in the general crisis of the state.\nAnd the very cut and colour of the figures, turban and tarbouch,\nkhaki and burnous and gabardine, seemed to stand out more sharply\nagainst that blank background of white.\n\nThe first fact of course was a fact of contrast.  When I said that\nthe city struck me in its historic aspect as being at least as much\na memory of the Crusaders as of the Saracens, I did not of course mean\nto deny the incidental contrasts between this Southern civilisation\nand the civilisation of Europe, especially northern Europe.\nThe immediate difference was obvious enough when the gold and\nthe gaudy vegetation of so comparatively Asiatic a city were struck\nby this strange blast out of the North.  It was a queer spectacle\nto see a great green palm bowed down under a white load of snow;\nand it was a stranger and sadder spectacle to see the people accustomed\nto live under such palm-trees bowed down under such unearthly storms.\nYet the very manner in which they bore it is perhaps the first fact\nto be noted among all the facts that make up the puzzling problem\nof Jerusalem.  Odd as it may sound you can see that the true Orientals\nare not familiar with snow by the very fact that they accept it.\nThey accept it as we should accept being swallowed by an earthquake;\nbecause we do not know the answer to an earthquake.  The men from the\ndesert do not know the answer to the snow, it seems to them unanswerable.\nBut Christians fight with snow in a double sense; they fight with\nsnow as they fight with snowballs.  A Moslem left to himself would\nno more play with a snowball than make a toy of a thunderbolt.\nAnd this is really a type of the true problem that was raised\nby the very presence of the English soldier in the street,\neven if he was only shovelling away the snow.\n\nIt would be far from a bad thing, I fancy, if the rights and wrongs\nof these Bible countries could occasionally be translated into\nBible language.  And I suggest this here, not in the least because it\nis a religious language, but merely because it is a simple language.\nIt may be a good thing, and in many ways it certainly is a good thing,\nthat the races native to the Near East, to Egypt or Arabia,\nshould come in contact with Western culture; but it will be\nunfortunate if this only means coming in contact with Western\npedantry and even Western hypocrisy.  As it is there is only too\nmuch danger that the local complaints against the government may be\nexactly like the official explanations of the government; that is,\nmere strings of long words with very little meaning involved.\nIn short, if people are to learn to talk English it will be a refreshing\nfinishing touch to their culture if they learn to talk plain English.\nOf this it would be hard to find a better working model than what may be\ncalled scriptural English.  It would be a very good thing for everybody\nconcerned if any really unjust or unpopular official were described\nonly in terms taken from the denunciations of Jezebel and Herod.\nIt would especially be a good thing for the official.  If it were true\nit would be appropriate, and if it were untrue it would be absurd.\nWhen people are really oppressed, their condition can generally\nbe described in very plain terms connected with very plain things;\nwith bread, with land, with taxes and children and churches.\nIf imperialists and capitalists do thus oppress them, as they\nmost certainly often do, then the condition of those more powerful\npersons can also be described in few and simple words; such as\ncrime and sin and death and hell.  But when complaints are made,\nas they are sometimes in Palestine and still more in Egypt,\nin the elaborate and long-winded style of a leading article,\nthe sympathetic European is apt to remember how very little confidence\nhe has ever felt in his own leading articles.  If an Arab comes\nto me and says, \"The stranger from across the sea has taxed me,\nand taken the corn-sheaves from the field of my fathers,\" I do really\nfeel that he towers over me and my perishing industrial civilisation\nwith a terrible appeal to eternal things.  I feel he is a figure\nmore enduring than a statue, like the figure of Naboth or of Nathan.\nBut when that simple son of the desert opens his mouth and says,\n\"The self-determination of proletarian class-conscious solidarity\nas it functions for international reconstruction,\" and so on,\nwhy then I must confess to the weakness of feeling my sympathies\ninstantly and strangely chilled.  I merely feel inclined to tell him\nthat I can talk that sort of pidgin English better than he can.\nIf he modelled himself on the great rebels and revolutionists\nof the Bible, it would at least be a considerable improvement\nin his literary style.  But as a matter of fact something much\nmore solid is involved than literary style.  There is a logic\nand justice in the distinction, even in the world of ideas.\nThat most people with much more education than the Arab, and therefore\nmuch less excuse than the Arab, entirely ignore that distinction,\nis merely a result of their ignoring ideas, and being satisfied\nwith long words.  They like democracy because it is a long word;\nthat is the only thing they do like about it.\n\nPeople are entitled to self-government; that is, to such\ngovernment as is self-made. They are not necessarily entitled\nto a special and elaborate machinery that somebody else has made.\nIt is their right to make it for themselves, but it is also their\nduty to think of it for themselves.  Self-government of a simple\nkind has existed in numberless simple societies, and I shall\nalways think it a horrible responsibility to interfere with it.\nBut representative government, or theoretically representative government,\nof an exceedingly complicated kind, may exist in certain complicated\nsocieties without their being bound to transfer it to others,\nor even to admire it for themselves.  At any rate, for good or evil,\nthey have invented it themselves.  And there is a moral distinction,\nwhich is perfectly rational and democratic, between such inventions\nand the self-evident rights which no man can claim to have invented.\nIf the Arab says to me, \"I don't care a curse for Europe; I demand bread,\"\nthe reproach is to me both true and terrible.  But if he says,\n\"I don't care a curse for Europe; I demand French cookery,\nItalian confectionery, English audit ale,\" and so on, I think he is\nrather an unreasonable Arab.  After all, we invented these things;\nin _auctore auctoritas_.\n\nAnd of this problem there is a sort of working model in the presence\nof the snow in Palestine, especially in the light of the old proverb\nabout the impossibility of snow in Egypt.  Palestine is wilder,\nless wealthy and modernised, more religious and therefore more realistic.\nThe issue between the things only a European can do, and the things\nno European has the right to do, is much sharper and clearer\nthan the confusions of verbosity.  On the one hand the things\nthe English can do are more real things, like clearing away the snow;\nfor the very reason that the English are not here, so to speak,\nbuilding on a French pavement but on the bare rocks of the Eastern wilds,\nthe contact with Islam and Israel is more simple and direct.\nAnd on the other side the discontents and revolts are more real.\nSo far from intending to suggest that the Egyptians have no complaints,\nI am very far from meaning that they have no wrongs.  But curiously\nenough the wrongs seem to me more real than the complaints.\nThe real case against our Egyptian adventure was stated long ago\nby Randolph Churchill, when he denounced \"a bondholder's war\"; it is\nin the whole business of collecting debts due to cosmopolitan finance.\nBut a stranger in Egypt hears little denunciation of cosmopolitan finance,\nand a great deal of drivel in the way of cosmopolitan idealism.\nWhen the Palestinians say that usurers menace their land they mean\nthe land they dig; an old actuality and not a new abstraction.\nTheir revolt may be right or wrong, but it is real;\nand what applies to their revolt applies to their religion.\nThere may well be doubts about whether Egypt is a nation, but there\nis no doubt that Jerusalem is a city, and the nations have come\nto its light.\n\nThe problem of the snow proved indeed the text for a tale touching\nthe practical politics of the city.  The English soldiers cleared\nthe snow away; the Arabs sat down satisfied or stoical with\nthe snow blocking their own doors or loading their own roofs.\nBut the Jews, as the story went, were at length persuaded to clear\naway the snow in front of them, and then demanded a handsome\nsalary for having recovered the use of their own front doors.\nThe story is not quite fair; and yet it is not so unfair as it seems.\nAny rational Anti-Semite will agree that such tales, even when they\nare true, do not always signify an avaricious tradition in Semitism,\nbut sometimes the healthier and more human suggestion of Bolshevism.\nThe Jews do demand high wages, but it is not always because they\nare in the old sense money-grabbers, but rather in the new\nsense money-grabbers (as an enemy would put it) men sincerely\nand bitterly convinced of their right to the surplus of capitalism.\nThere is the same problem in the Jewish colonies in the country districts;\nin the Jewish explanation of the employment of Arab and Syrian labour.\nThe Jews argue that this occurs, not because they wish to remain\nidle capitalists, but because they insist on being properly\npaid proletarians.  With all this I shall deal, however, when I\ntreat of the Jewish problem itself.  The point for the moment\nis that the episode of the snow did in a superficial way suggest\nthe parts played by the three parties and the tales told about them.\nTo begin with, it is right to say that the English do a great many things,\nas they clear away the snow, simply because nobody else would do them.\nThey did save the oriental inhabitants from some of the worst\nconsequences of the calamity.  Probably they sometimes save\nthe inhabitants from something which the inhabitants do not\nregard as a calamity.  It is the danger of all such foreign\nefficiency that it often saves men who do not want to be saved.\nBut they do in many cases do things from which Moslems profit,\nbut which Moslems by themselves would not propose, let alone perform.\nAnd this has a general significance even in our first survey, for it\nsuggests a truth easy to abuse, but I think impossible to ignore.\nI mean that there is something non-political about Moslem morality.\nPerverse as it may appear, I suspect that most of their\npolitical movements result from their non-political morality.\nThey become politicians because they know they are not political;\nand feel their simple and more or less healthy life is at a disadvantage,\nin face of the political supremacy of the English and the political\nsubtlety of the Jews.\n\nFor instance, the tradition of Turkish rule is simply a joke.\nAll the stories about it are jokes, and often very good jokes.\nMy own favourite incident is that which is still commemorated\nin the English cathedral by an enormous hole in the floor.\nThe Turks dug up the pavement looking for concealed English artillery;\nbecause they had been told that the bishop had given his blessing\nto two canons.  The bishop had indeed recently appointed two canons\nto the service of the Church, but he had not secreted them under\nthe floor of the chancel.  There was another agreeable incident when\nthe Turkish authorities, by an impulsive movement of religious toleration,\nsent for a Greek priest to bury Greek soldiers, and told him\nto take his choice in a heap of corpses of all creeds and colours.\nBut at once the most curious and the most common touch of comedy\nis the perpetual social introduction to solid and smiling citizens\nwho have been nearly hanged by the Turks.  The fortunate gentleman\nseems still to be regarding his escape with a broad grin.\nIf you were introduced to a polite Frenchman who had come straight\nfrom the guillotine, or to an affable American who had only just\nvacated the electrical chair, you would feel a faint curiosity\nabout the whole story.  If a friend introduced somebody, saying,\n\"My friend Robinson; his sentence has been commuted to penal servitude,\"\nor \"My Uncle William, just come from Dartmoor Prison,\" your mind\nand perhaps your lips would faintly form the syllables \"What for?\"\nBut evidently, under Turkish rule, being hanged was like\nbeing knocked down by a cab; it might happen to anybody.\nThis is a parenthesis, since I am only dealing here with the\nsuperficial experience of the streets, especially in the snow.\nBut it will be well to safeguard it by saying that this unpolitical\ncarelessness and comprehensiveness of the indiscriminate Turk had its\ntragic as well as its comic side.  It was by no means everybody that\nescaped hanging; and there was a tree growing outside the Jaffa Gate\nat which men might still shudder as they pass it in the sunlight.\nIt was what a modern revolutionary poet has called bitterly the Tree\nof Man's Making; and what a medieval revolutionary poet called\nthe fruit tree in the orchard of the king.  It was the gibbet;\nand lives have dropped from it like leaves from a tree in autumn.\nYet even on the sterner side, we can trace the truth about\nthe Moslem fatalism which seems so alien to political actuality.\nThere was a popular legend or proverb that this terrible tree\nwas in some way bound up with the power of the Turk, and perhaps\nthe Moslem over a great part of the earth.  There is nothing\nmore strange about that Moslem fatalism than a certain gloomy\nmagnanimity which can invoke omens and oracles against itself.\nIt is astonishing how often the Turks seem to have accepted a legend\nor prophecy about their own ultimate failure.  De Quincey mentions\none of them in the blow that half broke the Palladium of Byzantium.\nIt is said that the Moslems themselves predict the entry\nof a Christian king of Jerusalem through the Golden Gate.\nPerhaps that is why they have blocked up the fatal gate;\nbut in any case they dealt in that fashion with the fatal tree.\nThey elaborately bound and riveted it with iron, as if accepting\nthe popular prophecy which declared that so long as it stood\nthe Turkish Empire would stand.  It was as if the wicked man\nof Scripture had daily watered a green bay-tree, to make sure\nthat it should flourish.\n\nIn the last chapter I have attempted to suggest a background\nof the battlemented walls with the low gates and narrow windows\nwhich seem to relieve the liveliest of the coloured groups against\nthe neutral tints of the North, and how this was intensified\nwhen the neutral tints were touched with the positive hue of snow.\nIn the same merely impressionist spirit I would here attempt to sketch\nsome of the externals of the actors in such a scene, though it is\nhard to do justice to such a picture even in the superficial matter\nof the picturesque.  Indeed it is hard to be sufficiently superficial;\nfor in the East nearly every external is a symbol.\nThe greater part of it is the gorgeous rag-heap of Arabian humanity,\nand even about that one could lecture on almost every coloured rag.\nWe hear much of the gaudy colours of the East; but the most\nstriking thing about them is that they are delicate colours.\nIt is rare to see a red that is merely like a pillar-box, or a blue\nthat is Reckitt's blue; the red is sure to have the enrichment\nof tawny wine or blood oranges, and the blue of peacocks or the sea.\nIn short these people are artistic in the sense that used to be\ncalled aesthetic; and it is a nameless instinct that preserves\nthese nameless tints.  Like all such instincts, it can be\nblunted by a bullying rationalism; like all such children,\nthese people do not know why they prefer the better, and can\ntherefore be persuaded by sophists that they prefer the worst.\nBut there are other elements emerging from the coloured crowd,\nwhich are more significant, and therefore more stubborn.\nA stranger entirely ignorant of that world would feel something\nlike a chill to the blood when he first saw the black figures\nof the veiled Moslem women, sinister figures without faces.\nIt is as if in that world every woman were a widow.  When he realised\nthat these were not the masked mutes at a very grisly funeral,\nbut merely ladies literally obeying a convention of wearing\nveils in public, he would probably have a reaction of laughter.\nHe would be disposed to say flippantly that it must be, a dull life,\nnot only for the women but the men; and that a man might well want\nfive wives if he had to marry them before he could even look at them.\nBut he will be wise not to be satisfied with such flippancy,\nfor the complete veiling of the Moslem women of Jerusalem,\nthough not a finer thing than the freedom of the Christian woman\nof Bethlehem, is almost certainly a finer thing than the more\ncoquettish compromise of the other Moslem women of Cairo.\nIt simply means that the Moslem religion is here more sincerely observed;\nand this in turn is part of something that a sympathetic person will\nsoon feel in Jerusalem, if he has come from these more commercial\ncities of the East; a spiritual tone decidedly more delicate\nand dignified, like the clear air about the mountain city.\nWhatever the human vices involved, it is not altogether for\nnothing that this is the holy town of three great religions.\nWhen all is said, he will feel that there are some tricks that could\nnot be played, some trades that could not be plied, some shops\nthat could not be opened, within a stone's throw of the Sepulchre.\nThis indefinable seriousness has its own fantasies of fanaticism\nor formalism; but if these are vices they are not vulgarities.\nThere is no stronger example of this than the real Jews of Jerusalem,\nespecially those from the ghettoes of eastern Europe.\nThey can be immediately picked out by the peculiar wisps of hair worn\non each side of the face, like something between curls and whiskers.\nSometimes they look strangely effeminate, like some rococo\nburlesque of the ringlets of an Early Victorian woman.\nSometimes they look considerably more like the horns of a devil;\nand one need not be an Anti-Semite to say that the face is often\nmade to match.  But though they may be ugly, or even horrible,\nthey are not vulgar like the Jews at Brighton; they trail behind\nthem too many primeval traditions and laborious loyalties,\nalong with their grand though often greasy robes of bronze\nor purple velvet.  They often wear on their heads that odd\nturban of fur worn by the Rabbis in the pictures of Rembrandt.\nAnd indeed that great name is not irrelevant; for the whole truth\nat the back of Zionism is in the difference between the picture\nof a Jew by Rembrandt and a picture of a Jew by Sargent.\nFor Rembrandt the Rabbi was, in a special and double sense,\na distinguished figure.  He was something distinct from the world\nof the artist, who drew a Rabbi as he would a Brahmin.  But Sargent\nhad to treat his sitters as solid citizens of England or America;\nand consequently his pictures are direct provocations to a pogrom.\nBut the light that Rembrandt loved falls not irreverently on\nthe strange hairy haloes that can still be seen on the shaven heads\nof the Jews of Jerusalem.  And I should be sorry for any pogrom\nthat brought down any of their grey wisps or whiskers in sorrow\nto the grave.\n\nThe whole scene indeed, seriousness apart, might be regarded as a\nfantasia for barbers; for the different ways of dressing the hair\nwould alone serve as symbols of different races and religions.\nThus the Greek priests of the Orthodox Church, bearded and robed\nin black with black towers upon their heads, have for some\nstrange reason their hair bound up behind like a woman's. In\nany case they have in their pomp a touch of the bearded bulls\nof Assyrian sculpture; and this strange fashion of curling if not\noiling the Assyrian bull gives the newcomer an indescribable and\nillogical impression of the unnatural sublimity of archaic art.\nIn the Apocalypse somewhere there is an inspiringly unintelligible\nallusion to men coming on the earth, whose hair is like the hair\nof women and their teeth like the teeth of lions.  I have never been\nbitten by an Orthodox clergyman, and cannot say whether his teeth\nare at all leonine; though I have seen seven of them together\nenjoying their lunch at an hotel with decorum and dispatch.\nBut the twisting of the hair in the womanish fashion does for us\ntouch that note of the abnormal which the mystic meant to convey\nin his poetry, and which others feel rather as a recoil into humour.\nThe best and last touch to this topsy-turvydom was given when a lady,\nobserving one of these reverend gentlemen who for some reason did\nnot carry this curious coiffure, exclaimed, in a tone of heartrending\nsurprise and distress, \"Oh, he's bobbed his hair!\"\n\nHere again of course even a superficial glance at the pageant\nof the street should not be content with its comedy.  There is\nan intellectual interest in the external pomp and air of placid\npower in these ordinary Orthodox parish priests; especially if we\ncompare them with the comparatively prosaic and jog-trot good nature\nof the Roman monks, called in this country the Latins.  Mingling in\nthe same crowd with these black-robed pontiffs can be seen shaven men\nin brown habits who seem in comparison to be both busy and obscure.\nThese are the sons of St. Francis, who came to the East with a grand\nsimplicity and thought to finish the Crusades with a smile.\nThe spectator will be wise to accept this first contrast that strikes\nthe eye with an impartial intellectual interest; it has nothing\nto do with personal character, of course, and many Greek priests\nare as simple in their tastes as they are charming in their manners;\nwhile any Roman priests can find as much ritual as they may happen\nto want in other aspects of their own religion.  But it is broadly\ntrue that Roman and Greek Catholicism are contrasted in this way\nin this country; and the contrast is the flat contrary to all our\ncustomary associations in the West.  In the East it is Roman Catholicism\nthat stands for much that we associate with Protestantism.\nIt is Roman Catholicism that is by comparison plain and practical\nand scornful of superstition and concerned for social work.\nIt is Greek Catholicism that is stiff with gold and gorgeous\nwith ceremonial, with its hold on ancient history and its inheritance\nof imperial tradition.  In the cant of our own society, we may say\nit is the Roman who rationalises and the Greek who Romanises.\nIt is the Roman Catholic who is impatient with Russian and\nGreek childishness, and perpetually appealing for common sense.\nIt is the Greek who defends such childishness as childlike faith\nand would rebuke such common sense as common scepticism.  I do not\nspeak of the theological tenets or even the deeper emotions involved,\nbut only, as I have said, of contrasts visible even in the street.\nAnd the whole difference is sufficiently suggested in two phrases\nI heard within a few days.  A distinguished Anglo-Catholic,\nwho has himself much sympathy with the Greek Orthodox traditions,\nsaid to me, \"After all, the Romans were the first Puritans.\"\nAnd I heard that a Franciscan, being told that this Englishman\nand perhaps the English generally were disposed to make an alliance\nwith the Greek Church, had only said by way of comment, \"And a good\nthing too, the Greeks might do something at last.\"\n\nAnyhow the first impression is that the Greek is more gorgeous\nin black than the Roman in colours.  But the Greek of course\ncan also appear in colours, especially in those eternal\nforms of frozen yet fiery colours which we call jewels.\nI have seen the Greek Patriarch, that magnificent old gentleman,\nwalking down the street like an emperor in the _Arabian Nights_,\nhung all over with historic jewels as thick as beads or buttons,\nwith a gigantic cross of solid emeralds that might have been given him\nby the green genii of the sea, if any of the genii are Christians.\nThese things are toys, but I am entirely in favour of toys;\nand rubies and emeralds are almost as intoxicating as that sort\nof lustrous coloured paper they put inside Christmas crackers.\nThis beauty has been best achieved in the North in the glory\nof coloured glass; and I have seen great Gothic windows\nin which one could really believe that the robes of martyrs\nwere giant rubies or the starry sky a single enormous sapphire.\nBut the colours of the West are transparent, the colours\nof the East opaque.  I have spoken of the _Arabian Nights_,\nand there is really a touch of them even in the Christian churches,\nperhaps increased with a tradition of early Christian secrecy.\nThere are glimpses of gorgeously tiled walls, of blue curtains and green\ndoors and golden inner chambers, that are just like the entrance\nto an Eastern tale.  The Orthodox are at least more oriental\nin the sense of being more ornamental; more flat and decorative.\nThe Romans are more Western, I might even say more modern,\nin the sense of having more realism even in their ritualism.\nThe Greek cross is a cross; the Roman cross is a crucifix.\n\nBut these are deeper matters; I am only trying to suggest a sort\nof silhouette of the crowd like the similar silhouette of the city,\na profile or outline of the heads and hats, like the profile of\nthe towers and spires.  The tower that makes the Greek priest look\nlike a walking catafalque is by no means alone among the horns thus\nfantastically exalted.  There is the peaked hood of the Armenian priest,\nfor instance; the stately survival of that strange Monophysite\nheresy which perpetuated itself in pomp and pride mainly through\nthe sublime accident of the Crusades.  That black cone also rises\nabove the crowd with something of the immemorial majesty of a pyramid;\nand rightly so, for it is typical of the prehistoric poetry\nby which these places live that some say it is a surviving memory\nof Ararat and the Ark.\n\nAgain the high white headgear of the Bethlehem women,\nor to speak more strictly of the Bethlehem wives, has already\nbeen noted in another connection; but it is well to remark it\nagain among the colours of the crowd, because this at least has\na significance essential to all criticism of such a crowd.\nMost travellers from the West regard such an Eastern city far too\nmuch as a Moslem city, like the lady whom Mr. Maurice Baring met who\ntravelled all over Russia, and thought all the churches were mosques.\nBut in truth it is very hard to generalise about Jerusalem, precisely\nbecause it contains everything, and its contrasts are real contrasts.\nAnd anybody who doubts that its Christianity is Christian, a thing\nfighting for our own culture and morals on the borders of Asia,\nneed only consider the concrete fact of these women of Bethlehem\nand their costume.  There is no need to sneer in any unsympathetic\nfashion at all the domestic institutions of Islam; the sexes are\nnever quite so stupid as some feminists represent; and I dare say\na woman often has her own way in a harem as well as in a household.\nBut the broad difference does remain.  And if there be one thing,\nI think, that can safely be said about all Asia and all oriental tribes,\nit is this; that if a married woman wears any distinctive mark,\nit is always meant to prevent her from receiving the admiration or even\nthe notice of strange men.  Often it is only made to disguise her;\nsometimes it is made to disfigure her.  It may be the masking\nof the face as among the Moslems; it may be the shaving of the head\nas among the Jews; it may, I believe, be the blackening of the teeth\nand other queer expedients among the people of the Far East.\nBut is never meant to make her look magnificent in public;\nand the Bethlehem wife is made to look magnificent in public.  She not\nonly shows all the beauty of her face; and she is often very beautiful.\nShe also wears a towering erection which is as unmistakably\nmeant to give her consequence as the triple tiara of the Pope.\nA woman wearing such a crown, and wearing it without a veil, does stand,\nand can only conceivably stand, for what we call the Western view\nof women, but should rather call the Christian view of women.\nThis is the sort of dignity which must of necessity come from\nsome vague memory of chivalry.  The woman may or may not be,\nas the legend says, a lineal descendant of a Crusader.\nBut whether or no she is his daughter, she is certainly his heiress.\n\nShe may be put last among the local figures I have here described,\nfor the special reason that her case has this rather deeper significance.\nFor it is not possible to remain content with the fact that the crowd\noffers such varied shapes and colours to the eye, when it also offers\nmuch deeper divisions and even dilemmas to the intelligence.\nThe black dress of the Moslem woman and the white dress of the\nChristian woman are in sober truth as different as black and white.\nThey stand for real principles in a real opposition; and the black and\nwhite will not easily disappear in the dull grey of our own compromises.\nThe one tradition will defend what it regards as modesty, and the other\nwhat it regards as dignity, with passions far deeper than most of our\npaltry political appetites.  Nor do I see how we can deny such a right\nof defence, even in the case we consider the less enlightened.\nIt is made all the more difficult by the fact that those who consider\nthemselves the pioneers of enlightenment generally also consider\nthemselves the protectors of native races and aboriginal rights.\nWhatever view we take of the Moslem Arab, we must at least admit\nthat the greater includes the less.  It is manifestly absurd to say\nwe have no right to interfere in his country, but have a right\nto interfere in his home.\n\nIt is the intense interest of Jerusalem that there can thus be\ntwo universes in the same street.  Indeed there are ten rather\nthan two; and it is a proverb that the fight is not only between\nChristian and Moslem, but between Christian and Christian.\nAt this moment, it must be admitted, it is almost entirely a fight\nof Christian and Moslem allied against Jew.  But of that I shall have\nto speak later; the point for the moment is that the varied colours\nof the streets are a true symbol of the varied colours of the souls.\nIt is perhaps the only modern place where the war waged between ideas\nhas such a visible and vivid heraldry.\n\nAnd that fact alone may well leave the spectator with one\nfinal reflection; for it is a matter in which the modern world\nmay well have to learn something from the motley rabble of this\nremote Eastern town.\n\nIt may be an odd thing to suggest that a crowd in Bond Street\nor Piccadilly should model itself on this masquerade of religions.\nIt would be facile and fascinating to turn it into a satire or\nan extravaganza.  Every good and innocent mind would be gratified\nwith the image of a bowler hat in the precise proportions of the Dome\nof St. Paul's, and surmounted with a little ball and cross,\nsymbolising the loyalty of some Anglican to his mother church.\nIt might even be pleasing to see the street dominated\nwith a more graceful top-hat modelled on the Eiffel Tower,\nand signifying the wearer's faith in scientific enterprise,\nor perhaps in its frequent concomitant of political corruption.\nThese would be fair Western parallels to the head-dresses of Jerusalem;\nmodelled on Mount Ararat or Solomon's Temple, and some may insinuate\nthat we are not very likely ever to meet them in the Strand.\nA man wearing whiskers is not even compelled to plead some sort\nof excuse or authority for wearing whiskers, as the Jew can\nfor wearing ringlets; and though the Anglican clergyman may indeed\nbe very loyal to his mother church, there might be considerable\nhesitation if his mother bade him bind his hair.  Nevertheless a more\nhistorical view of the London and Jerusalem crowds will show as far\nfrom impossible to domesticate such symbols; that some day a lady's\njewels might mean something like the sacred jewels of the Patriarch,\nor a lady's furs mean something like the furred turban of the Rabbi.\nHistory indeed will show us that we are not so much superior to them\nas inferior to ourselves.\n\nWhen the Crusaders came to Palestine, and came riding up that road\nfrom Jaffa where the orange plantations glow on either side, they came\nwith motives which may have been mixed and are certainly disputed.\nThere may have been different theories among the Crusaders; there are\ncertainly different theories among the critics of the Crusaders.\nMany sought God, some gold, some perhaps black magic.  But whatever else\nthey were in search of, they were not in search of the picturesque.\nThey were not drawn from a drab civilisation by that mere thirst for\ncolour that draws so many modern artists to the bazaars of the East.\nIn those days there were colours in the West as well as in the East;\nand a glow in the sunset as well as in the sunrise.  Many of the men\nwho rode up that road were dressed to match the most glorious\norange garden and to rival the most magnificent oriental king.\nKing Richard cannot have been considered dowdy, even by comparison,\nwhen he rode on that high red saddle graven with golden lions,\nwith his great scarlet hat and his vest of silver crescents.\nThat squire of the comparatively unobtrusive household\nof Joinville, who was clad in scarlet striped with yellow,\nmust surely have been capable (if I may be allowed the expression)\nof knocking them in the most magnificent Asiatic bazaar.\nNor were these external symbols less significant, but rather more\nsignificant than the corresponding symbols of the Eastern civilisation.\nIt is true that heraldry began beautifully as an art and afterwards\ndegenerated into a science.  But even in being a science it had\nto possess a significance; and the Western colours were often\nallegorical where the Eastern were only accidental.  To a certain\nextent this more philosophical ornament was doubtless imitated;\nand I have remarked elsewhere on the highly heraldic lions\nwhich even the Saracens carved over the gate of St. Stephen.\nBut it is the extraordinary and even exasperating fact that it was not\nimitated as the most meaningless sort of modern vulgarity is imitated.\nKing Richard's great red hat embroidered with beasts and birds has not\novershadowed the earth so much as the billycock, which no one has yet\nthought of embroidering with any such natural and universal imagery.\nThe cockney tourist is not only more likely to set out with\nthe intention of knocking them, but he has actually knocked them;\nand Orientals are imitating the tweeds of the tourist more than they\nimitated the stripes of the squire.  It is a curious and perhaps\nmelancholy truth that the world is imitating our worst, our weariness\nand our dingy decline, when it did not imitate our best and the high\nmoment of our morning.\n\nPerhaps it is only when civilisation becomes a disease that it\nbecomes an infection.  Possibly it is only when it becomes a very\nvirulent disease that it becomes an epidemic.  Possibly again\nthat is the meaning both of cosmopolitanism and imperialism.\nAnyhow the tribes sitting by Afric's sunny fountains did\nnot take up the song when Francis of Assisi stood on the very\nmountain of the Middle Ages, singing the Canticle of the Sun.\nWhen Michael Angelo carved a statue in snow, Eskimos did not\ncopy him, despite their large natural quarries or resources.\nLaplanders never made a model of the Elgin Marbles, with a frieze\nof reindeers instead of horses; nor did Hottentots try to paint\nMumbo Jumbo as Raphael had painted Madonnas.  But many a savage king\nhas worn a top-hat, and the barbarian has sometimes been so debased\nas to add to it a pair of trousers.  Explosive bullets and the brutal\nfactory system numbers of advanced natives are anxious to possess.\nAnd it was this reflection, arising out of the mere pleasure\nof the eye in the parti-coloured crowd before me, that brought back\nmy mind to the chief problem and peril of our position in Palestine,\non which I touched earlier in this chapter; the peril which is largely\nat the back both of the just and of the unjust objections to Zionism.\nIt is the fear that the West, in its modern mercantile mood,\nwill send not its best but its worst.  The artisan way of putting it,\nfrom the point of view of the Arab, is that it will mean not\nso much the English merchant as the Jewish money-lender. I shall\nwrite elsewhere of better types of Jew and the truths they\nreally represent; but the Jewish money-lender is in a curious\nand complex sense the representative of this unfortunate paradox.\nHe is not only unpopular both in the East and West, but he is unpopular\nin the West for being Eastern and in the East for being Western.\nHe is accused in Europe of Asiatic crookedness and secrecy,\nand in Asia of European vulgarity and bounce.  I have said _a propos_\nof the Arab that the dignity of the oriental is in his long robe;\nthe merely mercantile Jew is the oriental who has lost his long robe,\nwhich leads to a dangerous liveliness in the legs.  He bustles\nand hustles too much; and in Palestine some of the unpopularity\neven of the better sort of Jew is simply due to his restlessness.\nBut there remains a fear that it will not be a question of the\nbetter sort of Jew, or of the better sort of British influence.\nThe same ignominious inversion which reproduces everywhere the factory\nchimney without the church tower, which spreads a cockney commerce\nbut not a Christian culture, has given many men a vague feeling\nthat the influence of modern civilisation will surround these ragged\nbut coloured groups with something as dreary and discoloured,\nas unnatural and as desolate as the unfamiliar snow in which they\nwere shivering as I watched them.  There seemed a sort of sinister\nomen in this strange visitation that the north had sent them;\nin the fact that when the north wind blew at last, it had only\nscattered on them this silver dust of death.\n\nIt may be that this more melancholy mood was intensified by that\npale landscape and those impassable ways.  I do not dislike snow;\non the contrary I delight in it; and if it had drifted as deep in my\nown country against my own door I should have thought it the triumph\nof Christmas, and a thing as comic as my own dog and donkey.\nBut the people in the coloured rags did dislike it; and the effects of it\nwere not comic but tragic.  The news that came in seemed in that little\nlonely town like the news of a great war, or even of a great defeat.\nMen fell to regarding it, as they have fallen too much to regarding\nthe war, merely as an unmixed misery, and here the misery was\nreally unmixed.  As the snow began to melt corpses were found in it,\nhomes were hopelessly buried, and even the gradual clearing of the roads\nonly brought him stories of the lonely hamlets lost in the hills.\nIt seemed as if a breath of the aimless destruction that wanders\nin the world had drifted across us; and no task remained for men\nbut the weary rebuilding of ruins and the numbering of the dead.\n\nOnly as I went out of the Jaffa Gate, a man told me that the tree\nof the hundred deaths, that was the type of the eternal Caliphate\nof the Crescent, was cast down and lying broken in the snow.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE GROUPS OF THE CITY\n\nPalestine is a striped country; that is the first effect of landscape\non the eye.  It runs in great parallel lines wavering into vast hills\nand valleys, but preserving the parallel pattern; as if drawn boldly\nbut accurately with gigantic chalks of green and grey and red and yellow.\nThe natural explanation or (to speak less foolishly) the natural process\nof this is simple enough.  The stripes are the strata of the rock,\nonly they are stripped by the great rains, so that everything has\nto grow on ledges, repeating yet again that terraced character\nto be seen in the vineyards and the staircase streets of the town.\nBut though the cause is in a sense in the ruinous strength of the rain,\nthe hues are not the dreary hues of ruin.  What earth there is is commonly\na red clay richer than that of Devon; a red clay of which it would\nbe easy to believe that the giant limbs of the first man were made.\nWhat grass there is is not only an enamel of emerald, but is\nliterally crowded with those crimson anemones which might well have\ncalled forth the great saying touching Solomon in all his glory.\nAnd even what rock there is is coloured with a thousand secondary\nand tertiary tints, as are the walls and streets of the Holy City\nwhich is built from the quarries of these hills.  For the old\nstones of the old Jerusalem are as precious as the precious stones\nof the New Jerusalem; and at certain moments of morning or of sunset,\nevery pebble might be a pearl.\n\nAnd all these coloured strata rise so high and roll so far that they might\nbe skies rather than slopes.  It is as if we looked up at a frozen sunset;\nor a daybreak fixed for ever with its fleeting bars of cloud.\nAnd indeed the fancy is not without a symbolic suggestiveness.\nThis is the land of eternal things; but we tend too much to forget\nthat recurrent things are eternal things.  We tend to forget that\nsubtle tones and delicate hues, whether in the hills or the heavens,\nwere to the primitive poets and sages as visible as they are to us;\nand the strong and simple words in which they describe them\ndo not prove that they did not realise them.  When Wordsworth\nspeaks of \"the clouds that gather round the setting sun,\"\nwe assume that he has seen every shadow of colour and every\ncurve of form; but when the Hebrew poet says \"He hath made\nthe clouds his chariot\"; we do not always realise that he was\nfull of indescribable emotions aroused by indescribable sights.\nWe vaguely assume that the very sky was plainer in primitive times.\nWe feel as if there had been a fashion in sunsets; or as if dawn\nwas always grey in the Stone Age or brown in the Bronze Age.\n\nBut there is another parable written in those long lines of many-coloured\nclay and stone.  Palestine is in every sense a stratified country.\nIt is not only true in the natural sense, as here where the clay has\nfallen away and left visible the very ribs of the hills.  It is true\nin the quarries where men dig, in the dead cities where they excavate,\nand even in the living cities where they still fight and pray.\nThe sorrow of all Palestine is that its divisions in culture,\npolitics and theology are like its divisions in geology.\nThe dividing line is horizontal instead of vertical.  The frontier\ndoes not run between states but between stratified layers.\nThe Jew did not appear beside the Canaanite but on top of the Canaanite;\nthe Greek not beside the Jew but on top of the Jew; the Moslem not\nbeside the Christian but on top of the Christian.  It is not merely\na house divided against itself, but one divided across itself.\nIt is a house in which the first floor is fighting the second floor,\nin which the basement is oppressed from above and attics are besieged\nfrom below.  There is a great deal of gunpowder in the cellars;\nand people are by no means comfortable even on the roof.\nIn days of what some call Bolshevism, it may be said that most states\nare houses in which the kitchen has declared war on the drawing-room.\nBut this will give no notion of the toppling pagoda of political\nand religious and racial differences, of which the name is Palestine.\nTo explain that it is necessary to give the traveller's first\nimpressions more particularly in their order, and before I\nreturn to this view of the society as stratified, I must state\nthe problem more practically as it presents itself while the society\nstill seems fragmentary.\n\nWe are always told that the Turk kept the peace between\nthe Christian sects.  It would be nearer the nerve of vital\ntruth to say that he made the war between the Christian sects.\nBut it would be nearer still to say that the war is something\nnot made by Turks but made up by infidels.  The tourist visiting\nthe churches is often incredulous about the tall tales told about them;\nbut he is completely credulous about the tallest of all the tales,\nthe tale that is told against them.  He believes in a frantic fraticidal\nwar perpetually waged by Christian against Christian in Jerusalem.\nIt freshens the free sense of adventure to wander through those\ncrooked and cavernous streets, expecting every minute to see the\nArmenian Patriarch trying to stick a knife into the Greek Patriarch;\njust as it would add to the romance of London to linger about Lambeth\nand Westminster in the hope of seeing the Archbishop of Canterbury locked\nin a deadly grapple with the President of the Wesleyan Conference.\nAnd if we return to our homes at evening without having actually seen\nthese things with the eye of flesh, the vision has none the less shone\non our path, and led us round many corners with alertness and with hope.\nBut in bald fact religion does not involve perpetual war in the East,\nany more than patriotism involves perpetual war in the West.\nWhat it does involve in both cases is a defensive attitude;\na vigilance on the frontiers.  There is no war; but there is\nan armed peace.\n\nI have already explained the sense in which I say that the Moslems\nare unhistoric or even anti-historic. Perhaps it would be near\nthe truth to say that they are prehistoric.  They attach themselves\nto the tremendous truisms which men might have realised before they\nhad any political experience at all; which might have been scratched\nwith primitive knives of flint upon primitive pots of clay.\nBeing simple and sincere, they do not escape the need for legends;\nI might almost say that, being honest, they do not escape the need\nfor lies.  But their mood is not historic, they do not wish to grapple\nwith the past; they do not love its complexities; nor do they\nunderstand the enthusiasm for its details and even its doubts.\nNow in all this the Moslems of a place like Jerusalem are the very\nopposite of the Christians of Jerusalem.  The Christianity of Jerusalem is\nhighly historic, and cannot be understood without historical imagination.\nAnd this is not the strong point perhaps of those among us who generally\nrecord their impressions of the place.  As the educated Englishman\ndoes not know the history of England, it would be unreasonable\nto expect him to know the history of Moab or of Mesopotamia.\nHe receives the impression, in visiting the shrines of Jerusalem,\nof a number of small sects squabbling about small things.\nIn short, he has before him a tangle of trivialities, which include\nthe Roman Empire in the West and in the East, the Catholic Church\nin its two great divisions, the Jewish race, the memories of Greece\nand Egypt, and the whole Mahometan world in Asia and Africa.\nIt may be that he regards these as small things; but I should be glad\nif he would cast his eye over human history, and tell me what are\nthe large things.  