They could not
be quite so ignorant as a broad-minded person in a big suburb.
Indeed there is something fine and distinguished about the very delicacy,
and even irony, of their diplomatic relations. There is something
of chivalry in the courtesy of their armed truce, and it is a great
school of manners that includes such differences in morals.
This is an aspect of the interest of Jerusalem which can easily
be neglected and is not easy to describe. The normal life
there is intensely exciting, not because the factions fight,
but rather because they do not fight. Of the abnormal crisis
when they did fight, and the abnormal motives that made them fight,
I shall have something to say later on. But it was true for a great
part of the time that what was picturesque and thrilling was not
the war but the peace. The sensation of being in this little town
is rather like that of being at a great international congress.
It is like that moving and glittering social satire, in which
diplomatists can join in a waltz who may soon be joining in a war.
For the religious and political parties have yet another point
in common with separate nations; that even within this narrow
space the complicated curve of their frontiers is really more
or less fixed, and certainly not particularly fluctuating.
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