or speeding over railway
lines, he cannot pass through any considerable stretch of country
without exercising his mind as to the possible advantages that might be
afforded opposing armies by this or that natural formation. It is fair
to say that this question, if we may call it such, has been uppermost in
Mr. Belloc's mind throughout every journey of an extent that he has
undertaken, whether in Southern, Western or Eastern Europe. It would be
false to imagine that the prime motive of all Mr. Belloc's journeys was
to view country purely from the military standpoint, but it is fair to
say that almost the first question Mr. Belloc asks himself when he
strikes a stretch of country with which he is unfamiliar, and the
question he repeatedly and continually asks himself as he traverses that
country, is--"How would the natural formation of this country aid or
hinder a modern army advancing or retreating through it?" That great
stretches of country, notably in France and Belgium, have been visited
by Mr. Belloc, moreover, with the definite object of viewing them from a
purely military standpoint, it is almost unnecessary to state; no reader
who will turn to the pages of _The French Revolution_ or of _Blenheim_
or _Waterloo_, can fail to realize as much for himself. Common sense,
indeed, plays a great part in Mr. Belloc's study of history. He regards
it as virtually essential that a historian who would describe the action
of a great battle of the past should be in a position faithfully to
reconstruct the conditions under which that battle was fought. Mr.
Belloc himself has settled the vexed question of why the Prussians did
not charge at Valmy by visiting the battlefield under the conditions of
the battle and discovering that they could not have charged.

Through the vast store of knowledge acquired in this way Mr. Belloc
enjoys an advantage in his treatment of the present war which cannot be
overestimated. In writing of the country in which the campaigns of
to-day are taking place he is not writing of country as he sees it on
the map. To him that country is not, as to the majority of Englishmen it
is, a conglomeration of patches, some heavily, some lightly shaded, of
larger and smaller dots, joined and intersected by an almost meaningless
maze of thin and thick lines. To him that country is hills and vales,
woods and fields, rivers and swamps, real things he has seen and among
which he has moved. As an example of this we may per