e pointed out touching certain political theories,
we already admit this truth in its small and questionable examples.
We only deny the large and obvious examples.

Christendom might quite reasonably have been alarmed if it had not
been attacked. But as a matter of history it had been attacked.
The Crusader would have been quite justified in suspecting the Moslem
even if the Moslem had merely been a new stranger; but as a matter
of history he was already an old enemy. The critic of the Crusade
talks as if it had sought out some inoffensive tribe or temple in the
interior of Thibet, which was never discovered until it was invaded.
They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed
of riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden into Paris.
They seem to forget that if the Crusaders nearly conquered Palestine,
it was but a return upon the Moslems who had nearly conquered Europe.
There was no need for them to argue by an appeal to reason, as I
have argued above, that a religious division must make a difference;
it had already made a difference. The difference stared them
in the face in the startling transformation of Roman Barbary
and of Roman Spain. In short it was something which must happen
in theory and which did happen in practice; all expectation
suggested that it would be so and all experience said it was so.
Having thought it out theoretically and experienced it practically,
they proceeded to deal with it equally practically. The first division
involved every principle of the science of thought; and the last
developments followed out every principle of the science of war.
The Crusade was the counter-attack. It was the defensive army taking
the offensive in its turn, and driving back the enemy to his base.
And it is this process, reasonable from its first axiom to its last act,
that Mr. Pound actually selects as a sort of automatic wandering
of an animal. But a man so intelligent would not have made a mistake
so extraordinary but for another error which it is here very essential
to consider. To suggest that men engaged, rightly or wrongly,
in so logical a military and political operation were only migrating
like birds or swarming like bees is as ridiculous as to say that
the Prohibition campaign in America was only an animal reversion
towards lapping as the dog lappeth, or Rowland Hill's introduction
of postage stamps an animal taste for licking as the cat licks.
Why should we provi