BELLOC-HILLS AND THE SEA - THE ONION-EATER
In Calais harbour, it being still very early in the morning, about
half-past five, I peered out to see how things were looking, for if that
coast corresponded at all to ours, the tide should be making westerly by
six o'clock that day--the ebb tide--and it was on the first of that tide
that I should make the passage to England, for at sea you never can
tell. At sea you never can tell, and you must take every inch the gods
allow you. You will need that and more very often before evening. Now,
as I put my head out I saw that I could not yet start, for there was a
thick white mist over everything, so that I could not even see the
bowsprit of my own boat. Everything was damp: the decks smelt of fog,
and from the shore came sounds whose cause I could not see. Looking over
the iron bulwarks of the big English cargo ship, alongside of which I
was moored, was a man with his head upon his folded arms. He told me
that he thought the fog would lift; and so I waited, seeking no more
sleep, but sitting up there in the drifting fog, and taking pleasure in
a bugle call which the French call "La Diane," and which they play to
wake the soldiers. But in summer it wakes nobody, for all the world is
waking long before.
Towards six the mist blew clean away before a little air from the
north-east; it had come sharp over those miles and miles of sand dunes
and flats which stretched away from Gris-nez on to Denmark. From
Gris-nez all the way to the Sound there is no other hill; but coarse
grass, wind-swept and flying sand. Finding this wind, I very quickly set
sail, and as I did not know the harbour I let down the peak of the
mainsail that she might sail slowly, and crept along close to the
eastern pier, for fear that when I got to the open work the westerly
tide should drive me against the western pier; but there was no need for
all this caution, since the tide was not yet making strongly. Yet was I
wise to beware, for if you give the strange gods of the sea one little
chance they will take a hundred, and drown you for their pleasure. And
sailing, if you sail in all weathers, is a perpetual game of skill
against them, the heartiest and most hazardous game in the world.
So then, when I had got well outside, I found what is called "a lump."
The sea was jumbling up and down irregularly, as though great animals
had just stopped fighting there. But whatever was the cause of it, this
lump made it difficult to manage the boat I was in, for the air was
still light and somewhat unsteady; sometimes within a point of north,
and then again dropping and rising free within a point of east: on the
whole, north-east. To windward the sea was very clear, but down towards
the land there was a haze, and when I got to the black buoy which is
three miles from Calais, and marks the place where you should turn to go
into the harbour, I could barely see the high land glooming through the
weather, and Calais belfry and lighthouse tower I could not see at all.
I looked at my watch and saw it was seven, and immediately afterwards
the wind became steady and true, and somewhat stronger, and work began.
She would point very nearly north, and so I laid her for that course,
though that would have taken me right outside the Goodwins, for I knew
that the tide was making westerly down the Channel, ebbing away faster
and faster, and that, like a man crossing a rapid river in a ferry-boat,
I had to point up far above where I wanted to land, which was at Dover,
the nearest harbour. I sailed her, therefore, I say, as close as she
would lie, and the wind rose.
The wind rose, and for half an hour I kept her to it. She had no more
sail than she needed; she heeled beautifully and strongly to the wind;
she took the seas, as they ran more regular, with a motion of mastery.
It was like the gesture of a horse when he bends his head back to his
chest, arching his neck with pride as he springs upon our Downs at
morning. So set had the surging of the sea become that she rose and fell
to it with rhythm, and the helm could be kept quite steady, and the
regular splash of the rising bows and the little wisps of foam came in
ceaseless exactitude like the marching of men, and in all this one mixed
with the life of the sea.
But before it was eight o'clock (and I had eaten nothing) the wind got
stronger still, and I was anxious and gazed continuously into it, up to
windward, seeing the white caps beginning on the tops of the seas,
although the wind and tide were together. She heeled also much more, and
my anxiety hardened with the wind, for the wind had strengthened by
about half-past eight, so that it was very strong indeed, and she was
plainly over-canvased, her lee rail under all the time and all the
cordage humming; there it stood, and by the grace and mercy of God the
wind increased no more, for its caprice might have been very different.
