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.