■64 Profef^sor Granville A. J. Cole on 



phates. From its western end the great confluent delta of the 

 Graronne and its tributaries spreads northwards, forming the 

 level country of the Landes, margined by sand-dunes and swept 

 by the Atlantic winds. This ocean frontier was known to the 

 Phoenicians, aiul it is said that the first knowledge of letters 

 reached Gaul through the estuary of the Seine. The bleak 

 promontory of Brittany, which gave so many seamen to the 

 navies of France, is part of "Armorican" Europe, a folded 

 mass fai- older than the Paris Basin, the Pyrenees, or the Alps ; 

 it is repeated in Cornwall and southern Ireland, and can be 

 traced through the Ardennes and eastward far across the Rhine. 



The special " narrow sea" of the old writers, the link 

 between the North Sea and the English Channel, completes 

 the sea-frontier of England, but has allowed of frequent rivalry 

 between dwellers on the opposing shores. Across it the Nor- 

 mans converted England into ' the most successful colony of 

 France," while their anglicized descendants made fi'equont raids 

 upon what they claimed as their rightful soil in Picardy. The 

 holding of Calais by those who held the port of Dover was 

 long regarded as essential to England's safety. A permanent 

 and warm alliance with France offers a far better guarantee at 

 the i)resent day. Eastward from the narrovv sea, the northern 

 frontier runs across the level lands of Flanders, where natural 

 boundaries are hard to find. Here nation has warred with 

 nation for supremacy in western Europe, and the open Nether- 

 lands have been again and again overrun in struggles with 

 which they had no immediate concern. It is no accident that 

 the invaders of France in 1914, and the victorious allies 

 marching northward in the autumn of 1918, traversed the 

 ground of Conde's, Marlborough's, and Wellington's campaigns. 



The frontier is far better defined when we reach the 

 Armorican ridge of the Ardennes, which leads us eastward 

 to the Rhine-trough. The mass of the Vosges forms a natural 

 rim to France above the Rhine, though the river itself must 

 be accepted as the actual frontier of Alsace. This country, 