The truth is that the things that meet to-day in\nJerusalem are by far the greatest things that the world has yet seen.\nIf they are not important nothing on this earth is important,\nand certainly not the impressions of those who happen to be bored\nby them.  But to understand them it is necessary to have something\nwhich is much commoner in Jerusalem than in Oxford or Boston;\nthat sort of living history which we call tradition.\n\nFor instance, the critic generally begins by dismissing these conflicts\nwith the statement that they are all about small points of theology.\nI do not admit that theological points are small points.  Theology is only\nthought applied to religion; and those who prefer a thoughtless religion\nneed not be so very disdainful of others with a more rationalistic taste.\nThe old joke that the Greek sects only differed about a single\nletter is about the lamest and most illogical joke in the world.\nAn atheist and a theist only differ by a single letter; yet theologians\nare so subtle as to distinguish definitely between the two.\nBut though I do not in any case allow that it is idle to be concerned\nabout theology, as a matter of actual fact these quarrels are not\nchiefly concerned about theology.  They are concerned about history.\nThey are concerned with the things about which the only human sort\nof history is concerned; great memories of great men, great battles\nfor great ideas, the love of brave people for beautiful places,\nand the faith by which the dead are alive.  It is quite true that with\nthis historic sense men inherit heavy responsibilities and revenges,\nfury and sorrow and shame.  It is also true that without it men die,\nand nobody even digs their graves.\n\nThe truth is that these quarrels are rather about patriotism than\nabout religion, in the sense of theology.  That is, they are just such\nheroic passions about the past as we call in the West by the name\nof nationalism; but they are conditioned by the extraordinarily\ncomplicated position of the nations, or what corresponds to the nations.\nWe of the West, if we wish to understand it, must imagine ourselves\nas left with all our local loves and family memories unchanged,\nbut the places affected by them intermingled and tumbled about by some\nalmost inconceivable convulsion.  We must imagine cities and landscapes\nto have turned on some unseen pivots, or been shifted about by some\nunseen machinery, so that our nearest was furthest and our remotest\nenemy our neighbour.  We must imagine monuments on the wrong sites,\nand the antiquities of one county emptied out on top of another.\nAnd we must imagine through all this the thin but tough threads\nof tradition everywhere tangled and yet everywhere unbroken.\nWe must picture a new map made out of the broken fragments of the old map;\nand yet with every one remembering the old map and ignoring the new.\nIn short we must try to imagine, or rather we must try to hope,\nthat our own memories would be as long and our own loyalties\nas steady as the memories and loyalties of the little crowd\nin Jerusalem; and hope, or pray, that we could only be as rigid,\nas rabid and as bigoted as are these benighted people.\nThen perhaps we might preserve all our distinctions of truth\nand falsehood in a chaos of time and space.\n\nWe have to conceive that the Tomb of Napoleon is in the middle\nof Stratford-on-Avon, and that the Nelson Column is erected\non the field of Bannockburn; that Westminster Abbey has taken\nwings and flown away to the most romantic situation on the Rhine,\nand that the wooden \"Victory\" is stranded, like the Ark on Ararat,\non the top of the Hill of Tara; that the pilgrims to the shrine\nof Lourdes have to look for it in the Island of Runnymede,\nand that the only existing German statue of Bismarck is to be found\nin the Pantheon at Paris.  This intolerable topsy-turvydom is no\nexaggeration of the way in which stories cut across each other and sites\nare imposed on each other in the historic chaos of the Holy City.\nNow we in the West are very lucky in having our nations normally\ndistributed into their native lands; so that good patriots can talk\nabout themselves without perpetually annoying their neighbours.\nSome of the pacifists tell us that national frontiers and divisions\nare evil because they exasperate us to war.  It would be far truer\nto say that national frontiers and divisions keep us at peace.\nIt would be far truer to say that we can always love each\nother so long as we do not see each other.  But the people\nof Jerusalem are doomed to have difference without division.\nThey are driven to set pillar against pillar in the same temple,\nwhile we can set city against city across the plains of the world.\nWhile for us a church rises from its foundations as naturally\nas a flower springs from a flower-bed, they have to bless the soil\nand curse the stones that stand on it.  While the land we love\nis solid under our feet to the earth's centre, they have to see\nall they love and hate lying in strata like alternate night and day,\nas incompatible and as inseparable.  Their entanglements are tragic,\nbut they are not trumpery or accidental.  Everything has a meaning;\nthey are loyal to great names as men are loyal to great nations;\nthey have differences about which they feel bound to dispute to the death;\nbut in their death they are not divided.\n\nJerusalem is a small town of big things; and the average modern\ncity is a big town full of small things.  All the most important\nand interesting powers in history are here gathered within the area\nof a quiet village; and if they are not always friends, at least they\nare necessarily neighbours.  This is a point of intellectual interest,\nand even intensity, that is far too little realised.  It is a matter\nof modern complaint that in a place like Jerusalem the Christian\ngroups do not always regard each other with Christian feelings.\nIt is said that they fight each other; but at least they meet each other.\nIn a great industrial city like London or Liverpool, how often do they\neven meet each other?  In a large town men live in small cliques,\nwhich are much narrower than classes; but in this small town they\nlive at least by large contacts, even if they are conflicts.\nNor is it really true, in the daily humours of human life, that they\nare only conflicts.  I have heard an eminent English clergyman from\nCambridge bargaining for a brass lamp with a Syrian of the Greek Church,\nand asking the advice of a Franciscan friar who was standing smiling\nin the same shop.  I have met the same representative of the Church\nof England, at a luncheon party with the wildest Zionist Jews,\nand with the Grand Mufti, the head of the Moslem religion.\nSuppose the same Englishman had been, as he might well have been,\nan eloquent and popular vicar in Chelsea or Hampstead.  How often\nwould he have met a Franciscan or a Zionist?  Not once in a year.\nHow often would he have met a Moslem or a Greek Syrian?  Not once\nin a lifetime.  Even if he were a bigot, he would be bound\nin Jerusalem to become a more interesting kind of bigot.\nEven if his opinions were narrow, his experiences would be wide.\nHe is not, as a fact, a bigot, nor, as a fact, are the other\npeople bigots, but at the worst they could not be unconscious bigots.\nThey could not live in such uncorrected complacency as is possible\nto a larger social set in a larger social system.  They could not\nbe quite so ignorant as a broad-minded person in a big suburb.\nIndeed there is something fine and distinguished about the very delicacy,\nand even irony, of their diplomatic relations.  There is something\nof chivalry in the courtesy of their armed truce, and it is a great\nschool of manners that includes such differences in morals.\n\nThis is an aspect of the interest of Jerusalem which can easily\nbe neglected and is not easy to describe.  The normal life\nthere is intensely exciting, not because the factions fight,\nbut rather because they do not fight.  Of the abnormal crisis\nwhen they did fight, and the abnormal motives that made them fight,\nI shall have something to say later on.  But it was true for a great\npart of the time that what was picturesque and thrilling was not\nthe war but the peace.  The sensation of being in this little town\nis rather like that of being at a great international congress.\nIt is like that moving and glittering social satire, in which\ndiplomatists can join in a waltz who may soon be joining in a war.\nFor the religious and political parties have yet another point\nin common with separate nations; that even within this narrow\nspace the complicated curve of their frontiers is really more\nor less fixed, and certainly not particularly fluctuating.\nPersecution is impossible and conversion is not at all common.\nThe very able Anglo-Catholic leader, to whom I have already referred,\nuttered to me a paradox that was a very practical truth.\nHe said he felt exasperated with the Christian sects,\nnot for their fanaticism but for their lack of fanaticism.\nHe meant their lack of any fervour and even of any hope,\nof converting each other to their respective religions.\nAn Armenian may be quite as proud of the Armenian Church as a Frenchman\nof the French nation, yet he may no more expect to make a Moslem an\nArmenian than the Frenchman expects to make an Englishman a Frenchman.\nIf, as we are told, the quarrels could be condemned as merely\ntheological, this would certainly be the very reverse of logical.\nBut as I say, we get much nearer to them by calling them national;\nand the leaders of the great religions feel much more like\nthe ambassadors of great nations.  And, as I have also said,\nthat ambassadorial atmosphere can be best expressed on the word irony,\nsometimes a rather tragic irony.  At any tea-party or talk in the street,\nbetween the rival leaders, there is a natural tendency to that sort\nof wit which consists in veiled allusion to a very open secret.\nEach mail feels that there are heavy forces behind a small point,\nas the weight of the fencer is behind the point of the rapier.\nAnd the point can be yet more pointed because the politics of the city,\nwhen I was there, included several men with a taste and talent for such\npolished intercourse; including especially two men whose experience\nand culture would have been remarkable in any community in the world;\nthe American Consul and the Military Governor of Jerusalem.\n\nIf in cataloguing the strata of the society we take first the topmost\nlayer of Western officialism, we might indeed find it not inconvenient\nto take these two men as representing the chief realities about it.\nDr. Glazebrook, the representative of the United States,\nhas the less to do with the internal issues of the country; but his\nmere presence and history is so strangely picturesque that he might\nbe put among the first reasons for finding the city interesting.\nHe is an old man now, for he actually began life as a soldier in the\nSouthern and Secessionist army, and still keeps alive in every detail,\nnot merely the virtues but the very gestures of the old Southern\nand Secessionist aristocrat.\n\nHe afterward became a clergyman of the Episcopalian Church, and served\nas a chaplain in the Spanish-American war, then, at an age when most\nmen have long retired from the most peaceful occupations, he was sent\nout by President Wilson to the permanent battlefield of Palestine.\nThe brilliant services he performed there, in the protection of British\nand American subjects, are here chiefly interesting as throwing\na backward light on the unearthly topsy-turvydom of Turkish rule.\nThere appears in his experiences something in such rule\nwhich we are perhaps apt to forget in a vision of stately\nEastern princes and gallant Eastern warriors, something more\ntyrannical even than the dull pigheadedness of Prussianism.\nI mean the most atrocious of all tortures, which is called caprice.\nIt is the thing we feel in the Arabian tales, when no man knows\nwhether the Sultan is good or bad, and he gives the same Vizier\na thousand pounds or a thousand lashes.  I have heard Dr. Glazebrook\ndescribe a whole day of hideous hesitation, in which fugitives\nfor whom he pleaded were allowed four times to embark and four\ntimes were brought back again to their prison.  There is something\nthere dizzy as well as dark, a whirlpool in the very heart of Asia;\nand something wilder than our own worst oppressions in the peril\nof those men who looked up and saw above all the power of Asiatic arms,\ntheir hopes hanging on a rocking mind like that of a maniac.\nThe tyrant let them go at last, avowedly out of a simple sentiment\nfor the white hair of the consul, and the strange respect that many\nMoslems feel for the minister of any religion.  Once at least\nthe trembling rock of barbaric rule nearly fell on him and killed him.\nBy a sudden movement of lawlessness the Turkish military authorities\nsent to him, demanding the English documents left in his custody.\nHe refused to give them up; and he knew what he was doing.\nIn standing firm he was not even standing like Nurse Cavell against\norganised Prussia under the full criticism of organised Europe.\nHe was rather standing in a den of brigands, most of whom\nhad never heard of the international rules they violated.\nFinally by another freak of friendliness they left him and his\npapers alone; but the old man had to wait many days in doubt,\nnot knowing what they would do, since they did not know themselves.\nI do not know what were his thoughts, or whether they were far from\nPalestine and all possibilities that tyranny might return and reign\nfor ever.  But I have sometimes fancied that, in that ghastly silence,\nhe may have heard again only the guns of Lee and the last battle\nin the Wilderness.\n\nIf the mention of the American Consul refers back to the oppression\nof the past, the mention of the Military Governor brings back\nall the problems of the present.  Here I only sketch these groups\nas I first found them in the present; and it must be remembered\nthat my present is already past.  All this was before the latest\nchange from military to civil government, but the mere name\nof Colonel Storrs raises a question which is rather misunderstood\nin relation to that change itself.  Many of our journalists,\nespecially at the time of the last and worst of the riots,\nwrote as if it would be a change from some sort of stiff militarism\nto a liberal policy akin to parliamentarism.  I think this a fallacy,\nand a fallacy not uncommon in journalism, which is professedly\nvery much up to date, and actually very much behind the times.\nAs a fact it is nearly four years behind the times, for it is\nthinking in terms of the old small and rigidly professional army.\nColonel Storrs is the very last man to be called militaristic in\nthe narrow sense; he is a particularly liberal and enlightened type\nof the sort of English gentleman who readily served his country in war,\nbut who is rather particularly fitted to serve her in politics\nor literature.  Of course many purely professional soldiers have\nliberal and artistic tastes; as General Shea, one of the organisers\nof Palestinian victory, has a fine taste in poetry, or Colonel Popham,\nthen deputy Governor of Jerusalem, an admirable taste in painting.\nBut while it is sometimes forgotten that many soldiers are men, it is\nnow still more strange to forget that most men are soldiers.  I fancy\nthere are now few things more representative than the British Army;\ncertainly it is much more representative than the British Parliament.\nThe men I knew, and whom I remember with so much gratitude, working under\nGeneral Bols at the seat of government on the Mount of Olives,\nwere certainly not narrowed by any military professionalism, and had if\nanything the mark of quite different professions.  One was a very shrewd\nand humorous lawyer employed on legal problems about enemy property,\nanother was a young schoolmaster, with keen and clear ideas,\nor rather ideals, about education for all the races in Palestine.\nThese men did not cease to be themselves because they were all\ndressed in khaki; and if Colonel Storrs recurs first to the memory,\nit is not because he had become a colonel in the trade of soldiering,\nbut because he is the sort of man who could talk equally about\nall these other trades and twenty more.  Incidentally, and by way\nof example, he can talk about them in about ten languages.\nThere is a story, which whether or no it be true is very typical,\nthat one of the Zionist leaders made a patriotic speech in Hebrew,\nand broke off short in his recollection of this partially revived\nnational tongue; whereupon the Governor of Jerusalem finished\nhis Hebrew speech for him--whether to exactly the same effect\nor not it would be impertinent to inquire.  He is a man rather\nrecalling the eighteenth century aristocrat, with his love of wit\nand classical learning; one of that small group of the governing\nclass that contains his uncle, Harry Cust, and was warmed with\nthe generous culture of George Wyndham.  It was a purely mechanical\ndistinction between the military and civil government that would\nlend to such figures the stiffness of a drumhead court martial.\nAnd even those who differed with him accused him in practice,\nnot of militarist lack of sympathy with any of those he ruled,\nbut rather with too imaginative a sympathy with some of them.\nTo know these things, however slightly, and then read the English\nnewspapers afterwards is often amusing enough; but I have only mentioned\nthe matter because there is a real danger in so crude a differentiation.\nIt would be a bad thing if a system military in form but representative\nin fact gave place to a system representative in form but financial\nin fact.  That is what the Arabs and many of the English fear;\nand with the mention of that fear we come to the next stratum\nafter the official.  It must be remembered that I am not at this\nstage judging these groups, but merely very rapidly sketching them,\nlike figures and costumes in the street.\n\nThe group standing nearest to the official is that of the Zionists;\nwho are supposed to have a place at least in our official policy.\nAmong these also I am happy to have friends; and I may venture to call\nthe official head of the Zionists an old friend in a matter quite remote\nfrom Zionism.  Dr. Eder, the President of the Zionist Commission,\nis a man for whom I conceived a respect long ago when he protested,\nas a professional physician, against the subjection of the poor\nto medical interference to the destruction of all moral independence.\nHe criticised with great effect the proposal of legislators to kidnap\nanybody else's child whom they chose to suspect of a feeblemindedness\nthey were themselves too feeble-minded to define.  It was defended,\nvery characteristically, by a combination of precedent and progress;\nand we were told that it only extended the principle of the lunacy laws.\nThat is to say, it only extended the principle of the lunacy laws\nto people whom no sane man would call lunatics.  It is as if they\nwere to alter the terms of a quarantine law from \"lepers\"\nto \"light-haired persons\"; and then say blandly that the principle\nwas the same.  The humour and human sympathy of a Jewish doctor was\nvery welcome to us when we were accused of being Anti-Semites, and we\nafterwards asked Dr. Eder for his own views on the Jewish problem.\nWe found he was then a very strong Zionist; and this was long before\nhe had the faintest chance of figuring as a leader of Zionism.\nAnd this accident is important; for it stamps the sincerity of the small\ngroup of original Zionists, who were in favour of this nationalist\nideal when all the international Jewish millionaires were against it.\nTo my mind the most serious point now against it is that the millionaires\nare for it.  But it is enough to note here the reality of the ideal\nin men like Dr. Eder and Dr. Weizmann, and doubtless many others.\nThe only defect that need be noted, as a mere detail of portraiture,\nis a certain excessive vigilance and jealousy and pertinacity in\nthe wrong place, which sometimes makes the genuine Zionists unpopular\nwith the English, who themselves suffer unpopularity for supporting them.\nFor though I am called an Anti-Semite, there were really periods of\nofficial impatience when I was almost the only Pro-Semite in the company.\nI went about pointing out what was really to be said for Zionism,\nto people who were represented by the Arabs as the mere slaves\nof the Zionists.\n\nThis group of Arab Anti-Semites may be taken next,\nbut very briefly; for the problem itself belongs to a later page;\nand the one thing to be said of it here is very simple.\nI never expected it, and even now I do not fully understand it.\nBut it is the fact that the native Moslems are more Anti-Semitic\nthan the native Christians.  Both are more or less so; and have formed\na sort of alliance out of the fact.  The banner carried by the mob\nbore the Arabic inscription \"Moslems and Christians are brothers.\"\nIt is as if the little wedge of Zionism had closed up the cracks\nof the Crusades.\n\nOf the Christian crowds in that partnership, and the Christian creeds\nthey are proud to inherit, I have already suggested something;\nit is only as well to note that I have put them out of their strict order\nin the stratification of history.  It is too often forgotten that in\nthese countries the Christian culture is older than the Moslem culture.\nI for one regret that the old Pax Romana was broken up by the Arabs;\nand hold that in the long run there was more life in that Byzantine\ndecline than in that Semitic revival.  And I will add what I cannot\nhere develop or defend; that in the long run it is best that the\nPax Romana should return; and that the suzerainty of those lands\nat least will have to be Christian, and neither Moslem nor Jewish.\nTo defend it is to defend a philosophy; but I do hold that there is\nin that philosophy, for all the talk of its persecutions in the past,\na possibility of comprehension and many-sided sympathy which is\nnot in the narrow intensity either of the Moslem or the Jew.\nChristianity is really the right angle of that triangle,\nand the other two are very acute angles.\n\nBut in the meetings that led up to the riots it is the more Moslem\npart of the mixed crowds that I chiefly remember; which touches\nthe same truth that the Christians are the more potentially tolerant.\nBut many of the Moslem leaders are as dignified and human as many\nof the Zionist leaders; the Grand Mufti is a man I cannot imagine\nas either insulting anybody, or being conceivably the object of insult.\nThe Moslem Mayor of Jerusalem was another such figure, belonging also I\nbelieve to one of the Arab aristocratic houses (the Grand Mufti is\na descendant of Mahomet) and I shall not forget his first appearance\nat the first of the riotous meetings in which I found myself.\nI will give it as the first of two final impressions with which I\nwill end this chapter, I fear on a note of almost anarchic noise,\nthe unearthly beating and braying of the Eastern gongs and horns\nof two fierce desert faiths against each other.\n\nI first saw from the balcony of the hotel the crowd of riotors come\nrolling up the street.  In front of them went two fantastic figures\nturning like teetotums in an endless dance and twirling two crooked\nand naked scimitars, as the Irish were supposed to twirl shillelaghs.\nI thought it a delightful way of opening a political meeting;\nand I wished we could do it at home at the General Election.\nI wish that instead of the wearisome business of Mr. Bonar Law\ntaking the chair, and Mr. Lloyd George addressing the meeting,\nMr. Law and Mr. Lloyd George would only hop and caper in front of\na procession, spinning round and round till they were dizzy, and waving\nand crossing a pair of umbrellas in a thousand invisible patterns.\nBut this political announcement or advertisement, though more intelligent\nthan our own, had, as I could readily believe, another side to it.\nI was told that it was often a prelude to ordinary festivals,\nsuch as weddings; and no doubt it remains from some ancient ritual dance\nof a religious character.  But I could imagine that it might sometimes\nseem to a more rational taste to have too religious a character.\nI could imagine that those dancing men might indeed be dancing dervishes,\nwith their heads going round in a more irrational sense than\ntheir bodies.  I could imagine that at some moments it might suck\nthe soul into what I have called in metaphor the whirlpool of Asia,\nor the whirlwind of a world whipped like a top with a raging monotony;\nthe cyclone of eternity.  That is not the sort of rhythm nor\nthe sort of religion by which I myself should hope to save the soul;\nbut it is intensely interesting to the mind and even the eye, and I\nwent downstairs and wedged myself into the thick and thronging press.\nIt surged through the gap by the gate, where men climbed\nlamp-posts and roared out speeches, and more especially recited\nnational poems in rich resounding voices; a really moving effect,\nat least for one who could not understand a word that was said.\nFeeling had already gone as far as knocking Jews' hats off and other\npopular sports, but not as yet on any universal and systematic scale;\nI saw a few of the antiquated Jews with wrinkles and ringlets,\npeering about here and there; some said as spies or representatives\nof the Zionists, to take away the Anti-Semitic colour from the meeting.\nBut I think this unlikely; especially as it would have been pretty hard\nto take it away.  It is more likely, I think, that the archaic Jews\nwere really not unamused and perhaps not unsympathetic spectators;\nfor the Zionist problem is complicated by a real quarrel\nin the Ghetto about Zionism.  The old religious Jews do not\nwelcome the new nationalist Jews; it would sometimes be hardly\nan exaggeration to say that one party stands for the religion without\nthe nation, and the other for the nation without the religion.\nJust as the old agricultural Arabs hate the Zionists as the\ninstruments of new Western business grab and sharp practice;\nso the old peddling and pedantic but intensely pious Jews hate\nthe Zionists as the instruments of new Western atheism of free thought.\nOnly I fear that when the storm breaks, such distinctions\nare swept away.\n\nThe storm was certainly rising.  Outside the Jaffa Gate the road\nruns up steeply and is split in two by the wedge of a high building,\nlooking as narrow as a tower and projecting like the prow of a ship.\nThere is something almost theatrical about its position and stage\nproperties, its one high-curtained window and balcony, with a sort\nof pole or flag-staff; for the place is official or rather municipal.\nRound it swelled the crowd, with its songs and poems and\npassionate rhetoric in a kind of crescendo, and then suddenly\nthe curtain of the window rose like the curtain of the theatre,\nand we saw on that high balcony the red fez and the tall figure\nof the Mahometan Mayor of Jerusalem.\n\nI did not understand his Arabic observations; but I know\nwhen a man is calming a mob, and the mob did become calmer.\nIt was as if a storm swelled in the night and gradually died away\nin a grey morning; but there are perpetual mutterings of that storm.\nMy point for the moment is that the exasperations come chiefly from\nthe two extremes of the two great Semitic traditions of monotheism;\nand certainly not primarily from those poor Eastern Christians\nof whose fanaticism we have been taught to make fun.\nFrom time to time there are gleams of the extremities of Eastern\nfanaticism which are almost ghastly to Western feeling.\nThey seem to crack the polish of the dignified leaders of the Arab\naristocracy and the Zionist school of culture, and reveal a\nvolcanic substance of which only oriental creeds have been made.\nOne day a wild Jewish proclamation is passed from hand to hand,\ndenouncing disloyal Jews who refuse the teaching Hebrew; telling doctors\nto let them die and hospitals to let them rot, ringing with the old\nunmistakable and awful accent that bade men dash their children\nagainst the stones.  Another day the city would be placarded with\nposters printed in Damascus, telling the Jews who looked to Palestine\nfor a national home that they should find it a national cemetery.\nAnd when these cries clash it is like the clash of those two\ncrooked Eastern swords, that crossed and recrossed and revolved\nlike blazing wheels, in the vanguard of the marching mob.\n\nI felt the fullest pressure of the problem when I first walked round\nthe whole of the Haram enclosure, the courts of the old Temple,\nwhere the high muezzin towers now stand at every corner,\nand heard the clear voices of the call to prayer.  The sky was\nladen with a storm that became the snowstorm; and it was the time\nat which the old Jews beat their hands and mourn over what are\nbelieved to be the last stones of the Temple.  There was a movement\nin my own mind that was attuned to these things, and impressed by\nthe strait limits and steep sides of that platform of the mountains;\nfor the sense of crisis is not only in the intensity of the ideals,\nbut in the very conditions of the reality, the reality with which this\nchapter began.  And the burden of it is the burden of Palestine;\nthe narrowness of the boundaries and the stratification of the rock.\nA voice not of my reason but rather sounding heavily in my heart,\nseemed to be repeating sentences like pessimistic proverbs.\nThere is no place for the Temple of Solomon but on the ruins of\nthe Mosque of Omar.  There is no place for the nation of the Jews\nbut in the country of the Arabs.  And these whispers came to me\nfirst not as intellectual conclusions upon the conditions of the case,\nof which I should have much more to say and to hope; but rather\nas hints of something immediate and menacing and yet mysterious.\nI felt almost a momentary impulse to flee from the place, like one\nwho has received an omen.  For two voices had met in my ears;\nand within the same narrow space and in the same dark hour,\nelectric and yet eclipsed with cloud, I had heard Islam crying\nfrom the turret and Israel wailing at the wall.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE SHADOW OF THE PROBLEM\n\nA traveller sees the hundred branches of a tree long before he is\nnear enough to see its single and simple root; he generally sees\nthe scattered or sprawling suburbs of a town long before he has looked\nupon the temple or the market-place. So far I have given impressions\nof the most motley things merely as they came, in chronological\nand not in logical order; the first flying vision of Islam as a sort\nof sea, with something both of the equality and the emptiness and\nthe grandeur of its purple seas of sand; the first sharp silhouette\nof Jerusalem, like Mount St. Michael, lifting above that merely\nMoslem flood a crag still crowned with the towers of the Crusaders;\nthe mere kaleidoscope of the streets, with little more than a hint\nof the heraldic meaning of the colours; a merely personal impression\nof a few of the leading figures whom I happened to meet first,\nand only the faintest suggestion of the groups for which they stood.\nSo far I have not even tidied up my own first impressions of the place;\nfar less advanced a plan for tidying up the place itself.\n\nIn any case, to begin with, it is easy to be in far too much\nof a hurry about tidying up.  This has already been noted in\nthe more obvious case, of all that religious art that bewildered\nthe tourist with its churches full of flat and gilded ikons.\nMany a man has had the sensation of something as full as a picture\ngallery and as futile as a lumber-room, merely by not happening to know\nwhat is really of value, or especially in what way it is really valued.\nAn Armenian or a Syrian might write a report on his visit\nto England, saying that our national and especially our naval\nheroes were neglected, and left to the lowest dregs of the rabble;\nsince the portraits of Benbow and Nelson, when exhibited to the public,\nwere painted on wood by the crudest and most incompetent artists.\nHe would not perhaps fully appreciate the fine shade of\nsocial status and utility implied in a public-house sign.\nHe might not realise that the sign of Nelson could be hung on\nhigh everywhere, because the reputation of Nelson was high everywhere,\nnot because it was low anywhere; that his bad portrait was really\na proof of his good name.  Yet the too rapid reformer may easily\nmiss even the simple and superficial parallel between the wooden\npictures of admirals and the wooden pictures of angels.\nStill less will he appreciate the intense spiritual atmosphere,\nthat makes the real difference between an ikon and an inn-sign,\nand makes the inns of England, noble and national as they are,\nrelatively the homes of Christian charity but hardly a Christian faith.\nHe can hardly bring himself to believe that Syrians can be as fond\nof religion as Englishmen of beer.\n\nNobody can do justice to these cults who has not some sympathy with\nthe power of a mystical idea to transmute the meanest and most trivial\nobjects with a kind of magic.  It is easy to talk of superstitiously\nattaching importance to sticks and stones, but the whole poetry\nof life consists of attaching importance to sticks and stones;\nand not only to those tall sticks we call the trees or those large\nstones we call the mountains.  Anything that gives to the sticks of our\nown furniture, or the stones of our own backyard, even a reflected\nor indirect divinity is good for the dignity of life; and this\nis often achieved by the dedication of similar and special things.\nAt least we should desire to see the profane things transfigured\nby the sacred, rather than the sacred disenchanted by the profane;\nand it was a prophet walking on the walls of this mountain city,\nwho said that in his vision all the bowls should be as the bowls\nbefore the altar, and on every pot in Jerusalem should be written\nHoly unto the Lord.\n\nAnyhow, this intensity about trifles is not always understood.\nSeveral quite sympathetic Englishmen told me merely as a funny story\n(and God forbid that I should deny that it is funny) the fact\nof the Armenians or some such people having been allowed to suspend\na string of lamps from a Greek pillar by means of a nail, and their\nsubsequent alarm when their nail was washed by the owners of the pillar;\na sort of symbol that their nail had finally fallen into the hands\nof the enemy.  It strikes us as odd that a nail should be so valuable\nor so vivid to the imagination.  And yet, to men so close to Calvary,\neven nails are not entirely commonplace.\n\nAll this, regarding a decent delay and respect for religion or\neven for superstition, is obvious and has already been observed.\nBut before leaving it, we may note that the same argument cuts\nthe other way; I mean that we should not insolently impose our own ideas\nof what is picturesque any more than our own ideas of what is practical.\nThe aesthete is sometimes more of a vandal than the vandal.\nThe proposed reconstructions of Jerusalem have been on\nthe whole reasonable and sympathetic; but there is always\na danger from the activities, I might almost say the antics,\nof a sort of antiquary who is more hasty than an anarchist.\nIf the people of such places revolt against their own limitations,\nwe must have a reasonable respect for their revolt, and we must\nnot be impatient even with their impatience.\n\nIt is their town; they have to live in it, and not we.\nAs they are the only judges of whether their antiquities are\nreally authorities, so they are the only judges of whether their\nnovelties are really necessities.  As I pointed out more than once\nto many of my friends in Jerusalem, we should be very much annoyed\nif artistic visitors from Asia took similar liberties in London.\nIt would be bad enough if they proposed to conduct excavations\nin Pimlico or Paddington, without much reference to the people\nwho lived there; but it would be worse if they began to relieve them\nof the mere utilitarianism of Chelsea Bridge or Paddington Station.\nSuppose an eloquent Abyssinian Christian were to hold up his hand and stop\nthe motor-omnibuses from going down Fleet Street on the ground that\nthe thoroughfare was sacred to the simpler locomotion of Dr. Johnson.\nWe should be pleased at the African's appreciation of Johnson;\nbut our pleasure would not be unmixed.  Suppose when you or I are\nin the act of stepping into a taxi-cab, an excitable Coptic Christian\nwere to leap from behind a lamp-post, and implore us to save\nthe grand old growler or the cab called the gondola of London.\nI admit and enjoy the poetry of the hansom; I admit and enjoy\nthe personality of the true cabman of the old four-wheeler, upon whose\nmassive manhood descended something of the tremendous tradition\nof Tony Weller.  But I am not so certain as I should like to be,\nthat I should at that moment enjoy the personality of the Copt.\nFor these reasons it seems really desirable, or at least defensible,\nto defer any premature reconstruction of disputed things,\nand to begin this book as a mere note-book or sketch-book\nof things as they are, or at any rate as they appear.\nIt was in this irregular order, and in this illogical disproportion,\nthat things did in fact appear to me, and it was some time before I saw\nany real generalisation that would reduce my impressions to order.\nI saw that the groups disagreed, and to some extent why they disagreed,\nlong before I could seriously consider anything on which they would\nbe likely to agree.  I have therefore confined the first section\nof this book to a mere series of such impressions, and left to the last\nsection a study of the problem and an attempt at the solution.\nBetween these two I have inserted a sort of sketch of what seemed to me\nthe determining historical events that make the problem what it is.\nOf these I will only say for the moment that, whether by a coincidence\nor for some deeper cause, I feel it myself to be a case of first\nthoughts being best; and that some further study of history served\nrather to solidify what had seemed merely a sort of vision.\nI might almost say that I fell in love with Jerusalem at first sight;\nand the final impression, right or wrong, served only to fix\nthe fugitive fancy which had seen, in the snow on the city,\nthe white crown of a woman of Bethlehem.\n\nBut there is another cause for my being content for the moment,\nwith this mere chaos of contrasts.  There is a very real reason\nfor emphasising those contrasts, and for shunning the temptation\nto shut our eyes to them even considered as contrasts.\nIt is necessary to insist that the contrasts are not easy to turn\ninto combinations; that the red robes of Rome and the green\nscarves of Islam will not very easily fade into a dingy russet;\nthat the gold of Byzantium and the brass of Babylon will require\na hot furnace to melt them into any kind of amalgam.  The reason\nfor this is akin to what has already been said about Jerusalem as a\nknot of realities.  It is especially a knot of popular realities.\nAlthough it is so small a place, or rather because it is so\nsmall a place, it is a domain and a dominion for the masses.\nDemocracy is never quite democratic except when it is quite direct;\nand it is never quite direct except when it is quite small.\nSo soon as a mob has grown large enough to have delegates it has\ngrown large enough to have despots; indeed the despots are often\nmuch the more representative of the two.  Now in a place so small\nas Jerusalem, what we call the rank and file really counts.\nAnd it is generally true, in religions especially, that the real\nenthusiasm or even fanaticism is to be found in the rank and file.\nIn all intense religions it is the poor who are more religious\nand the rich who are more irreligious.  It is certainly so with\nthe creeds and causes that come to a collision in Jerusalem.\nThe great Jewish population throughout the world did hail Mr. Balfour's\ndeclaration with something almost of the tribal triumph they might\nhave shown when the Persian conqueror broke the Babylonian bondage.\nIt was rather the plutocratic princes of Jewry who long hung back\nand hesitated about Zionism.  The mass of Mahometans really are\nready to combine against the Zionists as they might have combined\nagainst the Crusades.  It is rather the responsible Mahometan\nleaders who will naturally be found more moderate and diplomatic.\nThis popular spirit may take a good or a bad form; and a mob may cry\nout many things, right and wrong.  But a mob cries out \"No Popery\";\nit does not cry out \"Not so much Popery,\" still less \"Only a moderate\nadmixture of Popery.\"  It shouts \"Three cheers for Gladstone,\"\nit does not shout \"A gradual and evolutionary social tendency towards\nsome ideal similar to that of Gladstone.\"  It would find it quite\na difficult thing to shout; and it would find exactly the same\ndifficulty with all the advanced formulae about nationalisation\nand internationalisation and class-conscious solidarity.\nNo rabble could roar at the top of its voice the collectivist\nformula of \"The nationalisation of all the means of production,\ndistribution, and exchange.\"  The mob of Jerusalem is no\nexception to the rule, but rather an extreme example of it.\nThe mob of Jerusalem has cried some remarkable things in its time;\nbut they were not pedantic and they were not evasive.\nThere was a day when it cried a single word; \"Crucify.\" It was\na thing to darken the sun and rend the veil of the temple;\nbut there was no doubt about what it meant.\n\nThis is an age of minorities; of minorities powerful and predominant,\npartly through the power of wealth and partly through the idolatry\nof education.  Their powers appeared in every crisis of the Great War,\nwhen a small group of pacifists and internationalists, a microscopic\nminority in every country, were yet constantly figuring as diplomatists\nand intermediaries and men on whose attitude great issues might depend.\nA man like Mr. Macdonald, not a workman nor a formal or real\nrepresentative of workmen, was followed everywhere by the limelight;\nwhile the millions of workmen who worked and fought were out\nof focus and therefore looked like a fog.  Just as such figures\ngive a fictitious impression of unity between the crowds fighting\nfor different flags and frontiers, so there are similar figures\ngiving a fictitious unity to the crowds following different creeds.\nThere are already Moslems who are Modernists; there have always\nbeen a ruling class of Jews who are Materialists.  Perhaps it\nwould be true to say about much of the philosophical controversy\nin Europe, that many Jews tend to be Materialists, but all tend\nto be Monists, though the best in the sense of being Monotheists.\nThe worst are in a much grosser sense materialists, and have motives\nvery different from the dry idealism of men like Mr. Macdonald,\nwhich is probably sincere enough in its way.  But with whatever motives,\nthese intermediaries everywhere bridge the chasm between creeds\nas they do the chasm between countries.  Everywhere they exalt\nthe minority that is indifferent over the majority that is interested.\nJust as they would make an international congress out of the traitors\nof all nations, so they would make an ecumenical council out of\nthe heretics of all religions.\n\nMild constitutionalists in our own country often discuss\nthe possibility of a method of protecting the minority.\nIf they will find any possible method of protecting the majority,\nthey will have found something practically unknown to the modern world.\nThe majority is always at a disadvantage; the majority is\ndifficult to idealise, because it is difficult to imagine.\nThe minority is generally idealised, sometimes by its servants,\nalways by itself.  But my sympathies are generally, I confess,\nwith the impotent and even invisible majority.  And my sympathies,\nwhen I go beyond the things I myself believe, are with all\nthe poor Jews who do believe in Judaism and all the Mahometans\nwho do believe in Mahometanism, not to mention so obscure a crowd\nas the Christians who do believe in Christianity.  I feel I have\nmore morally and even intellectually in common with these people,\nand even the religions of these people, than with the supercilious\nnegations that make up the most part of what is called enlightenment.\nIt is these masses whom we ought to consider everywhere; but it\nis especially these masses whom we must consider in Jerusalem.\nAnd the reason is in the reality I have described; that the place\nis like a Greek city or a medieval parish; it is sufficiently\nsmall and simple to be a democracy.  This is not a university town\nfull of philosophies; it is a Zion of the hundred sieges raging\nwith religions; not a place where resolutions can be voted and amended,\nbut a place where men can be crowned and crucified.\n\nThere is one small thing neglected in all our talk\nabout self-determination; and that is determination.\nThere is a great deal more difference than there is between most\nmotions and amendments between the things for which a democracy\nwill vote and the things on which a democracy is determined.\nYou can take a vote among Jews and Christians and Moslems about whether\nlamp-posts should be painted green or portraits of politicians painted\nat all, and even their solid unanimity may be solid indifference.\nMost of what is called self-determination is like that; but there\nis no self-determination about it.  The people are not determined.\nYou cannot take a vote when the people are determined.\nYou accept a vote, or something very much more obvious than a vote.\n\nNow it may be that in Jerusalem there is not one people but rather\nthree or four; but each is a real people, having its public opinion,\nits public policy, its flag and almost, as I have said, its frontier.\nIt is not a question of persuading weak and wavering voters, at a vague\nparliamentary election, to vote on the other side for a change, to choose\nafresh between two middle-class gentlemen, who look exactly alike and\nonly differ on a question about which nobody knows or cares anything.\nIt is a question of contrasts that will almost certainly remain contrasts,\nexcept under the flood of some spiritual conversion which cannot\nbe foreseen and certainly cannot be enforced.  We cannot enrol\nthese people under our religion, because we have not got one.\nWe can enrol them under our government, and if we are obliged to do that,\nthe obvious essential is that like Roman rule before Christianity,\nor the English rule in India it should profess to be impartial if only\nby being irreligious.  That is why I willingly set down for the moment\nonly the first impressions of a stranger in a strange country.\nIt is because our first safety is in seeing that it is a strange country;\nand our present preliminary peril that we may fall into the habit\nof thinking it a familiar country.  It does no harm to put the facts\nin a fashion that seems disconnected; for the first fact of all is\nthat they are disconnected.  