their bronze, the arms of Caesar. Here the river was forded; here the
little men of the South went up in formation; here the Barbarian broke
and took his way, as the opposing General has recorded, through devious
woodland paths, scattering in the pursuit; here began the great history
of England.

Is it not an enormous business merely to stand in such a place? I think
so.

I know a field to the left of the Chalons Road, some few miles before
you get to Ste. Menehould. There used to be an inn by the roadside
called "The Sign of the Moon." It has disappeared. There used to be a
ramshackle windmill beyond the field, a mile or so from the road, on an
upland swell of land, but that also has gone, and had been gone for some
time before I knew the field of which I write. It is a bare fold of land
with one or two little scrubby spinneys alongside the plough. And for
the rest, just the brown earth and the sky. There are days on which you
will see a man at work somewhere within that mile, others on which it is
completely deserted. Here it is that the French Revolution was
preserved. Here was the Prussian charge. On the deserted, ugly lump of
empty earth beyond you were the three batteries that checked the
invaders. It was all alive and crowded for one intense moment with the
fate of Christendom. Here, on the place in which you are standing and
gazing, young Goethe stood and gazed. That meaningless stretch of coarse
grass supported Brunswick and the King of Prussia, and the brothers of
the King of France, as they stood windswept in the rain, watching the
failure of the charge. It is the field of Valmy. Turn on that height and
look back westward and you see the plains rolling out infinitely; they
are the plains upon which Attila was crushed; but there is no one there.