Bisbee daily review., 1918-11-22
FRANCE AND OUR DEAD


 set at rest by Irwin s. Cobb, in an article in the current issue of the Saturday Evening Post. in manner that will bring comfort to the hearts of those American mothers and fathers whose sons have died over there.
 Mir. Cobb, after describing a visit to cemetery in a large French city, where several hundred of our boys have been bur jed, tells how he found hundreds of French women decorating the graves of the Amer jeans, while old men, evidently drawn from all ranks of life, raked the walks and ar ranged the tidy borders of sea shells which marked each small plot.
 An American general was explaining to him how, on the day the first American to die in that vicinity was to be buried, a delegation of the towns most influential residents had come to him and said the town desired to adopt the American dead. When asked for an explanation, the spokesman said:
 General, there is scarcely family in this place where we live that has not given one or more of its members to die tor France. In most cases these dead of ours sleep on battlefields far away from us, per haps in unmarked and unknown graves. This is true of all parts of our country, but particularly is it true of this town, which is so remote from the scenes of actual fighting.
 So, in the case of this brave Ameri- can who today is to be buried here among us, we ask that a French family shall be
 ,,,,larFalra fha of his grave, as though it were the grave of one of their own flesh and blood who has fallen, as he has fallen, for France and for freedom In the case of each Ameri- can who may hereafter be buried here we ask the same privilege. We promise you that, so long as these Americans shall rest here in our land their graves shall be our graves, and will be tended as we tend the graves of our own sons.
 We desire that the name of each fam fly that adopts grave may be registered, so that, should the adults die, the children of the next generation, as sacred charge, may carry on the obligation which Is now to be laid upon their parents and trans mitted as legacy to all who bear their name We would make sure of this. so that no matter how long your fallen braves rest in the soil of France, their graves shall not be as the neglected graves of strangers to us, but symbolically at least, may be as the graves of our dead sons.
 We wish to do these things for more reasons than one: We wish to do them be cause thereby we may express in our own small, poor way the gratitude we feel to America. We wish to do them because of the thought that some stricken mother across the seas in America will perhaps feel a measure of comfort and consolation in knowing the grave of her boy shall al- ways be made beautiful by the hands of a French woman whose home, also, has been desolated. And finally we wish to do them because we know 1t will bring peace to the hearts of the Frenchwomen to feel they have a right to put French flowers upon the graves of your heroic dead, since they can never hope-most of them-to perform that same office for theirs.
 After describing the beauty of the scene in the cemetery, Cobb continues:
 50 have set down the tale; and to it must add sequel: Decoration Day was months ago, and now learn that the GUS tom which originated in this coast town is spreading throughout the country and that, in many villages and towns where Americans are buried, Frenchwomen whose sons or husbands or fathers or brothers have been killed are taking over the care of the graves of Americans, be- slowing upon them the same loving atten-