And the first danger of all is that we\nmay allow some international nonsense or newspaper cant to imply\nthat they are connected when they are not.  It does no harm,\nat any rate to start with, to state the differences as irreconcilable.\nFor the first and most unfamiliar fact the English have to learn\nin this strange land is that differences can be irreconcilable.\nAnd again the chief danger is that they may be persuaded that the wordy\ncompromises of Western politics can reconcile them; that such abysses\ncan be filled up with rubbish, or such chasms bridged with cobwebs.\nFor we have created in England a sort of compromise which may up to a\ncertain point be workable in England; though there are signs that even\nin England that point is approaching or is past.  But in any case we\ncould only do with that compromise as we could do without conscription;\nbecause an accident had made us insular and even provincial.\nSo in India where we have treated the peoples as different from\nourselves and from each other we have at least partly succeeded.\nSo in Ireland, where we have tried to make them agree with us\nand each other, we have made one never-ending nightmare.\n\nWe can no more subject the world to the English compromise than to the\nEnglish climate; and both are things of incalculable cloud and twilight.\nWe have grown used to a habit of calling things by the wrong\nnames and supporting them by the wrong arguments; and even doing\nthe right thing for the wrong cause.  We have party governments which\nconsist of people who pretend to agree when they really disagree.\nWe have party debates which consist of people who pretend to disagree\nwhen they really agree.  We have whole parties named after things they\nno longer support, or things they would never dream of proposing.\nWe have a mass of meaningless parliamentary ceremonials that are\nno longer even symbolic; the rule by which a parliamentarian\npossesses a constituency but not a surname; or the rule by\nwhich he becomes a minister in order to cease to be a member.\nAll this would seem the most superstitious and idolatrous\nmummery to the simple worshippers in the shrines of Jerusalem.\nYou may think what they say fantastic, or what they mean fanatical,\nbut they do not say one thing and mean another.  The Greek\nmay or may not have a right to say he is Orthodox, but he means\nthat he is Orthodox; in a very different sense from that in which\na man supporting a new Home Rule Bill means that he is Unionist.\nA Moslem would stop the sale of strong drink because he is a Moslem.\nBut he is not quite so muddleheaded as to profess to stop it because\nhe is a Liberal, and a particular supporter of the party of liberty.\nEven in England indeed it will generally be found that there\nis something more clear and rational about the terms of theology\nthan those of politics and popular science.  A man has at least\na more logical notion of what he means when he calls himself\nan Anglo-Catholic than when he calls himself an Anglo-Saxon. But\nthe old Jew with the drooping ringlets, shuffling in and out\nof the little black booths of Jerusalem, would not condescend\nto say he is a child of anything like the Anglo-Saxon race.\nHe does not say he is a child of the Aramaico-Semitic race.\nHe says he is a child of the Chosen Race, brought with thunder\nand with miracles and with mighty battles out of the land of Egypt\nand out of the house of bondage.  In other words, he says something\nthat means something, and something that he really means.\nOne of the white Dominicans or brown Franciscans, from the great\nmonasteries of the Holy City, may or may not be right in maintaining\nthat a Papacy is necessary to the unity of Christendom.\nBut he does not pass his life in proving that the Papacy\nis not a Papacy, as many of our liberal constitutionalists\npass it in proving that the Monarchy is not a Monarchy.\nThe Greek priests spend an hour on what seems to the sceptic\nmere meaningless formalities of the preparation of the Mass.\nBut they would not spend a minute if they were themselves sceptics\nand thought them meaningless formalities, as most modern people do\nthink of the formalities about Black Rod or the Bar of the House.\nThey would be far less ritualistic than we are, if they cared\nas little for the Mass as we do for the Mace.  Hence it is\nnecessary for us to realise that these rude and simple worshippers,\nof all the different forms of worship, really would be bewildered\nby the ritual dances and elaborate ceremonial antics of John Bull,\nas by the superstitious forms and almost supernatural incantations\nof most of what we call plain English.\n\nNow I take it we retain enough realism and common sense not to\nwish to transfer these complicated conventions and compromises\nto a land of such ruthless logic and such rending divisions.\nWe may hope to reproduce our laws, we do not want to reproduce our\nlegal fictions.  We do not want to insist on everybody referring\nto Mr. Peter or Mr. Paul, as the honourable member for Waddy Walleh;\nbecause a retiring Parliamentarian has to become Steward\nof the Chiltern Hundreds, we shall not insist on a retiring\nPalestinian official becoming Steward of the Moabitic Hundreds.\nBut yet in much more subtle and more dangerous ways we are making\nthat very mistake.  We are transferring the fictions and even the\nhypocrisies of our own insular institutions from a place where they\ncan be tolerated to a place where they will be torn in pieces.\nI have confined myself hitherto to descriptions and not to criticisms,\nto stating the elements of the problem rather than attempting\nas yet to solve it; because I think the danger is rather that we\nshall underrate the difficulties than overdo the description;\nthat we shall too easily deny the problem rather than that we shall\ntoo severely criticise the solution.  But I would conclude this chapter\nwith one practical criticism which seems to me to follow directly\nfrom all that is said here of our legal fictions and local anomalies.\nOne thing at least has been done by our own Government, which is entirely\naccording to the ritual or routine of our own Parliament.  It is a\nparliament of Pooh Bah, where anybody may be Lord High Everything Else.\nIt is a parliament of Alice in Wonderland, where the name of a thing is\ndifferent from what it is called, and even from what its name is called.\nIt is death and destruction to send out these fictions into a\nforeign daylight, where they will be seen as things and not theories.\nAnd knowing all this, I cannot conceive the reason, or even\nthe meaning, of sending out Sir Herbert Samuel as the British\nrepresentative in Palestine.\n\nI have heard it supported as an interesting experiment in Zionism.\nI have heard it denounced as a craven concession to Zionism.\nI think it is quite obviously a flat and violent contradiction\nto Zionism.  Zionism, as I have always understood it, and indeed\nas I have always defended it, consists in maintaining that it\nwould be better for all parties if Israel had the dignity\nand distinctive responsibility of a separate nation; and that\nthis should be effected, if possible, or so far as possible,\nby giving the Jews a national home, preferably in Palestine.\nBut where is Sir Herbert Samuel's national home?  If it is in\nPalestine he cannot go there as a representative of England.\nIf it is in England, he is so far a living proof that a Jew does\nnot need a national home in Palestine.  If there is any point\nin the Zionist argument at all, you have chosen precisely the wrong\nman and sent him to precisely the wrong country.  You have asserted\nnot the independence but the dependence of Israel, and yet you have\nratified the worst insinuations about the dependence of Christendom.\nIn reason you could not more strongly state that Palestine does not\nbelong to the Jews, than by sending a Jew to claim it for the English.\nAnd yet in practice, of course, all the Anti-Semites will say he is\nclaiming it for the Jews.  You combine all possible disadvantages\nof all possible courses of action; you run all the risks of the hard\nZionist adventure, while actually denying the high Zionist ideal.\nYou make a Jew admit he is not a Jew but an Englishman; even while you\nallow all his enemies to revile him because he is not an Englishman\nbut a Jew.\n\nNow this sort of confusion or compromise is as local as a London fog.\nA London fog is tolerable in London, indeed I think it is very\nenjoyable in London.  There is a beauty in that brown twilight\nas well as in the clear skies of the Orient and the South.\nBut it is simply horribly dangerous for a Londoner to carry\nhis cloud of fog about with him, in the crystalline air about\nthe crags of Zion, or under the terrible stars of the desert.\nThere men see differences with almost unnatural clearness,\nand call things by savagely simple names.  We in England may\nconsider all sorts of aspects of a man like Sir Herbert Samuel;\nwe may consider him as a Liberal, or a friend of the Fabian Socialists,\nor a cadet of one of the great financial houses, or a Member of\nParliament who is supposed to represent certain miners in Yorkshire,\nor in twenty other more or less impersonal ways.  But the people\nin Palestine will see only one aspect, and it will be a very personal\naspect indeed.  For the enthusiastic Moslems he will simply be a Jew;\nfor the enthusiastic Zionists he will not really be a Zionist.\nFor them he will always be the type of Jew who would be willing\nto remain in London, and who is ready to represent Westminster.\nMeanwhile, for the masses of Moslems and Christians, he will\nonly be the aggravation in practice of the very thing of which\nhe is the denial in theory.  He will not mean that Palestine\nis not surrendered to the Jews, but only that England is.\nNow I have nothing as yet to do with the truth of that suggestion;\nI merely give it as an example of the violent and unexpected\nreactions we shall produce if we thrust our own unrealities amid\nthe red-hot realities of the Near East; it is like pushing a snow man\ninto a furnace.  I have no objection to a snow man as a part of our\nown Christmas festivities; indeed, as has already been suggested,\nI think such festivities a great glory of English life.\nBut I have seen the snow melting in the steep places about Jerusalem;\nand I know what a cataract it could feed.\n\nAs I considered these things a deepening disquiet possessed me,\nand my thoughts were far away from where I stood.  After all,\nthe English did not indulge in this doubling of parts and muddling\nof mistaken identity in their real and unique success in India.\nThey may have been wrong or right but they were realistic about Moslems\nand Hindoos; they did not say Moslems were Hindoos, or send a highly\nintelligent Hindoo from Oxford to rule Moslems as an Englishman.\nThey may not have cared for things like the ideal of Zionism;\nbut they understood the common sense of Zionism, the desirability\nof distinguishing between entirely different things.\nBut I remembered that of late their tact had often failed them\neven in their chief success in India; and that every hour\nbrought worse and wilder news of their failure in Ireland.\nI remembered that in the Early Victorian time, against the advice\nonly of the wisest and subtlest of the Early Victorians, we had tied\nourselves to the triumphant progress of industrial capitalism; and that\nprogress had now come to a crisis and what might well be a crash.\nAnd now, on the top of all, our fine patriotic tradition of foreign\npolicy seemed to be doing these irrational and random things.\nA sort of fear took hold of me; and it was not for the Holy Land\nthat I feared.\n\nA cold wave went over me, like that unreasonable change and chill\nwith which a man far from home fancies his house has been burned down,\nor that those dear to him are dead.  For one horrible moment at least I\nwondered if we had come to the end of compromise and comfortable nonsense,\nand if at last the successful stupidity of England would topple\nover like the successful wickedness of Prussia; because God is not\nmocked by the denial of reason any more than the denial of justice.\nAnd I fancied the very crowds of Jerusalem retorted on me words\nspoken to them long ago; that a great voice crying of old along\nthe Via Dolorosa was rolled back on me like thunder from the mountains;\nand that all those alien faces are turned against us to-day,\nbidding us weep not for them, who have faith and clarity and a purpose,\nbut weep for ourselves and for our children.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE OTHER SIDE OF THE DESERT\n\nThere was a story in Jerusalem so true or so well told that I can see\nthe actors in it like figures in coloured costumes on a lighted stage.\nIt occurred during the last days of Turkish occupation, while the\nEnglish advance was still halted before Gaza, and heroically enduring\nthe slow death of desert warfare.  There were German and Austrian\nelements present in the garrison with the Turks, though the three\nallies seem to have held strangely aloof from each other.\nIn the Austrian group there was an Austrian lady, \"who had some dignity\nor other,\" like Lord Lundy's grandmother.  She was very beautiful,\nvery fashionable, somewhat frivolous, but with fits of Catholic devotion.\nShe had some very valuable Christian virtues, such as indiscriminate\ncharity for the poor and indiscriminate loathing for the Prussians.\nShe was a nurse; she was also a nuisance.  One day she was driving\njust outside the Jaffa Gate, when she saw one of those figures\nwhich make the Holy City seem like the eternal crisis of an epic.\nSuch a man will enter the gate in the most ghastly rags as if\nhe were going to be crowned king in the city; with his head\nlifted as if he saw apocalyptic stars in heaven, and a gesture at\nwhich the towers might fall.  This man was ragged beyond all that\nmoving rag-heap; he was as gaunt as a gallows tree, and the thing\nhe was uttering with arms held up to heaven was evidently a curse.\nThe lady sent an inquiry by her German servant, whom also I can see\nin a vision, with his face of wood and his air of still trailing\nall the heraldic trappings of the Holy Roman Empire.  This ambassador\nsoon returned in state and said, \"Your Serene High Sublimity\n(or whatever it is), he says he is cursing the English.\"  Her pity\nand patriotism were alike moved; and she again sent the plenipotentiary\nto discover why he cursed the English, or what tale of wrong or ruin\nat English hands lay behind the large gestures of his despair.\nA second time the wooden intermediary returned and said,\n\"Your Ecstatic Excellency (or whatever be the correct form),\nhe says he is cursing the English because they don't come.\"\n\nThere are a great many morals to this story, besides the general\ntruth to which it testifies; that the Turkish rule was not\npopular even with Moslems, and that the German war was not\nparticularly popular even with Turks.  When all deductions are\nmade for the patriot as a partisan, and his way of picking up\nonly what pleases him, it remains true that the English attack\nwas very widely regarded rather as a rescue than an aggression.\nAnd what complaint there was really was, in many cases, a complaint\nthat the rescue did not come with a rush; that the English forces\nhad to fall back when they had actually entered Gaza, and could not\nfor long afterwards continue their advance on Jerusalem.  This kind\nof criticism of military operations is always, of course, worthless.\nIn journalists it is generally worthless without being even harmless.\nThere were some in London whose pessimistic wailing was less excusable\nthan that of the poor Arab in Jerusalem; who cursed the English with\nthe addition of being English themselves, who did it, not as he did,\nbefore one foreigner, but before all foreign opinion; and who\nadvertised their failure in a sort of rags less reputable than his.\nNo one can judge of a point like the capture and loss of Gaza,\nunless he knows a huge mass of technical and local detail that can\nonly be known to the staff on the spot; it is not a question\nof lack of water but of exactly how little water; not of the\narrival of reinforcements but of exactly how much reinforcement;\nnot of whether time presses, but of exactly how much time there is.\nNobody can know these things who is editing a newspaper at the other\nend of the world; and these are the things which, for the soldier\non the spot, make all the difference between jumping over a paling\nand jumping over a precipice.  Even the latter, as the philosophic\nrelativist will eagerly point out, is only a matter of degree.\nBut this is a parenthesis; for the purpose with which I mentioned\nthe anecdote is something different.  It is the text of another and\nsomewhat more elusive truth; some appreciation of which is necessary\nto a sympathy with the more profound problems of Palestine.\nAnd it might be expressed thus; it is a proverb that the Eastern\nmethods seem to us slow; that the Arabs trail along on labouring\ncamels while the Europeans flash by on motors or mono-planes. But\nthere is another and stranger sense in which we do seem to them slow,\nand they do seem to themselves to have a secret of swiftness.\nThere is a sense in which we here touch the limits of a land of lightning;\nacross which, as in a dream, the motor-car can be seen crawling\nlike a snail.\n\nI have said that there is another side to the desert; though there\nis something queer in talking of another side to something so bare\nand big and oppressively obvious.  But there is another side besides\nthe big and bare truths, like giant bones, that the Moslem has\nfound there; there is, so to speak, an obverse of the obvious.\nAnd to suggest what I mean I must go back again to the desert and\nthe days I spent there, being carted from camp to camp and giving\nwhat were courteously described as lectures.  All I can say is that if\nthose were lectures, I cannot imagine why everybody is not a lecturer.\nPerhaps the secret is already out; and multitudes of men in evening dress\nare already dotted about the desert, wandering in search of an audience.\nAnyhow in my own wanderings I found myself in the high narrow house\nof the Base Commandant at Kantara, the only house in the whole\ncircle of the horizon; and from the wooden balustrade and verandah,\nrunning round the top of it, could be seen nine miles of tents.\nSydney Smith said that the bulbous domes of the Brighton Pavilion\nlooked as if St. Paul's Cathedral had come down there and littered;\nand that grey vista of countless cones looked rather as if the\nGreat Pyramid had multiplied itself on the prolific scale of the herring.\nNor was even such a foolish fancy without its serious side; for though\nthese pyramids would pass, the plan of them was also among the mightiest\nof the works of man; and the king in every pyramid was alive.\nFor this was the great camp that was the pivot of the greatest campaign;\nand from that balcony I had looked on something all the more\nhistoric because it may never be seen again.  As the dusk fell\nand the moon brightened above that great ghostly city of canvas,\nI had fallen into talk with three or four of the officers at the base;\ngrizzled and hard-headed men talking with all the curious and almost\ncolourless common sense of the soldier.  All that they said was objective;\none felt that everything they mentioned was really a thing\nand not merely a thought; a thing like a post or a palm-tree. I\nthink there is something in this of a sympathy between the English\nand the Moslems, which may have helped us in India and elsewhere.\nFor they mentioned many Moslem proverbs and traditions,\nlightly enough but not contemptuously, and in particular another\nof the proverbial prophecies about the term of Turkish power.\nThey said there was an old saying that the Turk would never depart\nuntil the Nile flowed through Palestine; and this at least\nwas evidently a proverb of pride and security, like many such;\nas who should say until the sea is dry or the sun rises in the west.\nAnd one of them smiled and made a small gesture as of attention.\nAnd in the silence of that moonlit scene we heard the clanking of a pump.\nThe water from the Nile had been brought in pipes across the desert.\n\nAnd I thought that the symbol was a sound one, apart from all vanities;\nfor this is indeed the special sort of thing that Christendom\ncan do, and that Islam by itself would hardly care to do.\nI heard more afterwards of that water, which was eventually carried\nup the hills to Jerusalem, when I myself followed it thither;\nand all I heard bore testimony to this truth so far as it goes; the sense\namong the natives themselves of something magic in our machinery,\nand that in the main a white magic; the sense of all the more solid sort\nof social service that belongs rather to the West than to the East.\nWhen the fountain first flowed in the Holy City in the mountains,\nand Father Waggett blessed it for the use of men, it is said that\nan old Arab standing by said, in the plain and powerful phraseology\nof his people:  \"The Turks were here for five hundred years,\nand they never gave us a cup of cold water.\"\n\nI put first this minimum of truth about the validity of Western\nwork because the same conversation swerved slowly, as it were,\nto the Eastern side.  These same men, who talked of all things\nas if they were chairs and tables, began to talk quite calmly of\nthings more amazing than table-turning. They were as wonderful as if\nthe water had come there like the wind, without any pipes or pumps;\nor if Father Waggett had merely struck the rock like Moses.\nThey spoke of a solitary soldier at the end of a single telephone wire\nacross the wastes, hearing of something that had that moment happened\nhundreds of miles away, and then coming upon a casual Bedouin who knew\nit already.  They spoke of the whole tribes moving and on the march,\nupon news that could only come a little later by the swiftest wires\nof the white man.  They offered no explanation of these things;\nthey simply knew they were there, like the palm-trees and the moon.\nThey did not say it was \"telepathy\"; they lived much too close to\nrealities for that.  That word, which will instantly leap to the lips\nof too many of my readers, strikes me as merely an evidence of two\nof our great modern improvements; the love of long words and the loss\nof common sense.  It may have been telepathy, whatever that is;\nbut a man must be almost stunned with stupidity if he is satisfied\nto say telepathy as if he were saying telegraphy.  If everybody\nis satisfied about how it is done, why does not everybody do it?\nWhy does not a cultivated clergyman in Cornwall make a casual remark\nto an old friend of his at the University of Aberdeen?  Why does\nnot a harassed commercial traveller in Barcelona settle a question\nby merely thinking about his business partner in Berlin?  The common\nsense of it is, of course, that the name makes no sort of difference;\nthe mystery is why some people can do it and others cannot;\nand why it seems to be easy in one place and impossible in another.\nIn other words it comes back to that very mystery which of all\nmysteries the modern world thinks most superstitious and senseless;\nthe mystery of locality.  It works back at last to the hardest of\nall the hard sayings of supernaturalism; that there is such a thing\nas holy or unholy ground, as divinely or diabolically inspired people;\nthat there may be such things as sacred sites or even sacred stones;\nin short that the airy nothing of spiritual essence, evil or good,\ncan have quite literally a local habitation and a name.\n\nIt may be said in passing that this _genius loci_ is here very much\nthe presiding genius.  It is true that everywhere to-day a parade of the\ntheory of pantheism goes with a considerable practice of particularism;\nand that people everywhere are beginning to wish they were somewhere.\nAnd even where it is not true of men, it seems to be true of the\nmysterious forces which men are once more studying.  The words we now\naddress to the unseen powers may be vague and universal, but the words\nthey are said to address to us are parochial and even private.\nWhile the Higher Thought Centre would widen worship everywhere\nto a temple not made with hands, the Psychical Research Society\nis conducting practical experiments round a haunted house.\nMen may become cosmopolitans, but ghosts remain patriots.\nMen may or may not expect an act of healing to take place at a holy well,\nbut nobody expects it ten miles from the well; and even the sceptic who\ncomes to expose the ghost-haunted churchyard has to haunt the churchyard\nlike a ghost.  There may be something faintly amusing about the idea\nof demi-gods with door-knockers and dinner tables, and demons,\none may almost say, keeping the home fires burning.  But the driving\nforce of this dark mystery of locality is all the more indisputable\nbecause it drives against most modern theories and associations.\nThe truth is that, upon a more transcendental consideration,\nwe do not know what place is any more than we know what time is.\nWe do not know of the unknown powers that they cannot concentrate\nin space as in time, or find in a spot something that corresponds\nto a crisis.  And if this be felt everywhere, it is necessarily\nand abnormally felt in those alleged holy places and sacred spots.\nIt is felt supremely in all those lands of the Near East which lie\nabout the holy hill of Zion.\n\nIn these lands an impression grows steadily on the mind much too\nlarge for most of the recent religious or scientific definitions.\nThe bogus heraldry of Haeckel is as obviously insufficient as any\nquaint old chronicle tracing the genealogies of English kings through\nthe chiefs of Troy to the children of Noah.  There is no difference,\nexcept that the tale of the Dark Ages can never be proved,\nwhile the travesty of the Darwinian theory can sometimes be disproved.\nBut I should diminish my meaning if I suggested it as a mere\nscore in the Victorian game of Scripture versus Science.\nSome much larger mystery veils the origins of man than most partisans\non either side have realised; and in these strange primeval plains\nthe traveller does realise it.  It was never so well expressed\nas by one of the most promising of those whose literary possibilities\nwere gloriously broken off by the great war; Lieutenant Warre-Cornish\nwho left a strange and striking fragment, about a man who came\nto these lands with a mystical idea of forcing himself back\nagainst the stream of time into the very fountain of creation.\nThis is a parenthesis; but before resuming the more immediate\nmatter of the supernormal tricks of the tribes of the East,\nit is well to recognise this very real if much more general historic\nimpression about the particular lands in which they lived.\nI have called it a historic impression; but it might more truly be called\na prehistoric impression.  It is best expressed in symbol by saying\nthat the legendary site of the Garden of Eden is in Mesopotamia.\nIt is equally well expressed in concrete experience by saying that,\nwhen I was in these parts, a learned man told me that the primitive form\nof wheat had just, for the first time, been discovered in Palestine.\n\nThe feeling that fills the traveller may be faintly suggested thus;\nthat here, in this legendary land between Asia and Europe, may well\nhave happened whatever did happen; that through this Eastern gate,\nif any, entered whatever made and changed the world.  Whatever else\nthis narrow strip of land may seem like, it does really seem,\nto the spirit and almost to the senses, like the bridge that may have\nborne across archaic abysses the burden and the mystery of man.\nHere have been civilisations as old as any barbarism; to all\nappearance perhaps older than any barbarism.  Here is the camel;\nthe enormous unnatural friend of man; the prehistoric pet.\nHe is never known to have been wild, and might make a man fancy\nthat all wild animals had once been tame.  As I said elsewhere,\nall might be a runaway menagerie; the whale a cow that went swimming\nand never came back, the tiger a large cat that took the prize\n(and the prize-giver) and escaped to the jungle.  This is not\n(I venture to think) true; but it is true as Pithecanthropus and\nPrimitive Man and all the other random guesses from dubious bits\nof bone and stone.  And the truth is some third thing, too tremendous\nto be remembered by men.  Whatever it was, perhaps the camel saw it;\nbut from the expression on the face of that old family servant,\nI feel sure that he will never tell.\n\nI have called this the other side of the desert; and in another\nsense it is literally the other side.  It is the other shore\nof that shifting and arid sea.  Looking at it from the West\nand considering mainly the case of the Moslem, we feel the desert\nis but a barren border-land of Christendom; but seen from\nthe other side it is the barrier between us and a heathendom far\nmore mysterious and even monstrous than anything Moslem can be.\nIndeed it is necessary to realise this more vividly in order to feel\nthe virtue of the Moslem movement.  It belonged to the desert,\nbut in one sense it was rather a clearance in the cloud that rests\nupon the desert; a rift of pale but clean light in volumes\nof vapour rolled on it like smoke from the strange lands beyond.\nIt conceived a fixed hatred of idolatry, partly because its face was\nturned towards the multitudinous idolatries of the lands of sunrise;\nand as I looked Eastward I seemed to be conscious of the beginnings\nof that other world; and saw, like a forest of arms or a dream full\nof faces, the gods of Asia on their thousand thrones.\n\nIt is not a mere romance that calls it a land of magic,\nor even of black magic.  Those who carry that atmosphere to us\nare not the romanticists but the realists.  Every one can feel\nit in the work of Mr. Rudyard Kipling; and when I once remarked\non his repulsive little masterpiece called \"The Mark of the Beast,\"\nto a rather cynical Anglo-Indian officer, he observed moodily, \"It's a\nbeastly story.  But those devils really can do jolly queer things.\"\nIt is but to take a commonplace example out of countless more\nnotable ones to mention the many witnesses to the mango trick.\nHere again we have from time to time to weep over the weak-mindedness\nthat hurriedly dismisses it as the practice of hypnotism.\nIt is as if people were asked to explain how one unarmed Indian\nhad killed three hundred men, and they said it was only the practice\nof human sacrifice.  Nothing that we know as hypnotism will enable a man\nto alter the eyes in the heads of a huge crowd of total strangers;\nwide awake in broad daylight; and if it is hypnotism, it is\nsomething so appallingly magnified as to need a new magic to explain\nthe explanation; certainly something that explains it better\nthan a Greek word for sleep.  But the impression of these special\ninstances is but one example of a more universal impression of\nthe Asiatic atmosphere; and that atmosphere itself is only an example\nof something vaster still for which I am trying to find words.\nAsia stands for something which the world in the West as well\nas the East is more and more feeling as a presence, and even\na pressure.  It might be called the spiritual world let loose;\nor a sort of psychical anarchy; a jungle of mango plants.\nAnd it is pressing upon the West also to-day because of the breaking\ndown of certain materialistic barriers that have hitherto held it back.\nIn plain words the attitude of science is not only modified;\nit is now entirely reversed.  I do not say it with mere pleasure;\nin some ways I prefer our materialism to their spiritualism.\nBut for good or evil the scientists are now destroying their\nown scientific world.\n\nThe agnostics have been driven back on agnosticism;\nand are already recovering from the shock.  They find\nthemselves in a really unknown world under really unknown gods;\na world which is more mystical, or at least more mysterious.\nFor in the Victorian age the agnostics were not really agnostics.\nThey might be better described as reverent materialists;\nor at any rate monists.  They had at least at the back\nof their minds a clear and consistent concept of their rather\nclockwork cosmos; that is why they could not admit the smallest\nspeck of the supernatural into their clockwork.  But to-day it is\nvery hard for a scientific man to say where the supernatural ends\nor the natural begins, or what name should be given to either.\nThe word agnostic has ceased to be a polite word for atheist.\nIt has become a real word for a very real state of mind,\nconscious of many possibilities beyond that of the atheist,\nand not excluding that of the polytheist.  It is no longer a question\nof defining or denying a simple central power, but of balancing\nthe brain in a bewilderment of new powers which seem to overlap\nand might even conflict.  Nature herself has become unnatural.\nThe wind is blowing from the other side of the desert, not now with\nnoble truism \"There is no God but God,\" but rather with that other\nmotto out of the deeper anarchy of Asia, drawn out by Mr. Kipling,\nin the shape of a native proverb, in the very story already mentioned;\n\"Your gods and my gods, do you or I know which is the stronger?\"\nThere was a mystical story I read somewhere in my boyhood,\nof which the only image that remains is that of a rose-bush growing\nmysteriously in the middle of a room.  Taking this image for the sake\nof argument, we can easily fancy a man half-conscious and convinced\nthat he is delirious, or still partly in a dream, because he sees\nsuch a magic bush growing irrationally in the middle of his bedroom.\nAll the walls and furniture are familiar and solid, the table,\nthe clock, the telephone, the looking glass or what not; there is\nnothing unnatural but this one hovering hallucination or optical\ndelusion of green and red.  Now that was very much the view taken\nof the Rose of Sharon, the mystical rose of the sacred tradition\nof Palestine, by any educated man about 1850, when the rationalism\nof the eighteenth century was supposed to have found full\nsupport in the science of the nineteenth.  He had a sentiment\nabout a rose:  he was still glad it had fragrance or atmosphere;\nthough he remembered with a slight discomfort that it had thorns.\nBut what bothered him about it was that it was impossible.\nAnd what made him think it impossible was it was inconsistent\nwith everything else.  It was one solitary and monstrous\nexception to the sort of rule that ought to have no exceptions.\nScience did not convince him that there were few miracles,\nbut that there were no miracles; and why should there be miracles\nonly in Palestine and only for one short period?  It was a single\nand senseless contradiction to an otherwise complete cosmos.\nFor the furniture fitted in bit by bit and better and better;\nand the bedroom seemed to grow more and more solid.\nThe man recognised the portrait of himself over the mantelpiece or\nthe medicine bottles on the table, like the dying lover in Browning.\nIn other words, science so far had steadily solidified things;\nNewton had measured the walls and ceiling and made a calculus\nof their three dimensions.  Darwin was already arranging\nthe animals in rank as neatly as a row of chairs, or Faraday\nthe chemical elements as clearly as a row of medicine bottles.\nFrom the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth,\nscience was not only making discoveries, but all the discoveries\nwere in one direction.  Science is still making discoveries;\nbut they are in the opposite direction.\n\nFor things are rather different when the man in the bed\nnext looks at the bedroom.  Not only is the rose-bush still\nvery obvious; but the other things are looking very odd.\nThe perspective seems to have gone crooked; the walls seem to vary\nin measurement till the man thinks he is going mad.  The wall-paper\nhas a new pattern, of strange spirals instead of round dots.\nThe table seems to have moved by itself across the room and thrown\nthe medicine bottles out of the window.  The telephone has vanished\nfrom the wall; the mirror does not reflect what is in front of it.\nThe portrait of himself over the mantelpiece has a face that is\nnot his own.\n\nThat is something like a vision of the vital change in the whole\ntrend of natural philosophy in the last twenty or thirty years.\nIt matters little whether we regard it as the deepening\nor the destruction of the scientific universe.\nIt matters little whether we say that grander abysses have\nopened in it, or merely that the bottom has fallen out of it.\nIt is quite self-evident that scientific men are at war with wilder\nand more unfathomable fancies than the facts of the age of Huxley.\nI attempt no controversy about any of the particular cases:\nit is the cumulative effect of all of them that makes the impression\none of common sense.  It is really true that the perspective and\ndimensions of the man's bedroom have altered; the disciples of Einstein\nwill tell him that straight lines are curved and perhaps measure\nmore one way than the other; if that is not a nightmare, what is?\nIt is really true that the clock has altered, for time has turned\ninto the fourth dimension or something entirely different;\nand the telephone may fairly be said to have faded from view in favour\nof the invisible telepath.  It is true that the pattern of the paper\nhas changed, for the very pattern of the world has changed;\nwe are told that it is not made of atoms like the dots but of\nelectrons like the spirals.  Scientific men of the first rank\nhave seen a table move by itself, and walk upstairs by itself.\nIt does not matter here whether it was done by the spirits; it is enough\nthat few still pretend that is entirely done by the spiritualists.\nI am not dealing with doctrines but with doubts; with the mere fact\nthat all these things have grown deeper and more bewildering.\nSome people really are throwing their medicine bottles out\nof the window; and some of them at least are working purely\npsychological cures of a sort that would once have been called\nmiraculous healing.  I do not say we know how far this could go;\nit is my whole point that we do not know, that we are in contact\nwith numbers of new things of which we know uncommonly little.\nBut the vital point is, not that science deals with what we do not know,\nbut that science is destroying what we thought we did know.\nNearly all the latest discoveries have been destructive, not of the old\ndogmas of religion, but rather of the recent dogmas of science.\nThe conservation of energy could not itself be entirely conserved.\nThe atom was smashed to atoms.  And dancing to the tune\nof Professor Einstein, even the law of gravity is behaving\nwith lamentable levity.\n\nAnd when the man looks at the portrait of himself he really does not\nsee himself.  He sees his Other Self, which some say is the opposite\nof his ordinary self; his Subconscious Self or his Subliminal Self,\nsaid to rage and rule in his dreams, or a suppressed self which hates him\nthough it is hidden from him; or the Alter Ego of a Dual Personality.\nIt is not to my present purpose to discuss the merit of\nthese speculations, or whether they be medicinal or morbid.\nMy purpose is served in pointing out the plain historical fact;\nthat if you had talked to a Utilitarian and Rationalist of Bentham's time,\nwho told men to follow \"enlightened self-interest,\" he would have been\nconsiderably bewildered if you had replied brightly and briskly,\n\"And to which self do you refer; the sub-conscious, the conscious,\nthe latently criminal or suppressed, or others that we fortunately have\nin stock?\"  When the man looks at his own portrait in his own bedroom,\nit does really melt into the face of a stranger or flicker into\nthe face of a fiend.  When he looks at the bedroom itself, in short,\nit becomes clearer and clearer that it is exactly this comfortable\nand solid part of the vision that is altering and breaking up.\nIt is the walls and furniture that are only a dream or memory.\nAnd when he looks again at the incongruous rose-bush, he seems\nto smell as well as see; and he stretches forth his hand, and his\nfinger bleeds upon a thorn.\n\nIt will not be altogether surprising if the story ends with the man\nrecovering full consciousness, and finding he has been convalescing in a\nhammock in a rose-garden. It is not so very unreasonable when you come\nto think of it; or at least when you come to think of the whole of it.\nHe was not wrong in thinking the whole must be a consistent whole,\nand that one part seemed inconsistent with the other.\nHe was only wrong about which part was wrong through being inconsistent\nwith the other.  Now the whole of the rationalistic doubt about\nthe Palestinian legends, from its rise in the early eighteenth\ncentury out of the last movements of the Renascence, was founded\non the fixity of facts.  Miracles were monstrosities because they\nwere against natural law, which was necessarily immutable law.\nThe prodigies of the Old Testament or the mighty works of the New\nwere extravagances because they were exceptions; and they were\nexceptions because there was a rule, and that an immutable rule.\nIn short, there was no rose-tree growing out of the carpet of a trim\nand tidy bedroom; because rose-trees do not grow out of carpets\nin trim and tidy bedrooms.  So far it seemed reasonable enough.\nBut it left out one possibility; that a man can dream about a room\nas well as a rose; and that a man can doubt about a rule as well\nas an exception.\n\nAs soon as the men of science began to doubt the rules of the game,\nthe game was up.  They could no longer rule out all the old marvels\nas impossible, in face of the new marvels which they had to admit\nas possible.  They were themselves dealing now with a number of\nunknown quantities; what is the power of mind over matter; when is\nmatter an illusion of mind; what is identity, what is individuality,\nis there a limit to logic in the last extremes of mathematics?\nThey knew by a hundred hints that their non-miraculous world was no\nlonger watertight; that floods were coming in from somewhere in which\nthey were already out of their depth, and down among very fantastical\ndeep-sea fishes.  They could hardly feel certain even about the fish\nthat swallowed Jonah, when they had no test except the very true\none that there are more fish in the sea than ever came out of it.\nLogically they would find it quite as hard to draw the line\nat the miraculous draught of fishes.  I do not mean that they,\nor even I, need here depend on those particular stories;\nI mean that the difficulty now is to draw a line, and a new line,\nafter the obliteration of an old and much more obvious line.\nAny one can draw it for himself, as a matter of mere taste in probability;\nbut we have not made a philosophy until we can draw it for others.\nAnd the modern men of science cannot draw it for others.\nMen could easily mark the contrast between the force of gravity\nand the fable of the Ascension.  They cannot all be made to see\nany such contrast between the levitation that is now discussed as a\npossibility and the ascension which is still derided as a miracle.\nI do not even say that there is not a great difference between them;\nI say that science is now plunged too deep in new doubts\nand possibilities to have authority to define the difference.\nI say the more it knows of what seems to have happened, or what is\nsaid to have happened, in many modern drawing-rooms, the less it\nknows what did or did not happen on that lofty and legendary hill,\nwhere a spire rises over Jerusalem and can be seen beyond Jordan.\n\nBut with that part of the Palestinian story which is told in the\nNew Testament I am not directly concerned till the next chapter;\nand the matter here is a more general one.  The truth is that through\na thousand channels something has returned to the modern mind.\nIt is not Christianity.  On the contrary, it would be truer\nto say that it is paganism.  In reality it is in a very special\nsense paganism; because it is polytheism.  The word will startle\nmany people, but not the people who know the modern world best.\nWhen I told a distinguished psychologist at Oxford that I differed\nfrom his view of the universe, he answered, \"Why universe?\nWhy should it not be a multiverse?\"  The essence of polytheism is\nthe worship of gods who are not God; that is, who are not necessarily\nthe author and the authority of all things.  Men are feeling more\nand more that there are many spiritual forces in the universe,\nand the wisest men feel that some are to be trusted more than others.\nThere will be a tendency, I think, to take a favourite force,\nor in other words a familiar spirit.  Mr. H. G. Wells, who is,\nif anybody is, a genius among moderns and a modern among geniuses,\nreally did this very thing; he selected a god who was really\nmore like a daemon.  He called his book _God, the Invisible King_;\nbut the curious point was that he specially insisted that his God differed\nfrom other people's God in the very fact that he was not a king.\nHe was very particular in explaining that his deity did not\nrule in any almighty or infinite sense; but merely influenced,\nlike any wandering spirit.  Nor was he particularly invisible,\nif there can be said to be any degrees in invisibility.\nMr. Wells's Invisible God was really like Mr. Wells's Invisible Man.\nYou almost felt he might appear at any moment, at any rate to his\none devoted worshipper; and that, as if in old Greece, a glad cry\nmight ring through the woods of Essex, the voice of Mr. Wells crying,\n\"We have seen, he hath seen us, a visible God.\"  I do not mean\nthis disrespectfully, but on the contrary very sympathetically;\nI think it worthy of so great a man to appreciate and answer the general\nsense of a richer and more adventurous spiritual world around us.\nIt is a great emancipation from the leaden materialism which weighed\non men of imagination forty years ago.  But my point for the moment\nis that the mode of the emancipation was pagan or even polytheistic,\nin the real philosophical sense that it was the selection of a\nsingle spirit, out of many there might be in the spiritual world.\nThe point is that while Mr. Wells worships his god (who is not his\ncreator or even necessarily his overlord) there is nothing to prevent\nMr. William Archer, also emancipated, from adoring another god in\nanother temple; or Mr. Arnold Bennett, should he similarly liberate\nhis mind, from bowing down to a third god in a third temple.\nMy imagination rather fails me, I confess, in evoking the image\nand symbolism of Mr. Bennett's or Mr. Archer's idolatries;\nand if I had to choose between the three, I should probably be found\nas an acolyte in the shrine of Mr. Wells.  But, anyhow, the trend\nof all this is to polytheism, rather as it existed in the old\ncivilisation of paganism.\n\nThere is the same modern mark in Spiritualism.  