Then began that excellent game which it is so hard to play, but so good
to remember, and in which all men, whether they admit it or not, are
full of fear, but it is a fear so steeped in exhilaration that one would
think the personal spirit of the sea was mingled with the noise of the
air.
For a whole great hour she roared and lifted through it still, taking
the larger seas grandly, with disdain, as she had taken the smaller, and
still over the buried lee rail the stream of the sea went by rejoicing
and pouring, and the sheets and the weather runner trembled with the
vigour of the charge, and on she went, and on. I was weary of the seas
ahead (for each and individually they struck my soul as they came, even
more strongly than they struck the bows--steep, curling, unintermittent,
rank upon rank upon rank, as innumerable cavalry); still watching them,
I say, I groped round with my hand behind the cabin door and pulled out
brandy and bread, and drank brandy and ate bread, still watching the
seas. And, as men are proud of their companions in danger, so I was
proud to see the admirable lift and swing of that good boat, and to note
how, if she slowed for a moment under the pounding, she recovered with
a stride, rejoicing; and as for my fears, which were now fixed and
considerable, I found this argument against them: that, though I could
see nothing round me but the sea, yet soon I should be under the lee of
the Goodwins, for, though I could not exactly calculate my speed, and
though in the haze beyond nothing appeared, it was certain that I was
roaring very quickly towards the further shore.
When, later, the sea grew confused and full of swirls and boiling, I
said to myself: "This must be the tail of the Goodwins." But it was,
not. For, though I did not know it, the ebb of the great spring tide had
carried me right away down Channel, and there was not twelve feet of
water under the keel, for the seething of the sea that I noticed came
from the Varne--the Varne, that curious, long, steep hill, with its twin
ridge close by, the Colbert; they stand right up in the Channel between
France and England; they very nearly lift their heads above the waves. I
passed over the crest of them, unknowing, into the deep beyond, and
still the ship raced on. Then, somewhat suddenly, so suddenly that I
gave a cry, I saw right up above me, through what was now a thick haze,
the cliffs of England, perhaps two miles away, and showing very faintly
indeed, a bare outline upon the white weather. A thought ran into my
mind with violence, how, one behind the other, beyond known things,
beyond history, the men from whom I came had greeted this sight after
winds like these and danger and the crossing of the narrow seas. I
looked at my watch; it was ten o'clock, so that this crossing had taken
three hours, and to see the land again like that was better than any
harbour, and I knew that all those hours my mind had been at strain. I
looked again at the vague cliffs narrowly, thinking them the South
Foreland, but as they cleared I saw to my astonishment that I had blown
all down the Straits, and that Folkestone and the last walls of the
chalk were before me.'
The wind dropped; the sea went on uneasily, tumbling and rolling, but
within a very little while--before eleven, I think--there was no breeze
at all; and there I lay, with Folkestone harbour not a mile away, but
never any chance of getting there; and I whistled, but no wind came. I
sat idle and admired the loneliness of the sea. Till, towards one, a
little draught of air blew slantwise from the land, and under it I crept
to the smooth water within the stone arm of the breakwater, and here I
let the anchor go, and settling everything, I slept.
It is pleasant to remember these things.
There is in that part of England which is very properly called her Eden
(that centre of all good things and home of happy men, the county of
Sussex), there is, I say, in that exalted county a valley which I shall
praise for your greater pleasure, because I know that it is too
jealously guarded for any run of strangers to make it common, and
because I am very sure that you may go and only make it the more
delightful by your presence. It is the valley of the River Rother; the
sacred and fruitful river between the downs and the weald.
