Isabel is ruthless, she is unafraid: she is certain. Such feeble virtues as tolerance, freedom, joy of life--Spain was celebrated for them beyond all Europe--must be given up. Shall Isabel spare her land, when she has not spared herself? She was young and tender. She has known what it is to lie in a man’s arms. She has been a mother. She has sacrificed love to become a captain. She has lost her children, unborn or born, because of her forced marches in the saddle. She has mortified not alone her lusts and vanities, but her gentleness and sweetness, to become this Weapon of the Lord. Let Spain do as much. Let there be laws against the wearing of gold braid: against display of luxuriance and ease. Let there be laws against the idleness of doubt, against the vice of willful search of truth. (Rome has the truth!) Let there be laws against any wavering whatsoever from the pure unity of Spain. And what element offends against this white simplicity, let it be cut away--though the land bleed. Above all let there be no peace. Isabel’s art reaches its ironic climax. Spain’s hunger for unity was the hunger for peace. Disunion and multiplicity had made perpetual war. Now unity was achieved, the Spanish rhythm--which was war--went on. The new ideal nourished the old mode. Spain is the apostle of Christ. Spain has become a state to establish Christ on earth. Let Spain not rest. Christ brings not peace, but a sword. * * * * * The vision, a theodicy: the form, the Church of Rome: the dynamic means, a State. In the impossible marriage of these three elements lies the tragedy of Spain. For seven centuries Christians have fought Moslems. Their motive was conquest of power. But their pretext became the Cross. The opposing Crescent determined this. The Cross grew, because of the faith of the Moor. Very early the Christians found it well in their raids against the Mussulman, to enlist the Presence of the Church. The priest became an auxiliary soldier: he brought the poetry and spirit of a religious slogan to enhance the fleeting motive of the Raid. And now at last the slogan has come true! Saint Ferdinand took Seville because he wanted more land. But Isabel sends ships to the Indies because she wants more Christians. A millennium of brutish restlessness has mothered this religious restlessness of Spain which would embroil the world till all the world be Christian. Ages after the Crusades of France and England, ages after the decadence of the Arab, the troops of Isabel become crusaders.