Spiritualism also\nhas the trend of polytheism, if it be in a form more akin to\nancestor-worship. But whether it be the invocation of ghosts or of gods,\nthe mark of it is that it invokes something less than the divine;\nnor am I at all quarrelling with it on that account.  I am merely\ndescribing the drift of the day; and it seems clear that it is towards\nthe summoning of spirits to our aid whatever their position in the\nunknown world, and without any clear doctrinal plan of that world.\nThe most probable result would seem to be a multitude of psychic cults,\npersonal and impersonal, from the vaguest reverence for the powers\nof nature to the most concrete appeal to crystals or mascots.\nWhen I say that the agnostics have discovered agnosticism,\nand have now recovered from the shock, I do not mean merely to sneer\nat the identity of the word agnosticism with the word ignorance.\nOn the contrary, I think ignorance the greater thing; for ignorance\ncan be creative.  And the thing it can create, and soon probably\nwill create, is one of the lost arts of the world; a mythology.\n\nIn a word, the modern world will probably end exactly where the\nBible begins.  In that inevitable setting of spirit against spirit,\nor god against god, we shall soon be in a position to do more\njustice not only to the New Testament, but to the Old Testament.\nOur descendants may very possibly do the very thing we scoff\nat the old Jews for doing; grope for and cling to their own\ndeity as one rising above rivals who seem to be equally real.\nThey also may feel him not primarily as the sole or even the supreme\nbut only as the best; and have to abide the miracles of ages to prove\nthat he is also the mightiest.  For them also he may at first\nbe felt as their own, before he is extended to others; he also,\nfrom the collision with colossal idolatries and towering spiritual\ntyrannies, may emerge only as a God of Battles and a Lord of Hosts.\nHere between the dark wastes and the clouded mountain was fought\nout what must seem even to the indifferent a wrestle of giants\ndriving the world out of its course; Jehovah of the mountains\ncasting down Baal of the desert and Dagon of the sea.  Here wandered\nand endured that strange and terrible and tenacious people who held\nhigh above all their virtues and their vices one indestructible idea;\nthat they were but the tools in that tremendous hand.\nHere was the first triumph of those who, in some sense beyond\nour understanding, had rightly chosen among the powers invisible,\nand found their choice a great god above all gods.  So the future\nmay suffer not from the loss but the multiplicity of faith;\nand its fate be far more like the cloudy and mythological war\nin the desert than like the dry radiance of theism or monism.\nI have said nothing here of my own faith, or of that name on which,\nI am well persuaded, the world will be most wise to call.\nBut I do believe that the tradition founded in that far tribal battle,\nin that far Eastern land, did indeed justify itself by leading\nup to a lasting truth; and that it will once again be justified\nof all its children.  What has survived through an age of atheism\nas the most indestructible would survive through an age of polytheism\nas the most indispensable.  If among many gods it could not presently\nbe proved to be the strongest, some would still know it was the best.\nIts central presence would endure through times of cloud and confusion,\nin which it was judged only as a myth among myths or a man among men.\nEven the old heathen test of humanity and the apparition of the body,\ntouching which I have quoted the verse about the pagan polytheist\nas sung by the neo-pagan poet, is a test which that incarnate\nmystery will abide the best.  And however much or little our\nspiritual inquirers may lift the veil from their invisible kings,\nthey will not find a vision more vivid than a man walking unveiled\nupon the mountains, seen of men and seeing; a visible god.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTHE BATTLE WITH THE DRAGON\n\nLydda or Ludd has already been noted as the legendary birthplace\nof St. George, and as the camp on the edge of the desert from which,\nas it happened, I caught the first glimpse of the coloured\nfields of Palestine that looked like the fields of Paradise.\nBeing an encampment of soldiers, it seems an appropriate place for\nSt. George; and indeed it may be said that all that red and empty land\nhas resounded with his name like a shield of copper or of bronze.\nThe name was not even confined to the cries of the Christians;\na curious imaginative hospitality in the Moslem mind, a certain innocent\nand imitative enthusiasm, made the Moslems also half-accept a sort\nof Christian mythology, and make an abstract hero of St. George.\nIt is said that Coeur de Lion on these very sands first invoked\nthe soldier saint to bless the English battle-line, and blazon his cross\non the English banners.  But the name occurs not only in the stories\nof the victory of Richard, but in the enemy stories that led up\nto the great victory of Saladin.  In that obscure and violent quarrel\nwhich let loose the disaster of Hattin, when the Grand Master\nof the Templars, Gerard the Englishman from Bideford in Devon,\ndrove with demented heroism his few lances against a host, there fell\namong those radiant fanatics one Christian warrior, who had made\nwith his single sword such a circle of the slain, that the victorious\nMoslems treated even his dead body as something supernatural;\nand bore it away with them with honour, saying it was the body\nof St. George.\n\nBut if the purpose of the camp be appropriate to the story of St. George,\nthe position of the camp might be considered appropriate to the more\nfantastic story of St. George and the Dragon.  The symbolic struggle\nbetween man and monster might very well take place somewhere where\nthe green culture of the fields meets the red desolation of the desert.\nAs a matter of fact, I dare say, legend locates the duel itself\nsomewhere else, but I am only making use of the legend as a legend,\nor even as a convenient figure of speech.  I would only use it\nhere to make a kind of picture which may clarify a kind of paradox,\nvery vital to our present attitude towards all Palestinian traditions,\nincluding those that are more sacred even than St. George.  This paradox\nhas already been touched on in the last chapter about polytheistic\nspirits or superstitions such as surrounded the Old Testament,\nbut it is yet more true of the criticisms and apologetics surrounding\nthe New Testament.  And the paradox is this; that we never find\nour own religion so right as when we find we are wrong about it.\nI mean that we are finally convinced not by the sort of evidence we\nare looking for, but by the sort of evidence we are not looking for.\nWe are convinced when we come on a ratification that is almost as abrupt\nas a refutation.  That is the point about the wireless telegraphy\nor wordless telepathy of the Bedouins.  A supernatural trick in a dingy\ntribe wandering in dry places is not the sort of supernaturalism\nwe should expect to find; it is only the sort that we do find.\nThese rocks of the desert, like the bones of a buried giant,\ndo not seem to stick out where they ought to, but they stick out,\nand we fall over them.\n\nWhatever we think of St. George, most people would see a mere\nfairy-tale in St. George and the Dragon.  I dare say they are right;\nand I only use it here as a figure for the sake of argument.\nBut suppose, for the sake of argument, that a man has come to\nthe conclusion that there probably was such a person as St. George,\nin spite of all the nonsense about dragons and the chimera with wings\nand claws that has somehow interwreathed itself with his image.\nPerhaps he is a little biased by patriotism or other ethical aims;\nand thinks the saint a good social ideal.  Perhaps he knows that\nearly Christianity, so far from being a religion of pacifists,\nwas largely a religion of soldiers.  Anyhow he thinks St. George\nhimself a quite sufficiently solid and historical figure;\nand has little doubt that records or traces can be found of him.\nNow the point is this; suppose that man goes to the land of\nthe legendary combat; and finds comparatively few or faint traces\nof the personality of St. George.  But suppose he _does_ find,\non that very field of combat, the bones of a gigantic monster unlike\nevery other creature except the legendary dragon.  Or suppose he only\nfinds ancient Eastern sculptures and hieroglyphics representing maidens,\nbeing sacrificed to such a monster, and making it quite clear that\neven within historic times one of those sacrificed was a princess.\nIt is surely clear that he will be considerably impressed by\nthis confirmation, not of the part he did believe, but actually\nof the part he did not believe.  He has not found what he expected\nbut he has found what he wanted, and much more than he wanted.\nHe has not found a single detail directly in support of St. George.\nBut he had found a very considerable support of St. George\nand the Dragon.\n\nIt is needless to inform the reader, I trust, that I do not think\nthis particular case in the least likely; or that I am only using it\nfor the sake of lucidity.  Even as it stands, it would not necessarily\nmake a man believe the traditional story, but it would make him\nguess that it was some sort of tradition of some sort of truth;\nthat there was something in it, and much more in it than even\nhe himself had imagined.  And the point of it would be precisely\nthat his reason had not anticipated the extent of his revelation.\nHe has proved the improbable, not the probable thing.\nReason had already taught him the reasonable part; but facts had\ntaught him the fantastic part.  He will certainly conclude that\nthe whole story is very much more valid than anybody has supposed.\nNow as I have already said, it is not in the least likely that\nthis will happen touching this particular tale of Palestine.\nBut this is precisely what really has happened touching\nthe most sacred and tremendous of all the tales of Palestine.\nThis is precisely what has happened touching that central figure,\nround which the monster and the champion are alike only\nornamental symbols; and by the right of whose tragedy even\nSt. George's Cross does not belong to St. George.  It is not likely\nto be true of the desert duel between George and the Dragon;\nbut it is already true of the desert duel between Jesus and the Devil.\nSt. George is but a servant and the Dragon is but a symbol,\nbut it is precisely about the central reality, the mystery of Christ\nand His mastery of the powers of darkness, that this very paradox\nhas proved itself a fact.\n\nGoing down from Jerusalem to Jericho I was more than once\nmoved by a flippant and possibly profane memory of the swine\nthat rushed down a steep place into the sea.  I do not insist on\nthe personal parallel; for whatever my points of resemblance to a pig\nI am not a flying pig, a pig with wings of speed and precipitancy;\nand if I am possessed of a devil, it is not the blue devil of suicide.\nBut the phrase came back into my mind because going down to\nthe Dead Sea does really involve rushing down a steep place.\nIndeed it gives a strange impression that the whole of Palestine\nis one single steep place.  It is as if all other countries lay\nflat under the sky, but this one country had been tilted sideways.\nThis gigantic gesture of geography or geology, this sweep\nas of a universal landslide, is the sort of thing that is never\nconveyed by any maps or books or even pictures.  All the pictures\nof Palestine I have seen are descriptive details, groups of costume\nor corners of architecture, at most views of famous places;\nthey cannot give the bottomless vision of this long descent.\nWe went in a little rocking Ford car down steep and jagged roads\namong ribbed and columned cliffs; but the roads below soon failed\nus altogether; and the car had to tumble like a tank over rocky\nbanks and into empty river-beds, long before it came to the sinister\nand discoloured landscapes of the Dead Sea.  And the distance looks\nfar enough on the map, and seems long enough in the motor journey,\nto make a man feel he has come to another part of the world;\nyet so much is it all a single fall of land that even when he gets\nout beyond Jordan in the wild country of the Shereef he can still\nlook back and see, small and faint as if in the clouds, the spire\nof the Russian church (I fancy) upon the hill of the Ascension.\nAnd though the story of the swine is attached in truth to another place,\nI was still haunted with its fanciful appropriateness to this one,\nbecause of the very steepness of this larger slope and the mystery\nof that larger sea.  I even had the fancy that one might fish\nfor them and find them in such a sea, turned into monsters;\nsea-swine or four-legged fishes, swollen and with evil eyes,\ngrown over with sea-grass for bristles; the ghosts of Gadara.\n\nAnd then it came back to me, as a curiosity and almost a coincidence,\nthat the same strange story had actually been selected as the text\nfor the central controversy of the Victorian Age between Christianity\nand criticism.  The two champions were two of the greatest men\nof the nineteenth century; Huxley representing scientific scepticism\nand Gladstone scriptural orthodoxy.  The scriptural champion\nwas universally regarded as standing for the past, if not for the\ndead past; and the scientific champion as standing for the future,\nif not the final judgment of the world.  And yet the future\nhas been entirely different to anything that anybody expected;\nand the final judgment may yet reverse all the conceptions of their\ncontemporaries and even of themselves.  The philosophical position\nnow is in a very curious way the contrary of the position then.\nGladstone had the worst of the argument, and has been proved right.\nHuxley had the best of the argument, and has been proved wrong.\nAt any rate he has been ultimately proved wrong about the way the world\nwas going, and the probable position of the next generation.\nWhat he thought indisputable is disputed; and what he thought dead\nis rather too much alive.\n\nHuxley was not only a man of genius in logic and rhetoric; he was\na man of a very manly and generous morality.  Morally he deserves\nmuch more sympathy than many of the mystics who have supplanted him.\nBut they have supplanted him.  In the more mental fashions\nof the day, most of what he thought would stand has fallen,\nand most of what he thought would fall is standing yet.\nIn the Gadarene controversy with Gladstone, he announced it\nas his purpose to purge the Christian ideal, which he thought\nself-evidently sublime, of the Christian demonology, which he thought\nself-evidently ridiculous.  And yet if we take any typical man\nof the next generation, we shall very probably find Huxley's sublime\nthing scoffed at, and Huxley's ridiculous thing taken seriously.\nI imagine a very typical child of the age succeeding Huxley's may\nbe found in Mr. George Moore.  He has one of the most critical,\nappreciative and atmospheric talents of the age.  He has lived in most\nof the sets of the age, and through most of the fashions of the age.\nHe has held, at one time or another, most of the opinions of the age.\nAbove all, he has not only thought for himself, but done it\nwith peculiar pomp and pride; he would consider himself the freest\nof all freethinkers.  Let us take him as a type and a test of what has\nreally happened to Huxley's analysis of the gold and the dross.\nHuxley quoted as the indestructible ideal the noble passage in Micah,\nbeginning \"He hath shewed thee, O man, that which is good\";\nand asked scornfully whether anybody was ever likely to suggest\nthat justice was worthless or that mercy was unlovable,\nand whether anything would diminish the distance between ourselves\nand the ideals that we reverence.  And yet already, perhaps,\nMr. George Moore was anticipating Nietzsche, sailing near,\nas he said, \"the sunken rocks about the cave of Zarathustra.\"\nHe said, if I remember right, that Cromwell should be admired\nfor his injustice.  He implied that Christ should be condemned,\nnot because he destroyed the swine, but because he delivered the sick.\nIn short he found justice quite worthless and mercy quite unlovable;\nand as for humility and the distance between himself and his ideals,\nhe seemed rather to suggest (at this time at least) that his somewhat\nvarying ideals were only interesting because they had belonged\nto himself.  Some of this, it is true, was only in the _Confessions\nof a Young Man_; but it is the whole point here that they were then\nthe confessions of a young man, and that Huxley's in comparison\nwere the confessions of an old man.  The trend of the new time,\nin very varying degrees, was tending to undermine, not merely\nthe Christian demonology, not merely the Christian theology,\nnot merely the Christian religion, but definitely the Christian\nethical ideal, which had seemed to the great agnostic as secure\nas the stars.\n\nBut while the world was mocking the morality he had assumed,\nit was bringing back the mysticism he had mocked.  The next phase\nof Mr. George Moore himself, whom I have taken as a type of the time,\nwas the serious and sympathetic consideration of Irish mysticism,\nas embodied in Mr. W. B. Yeats.  I have myself heard Mr. Yeats,\nabout that time, tell a story, to illustrate how concrete and even\ncomic is the reality of the supernatural, saying that he knew\na farmer whom the fairies had dragged out of bed and beaten.\nNow suppose Mr. Yeats had told Mr. Moore, then moving in this\nglamorous atmosphere, another story of the same sort.\nSuppose he had said that the farmer's pigs had fallen under\nthe displeasure of some magician of the sort he celebrates,\nwho had conjured bad fairies into the quadrupeds, so that they\nwent in a wild dance down to the village pond.  Would Mr. Moore\nhave thought that story any more incredible than the other?\nWould he have thought it worse than a thousand other things that a\nmodern mystic may lawfully believe?  Would he have risen to his feet\nand told Mr. Yeats that all was over between them?  Not a bit of it.\nHe would at least have listened with a serious, nay, a solemn face.\nHe would think it a grim little grotesque of rustic diablerie,\na quaint tale of goblins, neither less nor more improbable\nthan hundreds of psychic fantasies or farces for which there is\nreally a good deal of evidence.  He would be ready to entertain\nthe idea if he found it anywhere except in the New Testament.\nAs for the more vulgar and universal fashions that have followed\nafter the Celtic movement, they have left such trifles far behind.\nAnd they have been directed not by imaginative artists\nlike Mr. Yeats or even Mr. Moore, but by solid scientific\nstudents like Sir William Crookes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.\nI find it easier to imagine an evil spirit agitating the legs\nof a pig than a good spirit agitating the legs of a table.\nBut I will not here enter into the argument, since I am only\ntrying to describe the atmosphere.  Whatever has happened in more\nrecent years, what Huxley expected has certainly not happened.\nThere has been a revolt against Christian morality, and where there\nhas not been a return of Christian mysticism, it has been a return of\nthe mysticism without the Christianity.  Mysticism itself has returned,\nwith all its moons and twilights, its talismans and spells.\nMysticism itself has returned, and brought with it seven devils\nworse than itself.\n\nBut the scientific coincidence is even more strict and close.\nIt affects not only the general question of miracles,\nbut the particular question of possession.  This is the very\nlast element in the Christian story that would ever have been\nselected by the enlightened Christian apologist.  Gladstone would\ndefend it, but he would not go out of his way to dwell on it.\nIt is an excellent working model of what I mean by finding\nan unexpected support, and finding it in an unexpected quarter.\nIt is not theological but psychological study that has brought us\nback into this dark underworld of the soul, where even identity\nseems to dissolve or divide, and men are not even themselves.\nI do not say that psychologists admit the discovery of demoniacs;\nand if they did they would doubtless call them something else,\nsuch as demono-maniacs. But they admit things which seem almost\nas near to a new supernaturalism, and things quite as incredible\nto the old rationalism.  Dual personality is not so very far\nfrom diabolic possession.  And if the dogma of subconsciousness\nallows of agnosticism, the agnosticism cuts both ways.\nA man cannot say there is a part of him of which he is quite unconscious,\nand only conscious that it is not in contact with the unknown.\nHe cannot say there is a sealed chamber or cellar under his house,\nof which he knows nothing whatever; but that he is quite certain that it\ncannot have an underground passage leading anywhere else in the world.\nHe cannot say he knows nothing whatever about its size or shape\nor appearance, except that it certainly does not contain a relic\nof the finger-joint of St. Catherine of Alexandria, or that it\ncertainly is not haunted by the ghost of King Herod Agrippa.\nIf there is any sort of legend or tradition or plausible probability\nwhich says that it is, he cannot call a thing impossible where he is\nnot only ignorant but even unconscious.  It comes back therefore\nto the same reality, that the old compact cosmos depended on a\ncompact consciousness.  If we are dealing with unknown quantities,\nwe cannot deny their connection with other unknown quantities.\nIf I have a self of which I can say nothing, how can I even say\nthat it is my own self?  How can I even say that I always had it,\nor that it did not come from somewhere else?  It is clear that we\nare in very deep waters, whether or no we have rushed down a steep\nplace to fall into them.\n\nIt will be noted that what we really lack here is not\nthe supernatural but only the healthy supernatural.\nIt is not the miracle, but only the miracle of healing.\nI warmly sympathise with those who think most of this rather morbid,\nand nearer the diabolic than the divine, but to call a thing\ndiabolic is hardly an argument against the existence of diabolism.\nIt is still more clearly the case when we go outside the sphere\nof science into its penumbra in literature and conversation.\nThere is a mass of fiction and fashionable talk of which it may\ntruly be said, that what we miss in it is not demons but the power\nto cast them out.  It combines the occult with the obscene;\nthe sensuality of materialism with the insanity of spiritualism.\nIn the story of Gadara we have left out nothing except the Redeemer,\nwe have kept the devils and the swine.\n\nIn other words, we have not found St. George; but we have found\nthe Dragon.  We have found in the desert, as I have said,\nthe bones of the monster we did not believe in, more plainly than\nthe footprints of the hero we did.  We have found them not because we\nexpected to find them, for our progressive minds look to the promise\nof something much brighter and even better; not because we wanted\nto find them, for our modern mood, as well as our human nature,\nis entirely in favour of more amiable and reassuring things;\nnot because we thought it even possible to find them, for we really\nthought it impossible so far as we ever thought of it at all.\nWe have found them because they are _there_; and we are bound\nto come on them even by falling over them.  It is Huxley's\nmethod that has upset Huxley's conclusion.  As I have said,\nthat conclusion itself is completely reversed.  What he thought\nindisputable is disputed; and what he thought impossible is possible.\nInstead of Christian morals surviving in the form of humanitarian morals,\nChristian demonology has survived in the form of heathen demonology.\nBut it has not survived by scholarly traditionalism in the style\nof Gladstone, but rather by obstinate objective curiosity according\nto the advice of Huxley.  We in the West have \"followed our reason\nas far as it would go,\" and our reason has led us to things that\nnearly all the rationalists would have thought wildly irrational.\nScience was supposed to bully us into being rationalists;\nbut it is now supposed to be bullying us into being irrationalists.\nThe science of Einstein might rather be called following our\nunreason as far as it will go, seeing whether the brain will crack\nunder the conception that space is curved, or that parallel\nstraight lines always meet.  And the science of Freud would make it\nessentially impossible to say how far our reason or unreason does go,\nor where it stops.  For if a man is ignorant of his other self,\nhow can he possibly know that the other self is ignorant?\nHe can no longer say with pride that at least he knows that\nhe knows nothing.  That is exactly what he does not know.\nThe floor has fallen out of his mind and the abyss below may\ncontain subconscious certainties as well as subconscious doubts.\nHe is too ignorant even to ignore; and he must confess himself\nan agnostic about whether he is an agnostic.\n\nThat is the coil or tangle, at least, which the dragon has reached\neven in the scientific regions of the West.  I only describe\nthe tangle; I do not delight in it.  Like most people with a taste\nfor Catholic tradition, I am too much of a rationalist for that;\nfor Catholics are almost the only people now defending reason.\nBut I am not talking of the true relations of reason and mystery,\nbut of the historical fact that mystery has invaded the peculiar\nrealms of reason; especially the European realms of the motor\nand the telephone.  When we have a man like Mr. William Archer,\nlecturing mystically on dreams and psychoanalysis, and saying\nit is clear that God did not make man a reasonable creature,\nthose acquainted with the traditions and distinguished record\nof that dry and capable Scot will consider the fact a prodigy.\nI confess it never occurred to me that Mr. Archer was of such stuff\nas dreams are made of; and if he is becoming a mystic in his old age\n(I use the phrase in a mystical and merely relative sense)\nwe may take it that the occult oriental flood is rising fast,\nand reaching places that are not only high but dry.\nBut the change is much more apparent to a man who has chanced\nto stray into those orient hills where those occult streams\nhave always risen, and especially in this land that lies\nbetween Asia, where the occult is almost the obvious, and Europe,\nwhere it is always returning with a fresher and younger vigour.\nThe truth becomes strangely luminous in this wilderness between\ntwo worlds, where the rocks stand out stark like the very bones\nof the Dragon.\n\nAs I went down that sloping wall or shoulder of the world\nfrom the Holy City on the mountain to the buried Cities of\nthe Plain, I seemed to see more and more clearly all this Western\nevolution of Eastern mystery, and how on this one high place,\nas on a pivot, the whole purpose of mankind had swerved.\nI took up again the train of thought which I had trailed through\nthe desert, as described in the last chapter, about the gods of Asia\nand of the ancient dispensation, and I found it led me along\nthese hills to a sort of vista or vision of the new dispensation\nand of Christendom.  Considered objectively, and from the outside,\nthe story is something such as has already been loosely outlined;\nthe emergence in this immemorial and mysterious land of what\nwas undoubtedly, when thus considered, one tribe among many\ntribes worshipping one god among many gods, but it is quite\nas much an evident external fact that the god has become God.\nStill stated objectively, the story is that the tribe having this\nreligion produced a new prophet, claiming to be more than a prophet.\nThe old religion killed the new prophet; but the new prophet killed\nthe old religion.  He died to destroy it, and it died in destroying him.\nNow it may be reaffirmed equally realistically that there was nothing\nnormal about the case or its consequences.  The things that took part\nin that tragedy have never been the same since, and have never been\nlike anything else in the world.  The Church is not like other religions;\nits very crimes were unique.  The Jews are not like other races;\nthey remain as unique to everybody else as they are to themselves.\nThe Roman Empire did not pass like other empires; it did not perish\nlike Babylon and Assyria.  It went through a most extraordinary\nremorse amounting to madness and resuscitation into sanity,\nwhich is equally strange in history whether it seems as ghastly\nas a galvanised corpse or as glorious as a god risen from the dead.\nThe very land and city are not like other lands and cities.\nThe concentration and conflict in Jerusalem to-day, whether we\nregard them as a reconquest by Christendom or a conspiracy of Jews\nor a part of the lingering quarrel with Moslems, are alike the effect\nof forces gathered and loosened in that one mysterious moment\nin the history of the city.  They equally proclaim the paradox\nof its insignificance and its importance.\n\nBut above all the prophet was not and is not like other prophets;\nand the proof of it is to be found not primarily among\nthose who believe in him, but among those who do not.\nHe is not dead, even where he is denied.  What is the use of a modern\nman saying that Christ is only a thing like Atys or Mithras,\nwhen the next moment he is reproaching Christianity for not\nfollowing Christ?  He does not suddenly lose his temper and talk\nabout our most unmithraic conduct, as he does (very justly as a rule)\nabout our most unchristian conduct.  We do not find a group of ardent\nyoung agnostics, in the middle of a great war, tried as traitors\nfor their extravagant interpretation of remarks attributed to Atys.\nIt is improbable that Tolstoy wrote a book to prove that all modern\nills could be cured by literal obedience to all the orders of Adonis.\nWe do not find wild Bolshevists calling themselves Mithraic Socialists\nas many of them call themselves Christian Socialists.  Leaving orthodoxy\nand even sanity entirely on one side, the very heresies and insanities\nof our time prove that after nearly two thousand years the issue\nis still living and the name is quite literally one to conjure with.\nLet the critics try to conjure with any of the other names.\nIn the real centres of modern inquiry and mental activity,\nthey will not move even a mystic with the name of Mithras\nas they will move a materialist with the name of Jesus.\nThere are men who deny God and accept Christ.\n\nBut this lingering yet living power in the legend, even for\nthose to whom it is little more than a legend, has another\nrelevancy to the particular point here.  Jesus of Nazareth,\nmerely humanly considered, has thus become a hero of humanitarianism.\nEven the eighteenth-century deists in denying his divinity generally\ntook pains to exalt his humanity.  Of the nineteenth-century\nrevolutionists it is really an understatement to say that they exalted\nhim as a man; for indeed they rather exalted him as a superman.\nThat is to say, many of them represented him as a man preaching\na decisively superior and ever strange morality, not only\nin advance of his age but practically in advance of our age.\nThey made of his mystical counsels of perfection a sort of Socialism\nor Pacifism or Communism, which they themselves still see rather\nas something that ought to be or that will be; the extreme limit\nof universal love.  I am not discussing here whether they are\nright or not; I say they have in fact found in the same figure\na type of humanitarianism and the care for human happiness.\nEvery one knows the striking and sometimes staggering utterances\nthat do really support and illustrate this side of the teaching.\nModern idealists are naturally moved by such things as the intensely\npoetic paradox about the lilies of the field; which for them has\na joy in life and living things like that of Shelley or Whitman,\ncombined with a return to simplicity beyond that of Tolstoy or Thoreau.\nIndeed I rather wonder that those, whose merely historic or humanistic\nview of the case would allow of such criticism without incongruity,\nhave not made some study of the purely poetical or oratorical structure\nof such passages.  Certainly there are few finer examples of the swift\narchitecture of style than that single fragment about the flowers;\nthe almost idle opening of a chance reference to a wild flower,\nthe sudden unfolding of the small purple blossom into pavilions\nand palaces and the great name of the national history; and then with\na turn of the hand like a gesture of scorn, the change to the grass\nthat to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven.  Then follows,\nas so often in the Gospels, the \"how much more\" which is like a\ncelestial flight of stairs, a ladder of imaginative logic.  Indeed this\n_a fortiori_, and this power of thinking on three levels, is (I may\nremark incidentally) a thing very much needed in modern discussion.\nMany minds apparently cannot stretch to three dimensions,\nor to thinking that a cube can go beyond a surface as a surface\ngoes beyond a line; for instance, that the citizen is infinitely\nabove all ranks, and yet the soul is infinitely above the citizen.\nBut we are only concerned at the moment with the sides of this\nmany-sided mystery which happen to be really in sympathy with\nthe modern mood.  Judged even by our modern tests of emancipated\nart or ideal economics, it is admitted that Christ understood all\nthat is rather crudely embodied in Socialism or the Simple Life.\nI purposely insist first on this optimistic, I might almost say this\npantheistic or even this pagan aspect of the Christian Gospels.\nFor it is only when we understand that Christ, considered merely\nas a prophet, can be and is a popular leader in the love of natural\nthings, that we can feel that tremendous and tragic energy of his\ntestimony to an ugly reality, the existence of unnatural things.\nInstead of taking a text as I have done, take a whole Gospel and read\nit steadily and honestly and straight through at a sitting, and you\nwill certainly have one impression, whether of a myth or of a man.\nIt is that the exorcist towers above the poet and even the prophet;\nthat the story between Cana and Calvary is one long war with demons.\nHe understood better than a hundred poets the beauty of\nthe flowers of the battle-field; but he came out to battle.\nAnd if most of his words mean anything they do mean that there\nis at our very feet, like a chasm concealed among the flowers,\nan unfathomable evil.\n\nIn short, I would here only hint delicately that perhaps\nthe mind which admittedly knew much of what we think we know\nabout ethics and economics, knew a little more than we are\nbeginning to know about psychology and psychic phenomena.\nI remember reading, not without amusement, a severe and trenchant\narticle in the _Hibbert Journal_, in which Christ's admission\nof demonology was alone thought enough to dispose of his divinity.\nThe one sentence of the article, which I cherish in my memory\nthrough all the changing years, ran thus:  \"If he was God,\nhe knew there was no such thing as diabolical possession.\"\nIt did not seem to strike the _Hibbert_ critic that this line\nof criticism raises the question, not of whether Christ is God,\nbut of whether the critic in the _Hibbert Journal_ is God.\nAbout that mystery as about the other I am for the moment agnostic;\nbut I should have thought that the meditations of Omniscience\non the problem of evil might be allowed, even by an agnostic,\nto be a little difficult to discover.  Of Christ in the Gospels\nand in modern life I will merely for the moment say this; that if\nhe was God, as the critic put it, it seems possible that he knew\nthe next discovery in science, as well as the last, not to mention\n(what is more common in rationalistic culture) the last but three.\nAnd what will be the next discovery in psychological science nobody\ncan imagine; and we can only say that if it reveals demons and their\nname is Legion, we can hardly be much surprised now.  But at any rate\nthe days are over of Omniscience like that of the _Hibbert_ critic,\nwho knows exactly what he would know if he were God Almighty.\nWhat is pain?  What is evil?  What did they mean by devils?\nWhat do we mean by madness?  The rising generation, when asked\nby a venerable Victorian critic and catechist, \"What does God know?\"\nwill hardly think it unreasonably flippant to answer, \"God knows.\"\n\nThere was something already suggested about the steep scenery\nthrough which I went as I thought about these things; a sense\nof silent catastrophe and fundamental cleavage in the deep\ndivision of the cliffs and crags.  They were all the more\nprofoundly moving, because my sense of them was almost as\nsubconscious as the subconsciousness about which I was reflecting.\nI had fallen again into the old habit of forgetting where I was going,\nand seeing things with one eye off, in a blind abstraction.\nI awoke from a sort of trance of absentmindedness in a landscape\nthat might well awaken anybody.  It might awaken a man sleeping;\nbut he would think he was still in a nightmare.  It might wake\nthe dead, but they would probably think they were in hell.\nHalfway down the slope the hills had taken on a certain pallor which had\nabout it something primitive, as if the colours were not yet created.\nThere was only a kind of cold and wan blue in the level skies which\ncontrasted with wild sky-line. Perhaps we are accustomed to the contrary\ncondition of the clouds moving and mutable and the hills solid and serene;\nbut anyhow there seemed something of the making of a new world about\nthe quiet of the skies and the cold convulsion of the landscape.\nBut if it was between chaos and creation, it was creation by God\nor at least by the gods, something with an aim in its anarchy.\nIt was very different in the final stage of the descent, where my mind\nwoke up from its meditations.  One can only say that the whole landscape\nwas like a leper.  It was of a wasting white and silver and grey,\nwith mere dots of decadent vegetation like the green spots of a plague.\nIn shape it not only rose into horns and crests like waves\nor clouds, but I believe it actually alters like waves or clouds,\nvisibly but with a loathsome slowness.  The swamp is alive.\nAnd I found again a certain advantage in forgetfulness;\nfor I saw all this incredible country before I even remembered\nits name, or the ancient tradition about its nature.\nThen even the green plague-spots failed, and everything seemed\nto fall away into a universal blank under the staring sun,\nas I came, in the great spaces of the circle of a lifeless sea,\ninto the silence of Sodom and Gomorrah.\n\nFor these are the foundations of a fallen world, and a sea\nbelow the seas on which men sail.  Seas move like clouds and\nfishes float like birds above the level of the sunken land.\nAnd it is here that tradition has laid the tragedy of the mighty\nperversion of the imagination of man; the monstrous birth and death\nof abominable things.  I say such things in no mood of spiritual pride;\nsuch things are hideous not because they are distant but because\nthey are near to us; in all our brains, certainly in mine,\nwere buried things as bad as any buried under that bitter sea,\nand if He did not come to do battle with them, even in the darkness\nof the brain of man, I know not why He came.  Certainly it\nwas not only to talk about flowers or to talk about Socialism.\nThe more truly we can see life as a fairy-tale, the more clearly the tale\nresolves itself into war with the Dragon who is wasting fairyland.\nI will not enter on the theology behind the symbol; but I\nam sure it was of this that all the symbols were symbolic.\nI remember distinguished men among the liberal theologians,\nwho found it more difficult to believe in one devil than in many.\nThey admitted in the New Testament an attestation to evil spirits,\nbut not to a general enemy of mankind.  As some are said\nto want the drama of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark,\nthey would have the drama of Hell without the Prince of Darkness.\nI say nothing of these things, save that the language of the\nGospel seems to me to go much more singly to a single issue.\nThe voice that is heard there has such authority as speaks to an army;\nand the highest note of it is victory rather than peace.\nWhen the apostles were first sent forth with their faces to the four\ncorners of the earth, and turned again to acclaim their master,\nhe did not say in that hour of triumph, \"All are aspects of one\nharmonious whole\" or \"The universe evolves through progress\nto perfection\" or \"All things find their end in Nirvana\"\nor \"The dewdrop slips into the shining sea.\"  He looked up and said,\n\"I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.\"\n\nThen I looked up and saw in the long jagged lines of road and rock\nand cleft something of the swiftness of such a thunderbolt.\nWhat I saw seemed not so much a scene as an act; as when\nabruptly Michael barred the passage of the Lord of Pride.\nBelow me all the empire of evil was splashed and scattered\nupon the plain, like a wine-cup shattered into a star.\nSodom lay like Satan, flat upon the floor of the world.  And far away\nand aloft, faint with height and distance, small but still visible,\nstood up the spire of the Ascension like the sword of the Archangel,\nlifted in salute after a stroke.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nTHE ENDLESS EMPIRE\n\nOne of the adventures of travel consists, not so much in finding\nthat popular sayings are false, as that they mean more than they say.\nWe cannot appreciate the full force of the phrase until we have\nseen the fact.  We make a picture of the things we do not know\nout of the things we know; and suppose the traveller's tale\nto mean no more abroad than it would at home.  If a man acquainted\nonly with English churches is told about certain French churches\nthat they are much frequented, he makes an English picture.\nHe imagines a definite dense crowd of people in their best\nclothes going all together at eleven o'clock, and all coming back\ntogether to lunch.  He does not picture the peculiar impression\nhe would gain on the spot; of chance people going in and out of\nthe church all day, sometimes for quite short periods, as if it\nwere a sort of sacred inn.  Or suppose a man knowing only English\nbeer-shops hears for the first time of a German beer-garden,\nhe probably does not imagine the slow ritual of the place.\nHe does not know that unless the drinker positively slams down the top\nof his beer-mug with a resounding noise and a decisive gesture,\nbeer will go on flowing into it as from a natural fountain;\nthe drinking of beer being regarded as the normal state of man,\nand the cessation of it a decisive and even dramatic departure.\nI do not give this example in contempt; heaven forbid.\nI have had so much to say of the inhuman side of Prussianised Germany\nthat I am glad to be able to pay a passing tribute to those more\ngenerous German traditions which we hope may revive and make Germany\nonce more a part of Christendom.  I merely give it as an instance\nof the way in which things we have all heard of, like church-going\nor beer-drinking, in foreign lands, mean much more, and something\nmuch more special, than we should infer from our own land.\nNow this is true of a phrase we have all heard of deserted cities\nor temples in the Near East:  \"The Bedouins camp in the ruins.\"\nWhen I have read a hundred times that Arabs camp in some deserted town\nor temple near the Nile or the Euphrates, I always thought of gipsies\nnear some place like Stonehenge.  They would make their own rude shelter\nnear the stones, perhaps sheltering behind them to light a fire;\nand for the rest, generations of gipsies might camp there without\nmaking much difference.  The thing I saw more than once in Egypt\nand Palestine was much more curious.  It was as if the gipsies set\nto work to refurnish Stonehenge and make it a commodious residence.\nIt was as if they spread a sort of giant umbrella over the circle\nof stones, and elaborately hung curtains between them, so as to\nturn the old Druid temple into a sort of patchwork pavilion.\nIn one sense there is much more vandalism, and in another sense\nmuch more practicality; but it is a practicality that always stops\nshort of the true creative independence of going off and building\na house of their own.  That is the attitude of the Arab; and it runs\nthrough all his history.  Noble as is his masterpiece of the Mosque\nof Omar, there is something about it of that patchwork pavilion.\nIt was based on Christian work, it was built with fragments,\nit was content with things that fastidious architects call fictions\nor even shams.\n\nI frequently saw old ruined houses of which there only remained two walls\nof stone, to which the nomads had added two walls of canvas making\nan exact cube in form with the most startling incongruity in colour.\nHe needs the form and he does not mind the incongruity, nor does\nhe mind the fact that somebody else has done the solid part and\nhe has only done the ramshackle part.  You can say that he is nobly\nsuperior to jealousy, or that he is without artistic ambition,\nor that he is too much of a nomad to mind living half in somebody\nelse's house and half in his own.  The real quality is probably too\nsubtle for any simple praise or blame; we can only say that there\nis in the wandering Moslem a curious kind of limited common sense;\nwhich might even be called a short-sighted common sense.\nBut however we define it, that is what can really be traced through Arab\nconquests and Arab culture in all its ingenuity and insufficiency.\nThat is the note of these nomads in all the things in which they\nhave succeeded and failed.  In that sense they are constructive\nand in that sense unconstructive; in that sense artistic and in that\nsense inartistic; in that sense practical and in that sense unpractical;\nin that sense cunning and in that sense innocent.  The curtains they\nwould hang round Stonehenge might be of beautifully selected colours.\nThe banners they waved from Stonehenge might be defended with glorious\ncourage and enthusiasm.  The prayers they recited in Stonehenge\nmight be essentially worthy of human dignity, and certainly a great\nimprovement on its older associations of human sacrifice.  All this\nis true of Islam and the idolatries and negations are often replaced.\nBut they would not have built Stonehenge; they would scarcely,\nso to speak, have troubled to lift a stone of Stonehenge.\nThey would not have built Stonehenge; how much less Salisbury\nor Glastonbury or Lincoln.\n\nThat is the element about the Arab influence which makes it,\nafter its ages of supremacy and in a sense of success, remain in a\nsubtle manner superficial.  