first and most unfamiliar fact the English have to learn
in this strange land is that differences can be irreconcilable.
And again the chief danger is that they may be persuaded that the wordy
compromises of Western politics can reconcile them; that such abysses
can be filled up with rubbish, or such chasms bridged with cobwebs.
For we have created in England a sort of compromise which may up to a
certain point be workable in England; though there are signs that even
in England that point is approaching or is past. But in any case we
could only do with that compromise as we could do without conscription;
because an accident had made us insular and even provincial.
So in India where we have treated the peoples as different from
ourselves and from each other we have at least partly succeeded.
So in Ireland, where we have tried to make them agree with us
and each other, we have made one never-ending nightmare.

We can no more subject the world to the English compromise than to the
English climate; and both are things of incalculable cloud and twilight.
We have grown used to a habit of calling things by the wrong
names and supporting them by the wrong arguments; and even doing
the right thing for the wrong cause. We have party governments which
consist of people who pretend to agree when they really disagree.
We have party debates which consist of people who pretend to disagree
when they really agree. We have whole parties named after things they
no longer support, or things they would never dream of proposing.
We have a mass of meaningless parliamentary ceremonials that are
no longer even symbolic; the rule by which a parliamentarian
possesses a constituency but not a surname; or the rule by
which he becomes a minister in order to cease to be a member.
All this would seem the most superstitious and idolatrous
mummery to the simple worshippers in the shrines of Jerusalem.
You may think what they say fantastic, or what they mean fanatical,
but they do not say one thing and mean another. The Greek
may or may not have a right to say he is Orthodox, but he means
that he is Orthodox; in a very different sense from that in which
a man supporting a new Home Rule Bill means that he is Unionist.
A Moslem would stop the sale of strong drink because he is a Moslem.
But he is not quite so muddleheaded as to profess to stop it because
he is a Liberal, and a particular supporter of the party of liberty.
Even in England indeed it wi