My own brief contact with the Greek priests of the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem did not permit me to discover any trace of this detail of their discipline; and even the Russian pilgrims were said to be equally negligent in the matter.
The point for the moment, however, is that if I was violently opposed to anything, it was not to Jews, but to that sort of remark about Jews; or rather to the silly and craven fear of making it a remark about Jews.
But my friends and I had in some general sense a policy in the matter; and it was in substance the desire to give Jews the dignity and status of a separate nation.

We desired that in some fashion, and so far as possible, Jews should be represented by Jews, should live in a society of Jews, should be judged by Jews and ruled by Jews.
I am an Anti-Semite if that is Anti-Semitism.

It would seem more rational to call it Semitism.
Of this attitude, I repeat, I am now less likely than ever to repent.
I have lived to see the thing that was dismissed as a fad discussed everywhere as a fact; and one of the most menacing facts of the age.
I have lived to see people who accused me of Anti-Semitism become far more Anti-Semitic than I am or ever was.
I have heard people talking with real injustice about the Jews, who once seemed to think it an injustice to talk about them at all.

But, above all, I have seen with my own eyes wild mobs marching through a great city, raving not only against Jews, but against the English for identifying themselves with the Jews.
I have seen the whole prestige of England brought into peril, merely by the trick of talking about two nations as if they were one.
I have seen an Englishman arriving in Jerusalem with somebody he had been taught to regard as his fellow countryman and political colleague, and received as if he had come arm-in-arm with a flaming dragon.
So do our frosty fictions fare when they come under that burning sun.
Twice in my life, and twice lately, I have seen a piece of English pedantry bring us within an inch of an enormous English peril.
The first was when all the Victorian historians and philosophers had told us that our German cousin was a cousin german and even germane; something naturally near and sympathetic.
That also was an identification; that also was an assimilation; that also was a union of hearts.

For the second time in a few short years, English politicians and journalists have discovered the dreadful revenge of reality.