When a man first sees the Eastern deserts,\nhe sees this influence as I first described it, very present\nand powerful, almost omnipresent and omnipotent.  But I fancy that to me\nand to others it is partly striking only because it is strange.\nIslam is so different to Christendom that to see it at all is at\nfirst like entering a new world.  But, in my own case at any rate,\nas the strange colours became more customary, and especially as I saw\nmore of the established seats of history, the cities and the framework\nof the different states, I became conscious of something else.\nIt was something underneath, undestroyed and even in a sense unaltered.\nIt was something neither Moslem nor modern; not merely oriental and yet\nvery different from the new occidental nations from which I came.\nFor a long time I could not put a name to this historical atmosphere.\nThen one day, standing in one of the Greek churches, one of those houses\nof gold full of hard highly coloured pictures, I fancied it came to me.\nIt was the Empire.  And certainly not the raid of Asiatic bandits\nwe call the Turkish Empire.  The thing which had caught my eye\nin that coloured interior was the carving of a two-headed eagle\nin such a position as to make it almost as symbolic as a cross.\nEvery one has heard, of course, of the situation which this might well\nsuggest, the suggestion that the Russian Church was far too much of an\nEstablished Church and the White Czar encroached upon the White Christ.\nBut as a fact the eagle I saw was not borrowed from the Russian Empire;\nit would be truer to say that the Empire was borrowed from the eagle.\nThe double eagle is the ancient emblem of the double empire of Rome\nand of Byzantium; the one head looking to the west and the other to\nthe east, as if it spread its wings from the sunrise to the sunset.\nUnless I am mistaken, it was only associated with Russia as late\nas Peter the Great, though it had been the badge of Austria\nas the representative of the Holy Roman Empire.  And what I\nfelt brooding over that shrine and that landscape was something\nolder not only than Turkey or Russia but than Austria itself.\nI began to understand a sort of evening light that lies over\nPalestine and Syria; a sense of smooth ruts of custom such\nas are said to give a dignity to the civilisation of China.\nI even understood a sort of sleepiness about the splendid and\nhandsome Orthodox priests moving fully robed about the streets.\nThey were not aristocrats but officials; still moving with the mighty\nroutine of some far-off official system.  In so far as the eagle was\nan emblem not of such imperial peace but of distant imperial wars,\nit was of wars that we in the West have hardly heard of;\nit was the emblem of official ovations.\n\nWhen Heracleius rode homewards from the rout of Ispahan With\nthe captives dragged behind him and the eagles in the van.\n\n\nThat is the rigid reality that still underlay the light mastery\nof the Arab rider; that is what a man sees, in the patchwork pavilion,\nwhen he grows used to the coloured canvas and looks at the walls\nof stone.  This also was far too great a thing for facile praise\nor blame, a vast bureaucracy busy and yet intensely dignified,\nthe most civilised thing ruling many other civilisations.\nIt was an endless end of the world; for ever repeating its rich finality.\nAnd I myself was still walking in that long evening of the earth;\nand Caesar my lord was at Byzantium.\n\nBut it is necessary to remember next that this empire was not\nalways at its evening.  Byzantium was not always Byzantine.\nNor was the seat of that power always in the city of Constantine,\nwhich was primarily a mere outpost of the city of Caesar.\nWe must remember Rome as well as Byzantium; as indeed\nnobody would remember Byzantium if it were not for Rome.\nThe more I saw of a hundred little things the more my mind revolved\nround that original idea which may be called the Mediterranean;\nand the fact that it became two empires, but remained one civilisation,\njust as it has become two churches, but remained one religion.\n\nIn this little world there is a story attached to every word;\nand never more than when it is the wrong word.  For instance,\nwe may say that in certain cases the word Roman actually means Greek.\nThe Greek Patriarch is sometimes called the Roman Patriarch;\nwhile the real Roman Patriarch, who actually comes from Rome, is only\ncalled the Latin Patriarch, as if he came from any little town in Latium.\nThe truth behind this confusion is the truth about five hundred\nvery vital years, which are concealed even from cultivated Englishmen\nby two vague falsehoods; the notion that the Roman Empire was merely\ndecadent and the notion that the Middle Ages were merely dark.\nAs a fact, even the Dark Ages were not merely dark.\nAnd even the Byzantine Empire was not merely Byzantine.\nIt seems a little unfair that we should take the very title\nof decay from that Christian city, for surely it was yet\nmore stiff and sterile when it had become a Moslem city.\nI am not so exacting as to ask any one to popularise such a word\nas \"Constantinopolitan.\" But it would surely be a better word for\nstiffness and sterility to call it Stamboulish.  But for the Moslems\nand other men of the Near East what counted about Byzantium was\nthat it still inherited the huge weight of the name of Rome.\nRome had come east and reared against them this Roman city,\nand though and priest or soldier who came out of it might be\nspeaking as a Greek, he was ruling as a Roman.  Its critics in\nthese days of criticism may regard it as a corrupt civilisation.\nBut its enemies in the day of battle only regarded it as civilisation.\nSaladin, the greatest of the Saracens, did not call Greek bishops\ndegenerate dreamers or dingy outcasts, he called them, with a\nsounder historical instinct, \"The monks of the imperial race.\"\nThe survival of the word merely means that even when the imperial\ncity fell behind them, they did not surrender their claim\nto defy all Asia in the name of the Christian Emperor.\nThat is but one example out of twenty, but that is why in this\ndistant place to this day the Greeks who are separated from the see\nof Rome sometimes bear the strange name of \"The Romans.\"\n\nNow that civilisation is our civilisation, and we never had any other.\nWe have not inherited a Teutonic culture any more than a Druid culture;\nnot half so much.  The people who say that parliaments or pictures\nor gardens or roads or universities were made by the Teutonic\nrace from the north can be disposed of by the simple question:\nwhy did not the Teutonic race make them in the north?\nWhy was not the Parthenon originally built in the neighbourhood\nof Potsdam, or did ten Hansa towns compete to be the birthplace\nof Homer?  Perhaps they do by this time; but their local illusion\nis no longer largely shared.  Anyhow it seems strange that the roads\nof the Romans should be due to the inspiration of the Teutons;\nand that parliaments should begin in Spain because they came\nfrom Germany.  If I looked about in these parts for a local emblem\nlike that of the eagle, I might very well find it in the lion.\nThe lion is common enough, of course, in Christian art both\nhagiological and heraldic.  Besides the cavern of Bethlehem of which I\nshall speak presently, is the cavern of St. Jerome, where he lived\nwith that real or legendary lion who was drawn by the delicate\nhumour of Carpaccio and a hundred other religious painters.\nThat it should appear in Christian art is natural; that it should\nappear in Moslem art is much more singular, seeing that Moslems\nare in theory forbidden so to carve images of living things.\nSome say the Persian Moslems are less particular; but whatever\nthe explanation, two lions of highly heraldic appearance are carved\nover that Saracen gate which Christians call the gate of St. Stephen;\nand the best judges seem to agree that, like so much of the Saracenic\nshell of Zion, they were partly at least copied from the shields\nand crests of the Crusaders.\n\nAnd the lions graven over the gate of St. Stephen might well be\nthe text for a whole book on the subject.  For if they indicate,\nhowever indirectly, the presence of the Latins of the twelfth century,\nthey also indicate the earlier sources from which the Latin life had\nitself been drawn.  The two lions are pacing, passant as the heralds\nwould say, in two opposite directions almost as if prowling to and fro.\nAnd this also might well be symbolic as well as heraldic.\nFor if the Crusaders brought the lion southward in spite of\nthe conventional fancy of Moslem decoration, it was only because\nthe Romans had previously brought the lion northward to the cold\nseas and the savage forests.  The image of the lion came from north\nto south, only because the idea of the lion had long ago come\nfrom south to north.  The Christian had a symbolic lion he had\nnever seen, and the Moslem had a real lion that he refused to draw.\nFor we could deduce from the case of this single creature\nthe fact that all our civilisation came from the Mediterranean,\nand the folly of pretending that it came from the North Sea.\nThose two heraldic shapes over the gate may be borrowed from the Norman\nor Angevin shield now quartered in the Royal Arms of England.  They may\nhave been copied, directly or indirectly, from that great Angevin King\nof England whose title credited him with the heart of a lion.\nThey may have in some far-off fashion the same ancestry as the boast\nor jest of our own comic papers when they talk about the British Lion.\nBut why are there lions, though of French or feudal origin,\non the flag of England?  There might as well be camels or crocodiles,\nfor all the apparent connection with England or with France.\nWhy was an English king described as having the heart of a lion, any more\nthan of a tiger?  Why do your patriotic cartoons threaten the world\nwith the wrath of the British Lion; it is really as strange as if they\nwarned it against stimulating the rage of the British rhinoceros.\nWhy did not the French and English princes find in the wild boars,\nthat were the objects of their hunting, the subjects of their heraldry?\nIf the Normans were really the Northmen, the sea-wolves of Scandinavian\npiracy, why did they not display three wolves on their shields?\nWhy has not John Bull been content with the English bull,\nor the English bull-dog?\n\nThe answer might be put somewhat defiantly by saying that the very name\nof John Bull is foreign.  The surname comes through France from Rome;\nand the Christian name comes through Rome from Palestine.  If there\nhad really been any justification for the Teutonic generalisation,\nwe should expect the surname to be \"ox\" and not \"bull\"; and we should\nexpect the hero standing as godfather to be Odin or Siegfried, and not\nthe prophet who lived on locusts in the wilderness of Palestine or the\nmystic who mused with his burning eyes on the blue seas around Patmos.\nIf our national hero is John Bull and not Olaf the Ox, it is ultimately\nbecause that blue sea has run like a blue thread through all the\ntapestries of our traditions; or in other words because our culture,\nlike that of France or Flanders, came originally from the Mediterranean.\nAnd if this is true of our use of the word \"bull,\" it is obviously\neven truer of our use of the word \"lion.\" The later emblem is enough\nto show that the culture came, not only from the Mediterranean,\nbut from the southern as well as the northern side of the Mediterranean.\nIn other words, the Roman Empire ran all round the great inland sea;\nthe very name of which meant, not merely the sea in the middle of\nthe land, but more especially the sea in the middle of all the lands\nthat mattered most to civilisation.  One of these, and the one\nthat in the long run has mattered most of all, was Palestine.\n\nIn this lies the deepest difference between a man like Richard\nthe Lion Heart and any of the countless modern English soldiers\nin Palestine who have been quite as lion-hearted as he.\nHis superiority was not moral but intellectual; it consisted in\nknowing where he was and why he was there.  It arose from the fact\nthat in his time there remained a sort of memory of the Roman Empire,\nwhich some would have re-established as a Holy Roman Empire.\nChristendom was still almost one commonwealth; and it seemed to Richard\nquite natural to go from one edge of it that happened to be called\nEngland to the opposite edge of it that happened to be called Palestine.\nWe may think him right or wrong in the particular quarrel,\nwe may think him innocent or unscrupulous in his incidental methods;\nbut there is next to no doubt whatever that he did regard\nhimself not merely as conquering but as re-conquering a realm.\nHe was not like a man attacking total strangers on a hitherto\nundiscovered island.  He was not opening up a new country,\nor giving his name to a new continent, and he could boast none\nof those ideals of imperial innovation which inspire the more\nenlightened pioneers, who exterminate tribes or extinguish\nrepublics for the sake of a gold-mine or an oil-field. Some day,\nif our modern educational system is further expanded and enforced,\nthe whole of the past of Palestine may be entirely forgotten;\nand a traveller in happier days may have all the fresher sentiments\nof one stepping on a new and nameless soil.  Disregarding any dim\nand lingering legends among the natives, he may then have the honour\nof calling Sinai by the name of Mount Higgins, or marking on\na new map the site of Bethlehem with the name of Brownsville.\nBut King Richard, adventurous as he was, could not experience the full\nfreshness of this sort of adventure.  He was not riding into Asia thus\nromantically and at random; indeed he was not riding into Asia at all.\nHe was riding into Europa Irredenta.\n\nBut that is to anticipate what happened later and must be\nconsidered later.  I am primarily speaking of the Empire as a pagan\nand political matter; and it is easy to see what was the meaning of\nthe Crusade on the merely pagan and political side.  In one sentence,\nit meant that Rome had to recover what Byzantium could not keep.\nBut something further had happened as affecting Rome than anything\nthat could be understood by a man standing as I have imagined\nmyself standing, in the official area of Byzantium.  When I have\nsaid that the Byzantian civilisation seemed still to be reigning,\nI meant a curious impression that, in these Eastern provinces,\nthough the Empire had been more defeated it has been less disturbed.\nThere is a greater clarity in that ancient air; and fewer clouds of real\nrevolution and novelty have come between them and their ancient sun.\nThis may seem an enigma and a paradox; seeing that here a foreign\nreligion has successfully fought and ruled.  But indeed the enigma\nis also the explanation.  In the East the continuity of culture\nhas only been interrupted by negative things that Islam has done.\nIn the West it has been interrupted by positive things that\nChristendom itself has done.  In the West the past of Christendom\nhas its perspective blocked up by its own creations; in the East\nit is a true perspective of interminable corridors, with round\nByzantine arches and proud Byzantine pillars.  That, I incline\nto fancy, is the real difference that a man come from the west\nof Europe feels in the east of Europe, it is a gap or a void.\nIt is the absence of the grotesque energy of Gothic, the absence\nof the experiments of parliament and popular representation,\nthe absence of medieval chivalry, the absence of modern nationality.\nIn the East the civilisation lived on, or if you will, lingered on;\nin the West it died and was reborn.  But for a long time, it should\nbe remembered, it must have seemed to the East merely that it died.\nThe realms of Rome had disappeared in clouds of barbaric war,\nwhile the realms of Byzantium were still golden and gorgeous in the sun.\nThe men of the East did not realise that their splendour was stiffening\nand growing sterile, and even the early successes of Islam may not\nhave revealed to them that their rule was not only stiff but brittle.\nIt was something else that was destined to reveal it.\nThe Crusades meant many things; but in this matter they meant one thing,\nwhich was like a word carried to them on the great west wind.\nAnd the word was like that in an old Irish song:  \"The west is awake.\"\nThey heard in the distance the cries of unknown crowds and felt\nthe earth shaking with the march of mobs; and behind them came\nthe trampling of horses and the noise of harness and of horns of war;\nnew kings calling out commands and hosts of young men full of hope\ncrying out in the old Roman tongue \"Id Deus vult,\" Rome was risen\nfrom the dead.\n\nAlmost any traveller could select out of the countless things\nthat he has looked at the few things that he has seen.\nI mean the things that come to him with a curious clearness;\nso that he actually sees them to be what he knows them to be.\nI might almost say that he can believe in them although he has seen them.\nThere can be no rule about this realisation; it seems to come in\nthe most random fashion; and the man to whom it comes can only speak\nfor himself without any attempt at a critical comparison with others.\nIn this sense I may say that the Church of the Nativity at\nBethlehem contains something impossible to describe, yet driving\nme beyond expression to a desperate attempt at description.\nThe church is entered through a door so small that it it might fairly\nbe called a hole, in which many have seen, and I think truly,\na symbol of some idea of humility.  It is also said that the wall\nwas pierced in this way to prevent the appearance of a camel\nduring divine service, but even that explanation would only repeat\nthe same suggestion through the parable of the needle's eye.\nPersonally I should guess that, in so far as the purpose was practical,\nit was meant to keep out much more dangerous animals than camels,\nas, for instance, Turks.  For the whole church has clearly been\nturned into a fortress, windows are bricked up and walls thickened\nin some or all of its thousand years of religious war.  In the blank\nspaces above the little doorway hung in old times that strange\nmosaic of the Magi which once saved the holy place from destruction,\nin the strange interlude between the decline of Rome and the rise\nof Mahomet.  For when the Persians who had destroyed Jerusalem rode\nout in triumph to the village of Bethlehem, they looked up and saw\nabove the door a picture in coloured stone, a picture of themselves.\nThey were following a strange star and worshipping an unknown child.\nFor a Christian artist, following some ancient Eastern tradition\ncontaining an eternal truth, had drawn the three wise men with\nthe long robes and high head-dresses of Persia.  The worshippers\nof the sun had come westward for the worship of the star.\nBut whether that part of the church were bare and bald as it is\nnow or coloured with the gold and purple images of the Persians,\nthe inside of the church would always be by comparison abruptly dark.\nAs familiarity turns the darkness to twilight, and the twilight\nto a grey daylight, the first impression is that of two rows\nof towering pillars.  They are of a dark red stone having much\nof the appearance of a dark red marble; and they are crowned\nwith the acanthus in the manner of the Corinthian school.\nThey were carved and set up at the command of Constantine;\nand beyond them, at the other end of the church beside the attar,\nis the dark stairway that descends under the canopies of rock\nto the stable where Christ was born.\n\nOf all the things I have seen the most convincing, and as it\nwere crushing, were these red columns of Constantine.\nIn explanation of the sentiment there are a thousand things that want\nsaying and cannot be said.  Never have I felt so vividly the great\nfact of our history; that the Christian religion is like a huge\nbridge across a boundless sea, which alone connects us with the men\nwho made the world, and yet have utterly vanished from the world.\nTo put it curtly and very crudely on this point alone it was\npossible to sympathise with a Roman and not merely to admire him.\nAll his pagan remains are but sublime fossils; for we can never know\nthe life that was in them.  We know that here and there was a temple\nto Venus or there an altar to Vesta; but who knows or pretends to know\nwhat he really felt about Venus or Vesta?  Was a Vestal Virgin\nlike a Christian Virgin, or something profoundly different?\nWas he quite serious about Venus, like a diabolist, or merely frivolous\nabout Venus, like a Christian?  If the spirit was different from ours\nwe cannot hope to understand it, and if the spirit was like ours,\nthe spirit was expressed in images that no longer express it.\nBut it is here that he and I meet; and salute the same images\nin the end.\n\nIn any case I can never recapture in words the waves of\nsympathy with strange things that went through me in that\ntwilight of the tall pillars, like giants robed in purple,\nstanding still and looking down into that dark hole in the ground.\nHere halted that imperial civilisation, when it had marched in triumph\nthrough the whole world; here in the evening of its days it came\ntrailing in all its panoply in the pathway of the three kings.\nFor it came following not only a falling but a fallen star and one\nthat dived before them into a birthplace darker than a grave.\nAnd the lord of the laurels, clad in his sombre crimson, looked down\ninto that darkness, and then looked up, and saw that all the stars\nin his own sky were dead.  They were deities no longer but only\na brilliant dust, scattered down the vain void of Lucretius.\nThe stars were as stale as they were strong; they would never die\nfor they had never lived; they were cursed with an incurable\nimmortality that was but the extension of mortality; they were\nchained in the chains of causation and unchangeable as the dead.\nThere are not many men in the modern world who do not know that mood,\nthough it was not discovered by the moderns; it was the final and\nseemingly fixed mood of nearly all the ancients.  Only above the black\nhole of Bethlehem they had seen a star wandering like a lost spark;\nand it had done what the eternal suns and planets could not do.\nIt had disappeared.\n\nThere are some who resent the presence of such purple beside\nthe plain stable of the Nativity.  But it seems strange that they\nalways rebuke it as if it were a blind vulgarity like the red\nplush of a parvenu; a mere insensibility to a mere incongruity.\nFor in fact the insensibility is in the critics and not the artists.\nIt is an insensibility not to an accidental incongruity but to an\nartistic contrast.  Indeed it is an insensibility of a somewhat\ntiresome kind, which can often be noticed in those sceptics who\nmake a science of folk-lore. The mark of them is that they fail\nto see the importance of finding the upshot or climax of a tale,\neven when it is a fairy-tale. Since the old devotional doctors\nand designers were never tired of insisting on the sufferings of\nthe holy poor to the point of squalor, and simultaneously insisting\non the sumptuousness of the subject kings to the point of swagger,\nit would really seem not entirely improbable that they may have been\nconscious of the contrast themselves.  I confess this is an insensibility,\nnot to say stupidity, in the sceptics and simplifiers, which I\nfind very fatiguing.  I do not mind a man not believing a story,\nbut I confess I am bored stiff (if I may be allowed the expression)\nby a man who can tell a story without seeing the point of\nthe story, considered as a story or even considered as a lie.\nAnd a man who sees the rags and the royal purple as a clumsy\ninconsistency is merely missing the meaning of a deliberate design.\nHe is like a man who should hear the story of King Cophetua and the beggar\nmaid and say doubtfully that it was hard to recognise it as really _a\nmariage de convenance_; a phrase which (I may remark in parenthesis but\nnot without passion) is not the French for \"a marriage of convenience,\"\nany more than _hors d'oeuvre_ is the French for \"out of work\";\nbut may be more rightly rendered in English as \"a suitable match.\"\nBut nobody thought the match of the king and the beggar maid\nconventionally a suitable match; and nobody would ever have\nthought the story worth telling if it had been.  It is like saying\nthat Diogenes, remaining in his tub after the offer of Alexander,\nmust have been unaware of the opportunities of Greek architecture;\nor like saying that Nebuchadnezzar eating grass is clearly inconsistent\nwith court etiquette, or not to be found in any fashionable cookery book.\nI do not mind the learned sceptic saying it is a legend or a lie;\nbut I weep for him when he cannot see the gist of it, I might even\nsay the joke of it.  I do not object to his rejecting the story\nas a tall story; but I find it deplorable when he cannot see\nthe point or end or upshot of the tall story, the very pinnacle\nor spire of that sublime tower.\n\nThis dull type of doubt clouds the consideration of many\nsacred things as it does that of the shrine of Bethlehem.\nIt is applied to the divine reality of Bethlehem itself,\nas when sceptics still sneer at the littleness, the localism,\nthe provincial particularity and obscurity of that divine origin;\nas if Christians could be confounded and silenced by a contrast\nwhich Christians in ten thousand hymns, songs and sermons have\nincessantly shouted and proclaimed.  In this capital case, of course,\nthe same principle holds.  A man may think the tale is incredible;\nbut it would never have been told at all if it had not been incongruous.\nBut this particular case of the lesser contrast, that between the imperial\npomp and the rustic poverty of the carpenter and the shepherds,\nis alone enough to illustrate the strange artistic fallacy involved.\nIf it be the point that an emperor came to worship a carpenter,\nit is as artistically necessary to make the emperor imperial\nas to make the carpenter humble; if we wish to make plain to plain\npeople that before this shrine kings are no better than shepherds,\nit is as necessary that the kings should have crowns as that\nthe shepherds should have crooks.  And if modern intellectuals\ndo not know it, it is because nobody has really been mad enough\neven to try to make modern intellectualism popular.  Now this\nconception of pomp as a popular thing, this conception of a concession\nto common human nature in colour and symbol, has a considerable\nbearing on many misunderstandings about the original enthusiasm\nthat spread from the cave of Bethlehem over the whole Roman Empire.\nIt is a curious fact that the moderns have mostly rebuked\nhistoric Christianity, not for being narrow, but for being broad.\nThey have rebuked it because it did prove itself the desire of\nall nations, because it did satisfy the cravings of many creeds,\nbecause it did prove itself to idolaters as something as magic\nas their idols, or did prove itself to patriots something as lovable\nas their native land.  In many other matters indeed, besides this\npopular art, we may find examples of the same illogical prejudice.\nNothing betrays more curiously the bias of historians against\nthe Christian faith than the fact that they blame in Christians\nthe very human indulgences that they have praised in heathens.\nThe same arts and allegories, the same phraseologies and philosophies,\nwhich appear first as proofs of heathen health turn up later\nas proofs of Christian corruption.  It was noble of pagans to\nbe pagan, but it was unpardonable of Christians to be paganised.\nThey never tire of telling us of the glory that was Greece,\nthe grandeur that was Rome, but the Church was infamous because it\nsatisfied the Greek intellect and wielded the Roman power.\n\nNow on the first example of the attempt of theology to meet\nthe claims of philosophy I will not here dwell at length.\nI will only remark in passing that it is an utter fallacy\nto suggest, as for instance Mr. Wells suggests in his fascinating\n_Outline of History_, that the subtleties of theology were\na mere falling away from the simplicities of religion.\nReligion may be better simple for those who find it simple;\nbut there are bound to be many who in any case find it subtle,\namong those who think about it and especially those who doubt about it.\nTo take an example, there is no saying which the humanitarians\nof a broad religion more commonly offer as a model of simplicity\nthan that most mystical affirmation \"God is Love.\"  And there is\nno theological quarrel of the Councils of the Church which they,\nespecially Mr. Wells, more commonly deride as bitter and barren than\nthat at the Council of Nicea about the Co-eternity of the Divine Son.\nYet the subtle statement is simply a metaphysical explanation\nof the simple statement; and it would be quite possible even to\nmake it a popular explanation, by saying that God could not love\nwhen there was nothing to be loved.  Now the Church Councils\nwere originally very popular, not to say riotous assemblies.\nSo far from being undemocratic, they were rather too democratic;\nthe real case against them was that they passed by uproarious votes,\nand not without violence, things that had ultimately to be considered\nmore calmly by experts.  But it may reasonably be suggested, I think,\nthat the concentration of the Greek intellect on these things did\ngradually pass from a popular to a more professional or official thing;\nand that the traces of it have finally tended to fade from the\nofficial religion of the East.  It was far otherwise with the more\npoetical and therefore more practical religion of the West.\nIt was far otherwise with that direct appeal to pathos and affection\nin the highly coloured picture of the Shepherd and the King.\nIn the West the world not only prolonged its life but recovered\nits youth.  That is the meaning of the movement I have described\nas the awakening of the West and the resurrection of Rome.\nAnd the whole point of that movement, as I propose to suggest,\nwas that it was a popular movement.  It had returned with exactly\nthat strange and simple energy that belongs to the story of Bethlehem.\nNot in vain had Constantine come clad in purple to look down into\nthat dark cave at his feet; nor did the star mislead him when it seemed\nto end in the entrails of the earth.  The men who followed him passed on,\nas it were, through the low and vaulted tunnel of the Dark Ages;\nbut they had found the way, and the only way, out of that world\nof death, and their journey ended in the land of the living.\nThey came out into a world more wonderful than the eyes of men\nhave looked on before or after; they heard the hammers of hundreds\nof happy craftsmen working for once according to their own will,\nand saw St. Francis walking with his halo a cloud of birds.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHE MEANING OF THE CRUSADE\n\nThere are three examples of Western work on the great eastern slope\nof the Mount of Olives; and they form a sort of triangle illustrating\nthe truth about the different influences of the West on the East.\nAt the foot of the hill is the garden kept by the Franciscans\non the alleged site of Gethsemane, and containing the hoary olive\nthat is supposed to be the terrible tree of the agony of Christ.\nGiven the great age and slow growth of the olives, the tradition\nis not so unreasonable as some may suppose.  But whether or not it\nis historically right, it is not artistically wrong.  The instinct,\nif it was only an instinct, that made men fix upon this strange\ngrowth of grey and twisted wood, was a true imaginative instinct.\nOne of the strange qualities of this strange Southern tree is\nits almost startling hardness; accidentally to strike the branch\nof an olive is like striking rock.  With its stony surface,\nstunted stature, and strange holes and hollows, it is often more\nlike a grotto than a tree.  Hence it does not seem so unnatural\nthat it should be treated as a holy grotto; or that this strange\nvegetation should claim to stand for ever like a sculptured monument.\nEven the shimmering or shivering silver foliage of the living\nolive might well have a legend like that of the aspen; as if it\nhad grown grey with fear from the apocalyptic paradox of a divine\nvision of death.  A child from one of the villages said to me,\nin broken English, that it was the place where God said his prayers.\nI for one could not ask for a finer or more defiant statement\nof all that separates the Christian from the Moslem or the Jew;\n_credo quia impossibile_.\n\nAround this terrible spot the Franciscans have done something which will\nstrike many good and thoughtful people as quite fantastically inadequate;\nand which strikes me as fantastically but precisely right.\nThey have laid out the garden simply as a garden, in a way\nthat is completely natural because it is completely artificial.\nThey have made flower-beds in the shape of stars and moons,\nand coloured them with flowers like those in the backyard of a cottage.\nThe combination of these bright patterns in the sunshine\nwith the awful shadow in the centre is certainly an incongruity\nin the sense of a contrast.  But it is a poetical contrast,\nlike that of birds building in a temple or flowers growing on a tomb.\nThe best way of suggesting what I for one feel about it would\nbe something like this; suppose we imagine a company of children,\nsuch as those whom Christ blessed in Jerusalem, afterwards put\npermanently in charge of a field full of his sorrow; it is probable that,\nif they could do anything with it, they would do something like this.\nThey might cut it up into quaint shapes and dot it with red\ndaisies or yellow marigolds.  I really do not know that there\nis anything better that grown up people could do, since anything\nthat the greatest of them could do must be, must look quite as small.\n\"Shall I, the gnat that dances in Thy ray, dare to be reverent?\"\nThe Franciscans have not dared to be reverent; they have only dared\nto be cheerful.  It may be too awful an adventure of the imagination\nto imagine Christ in that garden.  But there is not the smallest\ndifficulty about imagining St. Francis there; and that is something\nto say of an institution which is eight hundred years old.\n\nImmediately above this little garden, overshadowing and almost\noverhanging it, is a gorgeous gilded building with golden domes\nand minarets glittering in the sun, and filling a splendid situation\nwith almost shameless splendour; the Russian church built over\nthe upper part of the garden, belonging to the Orthodox-Greeks.\nHere again many Western travellers will be troubled; and will think\nthat golden building much too like a fairy palace in a pantomime.\nBut here again I shall differ from them, though perhaps less strongly.\nIt may be that the pleasure is childish rather than childlike;\nbut I can imagine a child clapping his hands at the mere sight\nof those great domes like bubbles of gold against the blue sky.\nIt is a little like Aladdin's Palace, but it has a place in art\nas Aladdin has a place in literature; especially since it is\noriental literature.  Those wise missionaries in China who were not\nafraid to depict the Twelve Apostles in the costume of Chinamen\nmight have built such a church in a land of glittering mosques.\nAnd as it is said that the Russian has in him something of the child\nand something of the oriental, such a style may be quite sincere,\nand have even a certain simplicity in its splendour.\nIt is genuine of its kind; it was built for those who like it;\nand those who do not like it can look at something else.  This sort\nof thing may be called tawdry, but it is not what I call meretricious.\nWhat I call really meretricious can be found yet higher on the hill;\ntowering to the sky and dominating all the valleys.\n\nThe nature of the difference, I think, is worth noting.\nThe German Hospice, which served as a sort of palace for the\nGerman Emperor, is a very big building with a very high tower,\nplanned I believe with great efficiency, solidity and comfort,\nand fitted with a thousand things that mark its modernity\ncompared with the things around, with the quaint garden\nof the Franciscans or the fantastic temple of the Russians.\nIt is what I can only describe as a handsome building; rather as\nthe more vulgar of the Victorian wits used to talk about a fine woman.\nBy calling it a handsome building I mean that from the top of its dizzy\ntower to the bottom of its deepest foundations there is not one line\nor one tint of beauty.  This negative fact, however, would be nothing;\nit might be honestly ugly and utilitarian like a factory or a prison;\nbut it is not.  It is as pretentious as the gilded dome below it;\nand it is pretentious in a wicked way where the other is pretentious\nin a good and innocent way.  What annoys me about it is that it\nwas not built by children, or even by savages, but by professors;\nand the professors could profess the art and could not practise it.\nThe architects knew everything about a Romanesque building except\nhow to build it.  We feel that they accumulated on that spot\nall the learning and organisation and information and wealth of\nthe world, to do this one particular thing; and then did it wrong.\nThey did it wrong, not through superstition, not through fanatical\nexaggeration, not through provincial ignorance, but through pure,\nprofound, internal, intellectual incompetence; that intellectual\nincompetence which so often goes with intellectual pride.\nI will mention only one matter out of a hundred.  All the columns\nin the Kaiser's Chapel are in one way very suitable to their place;\nevery one of them has a swelled head.  The column itself is slender\nbut the capital is not only big but bulging; and it has the air\nof bulging _downwards_, as if pressing heavily on something too\nslender to support it.  This is false, not to any of the particular\nschools of architecture about which professors can read in libraries,\nbut to the inmost instinctive idea of architecture itself.\nA Norman capital can be heavy because the Norman column is thick,\nand the whole thing expresses an elephantine massiveness and repose.\nAnd a Gothic column can be slender, because its strength is energy;\nand is expressed in its line, which shoots upwards like the life of\na tree, like the jet of a fountain or even like the rush of a rocket.\nBut a slender thing beneath, obviously oppressed by a bloated\nthing above, suggests weakness by one of those miraculous mistakes\nthat are as precisely wrong as masterpieces are precisely right.\nAnd to all this is added the intolerable intuition; that the Russians\nand the Franciscans, even if we credit them with fantastic ignorance,\nare at least looking up at the sky; and we know how the learned\nGermans would look down upon them, from their monstrous tower\nupon the hill.\n\nAnd this is as true of the moral as of the artistic elements\nin the modern Jerusalem.  To show that I am not unjustly partisan,\nI will say frankly that I see little to complain of in that common\nsubject of complaint; the mosaic portrait of the Emperor on the ceiling\nof the chapel.  It is but one among many figures; and it is not an unknown\npractice to include a figure of the founder in such church decorations.\nThe real example of that startling moral stupidity which marked\nthe barbaric imperialism can be found in another figure of which,\ncuriously enough, considerably less notice seems to have been taken.\nIt is the more remarkable because it is but an artistic shadow of\nthe actual fact; and merely records in outline and relief the temporary\nmasquerade in which the man walked about in broad daylight.\nI mean the really astounding trick of dressing himself up as a Crusader.\nThat was, under the circumstances, far more ludicrous and lunatic\na proceeding than if he had filled the whole ceiling with cherub\nheads with his own features, or festooned all the walls with one\nornamental pattern of his moustaches.\n\nThe German Emperor came to Jerusalem under the escort of the Turks,\nas the ally of the Turks, and solely because of the victory\nand supremacy of the Turks.  In other words, he came to\nJerusalem solely because the Crusaders had lost Jerusalem;\nhe came there solely because the Crusaders had been routed,\nruined, butchered before and after the disaster of Hattin:\nbecause the Cross had gone down in blood before the Crescent,\nunder which alone he could ride in with safety.  Under those\ncircumstances to dress up as a Crusader, as if for a fancy dress ball,\nwas a mixture of madness and vulgarity which literally stops the breath.\nThere is no need whatever to blame him for being in alliance with\nthe Turks; hundreds of people have been in alliance with the Turks;\nthe English especially have been far too much in alliance with them.\nBut if any one wants to appreciate the true difference, distinct from all\nthe cant of newspaper nationality, between the English and the Germans\n(who were classed together by the same newspapers a little time\nbefore the war) let him take this single incident as a test.\nLord Palmerston, for instance, was a firm friend of the Turks.\nImagine Lord Palmerston appearing in chain mail and the shield\nof a Red Cross Knight.\n\nIt is obvious enough that Palmerston would have said that he cared\nno more for the Crusade than for the Siege of Troy; that his diplomacy\nwas directed by practical patriotic considerations of the moment;\nand that he regarded the religious wars of the twelfth century\nas a rubbish heap of remote superstitions.  In this he would be\nquite wrong, but quite intelligible and quite sincere; an English\naristocrat of the nineteenth century inheriting from the English\naristocrats of the eighteenth century; whose views were simply\nthose of Voltaire.  And these things are something of an allegory.\nFor the Voltairian version of the Crusades is still by far\nthe most reasonable of all merely hostile views of the Crusades.\nIf they were not a creative movement of religion, then they were\nsimply a destructive movement of superstition; and whether we agree\nwith Voltaire in calling it superstition or with Villehardouin in\ncalling it religion, at least both these very clear-headed Frenchmen\nwould agree that the motive did exist and did explain the facts.\nBut just as there is a clumsy German building with statues that at once\npatronise and parody the Crusaders, so there is a clumsy German theory\nthat at once patronises and minimises the Crusades.  According to this\ntheory the essential truth about a Crusade was that it was not a Crusade.\nIt was something that the professors, in the old days before the war,\nused to call a Teutonic Folk-Wandering. Godfrey and St. Louis\nwere not, as Villehardouin would say, fighting for the truth;\nthey were not even, as Voltaire would say, fighting for what they\nthought was the truth; this was only what they thought they thought,\nand they were really thinking of something entirely different.\nThey were not moved either by piety or priestcraft, but by a new\nand unexpected nomadism.  They were not inspired either by faith\nor fanaticism, but by an unusually aimless taste for foreign travel.\nThis theory that the war of the two great religions could be\nexplained by \"Wanderlust\" was current about twenty years ago among\nthe historical professors of Germany, and with many of their other views,\nwas often accepted by the historical professors of England.\nIt was swallowed by an earthquake, along with other rubbish,\nin the year 1914.\n\nSince then, so far as I know, the only person who has been\npatient enough to dig it up again is Mr. Ezra Pound.\nHe is well known as an American poet; and he is, I believe,\na man of great talent and information.  His attempt to recover\nthe old Teutonic theory of the Folk-Wandering of Peter the Hermit\nwas expressed, however, in prose; in an article in the _New Age_.\nI have no reason to doubt that he was to be counted among the most\nloyal of our allies; but he is evidently one of those who,\nquite without being Pro-German, still manage to be German.\nThe Teutonic theory was very Teutonic; like the German Hospice\non the hill it was put together with great care and knowledge\nand it is rotten from top to bottom.  I do not understand,\nfor that matter, why that alliance which we enjoy with Mr. Pound\nshould not be treated in the same way as the other historical event;\nor why the war should not be an example of the Wanderlust.\nSurely the American Army in France must have drifted eastward merely\nthrough the same vague nomadic need as the Christian Army in Palestine.\nSurely Pershing as well as Peter the Hermit was merely a rather restless\ngentleman who found his health improved by frequent change of scene.\nThe Americans said, and perhaps thought, that they were fighting\nfor democracy; and the Crusaders said, and perhaps thought,\nthat they were fighting for Christianity.  But as we know what\nthe Crusaders meant better than they did themselves, I cannot\nquite understand why we do not enjoy the same valuable omniscience\nabout the Americans.  Indeed I do not see why we should not enjoy it\n(for it would be very enjoyable) about any individual American.\nSurely it was this vague vagabond spirit that moved Mr. Pound,\nnot only to come to England, but in a fashion to come to Fleet Street.\nA dim tribal tendency, vast and invisible as the wind, carried him\nand his article like an autumn leaf to alight on the _New Age_ doorstep.\nOr a blind aboriginal impulse, wholly without rational motive,\nled him one day to put on his hat, and go out with his article\nin an envelope and put it in a pillar-box. It is vain to correct\nby cold logic the power of such primitive appetites; nature herself\nwas behind the seemingly random thoughtlessness of the deed.\nAnd now that it is irrevocably done, he can look back on it and trace\nthe large lines of an awful law of averages; wherein it is ruled\nby a ruthless necessity that a certain number of such Americans\nshould write a certain number of such articles, as the leaves fall\nor the flowers return.\n\nIn plain words, this sort of theory is a blasphemy against\nthe intellectual dignity of man.  It is a blunder as well as\na blasphemy; for it goes miles out of its way to find a bestial\nexplanation when there is obviously a human explanation.\nIt is as if a man told me that a dim survival of the instincts of a\nquadruped was the reason of my sitting on a chair with four legs.\nI answer that I do it because I foresee that there may be grave\ndisadvantages in sitting on a chair with one leg.  Or it is as if I\nwere told that I liked to swim in the sea, solely because some early\nforms of amphibian life came out of the sea on to the shore.\nI answer that I know why I swim in the sea; and it is because\nthe divine gift of reason tells me that it would be unsatisfactory\nto swim on the land.  In short this sort of vague evolutionary\ntheorising simply amounts to finding an unconvincing explanation\nof something that needs no explanation.  