is, from a certain distance, as
they also call it, shellabi kabir. Extremely beautiful.
Beautiful upon a mountain. El Kudz means The City, and in a
certain sense it is that, to unnumbered millions of people.
Ludicrous, uproarious, dignified, pious, sinful, naively
confidential, secretive, altruistic, realistic. Hoary-ancient
and ultra-modern. Very, very proud of its name Jerusalem, which
means City of Peace. Full to the brim with the malice of
certainly fifty religions, fifty races, and five hundred thousand
curious political chicaneries disguised as plans to save our
souls from hell and fill some fellow's purse. The jails
are full.

"Look for a man named Grim," said my employer. "James Schuyler
Grim, American, aged thirty-four or so. I've heard he knows
the ropes."

The ropes, when I was in Jerusalem before the war, were
principally used for hanging people at the Jaffa Gate, after they
had been well beaten on the soles of their feet to compel them to
tell where their money was hidden. The Turks entirely understood
the arts of suppression and extortion, which they defined as
government. The British, on the other hand, subject their normal
human impulse to be greedy, and their educated craving to be
gentlemanly white man's burden-bearers, to a process of compromise.
Perhaps that isn't government. But it works. They even carry
compromise to the point of not hanging even their critics if
they can possibly avoid doing it. They had not yet, but they
were about to receive a brand-new mandate from a brand-new
League of Nations, awkwardly qualified by Mr. Balfour's
post-Armistice promise to the Zionists to give the country to
the Jews, and by a war-time promise, in which the French had
joined, to create an Arab kingdom for the Arabs.

So there was lots of compromising being done, and hell to pay,
with no one paying, except, of course, the guests in the hotels,
at New York prices. The Zionist Jews were arriving in droves.
The Arabs, who owned most of the land, were threatening to cut
all the Jews' throats as soon as they could first get all their
money. Feisal, a descendant of the Prophet, who had fought
gloriously against the Turks, was romantically getting ready in
Damascus to be crowned King of Syria. The French, who pride
themselves on being realistic, were getting ready to go after
Feisal with bayonets and poison-gas, as they eventually did.

In Jerusalem the Bolsheviks, astonishingly credulous of "