n, where the most kind officials of the Library of Congress
assigned to me a roomy alcove in the north curtain with a desk and
ample surrounding shelves. These were filled for me by expert hands
with whatever I might require for my task, and a screen shut off
my corner from the corridor through which at times perambulated
Roosevelt, and other secluded delvers, intent on early Gaelic
literature and what not. Here I spent the most of two years, finding
it an ideal spot, but my task required more than an examination, under
the quiet light of my great window, of books and documents. The fields
themselves must also be surveyed, so I travelled far until I had
visited the scene of nearly every important conflict and traced the
lines of march in the great campaigns. I was already a haunter of old
battle-fields, that thread of heredity, from a line of forbears very
martial in their humble way, asserting itself in whatever lands I
wandered. I had been at Hastings, and had traced the Ironsides to
Marston Moor and Naseby. I had stood by the _Schweden-Stein_ at
Luetzen, and tramped the sod of Leipsic and Waterloo. It was for me
now to see our own fields of decision, fields ennobled by a courage as
great and a purpose as high as soldiers have ever shown.

To mark Waterloo the Belgians reared a mound of huge dimensions,
scraping the _terrain_ far and near to obtain the earth.
Wellington is said to have remarked that the features of the ground
had been so far obliterated by this that he could not recognise
his own positions. One wonders whether the future may not blame our
generation for transformations almost as disguising. Gettysburg,
Chickamauga, Vicksburg, and Shiloh are now elaborate parks. No mounds
have been reared, but the old roads are smooth boulevards, trim lawns
are on the ragged heights, the landscape-gardener has barbered the
grim rough face of the country-side into something very handsome no
doubt, but the imagination must be set to work to call back the arena
as it was on the battle-day. From various points of vantage
memorials make appeal, statues, obelisks, Greek temples, and porches,
bewildering in their number, and now and then making doubtful claims.
"This general," some scrutiniser will tell you, "never held the line
ascribed to him and that pompous pile falsely does honour to troops
who really wavered in the crisis." I know I run counter to prevailing
sentiment in saying that I prefer a field unchanged, not with