oups disagreed, and to some extent why they disagreed,
long before I could seriously consider anything on which they would
be likely to agree. I have therefore confined the first section
of this book to a mere series of such impressions, and left to the last
section a study of the problem and an attempt at the solution.
Between these two I have inserted a sort of sketch of what seemed to me
the determining historical events that make the problem what it is.
Of these I will only say for the moment that, whether by a coincidence
or for some deeper cause, I feel it myself to be a case of first
thoughts being best; and that some further study of history served
rather to solidify what had seemed merely a sort of vision.
I might almost say that I fell in love with Jerusalem at first sight;
and the final impression, right or wrong, served only to fix
the fugitive fancy which had seen, in the snow on the city,
the white crown of a woman of Bethlehem.

But there is another cause for my being content for the moment,
with this mere chaos of contrasts. There is a very real reason
for emphasising those contrasts, and for shunning the temptation
to shut our eyes to them even considered as contrasts.
It is necessary to insist that the contrasts are not easy to turn
into combinations; that the red robes of Rome and the green
scarves of Islam will not very easily fade into a dingy russet;
that the gold of Byzantium and the brass of Babylon will require
a hot furnace to melt them into any kind of amalgam. The reason
for this is akin to what has already been said about Jerusalem as a
knot of realities. It is especially a knot of popular realities.
Although it is so small a place, or rather because it is so
small a place, it is a domain and a dominion for the masses.
Democracy is never quite democratic except when it is quite direct;
and it is never quite direct except when it is quite small.
So soon as a mob has grown large enough to have delegates it has
grown large enough to have despots; indeed the despots are often
much the more representative of the two. Now in a place so small
as Jerusalem, what we call the rank and file really counts.
And it is generally true, in religions especially, that the real
enthusiasm or even fanaticism is to be found in the rank and file.
In all intense religions it is the poor who are more religious
and the rich who are more irreligious. It is certainly so with
the creeds and causes that come to a