Now, here many travelling men, bicyclists even and some who visit for a
livelihood, will think I mean the famous River Rother that almost
reaches the sea. The Rother into which the foreigners sailed for so many
hundred years, the River of the Marshes, the river on which stands Rye;
the easy Rother along whose deep meadows are the sloping kilns, the
bright-tilted towns and the steep roads; the red Rother that is fed by
streams from the ironstone. This Rother also all good men know and love,
both those that come in for pleasure, strangers of Kent, and those that
have a distant birthright in East Sussex, being born beyond Ouse in the
Rape of Bramber.
But it is not this Rother that I am telling of, though I would love to
tell of it also--as indeed I would love to tell at length of all the
rivers of Sussex--the Brede, the Ouse, the Adur, the Cuckmere; all the
streams that cut the chalk hills. But for this I have no space and you
no patience. Neither can I tell you of a thousand adventures and
wonderful hazards along the hills and valley of this eastern Rother; of
how I once through a telescope on Brightling Hill saw the meet at
Battle, and of how it looked quite near; of how I leapt the River Rother
once, landing on the far side safely (which argues the river narrow or
the leap tremendous); of how I poached in the wood of a friend who is
still my friend; of how I rode a horse into Robertsbridge; of the inn.
All these things could I tell with growing fervour, and to all these
would you listen with an increasing delight. But I must write of the
River Rother under Petworth, the other Rother in the West. Why? Because
I started out so to do, and no man should let himself be led away by a
word, or by any such little thing.
Let me therefore have done with this eastern river, far away from my
home, a river at the end of long journeys, and speak of that other noble
Rother, the Rother of quiet men, the valley that is like a shrine in
England.
Many famous towns and villages stand in the valley of this river and
even (some of them) upon its very banks. Thus there are the three
principal towns of this part, Midhurst and Petworth and Pulborough: but
these have been dealt with and written of in so many great books and by
such a swarm of new men that I have no business further to describe
their merits and antiquity. But this I will add to all that is known of
them. Midhurst takes its name from standing in the middle, for it is
half-way between the open downs and the thick woods on the borders of
Surrey. Petworth has a steeple that slopes to one side; not so much as
Chesterfield, but somewhat more than most steeples. Pulborough stands
upon a hill, and is famous for its corn-market, to which people come
from far and near, from as far off as Burpham or as close by as Bury.
All these noble towns have (as I said before) been written of in books,
only no book that I know puts them all together and calls them "the
Valley of the Rother." That is the title that such a book should have if
it is to treat of the heart of West Sussex, and I make no doubt that
such a book would be read lovingly by many men.
For the Valley of the Rother breeds men and is the cause of many
delightful villages, all the homes of men. I know that Cobden was born
there, the last of the yeomen: I hope that Cobbett lived here too.
Manning was here in his short married life; he lived at Barlton (which
foolish men call Barlavington), under the old Downs, where the steep
woods make a hollow. In this valley also are Fittleworth (the only place
in England that rhymes with Little Worth); Duncton, about which there is
nothing to be said; Burton, which is very old and has its church right
in the grounds of the house; Westburton, where the racehorses were;
Graffham, Bignor, Sutton, and I know not how many delightful hamlets.
In the Valley of the River Rother no hurried men ever come, for it leads
nowhere. They cross it now and then, and they forget it; but who, unless
he be a son or a lover, has really known that plain? It leads nowhere:
to the no man's land, the broken country by Liss. It has in it no
curious sight, but only beauty. The rich men in it (and thank Heaven
they are few) are of a reticent and homing kind, or (when the worst
comes to the worst) they have estates elsewhere, and go north for their
pleasure.
Foxes are hunted in the Valley of the Rother, but there are not very
many. Pheasants and partridges are shot, but I never heard of great
bags; one animal indeed there is in profusion. The rabbit swarms and
exults in this life of Southern England. Do you stalk him? He sits and
watches you. Do you hunt him with dogs? He thinks it a vast bother about
a very little matter. Do you ferret him? He dies, and rejoices to know
that so many more will take his place. The rabbit is the sacred emblem
of my river, and when we have a symbol, he shall be our symbol. He loves
men and eats the things they plant, especially the tender shoots of
young trees, wheat, and the choice roots in gardens. He only remains,
and is happy all his little life in the valley from which we depart when
our boyhood ends.
