The Home of Mankind

by Hendrik Willem van Loon

  There is a school of geography which holds that climate and geographical background play the decisive part in shaping human destinies. Undoubtedly they do—sometimes. Quite as often they do not. The Moors and the Spaniards lived on the same soil and the sun shone with the same violence upon the valley of the Guadalquivir in the year 1200 as it did in the year 1600. But in the year 1200 it bestowed its blessings upon a paradise of fruit and flowers and in the year 1600 it forced its accursed rays upon a parched wilderness of neglected irrigation ditches and weeds.

  And so It goes on. Human nature, regardless of the advance of the machine and of science and of standardization of every sort, will always remain an extremely unstable and undependable factor in the general scheme of things. It has been responsible for the many strange and unexpected developments of which the map of the world is the living evidence; and France is merely one of the object lessons which bear me out on this point.

  Politically speaking, France seems to be one country. But if you will kindly look at the map you will notice that France is really composed of two separate parts which actually turn their backs upon each other—the valley of the Rhône in the southeast which looks out upon the Mediterranean, and the great inclined plain of the north and the west which faces towards the Atlantic.

  Let us begin with the oldest of these two halves. The Rhône takes its origin in Switzerland but it really does not become a river of any importance until it has left the Lake of Geneva and has reached the city of Lyons, the centre of the French silk industry, where it combines with the Saône, a river which comes down from the north and which has its source only a few miles from that of the Meuse, a river which is as intimately connected with the history of northern Europe as the Saône (combined with the Rhône) is with that of the south. The Rhône is not a very navigable river. Before it reaches the Gulf of Lions (no, the name ‘Gulf of Lyons’ which appears on many maps is an error) it has come down some 6000 feet, which accounts for its rapid currents, which have not yet been entirely overcome by the modern steamer.

  Nevertheless it offered the ancient Phoenicians and Greeks a convenient entrance way into the heart of Europe, for man-power—slave-power—was cheap. The ships could be dragged upstream (with infinite labour) and downstream was a matter of a few days. And so it happened that the old civilization of the Mediterranean made its first attack upon the European hinterland by way of the Rhône valley. Strangely enough Marseilles, the earliest commercial settlement in that region (and still the most important French port on the Mediterranean), was not situated directly at the mouth of the river but several miles towards the east. (It is now connected with the Rhône by means of a canal.) Nevertheless it proved a very good choice, for Marseilles became such an important centre of trade that as early as the third century before Christ Marseillian coins had found their way as for as the Austrian Tyrol and the region round Paris. And soon the whole region immediately to the north of it recognized Marseilles as its capital.

  Then, during an ill-fated moment in its history, the citizens of the town, hard pressed by wild tribes from the Alps, asked the Romans to come and help them. The Romans came, and, as was their habit, stayed. All the land along the mouth of the Rhône became a Roman provincia and the name ‘Provence,’ which has played such a great part in history, bears silent testimony to the fact that it was the Romans, rather than the Phoenicians and Greeks, who recognized the importance of this fertile triangle.

  But here we find ourselves face to face with one of the most perplexing problems both of geography and history. The Provence with its mixture of Greek and Roman civilization, its ideal climate, its great fertility, its front door opening upon the Mediterranean and its back door leading conveniently to the plain of central and northern Europe, seemed predestined to become the logical successor to Rome. It was given every possible natural advantage and then, with, all the trump cards in its hands, it failed to play them. During the quarrels between Caesar and Pompey, the Provence took the side of Pompey, and the rival gang destroyed the city of Marseilles. But that was a minor incident, for soon afterwards its citizens were doing business once more at the same old stand, while literature and courtly manners and the arts and sciences, no longer safe in Rome, fled across the Ligurian Sea and turned the Provence into an island of civilization entirely surrounded by barbarians.

  When the Popes with all their wealth and power were no longer able to maintain themselves in the city of the Tiber they too moved their court to Avignon, the town famous for the first attempt at bridge-building on a large scale (part of the bridge now lies on the bottom of the river, but in the twelfth century it was one of the world’s wonders) and where they owned a castle that could withstand a hundred sieges. Thereupon for nearly seventy years the Provence was the home of the head of Christendom, its knights took a very prominent part in the Crusades, and one noble Provençal family became the hereditary ruler of Constantinople.

  But somehow or other the Provence was never able to play the part for which Nature seemed to have predestined her when she created these delightful and fertile and romantic valleys. The Provence gave us the Troubadours, but even they, although recognized as the founders of a form of literature which has maintained itself ever since in our novels and our plays and our poetry, were never able to make their soft Provencal dialect, the langue d’oc, the general tongue of all France. It was the north with its langue d’oïl (oïl and oc were merely different forms for oui or yes)—it was the north, which enjoyed none of the natural advantages of the south, which was to found the French State, create the French nation, and bestow upon the world in general the manifold blessings of French culture. But sixteen centuries ago no one could have foreseen this development. For then the entire plain which reaches from the Pyrenees in the south to the Baltic in the north seemed predestined to become part of a vast Teutonic empire. That would have been the natural development. But man not being very much interested in natural developments, everything came differently.

