Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/205

Rh as Roman citizens with all the privileges that this exalted station carried with it in those days?

This Volubilis, where Moors, Iberians, Gauls, Germans, Franks and Britons fought for the furtherance of Rome's political aspirations, has almost completely disappeared under the wind-borne mantle of the desert, and now these same Franks, Moors, Iberians and Germans are working to excavate and reconstruct it. German warprisoners have carried through the most difficult and important part of the task, for which intelligent and conscientious work were required, under the direction of Monsieur Louis Chatelain, a French officer who had been wounded during service on the German front. Spaniards have worked here, and Berbers of the ancient Mauretania Tingitana are still excavating. Is it not a proof that Europe, rent by political strife, can find common aims and comprehensible bases for co-operation the moment it steps from the realm of politics into those of knowledge and art?

"What became of Volubilis? Why was the town destroyed?" I asked our Arab guide.

"When Meknes, Zerhun and Rabat were constructed, the Morocco sultans took from here columns, cornices and whole façades, for it was all good building material."

This was not the reply to my question, as the Arab explained only the last stage in the town s destruction. But history tells us that, after the downfall of Rome from its inability to consolidate and hold together its immense Empire, the Vandals appeared here, those archiconoclasts and despoilers. Then came Byzantium, whose interests did not reach to this frontier and who