The Valley of the Rother is made of many parts. There is the chalk of
the Southern Down-land, the belt of the loam beneath it; then the
curious country of sand, full of dells and dark with pine woods; then
the luxurious meadows, which are open and full of cattle, colts, and
even sheep; then the woods. It is, in a few miles, a little England.
There are also large heaths--larger, you would think, than such a corner
of the earth could contain; old elms and oaks; many wide parks; fish
ponds; one trout stream and half a score of mills. There are men of many
characters, but all happy, honest, good, witty, and hale. And when I
have said all I could say of this delightful place (which indeed I think
is set apart for the reward of virtue) I should not have given you a
tithe of its prosperity and peace and beneficence. There is the picture
of the Valley of the River Rother. It flows in a short and happy murmur
from the confined hills by Hindhead to the Arun itself; but of the Arun
no one could write with any justice except at the expense of far more
space and time than I have given me.
If ever again we have a religion in the South Country, we will have a
temple to my darling valley. It shall be round, with columns and a wall,
and there I will hang a wreath in thanksgiving for having known the
river.
My companion said to me that there was a doom over the day and the reign
and the times, and that the turn of the nation had come. He felt it in
the sky.
The day had been troubled: from the forest ridge to the sea there was
neither wind nor sun, but a dull, even heat oppressed the fields and the
high downs under the uncertain, half-luminous confusion of grey clouds.
It was as though a relief was being denied, and as though something
inexorable had come into that air which is normally the softest and most
tender in the world. The hours of the low tide were too silent. The
little inland river was quite dead, the reeds beside it dry and
motionless; even in the trees about it no leaves stirred.
In the late afternoon, as the heat grew more masterful, a slight wind
came out of the east. It was so faint and doubtful in quantity that one
could not be certain, as one stood on the deserted shore, whether it
blew from just off the land or from the sullen level of the sea. It
followed along the line of the coast without refreshment and without
vigour, even hotter than had been the still air out of which it was
engendered. It did not do more than ruffle here and there the uneasy
surface of our sea; that surface moved a little, but with a motion
borrowed from nothing so living or so natural as the wind. It was a dull
memory of past storms, or perhaps that mysterious heaving from the lower
sands which sailors know, but which no silence has yet explained.
In such an influence of expectation and of presage--an influence having
in it that quality which seemed to the ancients only Fate, but to us
moderns a something evil--in the strained attention for necessary and
immovable things that cannot hear and cannot pity--the hour came for me
to reascend the valley to my home. Already upon the far and confused
horizon two or three motionless sails that had been invisible began to
show white against a rising cloud. This cloud had not the definition of
sudden conquering storms, proper to the summer, and leaving a blessing
behind their fury. The edge of it against the misty and brooding sky had
all the vagueness of smoke, and as it rose up out of the sea its growth
was so methodical and regular as to disconnect it wholly in one's mind
from the little fainting breeze that still blew, from rain, or from any
daily thing. It advanced with the fall of the evening till it held half
the sky. There it seemed halted for a while, and lent by contrast an
unnatural brightness to the parched hills beneath it; for now the sun
having set, we had come north of the gap, and were looking southward
upon that spectacle as upon the climax of a tragedy. But there was
nothing of movement or of sound. No lightning, no thunder; and soon the
hot breath of the afternoon had itself disappeared before the advance of
this silent pall. The night of June to the north was brighter than
twilight, and still southward, a deliberate spectacle, stood this great
range of vague and menacing cloud, shutting off the sky and towering
above the downs, so that it seemed permissible to ascribe to those
protecting gods of our valley a burden of fear.
