Think, Padre, it was near Châlons that Attila was defeated, and forced to fly from France for ever! I ought to say, Attila the first, since the self-named Attila II hasn't yet been beaten back beyond the Rhine.
We—you, and Brian and I—used to have excited arguments about reincarnation. You know now which of us was right! But I cling to the theory of the spiral, in evolution of the soul—the soul of a man or the soul of the world. It satisfies my sense of justice and my reason both, to believe that we must progress, being made for progression; but that we evolve upward slowly, with a spiral motion which brings us at certain periods, as we rise, directly above the last earth-phase in our evolution. If it's true, here, after nearly thirteen centuries, are the Huns overrunning Europe once more. Learned Huns, scientific Huns, but always Huns, repeating history on a higher scale, barbarously bent on pulling down the liberty of the world by the power of brute force. Again they're destined to be conquered as before, at a far bigger price. What will the next turn of their spiral bring, I wonder? A vast battle of intellect, perhaps, when wars of blood have been forgotten. And I wonder, too, where has Attila been, since he was beaten in this Champagne country of the Marne, and died two years later at his wedding-feast in Hungary!
Did he appear in our world again, in the form of some great, cruel general or king, or did his soul rest until it was reincarnated in the form that claims his name to-day?
I could scarcely concentrate upon Châlons, though it's a noble town, crowded with grand old buildings. My mind was busily travelling back, back into history, as Peter Ibbetson travelled in his prison-dreams. It didn't stop on its way to see the city capitulate to the Allies in 1814, just one hundred years before the great new meaning came into that word "allies." I ran past the brave fifteenth-century days, when the English used to attack Châlons-sur-Marne, hoping to keep their hold on France. I didn't even pause for Saint-Bernard, preaching the Crusade in the gorgeous presence of Louis VII and his knights. It was Attila who lured me down, down into his century, buried deep under the sands of Time. I heard the ring of George Meredith's words: "Attila, my Attila!" But I saw the wild warrior Attila, fighting in Champagne, not the dead man adjured by Ildico, his bride. I saw him "short, swarthy, broad-chested," in his crude armour, his large head, "early gray," lifted like a wolf's at bay. I saw his fierce, ugly face with its snub nose and little, deep-set eyes, flushed in the fury of defeat as he ordered the famous screen of chariots to be piled up between him and the Romano-Gauls. I saw him and his men profiting by the strange barrier, and the enemy's exhaustion, to escape beyond the Rhine, with eyes yearning toward the country they were to see no more.
History calls that battle "one of the decisive battles of the world," yet it lasted only a day, and engaged from a hundred and seventy-four thousand to three hundred thousand men. Oh, the spiral of battles has climbed high since then!
I think I should have had a presentiment of the war if I'd lived at Châlons, proud city of twenty-two bridges and the Canal Rhine-Marne. The water on stormy days must have whispered, "They are coming. Take care!"
At Vitry-le-François there is also that same sinister canal which leads from the Marne to the Rhine, the Rhine to the Marne. The name has a wicked sound in these days—Rhine-Marne; and at Vitry-le-François of all places. The men from over the Rhine destroyed as much as they had time to destroy of the charming old town planned by Francis I, and named for him. All the villages round about the new Huns broke to pieces, like the toy towns of children: Revigny, sprayed from hand pumps with petrol, and burnt to the ground: Sermaize-les-Bains, loved by Romans and Saracens, obliterated; women drowned in the river by laughing German soldiers, deep down under yellow water-lilies, which mark their resting place to-day: everywhere, through the fields and forests, low wooden crosses in the midst of little votive gardens, telling their silent tale.
Ah, but it is good that Mother Beckett saw Château-Thierry first, or she might have covered her eyes and begged to go back to Paris! Here all speaks of death and desolation, save the busy little hut-villages of the Quakers. The "Friends" quietly began their labour of love before the Battle of the Marne was ended, and they're "carrying on" still. The French translate them affectionately into "les Amis."
It was at Bar-le-Duc that I met disaster face to face in so strange a way that it needs a whole letter to tell you what happened.