WALKS IN THE WHEAT-FIELDS. 155 



and all these are the merely useful, and, in that sense, 

 the plainest of growths. There are, then, the poppies, 

 whose wild brilliance in July days is not surpassed by 

 any hue of Spain. Wild charlock — a clear yellow—pink 

 pimpernels, pink-streaked convolvulus, great white con- 

 volvulus, double-yellow toadflax, blue borage, broad 

 rays of blue chicory, tall corn-cockles, azure corn-flowers, 

 the great mallow, almost a bush, purple knapweed — I 

 will make no further catalogue, but there are pages more 

 of flowers, great and small, that grow at the edge of the 

 plough, from the coltsfoot that starts out of the clumsy 

 clod in spring to the white clematis. Of the broad sur- 

 face of the golden wheat and its glory I have already 

 spoken, yet these flower-encircled acres, these beautiful 

 fields of peaceful wheat, are the battle-fields of life. For 

 these fertile acres the Romans built their cities and those 

 villas whose mosaics and hypocausts are exposed by the 

 plough, and formed straight roads like the radii of a 

 wheel or the threads of a geometrical spider's web. Thus 

 like the spider the legions from their centre marched 

 direct and quickly conquered. Next the Saxons, next 

 the monk-slaying Danes, next the Normans in chain- 

 mail — one, two, three heavy blows — came to grasp these 

 golden acres. Dearly the Normans loved them ; they 

 gripped them firmly and registered them in ' Domesday 

 Book.' They let not a hide escape them ; they gripped 

 also the mills that ground the corn. Do you think such 

 blood would have been shed for barren wastes ? No, it 

 was to possess these harvest-laden fields. The wheat- 

 fields are the battle-fields of the world. If not so openly 

 invaded as of old time, the struggle between nations is 

 still one for the ownership or for the control of corn. 

 When Italy became a vineyard and could no more feed 

 the armies, slowly power slipped away and the great 



