But my sympathies are generally, I confess, with the impotent and even invisible majority.

And my sympathies, when I go beyond the things I myself believe, are with all the poor Jews who do believe in Judaism and all the Mahometans who do believe in Mahometanism, not to mention so obscure a crowd as the Christians who do believe in Christianity.

I feel I have more morally and even intellectually in common with these people, and even the religions of these people, than with the supercilious negations that make up the most part of what is called enlightenment.
It is these masses whom we ought to consider everywhere; but it is especially these masses whom we must consider in Jerusalem.
And the reason is in the reality I have described; that the place is like a Greek city or a medieval parish; it is sufficiently small and simple to be a democracy.

This is not a university town full of philosophies; it is a Zion of the hundred sieges raging with religions; not a place where resolutions can be voted and amended, but a place where men can be crowned and crucified.
There is one small thing neglected in all our talk about self-determination; and that is determination.
There is a great deal more difference than there is between most motions and amendments between the things for which a democracy will vote and the things on which a democracy is determined.
You can take a vote among Jews and Christians and Moslems about whether lamp-posts should be painted green or portraits of politicians painted at all, and even their solid unanimity may be solid indifference.
Most of what is called self-determination is like that; but there is no self-determination about it.

The people are not determined.
You cannot take a vote when the people are determined.
You accept a vote, or something very much more obvious than a vote.
Now it may be that in Jerusalem there is not one people but rather three or four; but each is a real people, having its public opinion, its public policy, its flag and almost, as I have said, its frontier.
It is not a question of persuading weak and wavering voters, at a vague parliamentary election, to vote on the other side for a change, to choose afresh between two middle-class gentlemen, who look exactly alike and only differ on a question about which nobody knows or cares anything.
It is a question of contrasts that will almost certainly remain contrasts, except under the flood of some spiritual conversion which cannot be foreseen and certainly cannot be enforced.