About the year 1640, James Howell, an English traveller spoke of "the Netherlands" as "the cockpit of Christendom." Some one suspecting him of cynicism has altered the phrase to "the cockpit of Europe." Howell was not, of course, referring to the Dutch Netherlands, for within its frontiers comparatively few battles have been fought, but to the Low Countries, comprising what is now Belgian Flanders and the old French province of Artois.