Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1918-02-25
France Mourning
One Million Dead


North Americana
Father, are they coming? Are
they coming?'
"'Are who coming?' ask my boys
roughly; the Germans
my French soldiers puff their
cheeks out and laugh. oh! for the
Germans! Pough! They better not;
But-grave again-'are the Ameri-
can boys coming to help us? Father.
ere they really coming soon?'
Then l tell my boys: Yes, the
american boys are on their way;
they are coming, as surely as the
seasons come, and they are coming
many, many thousands strong.
'Thnak you, Father, the voices
ring out, all confident again; thank
you for those words. How they put
the heart in one!'
Don't, oh, don't be afraid to send
men! My boys have cried to you
for help. America must help; the
cry has rung out to her; she dare
not let it go unheeded. Send men,
send money, send gold and iron and
steel and ships, ships, ships, and send
in unbounded measures your praise,
your sympathy and your help. There
IT, neither France, Great Britain nor
America in this war; it is one people
fighting for justice, liberty and
right"
1t is the French able with the
Irish name; it is that valiant soldier
of God, who for two years faced with
"his boys" the German hordes and
German shells from the front trench
of the great firing line; who prayed
and laughed and watched with them;
who cheered them to their dying
and buried them when dead; who
shared with them their ceaseless dam
ger of an awful death; who was hun
cry with them, and cold with them,
edirty and sick and wounded with
them, who was one with them in
everything except that subtle differ
ence which made of him father"
and of the rest my boys" 1t is the
Able Flynn, telling sobbing, shak-
en- audience of American men and
women yesterday afternoon in With
erspoon hall little of what it means
to have been a Frenchman in the
years since 1914.
II would rather talk to you in
French, ah, far rather talk in
French" begins the able in such
faultless, current English, "but since
] can't, why can't. And what | am
going to give you is facts, just facts,
the first-hand information Of what
] myself have seen at the front. For
that, / imagine, is what Americans
are most eager to get at, now that
their own boys are so soon to be
there.
1T is no exaggeration to say that
/ hear the sounds from over there
those sounds come waiting to me
across the misty Atlantic stretches,
and they come to me like cries; /
hear those voices and | know what
words it is which come to me upon
the swift Atlantic winds. They come
in great cries which go up from the
very soul of France.
And the first of those great cries
is cry of woe; it is the cry of de-
struction and of suffering, of blood
and death; it is again what Joan of
Arc described when she said; III
a grande pitie au royaume de France
there is great pity in the kingdom
OF France.
"0h, what pity, an awful pity
there is there!
Think of the destruction a man
must see! Think of the quaint little
French villages, some of which don't
exist any more, where there is quite
literally not a stone left; think Of
the others, more desolate still, where
only the bare walls remain to tell
their story.
1--WE said mass in underground
caves, where the shells broke
through the openings; we sat and
ate and slept there. While we talked
and waited for an answer, the man
we talked to dropped over suddenly
and was no more. We sat among
ruins and in the path of death.
But the cry of woe that comes
from over there is for the lives Of
the flower of the French nation cut
down and lost to life. France has
lost one million of the brightest and
the best that she could boast. You
here in America think it is tremen-
dous task to raise an army of one
million men; France has lost mil
lion and has raised two million and
a half since then. You are engrossed
in raising one million men, and you