  To the Romans of Caesar’s time all this part of Europe had been the Far West. They had called it Gallia because it was inhabited by Gauls, by people belonging to the mysterious race of fair-haired men and women to whom the Greeks had given the general name of Keltoi or Celts. And in those days there were two kinds of Gaul. One was the region of the Po river, between the Alps and the Apennines, where the fair-haired savages had made their appearance at a very early date and which was known as Gallia Cisalpina or Gaul-this-side-of-the-mountains. That was the Gaul which Caesar left when he threw his famous die and boldly crossed the Rubicon. Then there was the Gallia Transalpina, the Gaul-across-the-mountains, and that accounted vaguely for all the rest of Europe. But after Caesar’s famous expedition of the years 58–51 b.c. it came to be associated more particularly with the France of to-day. It was a fertile land which could be made to pay taxes without too much objection on the part of the natives, hence an ideal domain for intensive Roman colonization.

  The mountains, well provided with passes, as they are, offered no great difficulties to the progress of an army consisting mostly of infantry. Soon the great plain of France was dotted with Roman fortresses and Roman villages, markets, temples, prisons, theatres and factories. A small island in the river Seine, where the Celts still lived on houses built on piles, and called Lutetia (or Lutetia Parisiorum after the Parisii who had first taken possession of this natural fortress), became an ideal spot on which to build a temple dedicated to Jupiter. That temple stood where Notre-Dame rises to-day.

  As the island bad direct water communication with Great Britain (a profitable Roman colony during the first 400 years of our era) and was an excellent strategic centre from which to watch the turbulent regions between the Rhine and the Meuse, it quite naturally developed into the chief centre of the vast Roman organization that administered the Far West.

  THE GEOLOGY OF THE ÎLE DE FRANCE

  As I told you in the chapter on maps, we sometimes wonder how the Romans were able to find their way a
cross the whole island and mainland world of that day, but there can be no question about it—they had an unerring instinct for the right spot, whether they were building a harbour, a fortress, or a trading-post. A casual observer, after passing six dreary weeks amid the rains coast of Normandy. The third one, the famous Champagne region, encircles the fourth one, appropriately called the lie de France, or the Island of France. This ‘island’ is a vague circle and Paris is situated right in the heart of it. That meant safety—almost complete safety—because it offered the greatest amount of protection from foreign invasion. For the enemy was obliged to storm the steep outer edges of those saucers, while the home troops were not only in an excellent position for defence but in case of defeat could leisurely withdraw to the protection of the rains and fogs of the Parisian valley, may ask himself “Why in the name of Mars did the Romans ever select this forlorn spot to be their administrative headquarters for all their western and northern possessions?” But a geologist with a map of northern France before him could show us.

  In the course of millions of years the sea alternately invaded this land basin and slowly withdrew from it. Each time large deposits collected in the bed of the sea, first hard limestone, then later on chalk, sands and clays, more limestone and more sands in succession. The edges of these layers of rock have worn away, so that they now are exposed lying on each other something like the saucers of one of those Chinese tea-sets which used to delight the hearts of our grandmothers. The lowest and biggest of these saucers stretches from the Vosges Mountains to Brittany, where its western brim lies buried beneath the waters of the English Channel. The second one reaches from Lorraine to the saucer-rim, and could repeat that performance four times ere they had reached their little island in the Seine, which, by the burning of the few connecting bridges, could be turned into an impregnable fortress.

  THE ÎLE DE FRANCE EXPRESSED IN THE FORM OF SAUCERS

  It was of course possible for a very determined and well-equipped hostile force to take Paris. But it was exceedingly difficult, as the Great War has shown us only recently. It was not only the valour of the French and British that kept the Germans out of the French capital. It also was that geographical accident of millions of years ago which had put every possible natural barrier in the way of the invaders from the east.

  France has been obliged to fight almost ten centuries for her national independence. But whereas most countries have been under the necessity of guarding separate frontiers, France was able to devote all her energies to the protection of her eastern boundaries; and this probably accounted for the fact that France could develop into a highly centralized modern State long before any of the other nations of Europe.

  The whole of the western part of France, situated between the Cévennes and the Vosges and the Atlantic, falls quite naturally into a number of peninsulas and valleys which are separated from each other by low ridges. The valley of the Seine and Oise is connected with the plains of Belgium through a natural gateway defended since time immemorial by the city of St Quentin. In modern times it has become a very important railway centre, and as such it was one of the main German objectives during the march on Paris in 1914.

  The valley of the Seine and that of the Loire are in easy communication with each other by way of the gap of Orleans. As a result thereof that region was bound to play a very important part in the history of France. In the Middle Ages, knights in armour fought for such key positions. To-day railway companies fight for such key positions. The world changes. But often enough, the more it seems to change, the more it really remains the same.