Just when all that scene had been arranged to an adjustment that no art
could have attained, the first great fire blazed out miles and miles to
the west, somewhere above Midhurst: I think near No Man's Land. Then we
saw, miles to the east again, a glare over Mount Harry, the signal of
Lewes, and one after another all the heights took it up in a
chain--above Bramber, above Poynings, above Wiston, on Amberley Mount (I
think), certainly on the noble sweep of Bury. Even in those greater
distances which the horizon concealed they were burning and answering
each other into Hampshire: perhaps on the beaten grass of the high forts
above Portsmouth, and to the left away to the flat Rye level, and to
the eastern Rother; for we saw the line of red angry upon that cloud
which had come to receive it, an endless line which suddenly called up
what one had heard old men say of the prairie fires.
It was easy, without covering the face and without abstracting the mind
from the whirl of modern circumstance, it was easy, merely looking at
the thing, to be seized with an impression of disaster. The stars were
so pale on the lingering white light of the pure north, the smoky cloud
so deep and heavy and steadfast and low above the hills, the fire so
near to it, so sharp against it, and so huge, that the awe and sinister
meaning of conflagrations dominated the impression of all the scene.
There arose in the mind that memory which associates such a glare and
the rising and falling fury of flames with sacrifice or with vengeance,
or with the warning of an enemy's approach, or with the mark of his
conquest; for with such things our race (for how many thousand years!)
has watched the fires upon the hills far off. It touched one as does the
reiterated note of a chaunt; if not with an impression of doom, at least
with that of calamity.
When the fires had died down to a sullen glow, and the men watching them
had gone home under the weight of what they had seen, the storm broke
and occupied the whole sky. A very low wind rose and a furious rain
fell. It became suddenly cold; there was thunder all over the weald, and
the lightning along the unseen crest of the downs answered the lightning
above the forest.
I lay once alone upon the crest of a range whose name I have never seen
spelt, but which is pronounced "Haueedja," from whence a man can see
right away for ever the expanse of the Sahara.
It is well known that Mount Atlas and those inhabited lands where there
is a sufficient rainfall and every evidence of man's activity, the
Province of Africa, the plateaux which are full of the memories of Rome,
end abruptly towards the sun, and are bounded by a sort of cliff which
falls sheer upon the desert. On the summit of this cliff I lay and
looked down upon the sand. It was impressed upon my mind that here was
an influence quite peculiar, not to be discovered in any other climate
of the world; that all Europe received that influence, and yet that no
one in Europe had accepted it save for his hurt.
God forbid that any man should pretend that the material environment of
mankind determines the destiny of mankind. Those who say such things
have abandoned the domain of intelligence. But it is true that the soul
eagerly seeks for and receives the impressions of the world about it,
and will be moved to a different creed or to a different poetry,
according as the body perceives the sea or the hills or the rainless and
inhuman places which lie to the south of Europe; and certainly the souls
of those races which have inhabited the great zone of calms between the
trade winds and the tropics, those races which have felt nothing
beneficent, but only something awful and unfamiliar in the earth and
sky, have produced a peculiar philosophy.
It is to be remarked that this philosophy is not atheist; those races
called Semitic have never denied either the presence or the personality
of God. It is, on the contrary, their boast that they have felt His
presence, His unity, and His personality in a manner more pointed than
have the rest of mankind; and those of us who pretend to find in the
Desert a mere negation, are checked by the thought that within the
Desert the most positive of religions have appeared. Indeed, to deny God
has been the sad privilege of very few in any society of men; and those
few, if it be examined, have invariably been men in whom the power to
experience was deadened, usually by luxury, sometimes by distress.
It is not atheist; but whatever it is, it is hurtful, and has about it
something of the despair and strength of atheism. Consider the Book of
Job; consider the Arab Mohammedan; consider the fierce heresies which
besieged the last of the Romans in this Province of Africa, and which
tortured the short history of the Vandals; consider the modern tragedies
which develop among the French soldiers to the north and to the south of
this wide belt of sand; and you will see that the thing which the Sahara
and its prolongation produce is something evil, or at least to us evil.
