It is not often on one's way, even in England of my heart, that one can come upon a place, a lonely hill-side or a city, and say: this is a spot upon which the history of the world was decided; yet I was able on that showery morning, as I went up out of Hastings towards Battle and saw all the level of Pevensey full of rain, to recall two such places in which I had stood already upon my pilgrimage. For I had lingered a whole morning upon the battlefield where the Romans first met and overthrew our forefathers and thus brought Britain within the Empire; while at Canterbury I had been in the very place where, after an incredible disaster, England was persuaded back again out of barbarism into the splendour of the Faith and of civilisation. These places are more than English, they are European sanctuaries, two of the greater sites of the history of Europe. Perhaps as much cannot rightly be said for the hill where the town of Battle stands, the landing-place at Pevensey and the port of Hastings. And yet I don't know. What a different England it would have been if William of Normandy had failed or had never landed here at all. And if such an England could have endured how changed would have been the whole destiny of Europe. I am not sure after all that we ought not to be as uplifted by the memory of Hastings as we are or should be by the memory of Caesar's advent. At any rate since Hastings was fought and won in the eleventh century any national prejudices that belong wholly to the modern world are quite as much out of place with regard to it as they are with regard to Caesar or St Augustine. And if we must be indignant and remember old injuries that as often as not were sheer blessings, scarcely in disguise, let us reserve our hatred, scorn and contempt for those damned pagan and pirate hordes that first from Schleswig-Holstein and later from Denmark descended upon our Christian country, and for a time overwhelmed us with their brutish barbarism. As for me I am for the Duke of Normandy; without him England were not the England of my heart. Now the great and beautiful road up out of Hastings, seven miles into Battle, is not only one of the loveliest in Britain, every yard of it is full of Duke William's army, and thence we may see how in its wonderful simplicity all that mighty business which was decided that October morning on the hill-top that for so long Battle Abbey guarded as a holy place, was accomplished. For looking southward over the often steep escarpment, always between three and five hundred feet over the sea plain, we may see Pevensey Castle, the landing, Hastings, the port, and at last come to Battle, the scene of the fight that gave England to the Norman for our enormous good and glory and honour.