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212 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
saved England from perdition. One sees the burning villages
around, the roads with their avenues of trees and the shady
groves at Ohain and Chateau de Goumont.
But reality itself is after all more interesting. I walk up
to the crest of the hill, some sixty metres high, on which
stands a lion of colossal dimensions, unveiled ten years after
the battle by the Netherlands Government. The lion is cast
from captured French guns, and its base merely bears the
inscription : XVIII June MDCCCXV. It is not the con-
quered Titan who is symbolised by this pompous lion, but the
united powers who made an end of his career. The wounded
bronze eagle on his piece of rock, recently put up by the
French in memory of the battle, illustrates in a dignified
manner the glorious but unhappy struggle of Napoleon and
the French arms. But the lion remains at his post and looks
out defiantly upon the historic landscape.
Around us we now see the actual panorama with its shaded
roads, its villages and church towers, its gardens and fields.
Some of these are green—where clover or sugar-beet is grown ;
others blend in brown and grey—where the crops have been
brought in and the plough has furrowed the soil afresh, and
harvesters, ploughmen, grazing cattle, and other rural scenes
form a picture which seems to speak only of peace and tran-
quillity.
Dusk is descending over the tormented, blood-drenched
earth and the wind sweeps dismally over fields and hills where
the echo of the ancient guns and the rattle of harness and
stirrups, crossed lances, and doughty sword-thrusts died away
just on a hundred years ago. A feeling akin to reverence steals
over the wanderer on this battlefield, still marked with the
monuments put up by those who wished to honour their dead.
Everything recalls his name, that great name still living as
vivid and as fresh as ever, and undimmed by the dark nights
which for wellnigh a hundred years have clothed in their
shadows the country between Mont St. Jean and Planchenois.
Now German soldiers are on guard at the battlefield of
Waterloo and its historic monuments. Once more the Prus-
sians have taken charge of the spot where the bravery and
loyalty of their ancestors under the iron will of Bliicher
broke Napoleon’s strength and gave the British general a
victory which he alone would never have been able to achieve.
Wellington’s country followed the policy which had been its
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