There is in the idea running through the mind of the Desert an intensity
which may be of some value to us if it be diluted by a large admixture
of European tradition, or if it be mellowed and transformed by a long
process of time, but which, if we take it at its source and inspire
ourselves directly from it, warps and does hurt to our European sense.
It may be taken that whatever form truth takes among men will be the
more perfect in proportion as the men who receive that form are more
fully men. The whole of truth can never be comprehended by anything
finite; and truth as it appears to this species or to that is most true
when the type which receives it is the healthiest and the most normal of
its own kind. The truth as it is to men is most true when the men who
receive it are the healthiest and the most normal of men. We in Europe
are the healthiest and most normal of our kind. It is to us that the
world must look for its headship; we have the harbours, the continual
presence of the sea through all our polities; we have that high
differentiation between the various parts of our unity which makes the
whole of Europe so marvellous an organism; we alone change without
suffering decay. To the truth as Europe accepts it I cannot but bow
down; for if that is not the truth, then the truth is not to be found
upon earth. But there conies upon us perpetually that "wind of Africa";
and it disturbs us. As I lay that day, a year ago, upon the crest of the
mountain, my whole mind was possessed with the influence of such a gale.
Day after day, after day, the silent men of the Desert go forward across
its monotonous horizons; their mouths are flanked with those two deep
lines of patience and of sorrow which you may note to-day in all the
ghettoes of Europe; their smile, when they smile, is restrained by a
sort of ironic strength in the muscles of the face. Their eyes are more
bright than should be eyes of happy men; they are, as it were, inured to
sterility; there is nothing in them of that repose which we Westerners
acquire from a continual contemplation of deep pastures and of
innumerable leaves; they are at war, not only among themselves, but
against the good earth; in a silent and powerful way they are also
afraid.
You may note that their morals are an angry series of unexplained
commands, and that their worship does not include that fringe of
half-reasonable, wholly pleasant things which the true worship of a true
God must surely contain. All is as clear-cut as their rocks, and as
unfruitful as their dry valleys, and as dreadful as their brazen sky;
"thou shalt not" this, that, and the other. Their God is jealous; he is
vengeful; he is (awfully present and real to them!) a vision of that
demon of which we in our happier countries make a quaint legend. He
catches men out and trips them up; he has but little relation to the
Father of Christian men, who made the downs of South England and the
high clouds above them.
The good uses of the world are forgotten in the Desert, or fiercely
denied. Love is impure; so are birth, and death, and eating, and every
other necessary part in the life of a man. And yet, though all these
things are impure, there is no lustration. We also feel in a genial
manner that this merry body of ours requires apology; but those others
to south of us have no toleration in their attitude; they are awfully
afraid.
I have continually considered, as I have read my history, the special
points in which their influence is to be observed in the development of
Europe. It takes the form of the great heresies; the denial of the
importance of matter (sometimes of its existence); the denial that
anything but matter exists; the denial of the family; the denial of
ownership; the over-simplicity which is peculiarly a Desert product runs
through all such follies, as does the rejection of a central and
governing power upon earth, which is again just such a rebellion as the
Desert would bring. I say the great heresies are the main signs of that
influence; but it is in small and particular matters that you may see
its effect most clearly.
For instance, the men of the Desert are afraid of wine. They have good
reason; if you drink wine in the Desert you die. In the Desert, a man
can drink only water; and, when he gets it, it is like diamonds to him,
or, better still, it is like rejuvenation. All our long European legends
which denounce and bring a curse upon the men who are the enemies of
wine, are legends inspired by our hatred of the thing which is not
Europe, and that bounds Europe, and is the enemy of Europe.
So also with their attachment to numbers. For instance, the seventh day
must have about it something awful and oppressive; the fast must be
seven times seven days, and so forth. We Europeans have always smiled in
our hearts at these things. We would take this day or that, and make up
a scheme of great and natural complexity, full of interlacing seasons;
and nearly all our special days were days of rejoicing. We carried
images about our fields further to develop and enhance the nature of our
religion; we dedicated trees and caves; and the feasts of one place were
not the feasts of another. But to the men of the Desert mere unfruitful
number was a god.
