be avenged.




The Roman Roads in Picardy


If a man were asked where he would find upon the map the sharpest
impress of Rome and of the memories of Rome, and where he would most
easily discover in a few days on foot the foundations upon which our
civilization still rests, he might, in proportion to his knowledge of
history and of Europe, be puzzled to reply. He might say that a week
along the wall from Tyne to Solway would be the answer; or a week in the
great Roman cities of Provence with their triumphal arches and their
vast arenas and their Roman stone cropping out everywhere: in old quays,
in ruined bridges, in the very pavement of the streets they use to-day,
and in the columns of their living churches.

Now I was surprised to find myself after many years of dabbling in such
things, furnishing myself the answer in quite a different place. It was
in Picardy during the late manoeuvres of the French Army that, in the
intervals of watching those great buzzing flies, the aeroplanes, and in
the intervals of long tramps after the regiments or of watching the
massed guns, the necessity for perpetually consulting the map brought
home to me for the first time this truth--that Picardy is the
province--or to be more accurate, Picardy with its marches in the Ile de
France, the edge of Normandy and the edge of Flanders--which retains
to-day the most vivid impress of Rome. For though the great buildings
are lacking, and the Roman work, which must here have been mainly of