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 will generally be found that there is something more clear and rational about the terms of theology than those of politics and popular science.

A man has at least a more logical notion of what he means when he calls himself an Anglo-Catholic than when he calls himself an Anglo-Saxon.