e.

It has been necessary thus to pause upon the inner emotions of the
Crusade, because the modern English reader is widely cut off from these
particular feelings of his fathers; and the real quarrel of Christendom
and Islam, the fire-baptism of the young nations, could not otherwise be
seized in its unique character. It was nothing so simple as a quarrel
between two men who both wanted Jerusalem. It was the much deadlier
quarrel between one man who wanted it and another man who could not see
why it was wanted. The Moslem, of course, had his own holy places; but
he has never felt about them as Westerns can feel about a field or a
roof-tree; he thought of the holiness as holy, not of the places as
places. The austerity which forbade him imagery, the wandering war that
forbade him rest, shut him off from all that was breaking out and
blossoming in our local patriotisms; just as it has given the Turks an
empire without ever giving them a nation.

Now, the effect of this adventure against a mighty and mysterious enemy
was simply enormous in the transformation of England, as of all the
nations that were developing side by side with England. Firstly, we
learnt enormously from what the Saracen did. Secondly, we learnt yet
more enormously from what the Saracen did not do. Touching some of the
good things which we lacked, we were fortunately able to follow him. But
in all the good things which he lacked, we were confirmed like adamant
to defy him. It may be said that Christians never knew how right they
were till they went to war with Moslems. At once the most obvious and
the most representative reaction was the reaction which produced the
best of what we call Christian Art; and especially those grotesques of
Gothic architecture, which are not only alive but kicking. The East as
an environment, as an impersonal glamour, certainly stimulated the
Western mind, but stimulated it rather to break the Moslem commandment
than to keep it. It was as if the Christian were impelled, like a
caricaturist, to cover all that faceless ornament with faces; to give
heads to all those headless serpents and birds to all these lifeless
trees. Statuary quickened and came to life under the veto of the enemy
as under a benediction. The image, merely because it was called an idol,
became not only an ensign but a weapon. A hundredfold host of stone
sprang up all over the shrines and streets of Europe. The Iconoclasts
made more statues than they destroye