  As for the connexion between the Loire valley and the valley of the Garonne, it followed the present railway line via Poitiers, and it was near Poitiers that Charles Martel in the year 732 prevented the Moors from pushing any further into Europe, and it was near Poitiers that the Black Prince in the year 1356 so completely annihilated the French forces that France remained under English domination for almost another hundred years.

  As for that wide valley of the Garonne, the southern part of which, is that famous land of Gascony whence came the dashing d’Artagnan and the gallant King Henry IV, that part of France is in direct communication with the Provence and the Rhône valley by way of a valley that runs from Toulouse on the Garonne River to Narbonne, which used to be on the Mediterranean and which incidentally was the oldest of all Roman settlements in Gaul.

  THE RHINE, THE MEUSE, AND THEIR DELTA

  Like all such prehistoric highways (for that route was used thousands of years before the beginning of written history) it has always been a source of revenue to some one. Racketeering and profiteering are as old as the human race. If you doubt this statement, go to any mountain pass in any part of the world and remain in that neighbourhood until you have definitely located the spot where the road was at its narrowest a thousand years ago. On that exact spot you will find the ruins of from half a dozen to two dozen castles, and if you know anything about ancient civilizations, the different layers of stone will tell you: “Here in the year 50 b.c. and in the year 600 and 800 and in 1100 and in 1250 and in 1350 and in 1500 some robber baron built himself a fortress which allowed him to demand tribute from all passing caravans.”

  Sometimes you will be surprised to find a flourishing city instead of a mere ruin. But the towers and ravelins and counterscarps and bastions of Carcassonne will tell you how terribly strong such a mountain pass fortress had to be to survive the attacks of all its hungry enemies.

  So much for the general landscape of France. Now let me add a few very general characteristics about the people who live in this land between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. There is one thing they seem to have in common, a certain sense of balance and proportion. I should almost feel inclined to say that the French tried hard to be ‘logical,’ if that unfortunate word were not so closely connected with the idea of something dry and dull and pedantic.

  It is true that France is the home of the highest mountain in Europe. The top of Mount Blanc is now French territory, but that is merely an accident. The average Frenchman is as little concerned about that waste of snow and ice as the average American is about the Painted Desert. What he likes best is the harmonious roll of the hills of the Meuse region and Guyenne and Normandy and Picardy, the pleasant little rivers with their high poplars, and their leisurely barges, the haze that hangs over the valleys at night and then turns them into paintings by Corot. What he knows best are those little villages where nothing ever changes (the greatest strength of any country), those small towns in which the people live or at least try to live as their ancestors did fifty or five hundred years ago, and Paris, where the best living and the best thinking have gone hand in hand for more than ten centuries.

  PARIS

  For the Frenchman is not a sentimental dreamer, but a most intelligent and eager realist. He stands with both feet flatly on this earth. He realizes that he will live but once and that threescore and ten is all he can expect. And so he endeavours to make himself as comfortable as possible while on this planet and wastes no time imagining the world better than it is. C’est la vie—such is life—and suppose we make the best of it! Since food is agreeable to civilized man, let us provide even the poorest with the knowledge of good cooking. Since wine, ever since the days of our Saviour, has been regarded as a fit drink for true Christians, let us cultivate the best of wines. Since the Lord in His wisdom has seen fit to fill this earth with many things agreeable to the eye and the ear and the nose, let us not indulge in a haughty denial of these divine bounties, but partake of them as an all-wise Providence has evidently meant us to do. And since Man is stronger when fighting in a group than when acting, alone, let us stick closely to the family as the elementary social unit which is responsible for the weal and woe of all its members, just as all the individual members are responsible for the weal and woe of the family.

  This is the ideal side of French life. There is another side, much less agreeable, which however grows directly out of the v
ery qualities which 1 have just enumerated. The family quite frequently ceases to be a pleasant dream and becomes a nightmare. The endless grandmothers and grandfathers who rule the clan act as a brake which prevents all progress. The excellent habit of saving for sons and grandsons and great-grandsons degenerates into a hideous habit of scraping and filching and rooking and pinching and economizing on every necessity of life, including that charity towards one’s neighbour without which civilized existence becomes a very drab experience indeed.

  But by and large the average Frenchman, of however humble rank or station, seems to carry with him a certain practical philosophy of life which provides him with a maximum of content at a minimum of expenditure. For one thing, he is not ambitious in our sense of the word. He knows that all men are born unequal. They tell him that in America every boy may some day hope to become a president of the bank for which he works as a clerk. What of it? He does not want to assume all that responsibility! What would become of his three hours for luncheon? It would of course be nice to have all the money that goes with the job, but the sacrifice of comfort and happiness would be too great. And so the Frenchman works and works industriously and his wife works and his daughters and his sons work too, yes, and the whole country works and saves and lives the sort of lives it likes to live and does not try to lead the sort of lives other people think it ought to like to live; and that is a bit of wisdom which does not make for great riches, but which is a better guarantee for ultimate happiness than the doctrine of success preached all over the rest of the world.

  Whenever we come to the sea in this geography of ours I shall not tell you that the people of the coast indulge in fishing. Of course they do. What else would you expect them to do?