And the case is really quite\nas simple with great political and religious movements by which man\nhas from time to time changed the world in this or that respect\nin which he happened to think it would be the better for a change.\nThe Crusade was a religious movement, but it was also a perfectly\nrational movement; one might almost say a rationalist movement.\nI could quite understand Mr. Pound saying that such a campaign for\na creed was immoral; and indeed it often has been, and now perhaps\ngenerally is, quite horribly immoral.  But when he implies that it\nis irrational he has selected exactly the thing which it is not.\n\nIt is not enlightenment, on the contrary it is ignorance and insularity,\nwhich causes most of us to miss this fact.  But it certainly is the fact\nthat religious war is in itself much more rational than patriotic war.\nI for one have often defended and even encouraged patriotic war,\nand should always be ready to defend and encourage patriotic passion.\nBut it cannot be denied that there is more of mere passion,\nof mere preference and prejudice, in short of mere personal accident,\nin fighting another nation than in fighting another faith.\nThe Crusader is in every sense more rational than the modern\nconscript or professional soldier.  He is more rational in\nhis object, which is the intelligent and intelligible object\nof conversion; where the modern militarist has an object much\nmore confused by momentary vanity and one-sided satisfaction.\nThe Crusader wished to make Jerusalem a Christian town;\nbut the Englishman does not wish to make Berlin an English town.\nHe has only a healthy hatred of it as a Prussian town.\nThe Moslem wished to make the Christian a Moslem; but even\nthe Prussian did not wish to make the Frenchman a Prussian.\nHe only wished to make the Frenchman admire a Prussian;\nand not only were the means he adopted somewhat ill-considered for\nthis purpose, but the purpose itself is looser and more irrational.\nThe object of all war is peace; but the object of religious\nwar is mental as well as material peace; it is agreement.\nIn short religious war aims ultimately at equality, where national\nwar aims relatively at superiority.  Conversion is the one sort\nof conquest in which the conquered must rejoice.\n\nIn that sense alone it is foolish for us in the West to sneer\nat those who kill men when a foot is set in a holy place,\nwhen we ourselves kill hundreds of thousands when a foot is put\nacross a frontier.  It is absurd for us to despise those who shed\nblood for a relic when we have shed rivers of blood for a rag.\nBut above all the Crusade, or, for that matter, the Jehad,\nis by far the most philosophical sort of fighting, not only\nin its conception of ending the difference, but in its mere act\nof recognising the difference, as the deepest kind of difference.\nIt is to reverse all reason to suggest that a man's politics matter\nand his religion does not matter.  It is to say he is affected\nby the town he lives in, but not by the world he lives in.\nIt is to say that he is altered when he is a fellow-citizen walking\nunder new lamp-posts, but not altered when he is another creature walking\nunder strange stars.  It is exactly as if we were to say that two people\nought to live in the same house, but it need not be in the same town.\nIt is exactly as if we said that so long as the address included\nYork it did not matter whether it was New York; or that so long\nas a man is in Essex we do not care whether he is in England.\n\nChristendom would have been entirely justified in the abstract\nin being alarmed or suspicious at the mere rise of a great power\nthat was not Christian.  Nobody nowadays would think it odd\nto express regret at the rise of a power because it was Militarist\nor Socialist or even Protectionist.  But it is far more natural\nto be conscious of a difference, not about the order of battle but\nthe battle of life; not about our definable enjoyment of possessions,\nbut about our much more doubtful possession of enjoyment;\nnot about the fiscal divisions between us and foreigners\nbut about the spiritual divisions even between us and friends.\nThese are the things that differ profoundly with differing views\nof the ultimate nature of the universe.  For the things of our country\nare often distant; but the things of our cosmos are always near;\nwe can shut our doors upon the wheeled traffic of our native town;\nbut in our own inmost chamber we hear the sound that never ceases;\nthat wheel which Dante and a popular proverb have dared\nto christen as the love that makes the world go round.\nFor this is the great paradox of life; that there are not only\nwheels within wheels, but the larger wheels within the smaller.\nWhen a whole community rests on one conception of life and death\nand the origin of things, it is quite entitled to watch the rise\nof another community founded on another conception as the rise\nof something certain to be different and likely to be hostile.\nIndeed, as I have pointed out touching certain political theories,\nwe already admit this truth in its small and questionable examples.\nWe only deny the large and obvious examples.\n\nChristendom might quite reasonably have been alarmed if it had not\nbeen attacked.  But as a matter of history it had been attacked.\nThe Crusader would have been quite justified in suspecting the Moslem\neven if the Moslem had merely been a new stranger; but as a matter\nof history he was already an old enemy.  The critic of the Crusade\ntalks as if it had sought out some inoffensive tribe or temple in the\ninterior of Thibet, which was never discovered until it was invaded.\nThey seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed\nof riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden into Paris.\nThey seem to forget that if the Crusaders nearly conquered Palestine,\nit was but a return upon the Moslems who had nearly conquered Europe.\nThere was no need for them to argue by an appeal to reason, as I\nhave argued above, that a religious division must make a difference;\nit had already made a difference.  The difference stared them\nin the face in the startling transformation of Roman Barbary\nand of Roman Spain.  In short it was something which must happen\nin theory and which did happen in practice; all expectation\nsuggested that it would be so and all experience said it was so.\nHaving thought it out theoretically and experienced it practically,\nthey proceeded to deal with it equally practically.  The first division\ninvolved every principle of the science of thought; and the last\ndevelopments followed out every principle of the science of war.\nThe Crusade was the counter-attack. It was the defensive army taking\nthe offensive in its turn, and driving back the enemy to his base.\nAnd it is this process, reasonable from its first axiom to its last act,\nthat Mr. Pound actually selects as a sort of automatic wandering\nof an animal.  But a man so intelligent would not have made a mistake\nso extraordinary but for another error which it is here very essential\nto consider.  To suggest that men engaged, rightly or wrongly,\nin so logical a military and political operation were only migrating\nlike birds or swarming like bees is as ridiculous as to say that\nthe Prohibition campaign in America was only an animal reversion\ntowards lapping as the dog lappeth, or Rowland Hill's introduction\nof postage stamps an animal taste for licking as the cat licks.\nWhy should we provide other people with a remote reason for their\nown actions, when they themselves are ready to tell us the reason,\nand it is a perfectly reasonable reason?\n\nI have compared this pompous imposture of scientific history to\nthe pompous and clumsy building of the scientific Germans on the Mount\nof Olives, because it substitutes in the same way a modern stupidity\nfor the medieval simplicity.  But just as the German Hospice after\nall stands on a fine site, and might have been a fine building,\nso there is after all another truth, somewhat analogous,\nwhich the German historians of the Folk-Wanderings might possibly\nhave meant, as distinct from all that they have actually said.\nThere is indeed one respect in which the case of the Crusade does\ndiffer very much from modern political cases like prohibition\nor the penny post.  I do not refer to such incidental peculiarities\nas the fact that Prohibition could only have succeeded through\nthe enormous power of modern plutocracy, or that even the convenience\nof the postage goes along with an extreme coercion by the police.\nIt is a somewhat deeper difference that I mean; and it may possibly be\nwhat these critics mean.  But the difference is not in the evolutionary,\nbut rather the revolutionary spirit.\n\nThe First Crusade was not a racial migration; it was something much\nmore intellectual and dignified; a riot.  In order to understand this\nreligious war we must class it, not so much with the wars of history\nas with the revolutions of history.  As I shall try to show briefly\non a later page, it not only had all the peculiar good and the peculiar\nevil of things like the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution,\nbut it was a more purely popular revolution than either of them.\nThe truly modern mind will of course regard the contention that it\nwas popular as tantamount to a confession that it was animal.\nIn these days when papers and speeches are full of words like\ndemocracy and self-determination, anything really resembling\nthe movement of a mass of angry men is regarded as no better than\na stampede of bulls or a scurry of rats.  The new sociologists\ncall it the herd instinct, just as the old reactionaries called it\nthe many-headed beast.  But both agree in implying that it is hardly\nworth while to count how many head there are of such cattle.\nIn face of such fashionable comparisons it will seem comparatively\nmild to talk of migration as it occurs among birds or insects.\nNevertheless we may venture to state with some confidence\nthat both the sociologists and the reactionaries are wrong.\nIt does not follow that human beings become less than human because their\nideas appeal to more and more of humanity.  Nor can we deduce that men\nare mindless solely from the fact that they are all of one mind.\nIn plain fact the virtues of a mob cannot be found in a herd\nof bulls or a pack of wolves, any more than the crimes of a mob\ncan be committed by a flock of sheep or a shoal of herrings.\nBirds have never been known to besiege and capture an empty cage\nof an aviary, on a point of principle, merely because it had kept a few\nother birds in captivity, as the mob besieged and captured the almost\nempty Bastille, merely because it was the fortress of a historic tyranny.\nAnd rats have never been known to die by thousands merely in order\nto visit a particular trap in which a particular rat had perished,\nas the poor peasants of the First Crusade died in thousands for a\nfar-off sight of the Sepulchre or a fragment of the true cross.\nIn this sense indeed the Crusade was not rationalistic, if the rat\nis the only rationalist.  But it will seem more truly rational\nto point out that the inspiration of such a crowd is not in such\ninstincts as we share with the animals, but precisely in such ideas\nas the animals never (with all their virtues) understand.\n\nWhat is peculiar about the First Crusade is that it was in quite\na new and abnormal sense a popular movement.  I might almost say\nit was the only popular movement there ever was in the world.\nFor it was not a thing which the populace followed; it was actually\na thing which the populace led.  It was not only essentially\na revolution, but it was the only revolution I know of in which\nthe masses began by acting alone, and practically without any\nsupport from any of the classes.  When they had acted, the classes\ncame in; and it is perfectly true, and indeed only natural,\nthat the masses alone failed where the two together succeeded.\nBut it was the uneducated who educated the educated.\nThe case of the Crusade is emphatically not a case in which certain\nideas were first suggested by a few philosophers, and then preached\nby demagogues to the democracy.  This was to a great extent true\nof the French Revolution; it was probably yet more true of the\nRussian Revolution; and we need not here pause upon the fine shade\nof difference that Rousseau was right and Karl Marx was wrong.\nIn the First Crusade it was the ordinary man who was right or wrong.\nHe came out in a fury at the insult to his own little images or\nprivate prayers, as if he had come out to fight with his own domestic\npoker or private carving-knife. He was not armed with new weapons\nof wit and logic served round from the arsenal of an academy.\nThere was any amount of wit and logic in the academies of the Middle Ages;\nbut the typical leader of the Crusade was not Abelard or Aquinas\nbut Peter the Hermit, who can hardly be called even a popular leader,\nbut rather a popular flag.  And it was his army, or rather\nhis enormous rabble, that first marched across the world to die\nfor the deliverance of Jerusalem.\n\nHistorians say that in that huge host of thousands there were only\nnine knights.  To any one who knows even a little of medieval\nwar the fact seems astounding.  It is indeed a long exploded\nfallacy to regard medievalism as identical with feudalism.\nThere were countless democratic institutions, such as the guilds;\nsometimes as many as twenty guilds in one small town.\nBut it is really true that the military organization of the Middle Ages\nwas almost entirely feudal; indeed we might rather say that feudalism\nwas the name of their military organisation.  That so vast a military\nmass should have attempted to move at all, with only nine of the natural\nmilitary leaders, seems to me a prodigy of popular initiative.\nIt is as if a parliament were elected at the next general election,\nin which only two men could afford to read a daily newspaper.\n\nThis mob marched against the military discipline of the Moslems\nand was massacred; or, might I so mystically express it, martyred.\nMany of the great kings and knights who followed in their tracks\ndid not so clearly deserve any haloes for the simplicity and purity\nof their motives.  The canonisation of such a crowd might be impossible,\nand would certainly be resisted in modern opinion; chiefly because they\nindulged their democratic violence on the way by killing various usurers;\na course which naturally fills modern society with an anger verging\non alarm.  A perversity leads me to weep rather more over the many\nslaughtered peasants than over the few slaughtered usurers;\nbut in any case the peasants certainly were not slaughtered in vain.\nThe common conscience of all classes, in a time when all had\na common creed, was aroused, and a new army followed of a very\ndifferent type of skill and training; led by most of the ablest\ncaptains and by some of the most chivalrous gentlemen of the age.\nFor curiously enough, the host contained more than one cultured\ngentleman who was as simple a Christian as any peasant,\nand as recklessly ready to be butchered or tortured for the mere\nname of Christ.\n\nIt is a tag of the materialists that the truth about history\nrubs away the romance of history.  It is dear to the modern mind\nbecause it is depressing; but it does not happen to be true.\nNothing emerges more clearly from a study that is truly realistic,\nthan the curious fact that romantic people were really romantic.\nIt is rather the historical novels that will lead a modern\nman vaguely to expect to find the leader of the new knights,\nGodfrey de Bouillon, to have been merely a brutal baron.\nThe historical facts are all in favour of his having been much\nmore like a knight of the Round Table.  In fact he was a far\nbetter man than most of the knights of the Round Table, in whose\ncharacters the fabulist, knowing that he was writing a fable,\nwas tactful enough to introduce a larger admixture of vice.  Truth is\nnot only stranger than fiction, but often saintlier than fiction.\nFor truth is real, while fiction is bound to be realistic.\nCuriously enough Godfrey seems to have been heroic even in those\nadmirable accidents which are generally and perhaps rightly regarded\nas the trappings of fiction.  Thus he was of heroic stature,\na handsome red-bearded man of great personal strength and daring;\nand he was himself the first man over the wall of Jerusalem,\nlike any boy hero in a boy's adventure story.  But he was also,\nthe realist will be surprised to hear, a perfectly honest man,\nand a perfectly genuine practiser of the theoretical magnanimity\nof knighthood.  Everything about him suggests it; from his first\nconversion from the imperial to the papal (and popular) cause, to his\ngreat refusal of the kinghood of the city he had taken; \"I will\nnot wear a crown of gold where my Master wore a crown of thorns.\"\nHe was a just ruler, and the laws he made were full of the plainest\npublic spirit.  But even if we dismiss all that was written\nof him by Christian chroniclers because they might be his friends\n(which would be a pathetic and exaggerated compliment to the harmonious\nunity of Crusaders and of Christians) he would still remain\nsufficiently assoiled and crowned with the words of his enemies.\nFor a Saracen chronicler wrote of him, with a fine simplicity,\nthat if all truth and honour had otherwise withered off the earth,\nthere would still remain enough of them so long as Duke Godfrey was alive.\n\nAllied with Godfrey were Tancred the Italian, Raymond of Toulouse\nwith the southern French and Robert of Normandy, the adventurous\nson of the Conqueror, with the Normans and the English.\nBut it would be an error, I think, and one tending to make the whole\nsubsequent story a thing not so much misunderstood as unintelligible,\nto suppose that the whole crusading movement had been suddenly\nand unnaturally stiffened with the highest chivalric discipline.\nUnless I am much mistaken, a great mass of that army\nwas still very much of a mob.  It is probable _a priori_,\nsince the great popular movement was still profoundly popular.\nIt is supported by a thousand things in the story of the campaign;\nthe extraordinary emotionalism that made throngs of men weep and\nwail together, the importance of the demagogue, Peter the Hermit,\nin spite of his unmilitary character, and the wide differences between\nthe designs of the leaders and the actions of the rank and file.\nIt was a crowd of rude and simple men that cast themselves\non the sacred dust at the first sight of the little mountain\ntown which they had tramped for two thousand miles to see.\nTancred saw it first from the slope by the village of Bethlehem,\nwhich had opened its gates willingly to his hundred Italian knights;\nfor Bethlehem then as now was an island of Christendom in the sea\nof Islam.  Meanwhile Godfrey came up the road from Jaffa,\nand crossing the mountain ridge, saw also with his living eyes\nhis vision of the world's desire.  But the poorest men about him\nprobably felt the same as he; all ranks knelt together in the dust,\nand the whole story is one wave of numberless and nameless men.\nIt was a mob that had risen like a man for the faith.\nIt was a mob that had truly been tortured like a man for the faith.\nIt was already transfigured by pain as well as passion.\nThose that know war in those deserts through the summer months,\neven with modern supplies and appliances and modern maps and calculations,\nknow that it could only be described as a hell full of heroes.\nWhat it must have been to those little local serfs and peasants from\nthe Northern villages, who had never dreamed in nightmares of such\nlandscapes or such a sun, who knew not how men lived at all in such\na furnace and could neither guess the alleviations nor get them,\nis beyond the imagination of man.  They arrived dying with thirst,\ndropping with weariness, lamenting the loss of the dead that rotted\nalong their road; they arrived shrivelled to rags or already raving\nwith fever and they did what they had come to do.\n\nAbove all, it is clear that they had the vices as well as the virtues\nof a mob.  The shocking massacre in which they indulged in the sudden\nrelaxation of success is quite obviously a massacre by a mob.\nIt is all the more profoundly revolutionary because it must have\nbeen for the most part a French mob.  It was of the same order\nas the Massacre of September, and it is but a part of the same truth\nthat the First Crusade was as revolutionary as the French Revolution.\nIt was of the same order as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew,\nwhich was also a piece of purely popular fanaticism, directed\nagainst what was also regarded as an anti-national aristocracy.\nIt is practically self-evident that the Christian commanders were\nopposed to it, and tried to stop it.  Tancred promised their lives\nto the Moslems in the mosque, but the mob clearly disregarded him.\nRaymond of Toulouse himself saved those in the Tower of David,\nand managed to send them safely with their property to Ascalon.\nBut revolution with all its evil as well as its good was loose\nand raging in the streets of the Holy City.  And in nothing do we\nsee that spirit of revolution more clearly than in the sight\nof all those peasants and serfs and vassals, in that one wild\nmoment in revolt, not only against the conquered lords of Islam,\nbut even against the conquering lords of Christendom.\n\nThe whole strain of the siege indeed had been one of high and even\nhorrible excitement.  Those who tell us to-day about the psychology\nof the crowd will agree that men who have so suffered and so succeeded\nare not normal; that their brains are in a dreadful balance which may\nturn either way.  They entered the city at last in a mood in which they\nmight all have become monks; and instead they all became murderers.\nA brilliant general, who played a decisive part in our own recent\nPalestinian campaign, told me with a sort of grim humour that he hardly\nwondered at the story; for he himself had entered Jerusalem in a sort\nof fury of disappointment; \"We went through such a hell to get there,\nand now it's spoilt for all of us.\"  Such is the heavy irony that\nhangs over our human nature, making it enter the Holy City as if it\nwere the Heavenly City, and more than any earthly city can be.\nBut the struggle which led to the scaling of Jerusalem in the\nFirst Crusade was something much wilder and more incalculable than\nanything that can be conceived in modern war.  We can hardly wonder\nthat the crusading crowd saw the town in front of them as a sort\nof tower full of demons, and the hills around them as an enchanted\nand accursed land.  For in one very real sense it really was so;\nfor all the elements and expedients were alike unknown qualities.\nAll their enemies' methods were secrets sprung upon them.\nAll their own methods were new things made out of nothing.\nThey wondered alike what would be done on the other side and what\ncould be done on their own side; every movement against them\nwas a stab out of the darkness and every movement they made\nwas a leap in the dark.  First, on the one side, we have Tancred\ntrying to take the whole fortified city by climbing up a single\nslender ladder, as if a man tried to lasso the peak of a mountain.\nThen we have the flinging from the turrets of a strange\nand frightful fiery rain, as if water itself had caught fire.\nIt was afterwards known as the Greek Fire and was probably petroleum;\nbut to those who had never seen (or felt) it before it may well have\nseemed the flaming oil of witchcraft.  Then Godfrey and the wiser\nof the warriors set about to build wooden siege-towers and found\nthey had next to no wood to build them.  There was scarcely anything\nin that rocky waste but the dwarf trees of olive; a poetic fantasy\nwoven about that war in after ages described them as hindered\neven in their wood-cutting by the demons of that weird place.\nAnd indeed the fancy had an essential truth, for the very nature\nof the land fought against them; and each of those dwarf trees,\nhard and hollow and twisted, may well have seemed like a grinning goblin.\nIt is said that they found timbers by accident in a cavern;\nthey tore down the beams from ruined houses; at last they got into touch\nwith some craftsmen from Genoa who went to work more successfully;\nskinning the cattle, who had died in heaps, and covering the timbers.\nThey built three high towers on rollers, and men and beasts dragged\nthem heavily against the high towers of the city.  The catapults\nof the city answered them, the cataracts of devouring fire came down;\nthe wooden towers swayed and tottered, and two of them suddenly stuck\nmotionless and useless.  And as the darkness fell a great flare\nmust have told them that the third and last was in flames.\n\nAll that night Godfrey was toiling to retrieve the disaster.\nHe took down the whole tower from where it stood and raised\nit again on the high ground to the north of the city which is\nnow marked by the pine tree that grows outside Herod's gate.\nAnd all the time he toiled, it was said, sinister sorcerers sat\nupon the battlements, working unknown marvels for the undoing\nof the labour of man.  If the great knight had a touch of such\nsymbolism on his own side, he might have seen in his own strife\nwith the solid timber something of the craft that had surrounded\nthe birth of his creed, and the sacred trade of the carpenter.\nAnd indeed the very pattern of all carpentry is cruciform, and there\nis something more than an accident in the allegory.  The transverse\nposition of the timber does indeed involve many of those mathematical\nthat are analogous to moral truths and almost every structural\nshape has the shadow of the mystic rood, as the three dimensions\nhave a shadow of the Trinity.  Here is the true mystery of equality;\nsince the longer beam might lengthen itself to infinity, and never\nbe nearer to the symbolic shape without the help of the shorter.\nHere is that war and wedding between two contrary forces, resisting and\nsupporting each other; the meeting-place of contraries which we,\nby a sort of pietistic pun, still call the crux of the question.\nHere is our angular and defiant answer to the self-devouring circle\nof Asia.  It may be improbable, though it is far from impossible\n(for the age was philosophical enough) that a man like Godfrey\nthus extended the mystical to the metaphysical; but the writer\nof a real romance about him would be well within his rights in making\nhim see the symbolism of his own tower, a tower rising above\nhim through the clouds of night as if taking hold on the heaven\nor showing its network of beams black against the daybreak;\nscaling the skies and open to all the winds, a ladder and a labyrinth,\nrepeating till it was lost in the twilight the pattern of the sign\nof the cross.\n\nWhen dawn was come all those starving peasants may well have stood\nbefore the high impregnable walls in the broad daylight of despair.\nEven their nightmares during the night, of unearthly necromancers\nlooking down at them from the battlements and with signs and spells\nparalysing all their potential toils, may well have been a sort\nof pessimistic consolation, anticipating and accounting for failure.\nThe Holy City had become for them a fortress full of fiends, when Godfrey\nde Bouillon again set himself sword in hand upon the wooden tower and gave\nthe order once more to drag it tottering towards the towers on either\nside of the postern gate.  So they crawled again across the fosse\nfull of the slain, dragging their huge house of timber behind them,\nand all the blast and din of war broke again about their heads.\nA hail of bolts hammered such shields as covered them for a canopy,\nstones and rocks fell on them and crushed them like flies in\nthe mire, and from the engines of the Greek Fire all the torrents\nof their torment came down on them like red rivers of hell.\nFor indeed the souls of those peasants must have been sickened\nwith something of the topsy-turvydom felt by too many peasants of our\nown time under the frightful flying batteries of scientific war;\na blasphemy of inverted battle in which hell itself has occupied heaven.\nSomething of the vapours vomited by such cruel chemistry may\nhave mingled with the dust of battle, and darkened such light\nas showed where shattering rocks were rending a roof of shields,\nto men bowed and blinded as they are by such labour of dragging\nand such a hailstorm of death.  They may have heard through\nall the racket of nameless noises the high minaret cries\nof Moslem triumph rising shriller like a wind in shrill pipes,\nand known little else of what was happening above or beyond them.\nIt was most likely that they laboured and strove in that lower darkness,\nnot knowing that high over their heads, and up above the cloud\nof battle, the tower of timber and the tower of stone had touched\nand met in mid-heaven; and great Godfrey, alone and alive,\nhad leapt upon the wall of Jerusalem.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nTHE FALL OF CHIVALRY\n\nOn the back of this book is the name of the New Jerusalem and on\nthe first page of it a phrase about the necessity of going back\nto the old even to find the new, as a man retraces his steps\nto a sign-post. The common sense of that process is indeed most\nmysteriously misunderstood.  Any suggestion that progress has at\nany time taken the wrong turning is always answered by the argument\nthat men idealise the past, and make a myth of the Age of Gold.\nIf my progressive guide has led me into a morass or a man-trap\nby turning to the left by the red pillar-box, instead of to\nthe right by the blue palings of the inn called the Rising Sun,\nmy progressive guide always proceeds to soothe me by talking\nabout the myth of an Age of Gold.  He says I am idealising\nthe right turning.  He says the blue palings are not so blue\nas they are painted.  He says they are only blue with distance.\nHe assures me there are spots on the sun, even on the rising sun.\nSometimes he tells me I am wrong in my fixed conviction that the blue\nwas of solid sapphires, or the sun of solid gold.  In short he assures\nme I am wrong in supposing that the right turning was right in every\npossible respect; as if I had ever supposed anything of the sort.\nI want to go back to that particular place, not because it was\nall my fancy paints it, or because it was the best place my fancy\ncan paint; but because it was a many thousand times better place\nthan the man-trap in which he and his like have landed me.\nBut above all I want to go back to it, not because I know it was\nthe right place but because I think it was the right turning.\nAnd the right turning might possibly have led me to the right place;\nwhereas the progressive guide has quite certainly led me to\nthe wrong one.\n\nNow it is quite true that there is less general human testimony\nto the notion of a New Jerusalem in the future than to the notion\nof a Golden Age in the past.  But neither of those ideas, whether or\nno they are illusions, are any answer to the question of a plain\nman in the plain position of this parable; a man who has to find\nsome guidance in the past if he is to get any good in the future.\nWhat he positively knows, in any case, is the complete collapse\nof the present.  Now that is the exact truth about the thing so often\nrebuked as a romantic and unreal return of modern men to medieval things.\nThey suppose they have taken the wrong turning, because they know\nthey are in the wrong place.  To know that, it is necessary not to\nidealise the medieval world, but merely to realise the modern world.\nIt is not so much that they suppose the medieval world was above\nthe average as that they feel sure the modern world is below the average.\nThey do not start either with the idea that man is meant to live\nin a New Jerusalem of pearl and sapphire in the future, or that a man\nwas meant to live in a picturesque and richly-painted tavern of the past;\nbut with a strong inward and personal persuasion that a man was\nnot meant to live in a man-trap.\n\nFor there is and will be more and more a turn of total change\nin all our talk and writing about history.  Everything in the past\nwas praised if it had led up to the present, and blamed if it\nwould have led up to anything else.  In short everybody has been\nsearching the past for the secret of our success.  Very soon\neverybody may be searching the past for the secret of our failure.\nThey may be talking in such terms as they use after a motor smash\nor a bankruptcy; where was the blunder?  They may be writing such books\nas generals write after a military defeat; whose was the fault?\nThe failure will be assumed even in being explained.\n\nFor industrialism is no longer a vulgar success.\nOn the contrary, it is now too tragic even to be vulgar.\nUnder the cloud of doom the modern city has taken on something\nof the dignity of Babel or Babylon.  Whether we call it the nemesis\nof Capitalism or the nightmare of Bolshevism makes no difference;\nthe rich grumble as much as the poor; every one is discontented, and none\nmore than those who are chiefly discontented with the discontent.\nAbout that discord we are in perfect harmony; about that disease we\nall think alike, whatever we think of the diagnosis or the cure.\nBy whatever process in the past we might have come to the\nright place, practical facts in the present and future will\nprove more and more that we have come to the wrong place.\nAnd for many a premonition will grow more and more of a probability;\nthat we may or may not await another century or another world\nto see the New Jerusalem rebuilt and shining on our fields;\nbut in the flesh we shall see Babylon fall.\n\nBut there is another way in which that metaphor of the forked road\nwill make the position plain.  Medieval society was not the right place;\nit was only the right turning.  It was only the right road;\nor perhaps only the beginning of the right road.  The medieval age\nwas very far from being the age in which everything went right.\nIt would be nearer the truth I mean to call it the age in which\neverything went wrong.  It was the moment when things might have\ndeveloped well, and did develop badly.  Or rather, to be yet\nmore exact, it was the moment when they were developing well,\nand yet they were driven to develop badly.  This was the history\nof all the medieval states and of none more than medieval Jerusalem;\nindeed there were signs of some serious idea of making it the model\nmedieval state.  Of this notion of Jerusalem as the New Jerusalem,\nof the Utopian aspect of the adventure of the Latin Kingdom,\nsomething may be said in a moment.  But meanwhile there was a more\nimportant part played by Jerusalem, I think, in all that great\nprogress and reaction which has left us the problem of modern Europe.\nAnd the suggestion of it is bound up with the former suggestion,\nabout the difference between the goal and the right road that\nmight have led to it.  It is bound up with that quality of the\ncivilisation in question, that it was potential rather than perfect;\nand there is no need to idealise it in order to regret it.\nThis peculiar part played by Jerusalem I mention merely as a suggestion;\nI might almost say a suspicion.  Anyhow, it is something of a guess;\nbut I for one have found it a guide.\n\nMedievalism died, but it died young.  It was at once energetic\nand incomplete when it died, or very shortly before it died.\nThis is not a matter of sympathy or antipathy, but of appreciation\nof an interesting historic comparison with other historic cases.\nWhen the Roman Empire finally failed we cannot of course say\nthat it had done all it was meant to do, for that is dogmatism.\nWe cannot even say it had done all that it might have done,\nfor that is guesswork.  But we can say that it had done\ncertain definite things and was conscious of having done them;\nthat it had long and even literally rested on its laurels.\nBut suppose that Rome had fallen when she had only half defeated Carthage,\nor when she had only half conquered Gaul, or even when the city was\nChristian but most of the provinces still heathen.  Then we should\nhave said, not merely that Rome had not done what she might have done,\nbut that she had not done what she was actually doing.  And that is\nvery much the truth in the matter of the medieval civilisation.\nIt was not merely that the medievals left undone what they might\nhave done, but they left undone what they were doing.  This potential\npromise is proved not only in their successes but in their failures.\nIt is shown, for instance, in the very defects of their art.\nAll the crafts of which Gothic architecture formed the frame-work\nwere developed, not only less than they should have been,\nbut less than they would have been.  There is no sort of reason\nwhy their sculpture should not have become as perfect as\ntheir architecture; there is no sort of reason why their sense\nof form should not have been as finished as their sense of colour.\nA statue like the St. George of Donatello would have stood\nmore appropriately under a Gothic than under a Classic arch.\nThe niches were already made for the statues.  The same thing is true,\nof course, not only about the state of the crafts but about the status\nof the craftsman.  The best proof that the system of the guilds\nhad an undeveloped good in it is that the most advanced modern men\nare now going back five hundred years to get the good out of it.\nThe best proof that a rich house was brought to ruin is that our\nvery pioneers are now digging in the ruins to find the riches.\nThat the new guildsmen add a great deal that never belonged\nto the old guildsmen is not only a truth, but is part of\nthe truth I maintain here.  The new guildsmen add what the old\nguildsmen would have added if they had not died young.\nWhen we renew a frustrated thing we do not renew the frustration.\nBut if there are some things in the new that were not in the old,\nthere were certainly some things in the old that are not yet\nvisible in the new; such as individual humour in the handiwork.\nThe point here, however, is not merely that the worker worked well\nbut that he was working better; not merely that his mind was free\nbut that it was growing freer.  All this popular power and humour was\nincreasing everywhere, when something touched it and it withered away.\nThe frost had struck it in the spring.\n\nSome people complain that the working man of our own day does\nnot show an individual interest in his work.  But it will be well\nto realise that they would be much more annoyed with him if he did.\nThe medieval workman took so individual an interest in his work\nthat he would call up devils entirely on his own account,\ncarving them in corners according to his own taste and fancy.\nHe would even reproduce the priests who were his patrons and make them\nas ugly as devils; carving anti-clerical caricatures on the very seats\nand stalls of the clerics.  If a modern householder, on entering his\nown bathroom, found that the plumber had twisted the taps into the images\nof two horned and grinning fiends, he would be faintly surprised.\nIf the householder, on returning at evening to his house,\nfound the door-knocker distorted into a repulsive likeness\nof himself, his surprise might even be tinged with disapproval.\nIt may be just as well that builders and bricklayers do not\ngratuitously attach gargoyles to our smaller residential villas.\nBut well or ill, it is certainly true that this feature of a\nflexible popular fancy has never reappeared in any school of\narchitecture or any state of society since the medieval decline.\nThe great classical buildings of the Renascence were swept as bare\nof it as any villa in Balham.  But those who best appreciate this\nloss to popular art will be the first to agree that at its best it\nretained a touch of the barbaric as well as the popular.  While we can\nadmire these matters of the grotesque, we can admit that their work\nwas sometimes unintentionally as well as intentionally grotesque.\nSome of the carving did remain so rude that the angels were almost\nas ugly as the devils.  But this is the very point upon which I\nwould here insist; the mystery of why men who were so obviously\nonly beginning should have so suddenly stopped.\n\nMen with medieval sympathies are sometimes accused, absurdly enough,\nof trying to prove that the medieval period was perfect.\nIn truth the whole case for it is that it was imperfect.\nIt was imperfect as an unripe fruit or a growing child is imperfect.\nIndeed it was imperfect in that very particular fashion which most\nmodern thinkers generally praise, more than they ever praise maturity.\nIt was something now much more popular than an age of perfection;\nit was an age of progress.  It was perhaps the one real age of progress\nin all history.  Men have seldom moved with such rapidity and such\nunity from barbarism to civilisation as they did from the end of\nthe Dark Ages to the times of the universities and the parliaments,\nthe cathedrals and the guilds.  Up to a certain point we may say\nthat everything, at whatever stage of improvement, was full\nof the promise of improvement.  Then something began to go wrong,\nalmost equally rapidly, and the glory of this great culture\nis not so much in what it did as in what it might have done.\nIt recalls one of these typical medieval speculations, full of\nthe very fantasy of free will, in which the schoolmen tried to fancy\nthe fate of every herb or animal if Adam had not eaten the apple.\nIt remains, in a cant historical phrase, one of the great\nmight-have-beens of history.\n\nI have said that it died young; but perhaps it would be truer to say that\nit suddenly grew old.  Like Godfrey and many of its great champions in\nJerusalem, it was overtaken in the prime of life by a mysterious malady.\nThe more a man reads of history the less easy he will find it to explain\nthat secret and rapid decay of medieval civilisation from within.\nOnly a few generations separated the world that worshipped St. Francis\nfrom the world that burned Joan of Arc.  One would think there\nmight be no more than a date and a number between the white mystery\nof Louis the Ninth and the black mystery of Louis the Eleventh.\nThis is the very real historical mystery; the more realistic is our study\nof medieval things, the more puzzled we shall be about the peculiar\ncreeping paralysis which affected things so virile and so full of hope.\nThere was a growth of moral morbidity as well as social inefficiency,\nespecially in the governing classes; for even to the end the guildsmen\nand the peasants remained much more vigorous.  How it ended we all know;\npersonally I should say that they got the Reformation and deserved it.\nBut it matters nothing to the truth here whether the Reformation\nwas a just revolt and revenge or an unjust culmination and conquest.\nIt is common ground to Catholics and Protestants of intelligence\nthat evils preceded and produced the schism; and that evils\nwere produced by it and have pursued it down to our own day.\nWe know it if only in the one example, that the schism begat\nthe Thirty Years' War, and the Thirty Years' War begat the\nSeven Years' War, and the Seven Years' War begat the Great War,\nwhich has passed like a pestilence through our own homes.\nAfter the schism Prussia could relapse into heathenry and erect\nan ethical system external to the whole culture of Christendom.\nBut it can still be reasonably asked what begat the schism; and it can\nstill be reasonably answered; something that went wrong with medievalism.\nBut what was it that went wrong?\n\nWhen I looked for the last time on the towers of Zion I had a\nfixed fancy that I knew what it was.  It is a thing that cannot\nbe proved or disproved; it must sound merely an ignorant guess.\nBut I believe myself that it died of disappointment.\nI believe the whole medieval society failed, because the heart\nwent out of it with the loss of Jerusalem.  Let it be observed\nthat I do not say the loss of the war, or even the Crusade.\nFor the war against Islam was not lost.  The Moslem was overthrown\nin the real battle-field, which was Spain; he was menaced in Africa;\nhis imperial power was already stricken and beginning slowly to decline.\nI do not mean the political calculations about a Mediterranean war.\nI do not even mean the Papal conceptions about the Holy War.\nI mean the purely popular picture of the Holy City.\nFor while the aristocratic thing was a view, the vulgar thing was\na vision; something with which all stories stop, something where\nthe rainbow ends, something over the hills and far away.\nIn Spain they had been victorious; but their castle was not even\na castle in Spain.  It was a castle east of the sun and west\nof the moon, and the fairy prince could find it no more.\nIndeed that idle image out of the nursery books fits it very exactly.\nFor its mystery was and is in standing in the middle, or as they\nsaid in the very centre of the earth.  It is east of the sun\nof Europe, which fills the world with a daylight of sanity,\nand ripens real and growing things.  It is west of the moon of Asia,\nmysterious and archaic with its cold volcanoes, silver mirror\nfor poets and a most fatal magnet for lunatics.\n\nAnyhow the fall of Jerusalem, and in that sense the failure of\nthe Crusades, had a widespread effect, as I should myself suggest,\nfor the reason I have myself suggested.  Because it had been a\npopular movement, it was a popular disappointment; and because it had\nbeen a popular movement, its ideal was an image; a particular picture\nin the imagination.  For poor men are almost always particularists;\nand nobody has ever seen such a thing as a mob of pantheists.\nI have seen in some of that lost literature of the old guilds,\nwhich is now everywhere coming to light, a list of the stage\nproperties required for some village play, one of those popular\nplays acted by the medieval trades unions, for which the guild\nof the shipwrights would build Noah's Ark or the guild of the barbers\nprovide golden wigs for the haloes of the Twelve Apostles.\nThe list of those crude pieces of stage furniture had a curious colour\nof poetry about it, like the impromptu apparatus of a nursery charade;\na cloud, an idol with a club, and notably among the rest, the walls\nand towers of Jerusalem.  I can imagine them patiently painted and gilded\nas a special feature, like the two tubs of Mr. Vincent Crummles.\nBut I can also imagine that towards the end of the Middle Ages,\nthe master of the revels might begin to look at those towers\nof wood and pasteboard with a sort of pain, and perhaps put them\naway in a corner, as a child will tire of a toy especially if it\nis associated with a disappointment or a dismal misunderstanding.\nThere is noticeable in some of the later popular poems a\ndisposition to sulk about the Crusades.  But though the popular\nfeeling had been largely poetical, the same thing did in its\ndegree occur in the political realm that was purely practical.