Then again, the word, especially the written word, the document,
overshadows their mind. It has always had for them a power of something
mysterious. To engrave characters was to cast a spell; and when they
seek for some infallible authority upon earth, they can only discover it
in the written characters traced in a sacred book. All their expression
of worship is wrought through symbols. With us, the symbol is clearly
retained separate from that for which it stands, though hallowed by that
for which it stands. With them the symbol is the whole object of
affection.
On this account you will find in the men of the Desert a curious panic
in the presence of statues, which is even more severe than the panic
they suffer in the presence of wine. It is as though they said to
themselves: "Take this away; if you leave it here I shall worship it."
They are subject to possession.
Side by side with this fear of the graphic representation of men or of
animals, you will find in them an incapacity to represent them well. The
art of the iconoclasts is either childish, weak, or, at its strongest,
evil.
And especially among all these symptoms of the philosophy from which
they suffer is their manner of comprehending the nature of creation. Of
creation in any form they are afraid; and the infinite Creator is on
that account present to them almost as though He were a man, for when we
are afraid of things we see them very vividly indeed. On this account
you will find in the legends of the men of the Desert all manner of
fantastic tales incomprehensible to us Europeans, wherein God walks,
talks, eats, and wrestles. Nor is there any trace in this attitude of
theirs of parable or of allegory. That mixture of the truth, and of a
subtle unreal glamour which expands and confirms the truth, is a mixture
proper to our hazy landscapes, to our drowsy woods, and to our large
vision. We, who so often see from our high village squares soft and
distant horizons, mountains now near, now very far, according as the
weather changes: we, who are perpetually feeling the transformation of
the seasons, and who are immersed in a very ocean of manifold and
mysterious life, we need, create, and live by legends. The line between
the real and imaginary is vague and penumbral to us. We are justly
influenced by our twilights, and our imagination teaches us. How many
deities have we not summoned up to inhabit groves and lakes--special
deities who are never seen, but yet have never died?
To the men of the Desert, doubt and beauty mingled in this fashion
seemed meaningless. That which they worship they see and almost handle.
In the dreadful silence which surrounds them, their illusions turn into
convictions--the haunting voices are heard; the forms are seen.
Of two further things, native to us, their starved experience has no
hold; of nationality (or if the term be preferred, of "The City") and of
what we have come to call "chivalry." The two are but aspects of one
thing without a name; but that thing all Europeans possess, nor is it
possible for us to conceive of a patriotism unless it is a patriotism
which is chivalric. In our earliest stories, we honour men fighting
odds. Our epics are of small numbers against great; humility and charity
are in them, lending a kind of magic strength to the sword. The Faith
did not bring in that spirit, but rather completed it. Our boundaries
have always been intensely sacred to us. We are not passionate to cross
them save for the sake of adventure; but we are passionate to defend
them. In all that enormous story of Rome, from the dim Etrurian origins
right up to the end of her thousand years, the Wall of the Town was more
sacred than the limits of the Empire.
The men of the Desert do not understand these things. They are by
compulsion nomad, and for ever wandering; they strike no root; their
pride is in mere expansion; they must colonise or fail; nor does any man
die for a city.
As I looked from the mountain I thought the Desert which I had come so
far to see had explained to me what hitherto I had not understood in the
mischances of Europe. I remained for a long while looking out upon the
glare.
But when I came down again, northward from the high sandstone hill, and
was in the fields again near running water, and drinking wine from a cup
carved with Roman emblems, I began to wonder whether the Desert had not
put before my mind, as they say it can do before the eye of the
traveller, a mirage. Is there such an influence? Are there such men?
BELLOC-HILLS AND THE SEA - THE ONION-EATER