Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-08-29
THE CHAFFING DISH

BduHC gnQstS OF trees. just one Dltter hhi
on the long hard front, almost impregnable
yet changing hands half dozen times-what
n symbol of indomitable and wasted life!
On n smoothed out stretch Of this Scared,
agonized hilltop is a little cemetery of French
and German graves, neat and soldier like
and still as the quiet earth at the dawn of
the ages. There they know peace and are
quiet, oberleutnant and private, comrade and
foe. and have an end to their bitterness.
Blue helmets laid on few of the graves give
an amazingly intimate and pathetic touch,
as though they had been tossed aside before
tired men lay down to sleep.
MTE CAME back to Paris by another way
w along the Ourcq through Fismes and
Meaux, through some of the most lovely
country in France A few miles and we had
come from burning to beauty. Here was an
afternoon sunlit world of golden wheat
standing, gathered in sheaves, marshaled
against a background of flowing fields and
trees, billowing like low lying summer clouds
of green. The poplars, trimmed high from
the ground, stood in sweeping ranks along
the smooth sky -rehecting river, giving an
unbelievably perfect look to the landscape,
as though it were laid out in miniature or
in a stage setting. The late afternoon sun
light heightened this effect. for of all the
lights of the day that of the low sun gives
to the world its most enchanting aspect, that
heeting atmosphere of Immortality and hope
and poetry which hovers for moment about
the old, ever changing surface of the land.
Towns and small cities of an almost super
municipal beauty flowed past, serene in the
gold sunshine and green shadow of the perfect
afternoon, letting the river wind among their
gray, red-roofed houses or standing aloof in
sweet content.
. LNVENING Paris. Sitting near the darkly
IL glowing Seine and in sight of The lights
and movement along the Champs Elysees,
fell to thinking of the world and the cities
of it and the nations and what they have
ever been and yet may be. And was glad
to be an American, to bear Americas faults
and crudities for the sake of her dear youth
in the heart of the New World. In our
country the "New World" has an anachron-
istic ring, but from the Old World we see
more clearly and feel how vitally new our
country is, how gloriously vigorous and
whole hearted and foolish and hopeful and
young. And so, as for all the youth of the
world, we say short unanxious prayer for
guidance and in the years to be, q serene
maturity. Thence home and to bed as s.
Pepys would conclude the day.
TIME admirable fact that Paris is not built
L to great and uneven heights like our
cities and is much more given to open spaces
and magnificent public squares let's some
thing of the freshness and poignancy of coun-
try air blow through the early morning heart
, of the city. On Sunday morning / had a
ridiculously sublime breakfast in one of those
open air cafes that give on the food of sun
light and moving color in the square outside,
spread before one like the gayest, most low
able and moving tapestry in the world; a
breakfast of light and color and eternal
morning, and, more materially, of an ONE
lette and chocolate and bread and coniture
A breakfast, rightly partaken of, is in very
truth a feast of the soul just bathed in the
cool depths of sleep of all the fears and
cares of yesterday, and throbbing for an
immense today and the far horizons of in
Vulnerable tomorrows. Add to this dash of
morning hunger and the world is yours, or
all of it that you will ever require.
= The latest compromise suggested in the
actors strike is that the producers shall
| pay for the costumes of the chorus. SO cheap
| a concession as this will surely not dismay
the managers.
The government now plays its last trump
| card in the treaty battle, The attorney gen :
| eral says that wartime prohibition win con
! tinue until the treaty is signed,
SOCRATES