Most of our national highways start from London. There is one, a Roman road, called Watling Street, which starts from the Marble Arch and runs almost as straight as a rod from London to Chester, nearly two hundred miles; and it never changes its name after the first few miles, which are called the Edgware Road. Another, the Great North Road, runs from London to Edinburgh, and is four hundred miles long. One hundred years ago the mail coaches thundered along that road night and day, and highwaymen had their own particular pitches where no other highwaymen dreamed of butting in. Five years ago that road was a running river of touring automobiles. Now, strings of grey military motor lorries rumble up and down its entire length. Perhaps you will ride on some of them.
London, easy-going London, has her short cuts, too. That is where she differs from the methodical, rectangular, convenient cities of the United States. She is full of cunning by-ways, and every street has a character of its own. The Strand was called “The Strand” a thousand years ago, because it was a strand—a strip of beach which ran alongside the Thames at the foot of a cliff (which has long since been smoothed and sloped out of existence) and was submerged each high tide. The English fought a great battle with Danish pirates near by, and to-day the dead Danes sleep their last sleep in St. Clement Danes’ Church, right in the middle of the Strand.
Charing Cross, again, is the last of a great chain of such Crosses, stretching from London to Scotland, each a day’s march from the next. They were set up at the end of the thirteenth century by King Edward the First of England, to commemorate the last journey of his beloved Queen—his Chère Reine—who died while accompanying him upon a campaign against the Scots. At each stopping-place on his homeward journey the King erected one of these crosses to mark the spot where the Queen’s body lay that night. Many have perished, but you can still trace some of them along the Great North Road—Neville’s Cross, Waltham Cross, and finally Chère Reine Cross, or Charing Cross. That strikes the imagination. So do Aldgate, Aldersgate, Moorgate, London Wall, and other streets which go back to the days when London really was a walled city.
But a walk around London repays itself. There is Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment—the veteran among all monuments of the world, except perhaps its sister in Central Park, New York. It was in existence fifteen hundred years before Christ, in the city of Heliopolis. It looked down upon the Palace and Court of Queen Cleopatra in Alexandria. After that it lay prostrate in the sands of the Egyptian desert for another fifteen hundred years. It was finally presented to the British Government by the Khedive of Egypt. It was towed to England on a raft, and was nearly lost during a storm in the Bay of Biscay. Recently, the Zeppelins have tried dropping bombs on it, as you can see for yourself. But a mere bomb or two is nothing to a veteran with a constitution like that.
In Warwickshire, around Stratford and the Forest of Arden, you will find yourself in Shakespeare’s country. At Gerrard’s Cross William Penn is buried. In the old days a watch was kept on the grave, as certain patriotic Americans considered that the proper place for William Penn to be buried was Pennsylvania, and tried to give practical effect to this pious opinion.
Scotland, if you happen to find yourself there, is entirely different from England. England is flat or undulating, and except in the manufacturing districts, is given up mainly to cornfields and pasture land. Scotland, especially in the north, is cut up into hills and glens. Not such hills as you possess in Colorado, or Nevada, or the Northwest. There is no Pike’s Peak, no Shasta, no Rainier. The highest mountain in the British Isles—Ben Nevis—is only a little over four thousand feet high, but naturally Scotsmen think a good deal of it.
Scotland is a great battle-ground. The Scot has always been fighting some one. There was perpetual warfare upon the border from the earliest days. The Romans, who were business men, built a wall right across England from Newcastle to Carlisle, to keep the Scots out. They failed, as you will find out for yourself, when you study a list of British Cabinet Ministers; but you can see parts of the wall still. Later, there were everlasting border raids, from one side or the other, maintained as a tradition by the great families of that region—the Percys, the Douglases, the Maxwells, the Elliotts. Besides this, various English kings tried to conquer Scotland. Sometimes one side would win a battle, sometimes the other, but no victory was lasting. At last, in 1707, the Act of Union was passed, and Scotland and England came under one central Government. Unfortunately, the Highlanders of the north were not consulted in the arrangement, and they put up two rebellions of their own. Prince Charles Edward, the last of the Stuarts, actually invaded England, and got as far as Derby. He was defeated, but the rebellion smouldered on for years among the Highland glens. The chain of forts along the Caledonian Canal to-day—Fort George, Fort Augustus, Fort William, now peaceful holiday resorts—is a reminder of that time. But those days are all over now, and for nearly two centuries English and Scottish soldiers have fought side by side all over the world. Ireland was united to England and Scotland by a similar Act of Union in 1800. This event, as you may possibly have heard, has provided a fruitful topic of conversation ever since.
IV. Our Climate
Then there is our weather. An Englishman never knows on going to work in the morning whether to take a palm-leaf hat, or a fur overcoat, or a diving-suit. The trouble is that our weather arrives too suddenly. We are an island in the middle of the ocean, and most of our weather comes in from the Atlantic, where there is no one to watch it. Our weather prophets simply have to take a chance. That is all. With you it is different. Your weather travels across a continent three thousand miles wide. You can see it coming, and telegraph to the next State what to expect.
So, if you are spending a day’s leave in London, and walk out of blazing sunshine at one end of the street into a thunderstorm at the other—well, have a heart, and put it down to the War. We will try to fix things for you when peace comes. But we cannot promise. Anyway, in peace-time we can always wear rubbers.