ders.
The modern, or rather the Victorian prejudice against Crusaders
is positive and not relative; and it would still desire to
condemn Tancred if it could not acquit Saladin. Indeed it is
a prejudice not so much against Crusaders as against Christians.
It will not give to these heroes of religious war the fair measure
it gives to the heroes of ordinary patriotic and imperial war.
There never was a nobler hero than Nelson, or one more national
or more normal. Yet Nelson quite certainly did do what Tancred
almost certainly did not do; break his own word by giving up his own
brave enemies to execution. If the cause of Nelson in other times
comes to be treated as the creed of Tancred has often in recent
times been treated, this incident alone will be held sufficient
to prove not only that Nelson was a liar and a scoundrel, but that
he did not love England at all, did not love Lady Hamilton at all,
that he sailed in English ships only to pocket the prize money
of French ships, and would as willingly have sailed in French ships
for the prize money of English ships. That is the sort of dull dust
of gold that has been shaken like the drifting dust of the desert
over the swords and the relics, the crosses and the clasped
hands of the men who marched to Jerusalem or died at Hattin.
In these medieval pilgrims every inconsistency is a hypocrisy; while in
the more modern patriots even an infamy is only an inconsistency.
I have rounded off the story here with the ruin at Hattin because
the whole reaction against the pilgrimage had its origin there;
and because it was this at least that finally lost Jerusalem.
Elsewhere in Palestine, to say nothing of Africa and Spain,
splendid counter-strokes were still being delivered from the West,
not the least being the splendid rescue by Richard of England.
But I still think that with the mere name of that tiny town upon
the hills the note of the whole human revolution had been struck,
was changed and was silent. All the other names were only the names
of Eastern towns; but that was nearer to a man than his neighbours;
a village inside his village, a house inside his house.

There is a hill above Bethlehem of a strange shape, with a flat top
which makes it look oddly like an island, habitable though uninhabited,
when all Moab heaves about it and beyond it as with the curves
and colours of a sea. Its stability suggests in some strange
fashion what may often be felt in these lands with t