The frontier does not run between states but between stratified layers.
The Jew did not appear beside the Canaanite but on top of the Canaanite; the Greek not beside the Jew but on top of the Jew; the Moslem not beside the Christian but on top of the Christian.

It is not merely a house divided against itself, but one divided across itself.
It is a house in which the first floor is fighting the second floor, in which the basement is oppressed from above and attics are besieged from below.

There is a great deal of gunpowder in the cellars; and people are by no means comfortable even on the roof.
In days of what some call Bolshevism, it may be said that most states are houses in which the kitchen has declared war on the drawing-room.
But this will give no notion of the toppling pagoda of political and religious and racial differences, of which the name is Palestine.
To explain that it is necessary to give the traveller's first impressions more particularly in their order, and before I return to this view of the society as stratified, I must state the problem more practically as it presents itself while the society still seems fragmentary.
We are always told that the Turk kept the peace between the Christian sects.

It would be nearer the nerve of vital truth to say that he made the war between the Christian sects.
But it would be nearer still to say that the war is something not made by Turks but made up by infidels.

The tourist visiting the churches is often incredulous about the tall tales told about them; but he is completely credulous about the tallest of all the tales, the tale that is told against them.