I have no objection to a snow man as a part of our
own Christmas festivities; indeed, as has already been suggested,
I think such festivities a great glory of English life.
But I have seen the snow melting in the steep places about Jerusalem;
and I know what a cataract it could feed.
As I considered these things a deepening disquiet possessed me,
and my thoughts were far away from where I stood. After all,
the English did not indulge in this doubling of parts and muddling
of mistaken identity in their real and unique success in India.
They may have been wrong or right but they were realistic about Moslems
and Hindoos; they did not say Moslems were Hindoos, or send a highly
intelligent Hindoo from Oxford to rule Moslems as an Englishman.
They may not have cared for things like the ideal of Zionism;
but they understood the common sense of Zionism, the desirability
of distinguishing between entirely different things.
But I remembered that of late their tact had often failed them
even in their chief success in India; and that every hour
brought worse and wilder news of their failure in Ireland.
I remembered that in the Early Victorian time, against the advice
only of the wisest and subtlest of the Early Victorians, we had tied
ourselves to the triumphant progress of industrial capitalism; and that
progress had now come to a crisis and what might well be a crash.
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