They would be far less ritualistic than we are, if they cared as little for the Mass as we do for the Mace.  Hence it is necessary for us to realise that these rude and simple worshippers, of all the different forms of worship, really would be bewildered by the ritual dances and elaborate ceremonial antics of John Bull, as by the superstitious forms and almost supernatural incantations of most of what we call plain English.

Now I take it we retain enough realism and common sense not to wish to transfer these complicated conventions and compromises to a land of such ruthless logic and such rending divisions.  We may hope to reproduce our laws, we do not want to reproduce our legal fictions.  We do not want to insist on everybody referring to Mr. Peter or Mr. Paul, as the honourable member for Waddy Walleh; because a retiring Parliamentarian has to become Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds, we shall not insist on a retiring Palestinian official becoming Steward of the Moabitic Hundreds.  But yet in much more subtle and more dangerous ways we are making that very mistake.  We are transferring the fictions and even the hypocrisies of our own insular institutions from a place where they can be tolerated to a place where they will be torn in pieces.  I have confined myself hitherto to descriptions and not to criticisms, to stating the elements of the problem rather than attempting as yet to solve it; because I think the danger is rather that we shall underrate the difficulties than overdo the description; that we shall too easily deny the problem rather than that we shall too severely criticise the solution.  But I would conclude this chapter with one practical criticism which seems to me to follow directly from all that is said here of our legal fictions and local anomalies.  One thing at least has been done by our own Government, which is entirely according to the ritual or routine of our own Parliament.  It is a parliament of Pooh Bah, where anybody may be Lord High Everything Else.  It is a parliament of Alice in Wonderland, where the name of a thing is different from what it is called, and even from what its name is called.  It is death and destruction to send out these fictions into a foreign daylight, where they will be seen as things and not theories.  And knowing all this, I cannot conceive the reason, or even the meaning, of sending out Sir Herbert Samuel as the British representative in Palestine.

I have heard it supported as an interesting experiment in Zionism.  I have heard it denounced as a craven concession to Zionism.  I think it is quite obviously a flat and violent contradiction to Zionism.  Zionism, as I have always understood it, and indeed as I have always defended it, consists in maintaining that it would be better for all parties if Israel had the dignity and distinctive responsibility of a separate nation; and that this should be effected, if possible, or so far as possible, by giving the Jews a national home, preferably in Palestine.