\nThe Moslem had been checked, but he had not been checked enough.\nThe whole story of what was called the Eastern Question,\nand three-quarters of the wars of the modern world, were due\nto the fact that he was not checked enough.\n\nThe only thing to do with unconquerable things is to conquer them.\nThat alone will cure them of invincibility; or what is worse, their own\nvision of invincibility.  That was the conviction of those of us who\nwould not accept what we considered a premature peace with Prussia.\nThat is why we would not listen either to the Tory Pro-Germanism\nof Lord Lansdowne or the Socialist Pro-Germanism of Mr. Macdonald.\nIf a lunatic believes in his luck so fixedly as to feel sure be\ncannot be caught, he will not only believe in it still, but believe\nin it more and more, until the actual instant when he is caught.\nThe longer the chase, the more certain he will be of escaping;\nthe more narrow the escapes, the more certain will be the escape.\nAnd indeed if he does escape it will seem a miracle, and almost\na divine intervention, not only to the pursued but to the pursuers.\nThe evil thing will chiefly appear unconquerable to those who try\nto conquer it.  It will seem after all to have a secret of success;\nand those who failed against it will hide in their hearts\na secret of failure.  It was that secret of failure, I fancy,\nthat slowly withered from within the high hopes of the Middle Ages.\nChristianity and chivalry had measured their force against Mahound,\nand Mahound had not fallen; the shadow of his horned helmet,\nthe crest of the Crescent, still lay across their sunnier lands;\nthe Horns of Hattin.  The streams of life that flowed to guilds\nand schools and orders of knighthood and brotherhoods of friars\nwere strangely changed and chilled.  So, if the peace had left\nPrussianism secure even in Prussia, I believe that all the liberal\nideals of the Latins, and all the liberties of the English,\nand the whole theory of a democratic experiment in America,\nwould have begun to die of a deep and even subconscious despair.\nA vote, a jury, a newspaper, would not be as they are,\nthings of which it is hard to make the right use, or any use;\nthey would be things of which nobody would even try to make any use.\nA vote would actually look like a vassal's cry of \"haro,\"\na jury would look like a joust; many would no more read headlines\nthan blazon heraldic coats.  For these medieval things look dead\nand dusty because of a defeat, which was none the less a defeat\nbecause it was more than half a victory.\n\nA curious cloud of confusion rests on the details of that defeat.\nThe Christian captains who acted in it were certainly men on a different\nmoral level from the good Duke Godfrey; their characters were by\ncomparison mixed and even mysterious.  Perhaps the two determining\npersonalities were Raymond of Tripoli, a skilful soldier whom his\nenemies seemed to have accused of being much too skilful a diplomatist;\nand Renaud of Chatillon, a violent adventurer whom his enemies\nseem to have accused of being little better than a bandit.\nAnd it is the irony of the incident that Raymond got into trouble\nfor making a dubious peace with the Saracens, while Renaud got\ninto trouble by making an equally dubious war on the Saracens.\nRenaud exacted from Moslem travellers on a certain road what\nhe regarded as a sort of feudal toll or tax, and they regarded\nas a brigand ransom; and when they did not pay he attacked them.\nThis was regarded as a breach of the truce; but probably it would\nhave been easier to regard Renaud as waging the war of a robber,\nif many had not regarded Raymond as having made the truce of a traitor.\nProbably Raymond was not a traitor, since the military advice he gave\nup to the very instant of catastrophe was entirely loyal and sound,\nand worthy of so wise a veteran.  And very likely Renaud was not\nmerely a robber, especially in his own eyes; and there seems\nto be a much better case for him than many modern writers allow.\nBut the very fact of such charges being bandied among the factions\nshows a certain fall from the first days under the headship of\nthe house of Bouillon.  No slanderer ever suggested that Godfrey\nwas a traitor; no enemy ever asserted that Godfrey was only a thief.\nIt is fairly clear that there had been a degeneration; but most people\nhardly realise sufficiently that there had been a very great thing\nfrom which to degenerate.\n\nThe first Crusades had really had some notion of Jerusalem as a\nNew Jerusalem.  I mean they had really had a vision of the place being\nnot only a promised land but a Utopia or even an Earthly Paradise.\nThe outstanding fact and feature which is seldom seized is this:\nthat the social experiment in Palestine was rather in advance of\nthe social experiments in the rest of Christendom.  Having to begin\nat the beginning, they really began with what they considered the best\nideas of their time; like any group of Socialists founding an ideal\nCommonwealth in a modern colony.  A specialist on this period,\nColonel Conder of the Palestine Exploration, has written that the core\nof the Code was founded on the recommendations of Godfrey himself\nin his \"Letters of the Sepulchre\"; and he observes concerning it:\n\"The basis of these laws was found in Justinian's code, and they\npresented features as yet quite unknown in Europe, especially in their\ncareful provision of justice for the bourgeois and the peasant,\nand for the trading communes whose fleets were so necessary to the king.\nNot only were free men judged by juries of their equals, but the same\napplied to those who were technically serfs and actually aborigines.\"\nThe original arrangements of the Native Court seem to me singularly\nliberal, even by modern standards of the treatment of natives.\nThat in many such medieval codes citizens were still called serfs is\nno more final than the fact that in many modern capitalist newspapers\nserfs are still called citizens.  The whole point about the villein\nwas that he was a tenant at least as permanent as a peasant.\nHe \"went with the land\"; and there are a good many hopeless tramps\nstarving in streets, or sleeping in ditches, who might not be sorry\nif they could go with a little land.  It would not be very much\nworse than homelessness and hunger to go with a good kitchen garden\nof which you could always eat most of the beans and turnips;\nor to go with a good cornfield of which you could take a considerable\nproportion of the corn.  There has been many a modern man would have been\nnone the worse for \"going\" about burdened with such a green island,\nor dragging the chains of such a tangle of green living things.\nAs a fact, of course, this system throughout Christendom was already\nevolving rapidly into a pure peasant proprietorship; and it will be\nlong before industrialism evolves by itself into anything so equal\nor so free.  Above all, there appears notably that universal mark\nof the medieval movement; the voluntary liberation of slaves.\nBut we may willingly allow that something of the earlier success\nof all this was due to the personal qualities of the first knights\nfresh from the West; and especially to the personal justice\nand moderation of Godfrey and some of his immediate kindred.\nGodfrey died young; his successors had mostly short periods of power,\nlargely through the prevalence of malaria and the absence of medicine.\nRoyal marriages with the more oriental tradition of the Armenian\nprinces brought in new elements of luxury and cynicism;\nand by the time of the disputed truce of Raymond of Tripoli,\nthe crown had descended to a man named Guy of Lusignan who seems\nto have been regarded as a somewhat unsatisfactory character.\nHe had quarrelled with Raymond, who was ruler of Galilee, and a\ncurious and rather incomprehensible concession made by the latter,\nthat the Saracens should ride in arms but in peace round his land,\nled to alleged Moslem insults to Nazareth, and the outbreak of the furious\nTemplar, Gerard of Bideford, of which mention has been made already.\nBut the most serious threat to them and their New Jerusalem\nwas the emergence among the Moslems of a man of military genius,\nand the fact that all that land lay now under the shadow of the ambition\nand ardour of Saladin.\n\nWith the breach of the truce, or even the tale of it, the common\ndanger of Christians was apparent; and Raymond of Tripoli repaired\nto the royal headquarters to consult with his late enemy the king;\nbut he seems to have been almost openly treated as a traitor.\nGerard of Bideford, the fanatic who was Grand Master of the Templars,\nforced the king's hand against the advice of the wiser soldier,\nwho had pointed out the peril of perishing of thirst in the waterless\nwastes between them and the enemy.  Into those wastes they advanced,\nand they were already weary and unfit for warfare by the time\nthey came in sight of the strange hills that will be remembered\nfor ever under the name of the Horns of Hattin.  On those hills,\na few hours later, the last knights of an army of which half had\nfallen gathered in a final defiance and despair round the relic\nthey carried in their midst, a fragment of the True Cross.\nIn that hour fell, as I have fancied, more hopes than they themselves\ncould number, and the glory departed from the Middle Ages.\nThere fell with them all that New Jerusalem which was the symbol\nof a new world, all those great and growing promises and possibilities\nof Christendom of which this vision was the centre, all that \"justice\nfor the bourgeois and the peasant, and for the trading communes,\"\nall the guilds that gained their charters by fighting for the Cross,\nall the hopes of a happier transformation of the Roman Law wedded\nto charity and to chivalry.  There was the first slip and the great\nswerving of our fate; and in that wilderness we lost all the things\nwe should have loved, and shall need so long a labour to find again.\n\nRaymond of Tripoli had hewn his way through the enemy and ridden\naway to Tyre.  The king, with a few of the remaining nobles,\nincluding Renaud de Chatillon, were brought before Saladin in his tent.\nThere occurred a scene strangely typical of the mingled strains\nin the creed or the culture that triumphed on that day;\nthe stately Eastern courtesy and hospitality; the wild Eastern\nhatred and self-will. Saladin welcomed the king and gracefully\ngave him a cup of sherbet, which he passed to Renaud.\n\"It is thou and not I who hast given him to drink,\" said the Saracen,\npreserving the precise letter of the punctilio of hospitality.\nThen he suddenly flung himself raving and reviling upon Renaud\nde Chatillon, and killed the prisoner with his own hands.\nOutside, two hundred Hospitallers and Templars were beheaded on\nthe field of battle; by one account I have read because Saladin\ndisliked them, and by another because they were Christian priests.\n\nThere is a strong bias against the Christians and in favour of\nthe Moslems and the Jews in most of the Victorian historical works,\nespecially historical novels.  And most people of modern,\nor rather of very recent times got all their notions of history\nfrom dipping into historical novels.  In those romances the Jew is\nalways the oppressed where in reality he was often the oppressor.\nIn those romances the Arab is always credited with oriental dignity\nand courtesy and never with oriental crookedness and cruelty.\nThe same injustice is introduced into history, which by means\nof selection and omission can be made as fictitious as any fiction.\nTwenty historians mention the way in which the maddened Christian\nmob murdered the Moslems after the capture of Jerusalem, for one who\nmentions that the Moslem commander commanded in cold blood the murder\nof some two hundred of his most famous and valiant enemies after\nthe victory of Hattin.  The former cannot be shown to have been the act\nof Tancred, while the latter was quite certainly the act of Saladin.\nYet Tancred is described as at best a doubtful character,\nwhile Saladin is represented as a Bayard without fear or blame.\nBoth of them doubtless were ordinary faulty fighting men, but they\nare not judged by an equal balance.  It may seem a paradox that there\nshould be this prejudice in Western history in favour of Eastern heroes.\nBut the cause is clear enough; it is the remains of the revolt among many\nEuropeans against their own old religious organisation, which naturally\nmade them hunt through all ages for its crimes and its victims.\nIt was natural that Voltaire should sympathise more with a Brahmin\nhe had never seen than with a Jesuit with whom he was engaged in a\nviolent controversy; and should similarly feel more dislike of a Catholic\nwho was his enemy than of a Moslem who was the enemy of his enemy.\nIn this atmosphere of natural and even pardonable prejudice arose\nthe habit of contrasting the intolerance of the Crusaders with\nthe toleration shown by the Moslems.  Now as there are two sides\nto everything, it would undoubtedly be quite possible to tell\nthe tale of the Crusades, correctly enough in detail, and in such\na way as entirely to justify the Moslems and condemn the Crusaders.\nBut any such real record of the Moslem case would have very\nlittle to do with any questions of tolerance or intolerance,\nor any modern ideas about religious liberty and equality.\nAs the modern world does not know what it means itself by religious\nliberty and equality, as the moderns have not thought out any logical\ntheory of toleration at all (for their vague generalisations can\nalways be upset by twenty tests from Thugs to Christian Science)\nit would obviously be unreasonable to expect the moderns\nto understand the much clearer philosophy of the Moslems.\nBut some rough suggestion of what was really involved may be found\nconvenient in this case.\n\nIslam was not originally a movement directed against Christianity at all.\nIt did not face westwards, so to speak; it faced eastwards towards\nthe idolatries of Asia.  But Mahomet believed that these idols\ncould be fought more successfully with a simpler kind of creed;\none might almost say with a simpler kind of Christianity.\nFor he included many things which we in the West commonly suppose not\nonly to be peculiar to Christianity but to be peculiar to Catholicism.\nMany things have been rejected by Protestantism that are not\nrejected by Mahometanism.  Thus the Moslems believe in Purgatory,\nand they give at least a sort of dignity to the Mother of Christ.\nAbout such things as these they have little of the bitterness that rankles\nin the Jews and is said sometimes to become hideously vitriolic.  While I\nwas in Palestine a distinguished Moslem said to a Christian resident:\n\"We also, as well as you, honour the Mother of Christ.\nNever do we speak of her but we call her the Lady Miriam.\nI dare not tell you what the Jews call her.\"\n\nThe real mistake of the Moslems is something much more modern in its\napplication than any particular or passing persecution of Christians\nas such.  It lay in the very fact that they did think they had a\nsimpler and saner sort of Christianity, as do many modern Christians.\nThey thought it could be made universal merely by being\nmade uninteresting.  Now a man preaching what he thinks is a platitude\nis far more intolerant than a man preaching what he admits is a paradox.\nIt was exactly because it seemed self-evident, to Moslems as\nto Bolshevists, that their simple creed was suited to everybody,\nthat they wished in that particular sweeping fashion to impose it\non everybody.  It was because Islam was broad that Moslems were narrow.\nAnd because it was not a hard religion it was a heavy rule.\nBecause it was without a self-correcting complexity, it allowed\nof those simple and masculine but mostly rather dangerous\nappetites that show themselves in a chieftain or a lord.\nAs it had the simplest sort of religion, monotheism, so it had\nthe simplest sort of government, monarchy.  There was exactly\nthe same direct spirit in its despotism as in its deism.\nThe Code, the Common Law, the give and take of charters\nand chivalric vows, did not grow in that golden desert.\nThe great sun was in the sky and the great Saladin was in his tent,\nand he must be obeyed unless he were assassinated.  Those who\ncomplain of our creeds as elaborate often forget that the elaborate\nWestern creeds have produced the elaborate Western constitutions;\nand that they are elaborate because they are emancipated.\nAnd the real moral of the relations of the two great religions is\nsomething much more subtle and sincere than any mere atrocity tales\nagainst Turks.  It is the same as the moral of the Christian refusal\nof a Pagan Pantheon in which Christ should rank with Ammon and Apollo.\nTwice the Christian Church refused what seemed like a handsome\noffer of a large latitudinarian sort; once to include Christ as a\ngod and once to include him as a prophet; once by the admission\nof all idols and once by the abandonment of all idols.\nTwice the Church took the risk and twice the Church survived alone\nand succeeded alone, filling the world with her own children;\nand leaving her rivals in a desert, where the idols were dead\nand the iconoclasts were dying.\n\nBut all this history has been hidden by a prejudice more\ngeneral than the particular case of Saracens and Crusaders.\nThe modern, or rather the Victorian prejudice against Crusaders\nis positive and not relative; and it would still desire to\ncondemn Tancred if it could not acquit Saladin.  Indeed it is\na prejudice not so much against Crusaders as against Christians.\nIt will not give to these heroes of religious war the fair measure\nit gives to the heroes of ordinary patriotic and imperial war.\nThere never was a nobler hero than Nelson, or one more national\nor more normal.  Yet Nelson quite certainly did do what Tancred\nalmost certainly did not do; break his own word by giving up his own\nbrave enemies to execution.  If the cause of Nelson in other times\ncomes to be treated as the creed of Tancred has often in recent\ntimes been treated, this incident alone will be held sufficient\nto prove not only that Nelson was a liar and a scoundrel, but that\nhe did not love England at all, did not love Lady Hamilton at all,\nthat he sailed in English ships only to pocket the prize money\nof French ships, and would as willingly have sailed in French ships\nfor the prize money of English ships.  That is the sort of dull dust\nof gold that has been shaken like the drifting dust of the desert\nover the swords and the relics, the crosses and the clasped\nhands of the men who marched to Jerusalem or died at Hattin.\nIn these medieval pilgrims every inconsistency is a hypocrisy; while in\nthe more modern patriots even an infamy is only an inconsistency.\nI have rounded off the story here with the ruin at Hattin because\nthe whole reaction against the pilgrimage had its origin there;\nand because it was this at least that finally lost Jerusalem.\nElsewhere in Palestine, to say nothing of Africa and Spain,\nsplendid counter-strokes were still being delivered from the West,\nnot the least being the splendid rescue by Richard of England.\nBut I still think that with the mere name of that tiny town upon\nthe hills the note of the whole human revolution had been struck,\nwas changed and was silent.  All the other names were only the names\nof Eastern towns; but that was nearer to a man than his neighbours;\na village inside his village, a house inside his house.\n\nThere is a hill above Bethlehem of a strange shape, with a flat top\nwhich makes it look oddly like an island, habitable though uninhabited,\nwhen all Moab heaves about it and beyond it as with the curves\nand colours of a sea.  Its stability suggests in some strange\nfashion what may often be felt in these lands with the longest\nrecord of culture; that there may be not only a civilisation\nbut even a chivalry older than history.  Perhaps the table-land\nwith its round top has a romantic reminiscence of a round table.\nPerhaps it is only a fantastic effect of evening, for it is felt\nmost when the low skies are swimming with the colours of sunset,\nand in the shadows the shattered rocks about its base take on\nthe shapes of titanic paladins fighting and falling around it.\nI only know that the mere shape of the hill and vista of the landscape\nsuggested such visions and it was only afterwards that I heard\nthe local legend, which says it is here that some of the Christian\nknights made their last stand after they lost Jerusalem and which\nnames this height The Mountain of the Latins.\n\nThey fell, and the ages rolled on them the rocks of scorn;\nthey were buried in jests and buffooneries.  As the Renascence\nexpanded into the rationalism of recent centuries, nothing seemed\nso ridiculous as to butcher and bleed in a distant desert not only\nfor a tomb, but an empty tomb.  The last legend of them withered\nunder the wit of Cervantes, though he himself had fought in the last\nCrusade at Lepanto.  They were kicked about like dead donkeys\nby the cool vivacity of Voltaire; who went off, very symbolically,\nto dance attendance on the new drill-sergeant of the Prussians.\nThey were dissected like strange beasts by the serene disgust\nof Gibbon, more serene than the similar horror with which\nhe regarded the similar violence of the French Revolution.\nBy our own time even the flippancy has become a platitude.\nThey have long been the butt of every penny-a-liner who can talk of a\nhelmet as a tin pot, of every caricaturist on a comic paper who can draw\na fat man falling off a bucking horse; of every pushing professional\npolitician who can talk about the superstitions of the Middle Ages.\nGreat men and small have agreed to contemn them; they were renounced\nby their children and refuted by their biographers; they were exposed,\nthey were exploded, they were ridiculed and they were right.\n\nThey were proved wrong, and they were right.  They were judged\nfinally and forgotten, and they were right.  Centuries after\ntheir fall the full experience and development of political\ndiscovery has shown beyond question that they were right.\nFor there is a very simple test of the truth; that the very\nthing which was dismissed, as a dream of the ages of faith,\nwe have been forced to turn into a fact in the ages of fact.\nIt is now more certain than it ever was before that Europe must\nrescue some lordship, or overlordship, of these old Roman provinces.\nWhether it is wise for England alone to claim Palestine, whether it\nwould be better if the Entente could do so, I think a serious question.\nBut in some form they are reverting for the Roman Empire.\nEvery opportunity has been given for any other empire that could\nbe its equal, and especially for the great dream of a mission\nfor Imperial Islam.  If ever a human being had a run for his money,\nit was the Sultan of the Moslems riding on his Arab steed.\nHis empire expanded over and beyond the great Greek empire of Byzantium;\na last charge of the chivalry of Poland barely stopped it at the very\ngates of Vienna.  He was free to unfold everything that was in him,\nand he unfolded the death that was in him.  He reigned and he could\nnot rule; he was successful and he did not succeed.  His baffled\nand retreating enemies left him standing, and he could not stand.\nHe fell finally with that other half-heathen power in the North,\nwith which he had made an alliance against the remains of Roman\nand Byzantine culture.  He fell because barbarism cannot stand;\nbecause even when it succeeds it rather falls on its foes and\ncrushes them.  And after all these things, after all these ages,\nwith a wearier philosophy, with a heavier heart, we have been forced\nto do again the very thing that the Crusaders were derided for doing.\nWhat Western men failed to do for the faith, other Western men\nhave been forced to do even without the faith.  The sons of Tancred\nare again in Tripoli.  The heirs of Raymond are again in Syria.\nAnd men from the Midlands or the Northumbrian towns went again\nthrough a furnace of thirst and fever and furious fighting,\nto gain the same water-courses and invest the same cities as of old.\nThey trod the hills of Galilee and the Horns of Hattin threw no shadow\non their souls; they crossed dark and disastrous fields whose fame\nhad been hidden from them, and avenged the fathers they had forgotten.\nAnd the most cynical of modern diplomatists, making their settlement\nby the most sceptical of modern philosophies, can find no practical\nor even temporary solution for this sacred land, except to bring it\nagain under the crown of Coeur de Lion and the cross of St. George.\n\nThere came in through the crooked entry beside the great gap\nin the wall a tall soldier, dismounting and walking and wearing\nonly the dust-hued habit of modern war.  There went no trumpet\nbefore him, neither did he enter by the Golden Gate; but the silence\nof the deserts was full of a phantom acclamation, as when from far\naway a wind brings in a whisper the cheering of many thousand men.\nFor in that hour a long-lost cry found fulfilment, and something\ncounted irrational returned in the reason of things.\nAnd at last even the wise understood, and at last even the learned\nwere enlightened on a need truly and indeed international, which a mob\nin a darker age had known by the light of nature; something that\ncould be denied and delayed and evaded, but not escaped for ever.\n_Id Deus vult_.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nTHE PROBLEM OF ZIONISM\n\nThere is an attitude for which my friends and I were for a long period\nrebuked and even reviled; and of which at the present period we are\nless likely than ever to repent.  It was always called Anti-Semitism;\nbut it was always much more true to call it Zionism.  At any rate\nit was much nearer to the nature of the thing to call it Zionism,\nwhether or no it can find its geographical concentration in Zion.\nThe substance of this heresy was exceedingly simple.  It consisted\nentirely in saying that Jews are Jews; and as a logical consequence\nthat they are not Russians or Roumanians or Italians or Frenchmen\nor Englishmen.  During the war the newspapers commonly referred to them\nas Russians; but the ritual wore so singularly thin that I remember\none newspaper paragraph saying that the Russians in the East End\ncomplained of the food regulations, because their religion forbade\nthem to eat pork.  My own brief contact with the Greek priests\nof the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem did not permit me to discover\nany trace of this detail of their discipline; and even the Russian\npilgrims were said to be equally negligent in the matter.\nThe point for the moment, however, is that if I was violently opposed\nto anything, it was not to Jews, but to that sort of remark about Jews;\nor rather to the silly and craven fear of making it a remark about Jews.\nBut my friends and I had in some general sense a policy in the matter;\nand it was in substance the desire to give Jews the dignity\nand status of a separate nation.  We desired that in some fashion,\nand so far as possible, Jews should be represented by Jews, should live\nin a society of Jews, should be judged by Jews and ruled by Jews.\nI am an Anti-Semite if that is Anti-Semitism. It would seem more\nrational to call it Semitism.\n\nOf this attitude, I repeat, I am now less likely than ever to repent.\nI have lived to see the thing that was dismissed as a fad discussed\neverywhere as a fact; and one of the most menacing facts of the age.\nI have lived to see people who accused me of Anti-Semitism\nbecome far more Anti-Semitic than I am or ever was.\nI have heard people talking with real injustice about the Jews,\nwho once seemed to think it an injustice to talk about them\nat all.  But, above all, I have seen with my own eyes wild mobs\nmarching through a great city, raving not only against Jews,\nbut against the English for identifying themselves with the Jews.\nI have seen the whole prestige of England brought into peril,\nmerely by the trick of talking about two nations as if they were one.\nI have seen an Englishman arriving in Jerusalem with somebody he had\nbeen taught to regard as his fellow countryman and political colleague,\nand received as if he had come arm-in-arm with a flaming dragon.\nSo do our frosty fictions fare when they come under that burning sun.\n\nTwice in my life, and twice lately, I have seen a piece of English\npedantry bring us within an inch of an enormous English peril.\nThe first was when all the Victorian historians and philosophers\nhad told us that our German cousin was a cousin german\nand even germane; something naturally near and sympathetic.\nThat also was an identification; that also was an assimilation;\nthat also was a union of hearts.  For the second time in a few\nshort years, English politicians and journalists have discovered\nthe dreadful revenge of reality.  To pretend that something is what it\nis not is business that can easily be fashionable and sometimes popular.\nBut the thing we have agreed to regard as what it is not will always\nabruptly punish and pulverise us, merely by being what it is.\nFor years we were told that the Germans were a sort of Englishman\nbecause they were Teutons; but it was all the worse for us when we\nfound out what Teutons really were.  For years we were told that Jews\nwere a sort of Englishman because they were British subjects.\nIt is all the worse for us now we have to regard them,\nnot subjectively as subjects, but objectively as objects;\nas objects of a fierce hatred among the Moslems and the Greeks.\nWe are in the absurd position of introducing to these people\na new friend whom they instantly recognise as an old enemy.\nIt is an absurd position because it is a false position; but it\nis merely the penalty of falsehood.\n\nWhether this Eastern anger is reasonable or not may be discussed\nin a moment; but what is utterly unreasonable is not the anger but\nthe astonishment; at least it is our astonishment at their astonishment.\nWe might believe ourselves in the view that a Jew is an Englishman;\nbut there was no reason why they should regard him as\nan Englishman, since they already recognised him as a Jew.\nThis is the whole present problem of the Jew in Palestine;\nand it must be solved either by the logic of Zionism or the logic\nof purely English supremacy and, impartiality; and not by what\nseems to everybody in Palestine a monstrous muddle of the two.\nBut of course it is not only the peril in Palestine that has made\nthe realisation of the Jewish problem, which once suffered all\nthe dangers of a fad, suffer the opposite dangers of a fashion.\nThe same journalists who politely describe Jews as Russians are\nnow very impolitely describing certain Russians who are Jews.\nMany who had no particular objection to Jews as Capitalists\nhave a very great objection to them as Bolshevists.  Those who\nhad an innocent unconsciousness of the nationality of Eckstein,\neven when he called himself Eckstein, have managed to discover\nthe nationality of Braunstein, even, when he calls, himself Trotsky.\nAnd much of this peril also might easily have been lessened,\nby the simple proposal to call men and things by their own names.\n\nI will confess, however, that I have no very full sympathy with\nthe new Anti-Semitism which is merely Anti-Socialism. There are good,\nhonourable and magnanimous Jews of every type and rank, there are many\nto whom I am greatly attached among my own friends in my own rank;\nbut if I have to make a general choice on a general chance among\ndifferent types of Jews, I have much more sympathy with the Jew\nwho is revolutionary than the Jew who is plutocratic.  In other words,\nI have much more sympathy for the Israelite we are beginning to reject,\nthan for the Israelite we have already accepted.  I have more respect\nfor him when he leads some sort of revolt, however narrow and anarchic,\nagainst the oppression of the poor, than when he is safe at the head\nof a great money-lending business oppressing the poor himself.\nIt is not the poor aliens, but the rich aliens I wish we had excluded.\nI myself wholly reject Bolshevism, not because its actions\nare violent, but because its very thought is materialistic and mean.\nAnd if this preference is true even of Bolshevism, it is ten times\ntruer of Zionism.  It really seems to me rather hard that the full\nstorm of fury should have burst about the Jews, at the very moment\nwhen some of them at least have felt the call of a far cleaner ideal;\nand that when we have tolerated their tricks with our country,\nwe should turn on them precisely when they seek in sincerity\nfor their own.\n\nBut in order to judge this Jewish possibility, we must understand\nmore fully the nature of the Jewish problem.  We must consider it\nfrom the start, because there are still many who do not know that\nthere is a Jewish problem.  That problem has its proof, of course,\nin the history of the Jew, and the fact that he came from the East.\nA Jew will sometimes complain of the injustice of describing\nhim as a man of the East; but in truth another very real\ninjustice may be involved in treating him as a man of the West.\nVery often even the joke against the Jew is rather a joke against\nthose who have made the joke; that is, a joke against what they\nhave made out of the Jew.  This is true especially, for instance,\nof many points of religion and ritual.  Thus we cannot help feeling,\nfor instance, that there is something a little grotesque about\nthe Hebrew habit of putting on a top-hat as an act of worship.\nIt is vaguely mixed up with another line of humour, about another\nclass of Jew, who wears a large number of hats; and who must not\ntherefore be credited with an extreme or extravagant religious zeal,\nleading him to pile up a pagoda of hats towards heaven.\nTo Western eyes, in Western conditions, there really is something\ninevitably fantastic about this formality of the synagogue.\nBut we ought to remember that we have made the Western conditions\nwhich startle the Western eyes.  It seems odd to wear a modern top-hat\nas if it were a mitre or a biretta; it seems quainter still when the hat\nis worn even for the momentary purpose of saying grace before lunch.\nIt seems quaintest of all when, at some Jewish luncheon parties,\na tray of hats is actually handed round, and each guest helps\nhimself to a hat as a sort of _hors d'oeuvre_. All this could\neasily be turned into a joke; but we ought to realise that the joke\nis against ourselves.  It is not merely we who make fun of it,\nbut we who have made it funny.  For, after all, nobody can\npretend that this particular type of head-dress is a part of that\nuncouth imagery \"setting painting and sculpture at defiance\"\nwhich Renan remarked in the tradition of Hebrew civilisation.\nNobody can say that a top-hat was among the strange symbolic utensils\ndedicated to the obscure service of the Ark; nobody can suppose\nthat a top-hat descended from heaven among the wings and wheels\nof the flying visions of the Prophets.  For this wild vision the West\nis entirely responsible.  Europe has created the Tower of Giotto;\nbut it has also created the topper.  We of the West must bear\nthe burden, as best we may, both of the responsibility and of the hat.\nIt is solely the special type and shape of hat that makes the Hebrew\nritual seem ridiculous.  Performed in the old original Hebrew\nfashion it is not ridiculous, but rather if anything sublime.\nFor the original fashion was an oriental fashion; and the Jews\nare orientals; and the mark of all such orientals is the wearing\nof long and loose draperies.  To throw those loose draperies\nover the head is decidedly a dignified and even poetic gesture.\nOne can imagine something like justice done to its majesty\nand mystery in one of the great dark drawings of William Blake.\nIt may be true, and personally I think it is true, that the Hebrew\ncovering of the head signifies a certain stress on the fear of God,\nwhich is the beginning of wisdom, while the Christian uncovering\nof the head suggests rather the love of God that is the end of wisdom.\nBut this has nothing to do with the taste and dignity of the ceremony;\nand to do justice to these we must treat the Jew as an oriental;\nwe must even dress him as an oriental.\n\nI have only taken this as one working example out of many that\nwould point to the same conclusion.  A number of points upon\nwhich the unfortunate alien is blamed would be much improved\nif he were, not less of an alien, but rather more of an alien.\nThey arise from his being too like us, and too little like himself.\nIt is obviously the case, for instance, touching that vivid vulgarity\nin clothes, and especially the colours of clothes, with which a certain\nsort of Jews brighten the landscape or seascape at Margate or many\nholiday resorts.  When we see a foreign gentleman on Brighton Pier\nwearing yellow spats, a magenta waistcoat, and an emerald green tie,\nwe feel that he has somehow missed certain fine shades of social\nsensibility and fitness.  It might considerably surprise the company\non Brighton Pier, if he were to reply by solemnly unwinding his\ngreen necktie from round his neck, and winding it round his head.\nYet the reply would be the right one; and would be equally logical\nand artistic.  As soon as the green tie had become a green turban,\nit might look as appropriate and even attractive as the green turban\nof any pilgrim of Mecca or any descendant of Mahomet, who walks\nwith a stately air through the streets of Jaffa or Jerusalem.\nThe bright colours that make the Margate Jews hideous are no brighter\nthan those that make the Moslem crowd picturesque.  They are only worn\nin the wrong place, in the wrong way, and in conjunction with a type\nand cut of clothing that is meant to be more sober and restrained.\nLittle can really be urged against him, in that respect,\nexcept that his artistic instinct is rather for colour than form,\nespecially of the kind that we ourselves have labelled good form.\n\nThis is a mere symbol, but it is so suitable a symbol that I have\noften offered it symbolically as a solution of the Jewish problem.\nI have felt disposed to say:  let all liberal legislation stand,\nlet all literal and legal civic equality stand; let a Jew occupy any\npolitical or social position which he can gain in open competition;\nlet us not listen for a moment to any suggestions of reactionary\nrestrictions or racial privilege.  Let a Jew be Lord Chief justice,\nif his exceptional veracity and reliability have clearly marked\nhim out for that post.  Let a Jew be Archbishop of Canterbury,\nif our national religion has attained to that receptive\nbreadth that would render such a transition unobjectionable\nand even unconscious.  But let there be one single-clause bill;\none simple and sweeping law about Jews, and no other.\nBe it enacted, by the King's Most Excellent Majesty, by and with\nthe advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in\nParliament assembled, that every Jew must be dressed like an Arab.\nLet him sit on the Woolsack, but let him sit there dressed as an Arab.\nLet him preach in St. Paul's Cathedral, but let him preach there\ndressed as an Arab.  It is not my point at present to dwell on\nthe pleasing if flippant fancy of how much this would transform\nthe political scene; of the dapper figure of Sir Herbert Samuel\nswathed as a Bedouin, or Sir Alfred Mond gaining a yet greater\ngrandeur from the gorgeous and trailing robes of the East.\nIf my image is quaint my intention is quite serious; and the point\nof it is not personal to any particular Jew.  The point applies\nto any Jew, and to our own recovery of healthier relations with him.\nThe point is that we should know where we are; and he would know\nwhere he is, which is in a foreign land.\n\nThis is but a parenthesis and a parable, but it brings us to\nthe concrete controversial matter which is the Jewish problem.\nOnly a few years ago it was regarded as a mark of a blood-thirsty\ndisposition to admit that the Jewish problem was a problem,\nor even that the Jew was a Jew.  Through much misunderstanding certain\nfriends of mine and myself have persisted in disregarding the silence\nthus imposed; but facts have fought for us more effectively than words.\nBy this time nobody is more conscious of the Jewish problem\nthan the most intelligent and idealistic of the Jews.  The folly\nof the fashion by which Jews often concealed their Jewish names,\nmust surely be manifest by this time even to those who concealed them.\nTo mention but one example of the way in which this fiction\nfalsified the relations of everybody and everything, it is enough\nto note that it involved the Jews themselves in a quite new\nand quite needless unpopularity in the first years of the war.\nA poor little Jewish tailor, who called himself by a German name merely\nbecause he lived for a short time in a German town, was instantly\nmobbed in Whitechapel for his share in the invasion of Belgium.\nHe was cross-examined about why he had damaged the tower of Rheims;\nand talked to as if he had killed Nurse Cavell with his own pair\nof shears.  It was very unjust; quite as unjust as it would be to ask\nBethmann-Hollweg why he had stabbed Eglon or hewn Agag in pieces.\nBut it was partly at least the fault of the Jew himself,\nand of the whole of that futile and unworthy policy which had led\nhim to call himself Bernstein when his name was Benjamin.\n\nIn such cases the Jews are accused of all sorts of faults\nthey have not got; but there are faults that they have got.\nSome of the charges against them, as in the cases I have quoted\nconcerning religious ritual and artistic taste, are due merely\nto the false light in which they are regarded.  Other faults\nmay also be due to the false position in which they are placed.\nBut the faults exist; and nothing was ever more dangerous to everybody\nconcerned than the recent fashion of denying or ignoring them.\nIt was done simply by the snobbish habit of suppressing the experience\nand evidence of the majority of people, and especially of the majority\nof poor people.  It was done by confining the controversy to a small\nworld of wealth and refinement, remote from all the real facts involved.\nFor the rich are the most ignorant people on earth, and the best\nthat can be said for them, in cases like these, is that their\nignorance often reaches the point of innocence.\n\nI will take a typical case, which sums up the whole of this\nabsurd fashion.  There was a controversy in the columns\nof an important daily paper, some time ago, on the subject\nof the character of Shylock in Shakespeare.  Actors and authors\nof distinction, including some of the most brilliant of living Jews,\nargued the matter from the most varied points of view.\nSome said that Shakespeare was prevented by the prejudices\nof his time from having a complete sympathy with Shylock.\nSome said that Shakespeare was only restrained by fear of the powers\nof his time from expressing his complete sympathy with Shylock.\nSome wondered how or why Shakespeare had got hold of such a queer\nstory as that of the pound of flesh, and what it could possibly have\nto do with so dignified and intellectual a character as Shylock.\nIn short, some wondered why a man of genius should be so much\nof an Anti-Semite, and some stoutly declared that he must\nhave been a Pro-Semite. But all of them in a sense admitted\nthat they were puzzled as to what the play was about.\nThe correspondence filled column after column and went on for weeks.\nAnd from one end of that correspondence to the other, no human\nbeing even so much as mentioned the word \"usury.\" It is exactly\nas if twenty clever critics were set down to talk for a month about\nthe play of Macbeth, and were all strictly forbidden to mention\nthe word \"murder.\"\n\nThe play called _The Merchant of Venice_ happens to be about usury,\nand its story is a medieval satire on usury.  It is the fashion\nto say that it is a clumsy and grotesque story; but as a fact it\nis an exceedingly good story.  It is a perfect and pointed story\nfor its purpose, which is to convey the moral of the story.  And the\nmoral is that the logic of usury is in its nature at war with life,\nand might logically end in breaking into the bloody house of life.\nIn other words, if a creditor can always claim a man's tools or a\nman's home, he might quite as justly claim one of his arms or legs.\nThis principle was not only embodied in medieval satires but in very\nsound medieval laws, which set a limit on the usurer who was trying\nto take away a man's livelihood, as the usurer in the play is trying\nto take away a man's life.  And if anybody thinks that usury can\nnever go to lengths wicked enough to be worthy of so wild an image,\nthen that person either knows nothing about it or knows too much.\nHe is either one of the innocent rich who have never been the victims\nof money-lenders, or else one of the more powerful and influential\nrich who are money-lenders themselves.\n\nAll this, I say, is a fact that must be faced, but there is another side\nto the case, and it is this that the genius of Shakespeare discovered.\nWhat he did do, and what the medieval satirist did not do, was to attempt\nto understand Shylock; in the true sense to sympathise with Shylock\nthe money-lender, as he sympathised with Macbeth the murderer.\nIt was not to deny that the man was an usurer, but to assert\nthat the usurer was a man.  And the Elizabethan dramatist does\nmake him a man, where the medieval satirist made him a monster.\nShakespeare not only makes him a man but a perfectly\nsincere and self-respecting man.  But the point is this:\nthat he is a sincere man who sincerely believes in usury.\nHe is a self-respecting man who does not despise himself\nfor being a usurer.  In one word, he regards usury as normal.\nIn that word is the whole problem of the popular impression of the Jews.\nWhat Shakespeare suggested about the Jew in a subtle and sympathetic way,\nmillions of plain men everywhere would suggest about him in a\nrough and ready way.  Regarding the Jew in relation to his ideas\nabout interest, they think either that he is simply immoral;\nor that if he is moral, then he has a different morality.\nThere is a great deal more to be said about how far this is true,\nand about what are its causes and excuses if it is true.\nBut it is an old story, surely, that the worst of all cures is\nto deny the disease.\n\nTo recognise the reality of the Jewish problem is very vital for\neverybody and especially vital for Jews.  To pretend that there is no\nproblem is to precipitate the expression of a rational impatience,\nwhich unfortunately can only express itself in the rather irrational\nform of Anti-Semitism. In the controversies of Palestine and Syria,\nfor instance, it is very common to hear the answer that the Jew is no\nworse than the Armenian.  The Armenian also is said to be unpopular\nas a money-lender and a mercantile upstart; yet the Armenian figures\nas a martyr for the Christian faith and a victim of the Moslem fury.\nBut this is one of those arguments which really carry their own answer.\nIt is like the sceptical saying that man is only an animal,\nwhich of itself provokes the retort, \"What an animal!\"\nThe very similarity only emphasises the contrast.  Is it seriously\nsuggested that we can substitute the Armenian for the Jew in\nthe study of a world-wide problem like that of the Jews?  Could we\ntalk of the competition of Armenians among Welsh shop-keepers,\nor of the crowd of Armenians on Brighton Parade?  Can Armenian usury\nbe a common topic of talk in a camp in California and in a club\nin Piccadilly?  Does Shakespeare show us a tragic Armenian towering\nover the great Venice of the Renascence?  Does Dickens show us\na realistic Armenian teaching in the thieves' kitchens of the slums?\nWhen we meet Mr. Vernon Vavasour, that brilliant financier, do we\nspeculate on the probability of his really having an Armenian name\nto match his Armenian nose?  Is it true, in short, that all sorts\nof people, from the peasants of Poland to the peasants of Portugal,\ncan agree more or less upon the special subject of Armenia?  Obviously it\nis not in the least true; obviously the Armenian question is only\na local question of certain Christians, who may be more avaricious\nthan other Christians.  But it is the truth about the Jews.\nIt is only half the truth, and one which by itself would be very unjust\nto the Jews.  But it is the truth, and we must realise it as sharply\nand clearly as we can.  The truth is that it is rather strange\nthat the Jews should be so anxious for international agreements.\nFor one of the few really international agreements is a suspicion\nof the Jews.\n\nA more practical comparison would be one between the Jews\nand gipsies; for the latter at least cover several countries,\nand can be tested by the impressions of very different districts.\nAnd in some preliminary respects the comparison is really useful.\nBoth races are in different ways landless, and therefore in\ndifferent ways lawless.  For the fundamental laws are land laws.\nIn both cases a reasonable man will see reasons for unpopularity,\nwithout wishing to indulge any task for persecution.\nIn both cases he will probably recognise the reality of a racial fault,\nwhile admitting that it may be largely a racial misfortune.\nThat is to say, the drifting and detached condition may be largely\nthe cause of Jewish usury or gipsy pilfering; but it is not common sense\nto contradict the general experience of gipsy pilfering or Jewish usury.\nThe comparison helps us to clear away some of the cloudy evasions\nby which modern men have tried to escape from that experience.\nIt is absurd to say that people are only prejudiced against the money\nmethods of the Jews because the medieval church has left behind a hatred\nof their religion.  We might as well say that people only protect\nthe chickens from the gipsies because the medieval church undoubtedly\ncondemned fortune-telling. It is unreasonable for a Jew to complain\nthat Shakespeare makes Shylock and not Antonio the ruthless money-lender;\nor that Dickens makes Fagin and not Sikes the receiver of stolen goods.\nIt is as if a gipsy were to complain when a novelist describes a child\nas stolen by the gipsies, and not by the curate or the mothers' meeting.\nIt is to complain of facts and probabilities.  There may be good gipsies;\nthere may be good qualities which specially belong to them as gipsies;\nmany students of the strange race have, for instance, praised a\ncertain dignity and self-respect among the women of the Romany.\nBut no student ever praised them for an exaggerated respect\nfor private property, and the whole argument about gipsy theft can\nbe roughly repeated about Hebrew usury.  Above all, there is one\nother respect in which the comparison is even more to the point.\nIt is the essential fact of the whole business, that the Jews do not\nbecome national merely by becoming a political part of any nation.\nWe might as well say that the gipsies had villas in Clapham,\nwhen their caravans stood on Clapham Common.\n\nBut, of course, even this comparison between the two wandering peoples\nfails in the presence of the greater problem.  Here again even the attempt\nat a parallel leaves the primary thing more unique.  The gipsies do\nnot become municipal merely by passing through a number of parishes,\nand it would seem equally obvious that a Jew need not become English\nmerely by passing through England on his way from Germany to America.\nBut the gipsy not only is not municipal, but he is not called municipal.\nHis caravan is not immediately painted outside with the number and name\nof 123 Laburnam Road, Clapham.  The municipal authorities generally\nnotice the wheels attached to the new cottage, and therefore do not\nfall into the error.  The gipsy may halt in a particular parish,\nbut he is not as a rule immediately made a parish councillor.\nThe cases in which a travelling tinker has been suddenly made\nthe mayor of an important industrial town must be comparatively rare.\nAnd if the poor vagabonds of the Romany blood are bullied by mayors\nand magistrates, kicked off the land by landlords, pursued by policemen\nand generally knocked about from pillar to post, nobody raises\nan outcry that _they_ are the victims of religious persecution;\nnobody summons meetings in public halls, collects subscriptions\nor sends petitions to parliament; nobody threatens anybody else\nwith the organised indignation of the gipsies all over the world.\nThe case of the Jew in the nation is very different from\nthat of the tinker in the town.  The moral elements that can\nbe appealed to are of a very different style and scale.\nNo gipsies are millionaires.\n\nIn short, the Jewish problem differs from anything like the gipsy\nproblem in two highly practical respects.  First, the Jews already\nexercise colossal cosmopolitan financial power.  And second,\nthe modern societies they live in also grant them vital forms of national\npolitical power.  Here the vagrant is already as rich as a miser\nand the vagrant is actually made a mayor.  As will be seen shortly,\nthere is a Jewish side of the story which leads really to the same\nending of the story; but the truth stated here is quite independent\nof any sympathetic or unsympathetic view of the race in question.\nIt is a question of fact, which a sensible Jew can afford to recognise,\nand which the most sensible Jews do very definitely recognise.\nIt is really irrational for anybody to pretend that the Jews\nare only a curious sect of Englishmen, like the Plymouth Brothers\nor the Seventh Day Baptists, in the face of such a simple fact\nas the family of Rothschild.  Nobody can pretend that such\nan English sect can establish five brothers, or even cousins,\nin the five great capitals of Europe.  Nobody can pretend that the\nSeventh Day Baptists are the seven grandchildren of one grandfather,\nscattered systematically among the warring nations of the earth.\nNobody thinks the Plymouth Brothers are literally brothers,\nor that they are likely to be quite as powerful in Paris or in\nPetrograd as in Plymouth.\n\nThe Jewish problem can be stated very simply after all.\nIt is normal for the nation to contain the family.\nWith the Jews the family is generally divided among the nations.\nThis may not appear to matter to those who do not believe in nations,\nthose who really think there ought not to be any nations.\nBut I literally fail to understand anybody who does believe in patriotism\nthinking that this state of affairs can be consistent with it.\nIt is in its nature intolerable, from a national standpoint,\nthat a man admittedly powerful in one nation should be bound\nto a man equally powerful in another nation, by ties more private\nand personal even than nationality.  Even when the purpose is not\nany sort of treachery, the very position is a sort of treason.\nGiven the passionately patriotic peoples of the west of Europe especially,\nthe state of things cannot conceivably be satisfactory to a patriot.\nBut least of all can it conceivably be satisfactory to a Jewish patriot;\nby which I do not mean a sham Englishman or a sham Frenchman,\nbut a man who is sincerely patriotic for the historic and highly\ncivilised nation of the Jews.\n\nFor what may be criticised here as Anti-Semitism is only the negative\nside of Zionism.  For the sake of convenience I have begun by stating\nit in terms of the universal popular impression which some call\na popular prejudice.  But such a truth of differentiation is equally\ntrue on both its different sides.  Suppose somebody proposes to mix up\nEngland and America, under some absurd name like the Anglo-Saxon Empire.\nOne man may say, \"Why should the jolly English inns and villages\nbe swamped by these priggish provincial Yankees?\"  Another may say,\n\"Why should the real democracy of a young country be tied to your\nsnobbish old squirarchy?\"  But both these views are only versions\nof the same view of a great American:  \"God never made one people\ngood enough to rule another.\"\n\nThe primary point about Zionism is that, whether it is right or wrong,\nit does offer a real and reasonable answer both to Anti-Semitism\nand to the charge of Anti-Semitism. The usual phrases about\nreligious persecution and racial hatred are not reasonable answers,\nor answers at all.  These Jews do not deny that they are Jews;\nthey do not deny that Jews may be unpopular; they do not deny that there\nmay be other than superstitious reasons for their unpopularity.\nThey are not obliged to maintain that when a Piccadilly dandy talks\nabout being in the hands of the Jews he is moved by the theological\nfanaticism that prevails in Piccadilly; or that when a silly youth on\nDerby Day says he was done by a dirty Jew, he is merely conforming to that\nChristian orthodoxy which is one of the strict traditions of the Turf.\nThey are not, like some other Jews, forced to pay so extravagant\na compliment to the Christian religion as to suppose it the ruling\nmotive of half the discontented talk in clubs and public-houses,\nof nearly every business man who suspects a foreign financier,\nor nearly every working man who grumbles against the local\npawn-broker. Religious mania, unfortunately, is not so common.\nThe Zionists do not need to deny any of these things;\nwhat they offer is not a denial but a diagnosis and a remedy.\nWhether their diagnosis is correct, whether their remedy\nis practicable, we will try to consider later, with something\nlike a fair summary of what is to be said on both sides.\nBut their theory, on the face of it, is perfectly reasonable.\nIt is the theory that any abnormal qualities in the Jews are due\nto the abnormal position of the Jews.  They are traders rather\nthan producers because they have no land of their own from\nwhich to produce, and they are cosmopolitans rather than patriots\nbecause they have no country of their own for which to be patriotic.\nThey can no more become farmers while they are vagrant than they\ncould have built the Temple of Solomon while they were building\nthe Pyramids of Egypt.  They can no more feel the full stream\nof nationalism while they wander in the desert of nomadism than\nthey could bathe in the waters of Jordan while they were weeping\nby the waters of Babylon.  For exile is the worst kind of bondage.\nIn insisting upon that at least the Zionists have insisted upon\na profound truth, with many applications to many other moral issues.\nIt is true that for any one whose heart is set on a particular\nhome or shrine, to be locked out is to be locked in.\nThe narrowest possible prison for him is the whole world.\n\nIt will be well to notice briefly, however, how the principle\napplies to the two Anti-Semitic arguments already considered.\nThe first is the charge of usury and unproductive loans, the second\nthe charge either of treason or of unpatriotic detachment.\nThe charge of usury is regarded, not unreasonably, as only\na specially dangerous development of the general charge of\nuncreative commerce and the refusal of creative manual exercise;\nthe unproductive loan is only a minor form of the unproductive labour.\nIt is certainly true that the latter complaint is, if possible,\ncommoner than the former, especially in comparatively simple\ncommunities like those of Palestine.  A very honest Moslem Arab\nsaid to me, with a singular blend of simplicity and humour, \"A Jew\ndoes not work; but he grows rich.  You never see a Jew working;\nand yet they grow rich.  What I want to know is, why do we not\nall do the same?  Why do we not also do this and become rich?\"\nThis is, I need hardly say, an over-simplification. Jews often\nwork hard at some things, especially intellectual things.\nBut the same experience which tells us that we have known many industrious\nJewish scholars, Jewish lawyers, Jewish doctors, Jewish pianists,\nchess-players and so on, is an experience which cuts both ways.\nThe same experience, if carefully consulted, will probably tell us\nthat we have not known personally many patient Jewish ploughmen,\nmany laborious Jewish blacksmiths, many active Jewish hedgers\nand ditchers, or even many energetic Jewish hunters and fishermen.\nIn short, the popular impression is tolerably true to life,\nas popular impressions very often are; though it is not fashionable\nto say so in these days of democracy and self-determination. Jews\ndo not generally work on the land, or in any of the handicrafts\nthat are akin to the land; but the Zionists reply that this is\nbecause it can never really be their own land.  That is Zionism,\nand that has really a practical place in the past and future of Zion.\n\nPatriotism is not merely dying for the nation.  It is dying\nwith the nation.  It is regarding the fatherland not merely\nas a real resting-place like an inn, but as a final resting-place,\nlike a house or even a grave.  Even the most Jingo of the Jews\ndo not feel like this about their adopted country; and I doubt\nif the most intelligent of the Jews would pretend that they did.\nEven if we can bring ourselves to believe that Disraeli lived\nfor England, we cannot think that he would have died with her.\nIf England had sunk in the Atlantic he would not have sunk with her,\nbut easily floated over to America to stand for the Presidency.\nEven if we are profoundly convinced that Mr. Beit or Mr. Eckstein\nhad patriotic tears in his eyes when he obtained a gold concession\nfrom Queen Victoria, we cannot believe that in her absence he would\nhave refused a similar concession from the German Emperor.\nWhen the Jew in France or in England says he is a good patriot\nhe only means that he is a good citizen, and he would put it\nmore truly if he said he was a good exile.  Sometimes indeed\nhe is an abominably bad citizen, and a most exasperating and\nexecrable exile, but I am not talking of that side of the case.\nI am assuming that a man like Disraeli did really make a romance\nof England, that a man like Dernburg did really make a romance\nof Germany, and it is still true that though it was a romance,\nthey would not have allowed it to be a tragedy.  They would have\nseen that the story had a happy ending, especially for themselves.\nThese Jews would not have died with any Christian nation.\n\nBut the Jews did die with Jerusalem.  That is the first and\nlast great truth in Zionism.  Jerusalem was destroyed and Jews\nwere destroyed with it, men who cared no longer to live because\nthe city of their faith had fallen.  It may be questioned whether\nall the Zionists have all the sublime insanity of the Zealots.\nBut at least it is not nonsense to suggest that the Zionists\nmight feel like this about Zion.  It is nonsense to suggest\nthat they would ever feel like this about Dublin or Moscow.\nAnd so far at least the truth both in Semitism and Anti-Semitism\nis included in Zionism.\n\nIt is a commonplace that the infamous are more famous than the famous.\nByron noted, with his own misanthropic moral, that we think more\nof Nero the monster who killed his mother than of Nero the noble\nRoman who defeated Hannibal.  The name of Julian more often suggests\nJulian the Apostate than Julian the Saint; though the latter crowned\nhis canonisation with the sacred glory of being the patron saint\nof inn-keepers. But the best example of this unjust historical\nhabit is the most famous of all and the most infamous of all.\nIf there is one proper noun which has become a common noun,\nif there is one name which has been generalised till it means a thing,\nit is certainly the name of Judas.  We should hesitate perhaps to call\nit a Christian name, except in the more evasive form of Jude.\nAnd even that, as the name of a more faithful apostle, is another\nillustration of the same injustice; for, by comparison with the other,\nJude the faithful might almost be called Jude the obscure.\nThe critic who said, whether innocently or ironically, \"What wicked\nmen these early Christians were!\" was certainly more successful\nin innocence than in irony; for he seems to have been innocent or\nignorant of the whole idea of the Christian communion.  Judas Iscariot\nwas one of the very earliest of all possible early Christians.\nAnd the whole point about him was that his hand was in the same dish;\nthe traitor is always a friend, or he could never be a foe.\nBut the point for the moment is merely that the name is known\neverywhere merely as the name of a traitor.  The name of Judas nearly\nalways means Judas Iscariot; it hardly ever means Judas Maccabeus.\nAnd if you shout out \"Judas\" to a politician in the thick of a political\ntumult, you will have some difficulty in soothing him afterwards,\nwith the assurance that you had merely traced in him something\nof that splendid zeal and valour which dragged down the tyranny\nof Antiochus, in the day of the great deliverance of Israel.\n\nThose two possible uses of the name of Judas would give us yet another\ncompact embodiment of the case for Zionism.  Numberless international\nJews have gained the bad name of Judas, and some have certainly\nearned it.  If you have gained or earned the good name of Judas,\nit can quite fairly and intelligently be affirmed that this was not\nthe fault of the Jews, but of the peculiar position of the Jews.\nA man can betray like Judas Iscariot in another man's house;\nbut a man cannot fight like Judas Maccabeus for another man's temple.\nThere is no more truly rousing revolutionary story amid all the stories\nof mankind, there is no more perfect type of the element of chivalry\nin rebellion, than that magnificent tale of the Maccabee who stabbed\nfrom underneath the elephant of Antiochus and died under the fall\nof that huge and living castle.  But it would be unreasonable to ask\nMr. Montagu to stick a knife into the elephant on which Lord Curzon,\nlet us say, was riding in all the pomp of Asiatic imperialism.\nFor Mr. Montagu would not be liberating his own land; and therefore\nhe naturally prefers to interest himself either in operations in silver\nor in somewhat slower and less efficient methods of liberation.\nIn short, whatever we may think of the financial or social services\nsuch as were rendered to England in the affair of Marconi, or to France\nin the affair of Panama, it must be admitted that these exhibit\na humbler and more humdrum type of civic duty, and do not remind\nus of the more reckless virtues of the Maccabees or the Zealots.\nA man may be a good citizen of anywhere, but he cannot be a national\nhero of nowhere; and for this particular type of patriotic passion\nit is necessary to have a _patria_.  The Zionists therefore are\nmaintaining a perfectly reasonable proposition, both about the charge\nof usury and the charge of treason, if they claim that both could\nbe cured by the return to a national soil as promised in Zionism.\n\nUnfortunately they are not always reasonable about their own\nreasonable proposition.  Some of them have a most unlucky habit\nof ignoring, and therefore implicitly denying, the very evil\nthat they are wisely trying to cure.  I have already remarked\nthis irritating innocence in the first of the two questions;\nthe criticism that sees everything in Shylock except the point of him,\nor the point of his knife.  How in the politics of Palestine at this\nmoment this first question is in every sense the primary question.\nPalestine has hardly as yet a patriotism to be betrayed; but it\ncertainly has a peasantry to be oppressed, and especially to be\noppressed as so many peasantries have been with usury and forestalling.\nThe Syrians and Arabs and all the agricultural and pastoral populations\nof Palestine are, rightly or wrongly, alarmed and angered at the advent\nof the Jews to power; for the perfectly practical and simple\nreason of the reputation which the Jews have all over the world.\nIt is really ridiculous in people so intelligent as the Jews,\nand especially so intelligent as the Zionists, to ignore so enormous\nand elementary a fact as that reputation and its natural results.\nIt may or may not in this case be unjust; but in any case it\nis not unnatural.  It may be the result of persecution, but it\nis one that has definitely resulted.  It may be the consequence\nof a misunderstanding; but it is a misunderstanding that must itself\nbe understood.  Rightly or wrongly, certain people in Palestine\nfear the coming of the Jews as they fear the coming of the locusts;\nthey regard them as parasites that feed on a community by a\nthousand methods of financial intrigue and economic exploitation.\nI could understand the Jews indignantly denying this, or eagerly\ndisproving it, or best of all, explaining what is true in it while\nexposing what is untrue.  What is strange, I might almost say weird,\nabout the attitude of some quite intelligent and sincere Zionists,\nis that they talk, write and apparently think as if there were no\nsuch thing in the world.\n\nI will give one curious example from one of the best and most\nbrilliant of the Zionists.  Dr. Weizmann is a man of large mind\nand human sympathies; and it is difficult to believe that any one\nwith so fine a sense of humanity can be entirely empty of anything\nlike a sense of humour.  Yet, in the middle of a very temperate\nand magnanimous address on \"Zionist Policy,\" he can actually\nsay a thing like this, \"The Arabs need us with our knowledge,\nand our experience and our money.  If they do not have us they\nwill fall into the hands of others, they will fall among sharks.\"\nOne is tempted for the moment to doubt whether any one else\nin the world could have said that, except the Jew with his strange\nmixture of brilliancy and blindness, of subtlety and simplicity.\nIt is much as if President Wilson were to say, \"Unless America deals\nwith Mexico, it will be dealt with by some modern commercial power,\nthat has trust-magnates and hustling millionaires.\"  But would\nPresident Wilson say it?  It is as if the German Chancellor had said,\n\"We must rush to the rescue of the poor Belgians, or they may be put\nunder some system with a rigid militarism and a bullying bureaucracy.\"\nBut would even a German Chancellor put it exactly like that?\nWould anybody put it in the exact order of words and structure of\nsentence in which Dr. Weizmann has put it?  Would even the Turks say,\n\"The Armenians need us with our order and our discipline and our arms.\nIf they do not have us they will fall into the hands of others, they will\nperhaps be in danger of massacres.\"  I suspect that a Turk would see\nthe joke, even if it were as grim a joke as the massacres themselves.\nIf the Zionists wish to quiet the fears of the Arabs, surely the\nfirst thing to do is to discover what the Arabs are afraid of.\nAnd very little investigation will reveal the simple truth that they\nare very much afraid of sharks; and that in their book of symbolic\nor heraldic zoology it is the Jew who is adorned with the dorsal fin\nand the crescent of cruel teeth.  This may be a fairy-tale about\na fabulous animal; but it is one which all sorts of races believe,\nand certainly one which these races believe.\n\nBut the case is yet more curious than that.  These simple tribes\nare afraid, not only of the dorsal fin and dental arrangements\nwhich Dr. Weizmann may say (with some justice) that he has not got;\nthey are also afraid of the other things which he says he has got.\nThey may be in error, at the first superficial glance,\nin mistaking a respectable professor for a shark.\nBut they can hardly be mistaken in attributing to the respectable\nprofessor what he himself considers as his claims to respect.\nAnd as the imagery about the shark may be too metaphorical\nor almost mythological, there is not the smallest difficulty in\nstating in plain words what the Arabs fear in the Jews.  They fear,\nin exact terms, their knowledge and their experience and their money.\nThe Arabs fear exactly the three things which he says they need.\nOnly the Arabs would call it a knowledge of financial trickery\nand an experience of political intrigue, and the power given\nby hoards of money not only of their own but of other peoples.\nAbout Dr. Weizmann and the true Zionists this is self-evidently unjust;\nbut about Jewish influence of the more visible and vulgar kind\nit has to be proved to be unjust.  Feeling as I do the force\nof the real case for Zionism, I venture most earnestly\nto implore the Jews to disprove it, and not to dismiss it.\nBut above all I implore them not to be content with assuring us again\nand again of their knowledge and their experience and their money.\nThat is what people dread like a pestilence or an earthquake;\ntheir knowledge and their experience and their money.\nIt is needless for Dr. Weizmann to tell us that he does not desire\nto enter Palestine like a Junker or drive thousands of Arabs forcibly\nout of the land; nobody supposes that Dr. Weizmann looks like a Junker;\nand nobody among the enemies of the Jews says that they have driven\ntheir foes in that fashion since the wars with the Canaanites.\nBut for the Jews to reassure us by insisting on their own economic\nculture or commercial education is exactly like the Junkers\nreassuring us by insisting on the unquestioned supremacy of\ntheir Kaiser or the unquestioned obedience of their soldiers.\nMen bar themselves in their houses, or even hide themselves\nin their cellars, when such virtues are abroad in the land.\n\nIn short the fear of the Jews in Palestine, reasonable or unreasonable,\nis a thing that must be answered by reason.  It is idle for the unpopular\nthing to answer with boasts, especially boasts of the very quality\nthat makes it unpopular.  But I think it could be answered by reason,\nor at any rate tested by reason; and the tests by consideration.\nThe principle is still as stated above; that the tests must\nnot merely insist on the virtues the Jews do show, but rather\ndeal with the particular virtues which they are generally accused\nof not showing.  It is necessary to understand this more thoroughly\nthan it is generally understood, and especially better than it\nis usually stated in the language of fashionable controversy.\nFor the question involves the whole success or failure of Zionism.\nMany of the Zionists know it; but I rather doubt whether most of\nthe Anti-Zionists know that they know it.  And some of the phrases\nof the Zionists, such as those that I have noted, too often tend\nto produce the impression that they ignore when they are not ignorant.\nThey are not ignorant; and they do not ignore in practice;\neven when an intellectual habit makes them seem to ignore in theory.\nNobody who has seen a Jewish rural settlement, such as Rishon,\ncan doubt that some Jews are sincerely filled with the vision\nof sitting under their own vine and fig-tree, and even with its\naccompanying lesson that it is first necessary to grow the fig-tree\nand the vine.\n\nThe true test of Zionism may seem a topsy-turvy test.\nIt will not succeed by the number of successes, but rather\nby the number of failures, or what the world (and certainly\nnot least the Jewish world) has generally called failures.\nIt will be tested, not by whether Jews can climb to the top\nof the ladder, but by whether Jews can remain at the bottom;\nnot by whether they have a hundred arts of becoming important,\nbut by whether they have any skill in the art of remaining insignificant.\nIt is often noted that the intelligent Israelite can rise to positions\nof power and trust outside Israel, like Witte in Russia or Rufus Isaacs\nin England.  It is generally bad, I think, for their adopted country;\nbut in any case it is no good for the particular problem of their\nown country.  Palestine cannot have a population of Prime Ministers\nand Chief Justices; and if those they rule and judge are not Jews,\nthen we have not established a commonwealth but only an oligarchy.\nIt is said again that the ancient Jews turned their enemies\ninto hewers of wood and drawers of water.  The modern Jews have\nto turn themselves into hewers of wood and drawers of water.\nIf they cannot do that, they cannot turn themselves into citizens,\nbut only into a kind of alien bureaucrats, of all kinds\nthe most perilous and the most imperilled.  Hence a Jewish\nstate will not be a success when the Jews in it are successful,\nor even when the Jews in it are statesmen.  It will be a success\nwhen the Jews in it are scavengers, when the Jews in it are sweeps,\nwhen they are dockers and ditchers and porters and hodmen.\nWhen the Zionist can point proudly to a Jewish navvy who has _not_\nrisen in the world, an under-gardener who is not now taking his ease\nas an upper-gardener, a yokel who is still a yokel, or even a village\nidiot at least sufficiently idiotic to remain in his village,\nthen indeed the world will come to blow the trumpets and lift\nup the heads of the everlasting gates; for God will have turned\nthe captivity of Zion.\n\nZionists of whose sincerity I am personally convinced,\nand of whose intelligence anybody would be convinced, have told\nme that there really is, in places like Rishon, something like a\nbeginning of this spirit; the love of the peasant for his land.\nOne lady, even in expressing her conviction of it, called it \"this\nvery un-Jewish characteristic.\"  She was perfectly well aware both of\nthe need of it in the Jewish land, and the lack of it in the Jewish race.\nIn short she was well aware of the truth of that seemingly topsy-turvy\ntest I have suggested; that of whether men are worthy to be drudges.\nWhen a humorous and humane Jew thus accepts the test, and honestly\nexpects the Jewish people to pass it, then I think the claim\nis very serious indeed, and one not lightly to be set aside.\nI do certainly think it a very serious responsibility under the\ncircumstances to set it altogether aside.  It is our whole complaint\nagainst the Jew that he does not till the soil or toil with the spade;\nit is very hard on him to refuse him if he really says, \"Give me\na soil and I will till it; give me a spade and I will use it.\"\nIt is our whole reason for distrusting him that he cannot really love\nany of the lands in which he wanders; it seems rather indefensible to be\ndeaf to him if he really says, \"Give me a land and I will love it.\"\nI would certainly give him a land or some instalment of the land,\n(in what general sense I will try to suggest a little later) so long\nas his conduct on it was watched and tested according to the principles\nI have suggested.  If he asks for the spade he must use the spade,\nand not merely employ the spade, in the sense of hiring half a hundred\nmen to use spades.  If he asks for the soil he must till the soil;\nthat is he must belong to the soil and not merely make the soil\nbelong to him.  He must have the simplicity, and what many would\ncall the stupidity of the peasant.  He must not only call a spade\na spade, but regard it as a spade and not as a speculation.\nBy some true conversion the urban and modern man must be not\nonly on the soil, but of the soil, and free from our urban trick\nof inventing the word dirt for the dust to which we shall return.\nHe must be washed in mud, that he may be clean.\n\nHow far this can really happen it is very hard for anybody,\nespecially a casual visitor, to discover in the present crisis.\nIt is admitted that there is much Arab and Syrian labour employed;\nand this in itself would leave all the danger of the Jew\nas a mere capitalist.  The Jews explain it, however, by saying\nthat the Arabs will work for a lower wage, and that this is\nnecessarily a great temptation to the struggling colonists.\nIn this they may be acting naturally as colonists, but it is none\nthe less clear that they are not yet acting literally as labourers.\nIt may not be their fault that they are not proving themselves to\nbe peasants; but it is none the less clear that this situation in itself\ndoes not prove them to be peasants.  So far as that is concerned,\nit still remains to be decided finally whether a Jew will be an\nagricultural labourer, if he is a decently paid agricultural labourer.\nOn the other hand, the leaders of these local experiments,\nif they have not yet shown the higher materialism of peasants,\nmost certainly do not show the lower materialism of capitalists.\nThere can be no doubt of the patriotic and even poetic spirit in which\nmany of them hope to make their ancient wilderness blossom like the rose.\nThey at least would still stand among the great prophets of Israel,\nand none the less though they prophesied in vain.\n\nI have tried to state fairly the case for Zionism, for the reason\nalready stated; that I think it intellectually unjust that any attempt\nof the Jews to regularise their position should merely be rejected\nas one of their irregularities.  But I do not disguise the enormous\ndifficulties of doing it in the particular conditions Of Palestine.\nIn fact the greatest of the real difficulties of Zionism is that it\nhas to take place in Zion.  There are other difficulties, however,\nwhich when they are not specially the fault of Zionists are\nvery much the fault of Jews.  The worst is the general impression\nof a business pressure from the more brutal and businesslike type\nof Jew, which arouses very violent and very just indignation.\nWhen I was in Jerusalem it was openly said that Jewish financiers\nhad complained of the low rate of interest at which loans were made\nby the government to the peasantry, and even that the government\nhad yielded to them.  If this were true it was a heavier reproach\nto the government even than to the Jews.  But the general truth\nis that such a state of feeling seems to make the simple and solid\npatriotism of a Palestinian Jewish nation practically impossible,\nand forces us to consider some alternative or some compromise.\nThe most sensible statement of a compromise I heard among the Zionists\nwas suggested to me by Dr. Weizmann, who is a man not only highly\nintelligent but ardent and sympathetic.  And the phrase he used\ngives the key to my own rough conception of a possible solution,\nthough he himself would probably, not accept that solution.\n\nDr. Weizmann suggested, if I understood him rightly, that he did\nnot think Palestine could be a single and simple national territory\nquite in the sense of France; but he did not see why it should not\nbe a commonwealth of cantons after the manner of Switzerland.\nSome of these could be Jewish cantons, others Arab cantons,\nand so on according to the type of population.  This is in itself\nmore reasonable than much that is suggested on the same side;\nbut the point of it for my own purpose is more particular.\nThis idea, whether it correctly represents Dr. Weizmann's meaning\nor no, clearly involves the abandonment of the solidarity\nof Palestine, and tolerates the idea of groups of Jews being\nseparated from each other by populations of a different type.\nNow if once this notion be considered admissible, it seems to me\ncapable of considerable extension.  It seems possible that there\nmight be not only Jewish cantons in Palestine but Jewish cantons\noutside Palestine, Jewish colonies in suitable and selected\nplaces in adjacent parts or in many other parts of the world.\nThey might be affiliated to some official centre in Palestine,\nor even in Jerusalem, where there would naturally be at least some\ngreat religious headquarters of the scattered race and religion.\nThe nature of that religious centre it must be for Jews to decide;\nbut I think if I were a Jew I would build the Temple without\nbothering about the site of the Temple.  That they should\nhave the old site, of course, is not to be thought of;\nit would raise a Holy War from Morocco to the marches of China.\nBut seeing that some of the greatest of the deeds of Israel were done,\nand some of the most glorious of the songs of Israel sung,\nwhen their only temple was a box carried about in the desert,\nI cannot think that the mere moving of the situation of the place\nof sacrifice need even mean so much to that historic tradition\nas it would to many others.  That the Jews should have some high\nplace of dignity and ritual in Palestine, such as a great building\nlike the Mosque of Omar, is certainly right and reasonable;\nfor upon no theory can their historic connection be dismissed.\nI think it is sophistry to say, as do some Anti-Semites,\nthat the Jews have no more right there than the Jebusites.\nIf there are Jebusites they are Jebusites without knowing it.\nI think it sufficiently answered in the fine phrase of an English priest,\nin many ways more Anti-Semitic than I:  \"The people that remembers\nhas a right.\"  The very worst of the Jews, as well as the very best,\ndo in some sense remember.  They are hated and persecuted and\nfrightened into false names and double lives; but they remember.\nThey lie, they swindle, they betray, they oppress; but they remember.\nThe more we happen to hate such elements among the Hebrews the more\nwe admire the manly and magnificent elements among the more vague\nand vagrant tribes of Palestine, the more we must admit that paradox.\nThe unheroic have the heroic memory; and the heroic people\nhave no memory.\n\nBut whatever the Jewish nation might wish to do about a national shrine\nor other supreme centre, the suggestion for the moment is that something\nlike a Jewish territorial scheme might really be attempted, if we permit\nthe Jews to be scattered no longer as individuals but as groups.\nIt seems possible that by some such extension of the definition of Zionism\nwe might ultimately overcome even the greatest difficulty of Zionism,\nthe difficulty of resettling a sufficient number of so large a race\non so small a land.  For if the advantage of the ideal to the Jews\nis to gain the promised land, the advantage to the Gentiles is to get\nrid of the Jewish problem, and I do not see why we should obtain\nall their advantage and none of our own.  Therefore I would leave\nas few Jews as possible in other established nations, and to these\nI would give a special position best described as privilege;\nsome sort of self-governing enclave with special laws and exemptions;\nfor instance, I would certainly excuse them from conscription,\nwhich I think a gross injustice in their case. [Footnote: Of course\nthe privileged exile would also lose the rights of a native.]\nA Jew might be treated as respectfully as a foreign ambassador,\nbut a foreign ambassador is a foreigner.  Finally, I would give\nthe same privileged position to all Jews everywhere, as an alternative\npolicy to Zionism, if Zionism failed by the test I have named;\nthe only true and the only tolerable test; if the Jews had not\nso much failed as peasants as succeeded as capitalists.\n\nThere is one word to be added; it will be noted that inevitably\nand even against some of my own desires, the argument has returned\nto that recurrent conclusion, which was found in the Roman Empire\nand the Crusades.  The European can do justice to the Jew;\nbut it must be the European who does it.  Such a possibility\nas I have thrown out, and any other possibility that any one can\nthink of, becomes at once impossible without some idea of a general\nsuzerainty of Christendom over the lands of the Moslem and the Jew.\nPersonally, I think it would be better if it were a general\nsuzerainty of Christendom, rather than a particular supremacy\nof England.  And I feel this, not from a desire to restrain\nthe English power, but rather from a desire to defend it.\nI think there is not a little danger to England in the diplomatic\nsituation involved; but that is a diplomatic question that it\nis neither within my power or duty to discuss adequately.\nBut if I think it would be wiser for France and England together\nto hold Syria and Palestine together rather than separately,\nthat only completes and clinches the conclusion that has haunted me,\nwith almost uncanny recurrence, since I first saw Jerusalem\nsitting on the hill like a turreted town in England or in France;\nand for one moment the dark dome of it was again the Templum Domini,\nand the tower on it was the Tower of Tancred.\n\nAnyhow with the failure of Zionism would fall the last\nand best attempt at a rationalistic theory of the Jew.\nWe should be left facing a mystery which no other rationalism has\never come so near to providing within rational cause and cure.\nWhatever we do, we shall not return to that insular innocence and\ncomfortable unconsciousness of Christendom, in which the Victorian\nagnostics could suppose that the Semitic problem was a brief\nmedieval insanity.  In this as in greater things, even if we lost\nour faith we could not recover our agnosticism.  We can never\nrecover agnosticism, any more than any other kind of ignorance.\nWe know that there is a Jewish problem; we only hope that there\nis a Jewish solution.  If there is not, there is no other.\nWe cannot believe again that the Jew is an Englishman with certain\ntheological theories, any more than we can believe again any other part\nof the optimistic materialism whose temple is the Albert Memorial.\nA scheme of guilds may be attempted and may be a failure;\nbut never again can we respect mere Capitalism for its success.\nAn attack may be made on political corruption, and it may be a failure;\nbut never again can we believe that our politics are not corrupt.\nAnd so Zionism may be attempted and may be a failure;\nbut never again can we ourselves be at ease in Zion.\nOr rather, I should say, if the Jew cannot be at ease in Zion we\ncan never again persuade ourselves that he is at ease out of Zion.\nWe can only salute as it passes that restless and mysterious figure,\nknowing at last that there must be in him something mystical as well\nas mysterious; that whether in the sense of the sorrows of Christ\nor of the sorrows of Cain, he must pass by, for he belongs to God.\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\nTo have worn a large scallop shell in my hat in the streets of London\nmight have been deemed ostentatious, to say nothing of carrying a staff\nlike a long pole; and wearing sandals might have proclaimed rather\nthat I had not come from Jerusalem but from Letchworth, which some\nidentify with the New Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God.\nLacking such attributes, I passed through South England as one\nwho might have come from Ramsgate or from anywhere; and the only\nsymbol left to me of my pilgrimage was a cheap ring of metal\ncoloured like copper and brass.  For on it was written in Greek\ncharacters the word \"Jerusalem,\" and though it may be less valuable\nthan a brass nail, I do not think you can buy it in the Strand.\nAll those enormous and everlasting things, all those gates of bronze\nand mosaics of purple and peacock colouring, all those chapels of gold\nand columns of crimson marble, had all shrivelled up and dwindled\ndown to that one small thread of red metal round my finger.\nI could not help having a feeling, like Aladdin, that if I\nrubbed the ring perhaps all those towers would rise again.\nAnd there was a sort of feeling of truth in the fancy after all.\nWe talk of the changeless East; but in one sense the impression\nof it is really rather changing, with its wandering tribes and its\nshifting sands, in which the genii of the East might well build\nthe palace or the paradise of a day.  As I saw the low and solid\nEnglish cottages rising around me amid damp delightful thickets\nunder rainy skies, I felt that in a deeper sense it is rather\nwe who build for permanence or at least for a sort of peace.\nIt is something more than comfort; a relative and reasonable contentment.\nAnd there came back on me like a boomerang a rather indescribable\nthought which had circled round my head through most of my journey;\nthat Christendom is like a gigantic bronze come out of the furnace\nof the Near East; that in Asia is only the fire and in Europe\nthe form.  The nearest to what I mean was suggested in that\nvery striking book _Form and Colour_, by Mr. March Philips.\nWhen I spoke of the idols of Asia, many moderns may well have murmured\nagainst such a description of the ideals of Buddha or Mrs. Besant.\nTo which I can only reply that I do know a little about the ideals,\nand I think I prefer the idols.  I have far more sympathy with\nthe enthusiasm for a nice green or yellow idol, with nine arms\nand three heads, than with the philosophy ultimately represented\nby the snake devouring his tail; the awful sceptical argument\nin a circle by which everything begins and ends in the mind.\nI would far rather be a fetish worshipper and have a little fun,\nthan be an oriental pessimist expected always to smile like an optimist.\nNow it seems to me that the fighting Christian creed is the one\nthing that has been in that mystical circle and broken out of it,\nand become something real as well.  It has gone westward by a sort\nof centrifugal force, like a stone from a sling; and so made\nthe revolving Eastern mind, as the Franciscan said in Jerusalem,\ndo something at last.\n\nAnyhow, although I carried none of the trappings of a pilgrim I felt\nstrongly disposed to take the privileges of one.  I wanted to be\nentertained at the firesides of total strangers, in the medieval manner,\nand to tell them interminable tales of my travels.  I wanted to linger\nin Dover, and try it on the citizens of that town.  I nearly got\nout of the train at several wayside stations, where I saw secluded\ncottages which might be brightened by a little news from the Holy Land.\nFor it seemed to me that all my fellow-countrymen must be my friends;\nall these English places had come much closer together after travels\nthat seemed in comparison as vast as the spaces between the stars.\nThe hop-fields of Kent seemed to me like outlying parts of my own\nkitchen garden; and London itself to be really situated at London End.\nLondon was perhaps the largest of the suburbs of Beaconsfield.\nBy the time I came to Beaconsfield itself, dusk was dropping\nover the beechwoods and the white cross-roads. The distance seemed\nto grow deeper and richer with darkness as I went up the long\nlanes towards my home; and in that distance, as I drew nearer,\nI heard the barking of a dog.","title":"The New Jerusalem","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":93213}